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Committed to carrying forward reform mission despite loss: PKA federal appeals court panel on Friday unanimously upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok as soon as next month, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law — which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January — and rebuffed the company’s challenge of the statute, which it argued had ran afoul of the First Amendment. “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion, which was written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.” TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, though its unclear whether the court will take up the case. “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” Hughes said. Unless stopped, he argued the statute “will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.” Though the case is squarely in the court system, it’s also possible the two companies might be thrown some sort of a lifeline by President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term but said during the presidential campaign that he is now against such action . “He wants to save TikTok,” Rep. Michael Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, said Friday during an interview on Fox Business. The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a yearslong saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China. The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits , that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect. The European Union on Friday expressed similar concerns as it investigates intelligence that suggests Russia possibly abused the platform to influence the elections in Romania. “Today’s decision is an important step in blocking the Chinese government from weaponizing TikTok,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday. TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government. Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel, composed of two Republicans and one Democrat appointed judges, heard oral arguments in September. In the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, the panel appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform. On Friday, all three denied TikTok’s petition. In the court’s ruling, Ginsburg, a Republican appointee, rejected TikTok’s main legal arguments against the law, including that the statute was an unlawful bill of attainder, or a taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment. He also said the law did not violate the First Amendment because the government is not looking to “suppress content or require a certain mix of content” on TikTok. “Content on the platform could in principle remain unchanged after divestiture, and people in the United States would remain free to read and share as much PRC propaganda (or any other content) as they desire on TikTok or any other platform of their choosing,” Ginsburg wrote, using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. Judge Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge on the court, issued a concurring opinion. TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators — for which the company is covering legal costs — as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc. Other organizations, including the Knight First Amendment Institute, had also filed amicus briefs supporting TikTok. “This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans’ access to information, ideas, and media from abroad,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the organization. “We hope that the appeals court’s ruling won’t be the last word.” Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers who had pushed for the legislation celebrated the court’s ruling. “I am optimistic that President Trump will facilitate an American takeover of TikTok to allow its continued use in the United States and I look forward to welcoming the app in America under new ownership,” said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China. Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who co-authored the law, said “it’s time for ByteDance to accept” the law. To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data. The company has also argued the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient. Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm — the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan — would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content. RECOMMENDED • silive .com Is there a new ‘Saturday Night Live’ episode tonight (12/7/24)? Dec. 7, 2024, 9:00 a.m. Could Daylight Saving Time end in the new Trump administration? Musk, Ramaswamy on board Dec. 4, 2024, 12:22 p.m. Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business. This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.

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Presidential media chat: Borrowing not criminal – TinubuBill Shorten represents the best in Australian politics. And the worst. In his valedictory speech to the House on Thursday, ending 17 years in parliament, he spoke of the achievement in government that was “closest to my heart” – the National Disability Insurance Scheme. “The NDIS belongs alongside Medicare and superannuation as examples of Australian exceptionalism.” Illustration by Simon Letch Credit: Shorten is rightly proud of the NDIS. It was a world-first undertaking and instantly set the standard for the way that civilised societies should treat their disabled citizens. It was not all his work. As Shorten acknowledged, it was Kevin Rudd who gave him his start in the field by appointing him as the parliamentary secretary for disabilities in 2007. “I thought I knew hardship, having seen disadvantage representing workers,” Shorten told the House. “But nothing had prepared me for the way literally hundreds of thousands of Australians with disability and their carers were sentenced to a second-class life of lesser opportunity.” And it was Julia Gillard who committed her government to implementing it. Shorten recalls asking the then prime minister to do just one thing: “I asked her to meet five people in my office and leave her phone outside for an hour and a half.” She heard their stories and was persuaded. Credit must also go to Tony Abbott, the opposition leader who embraced the idea. As he said: “Normally I’m Mr No, but on this occasion I’m Mr Yes!” It’s hard for any major reform to endure without bipartisan support; Abbott gave it that support. Bill Shorten delivers his valedictory speech in the House of Representatives on Thursday. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer But Shorten can take most of the credit for creating the scheme when Labor was in power in 2007-2013, and for repairing it now that Labor is in power once more. By the time Anthony Albanese gave Shorten responsibility for the NDIS in 2022, it had veered out of control. It had become an open secret that it was rife with rorting. Not rorted by the disabled people receiving help, but by the companies and individuals who were supposed to help them and who then billed the government for services provided. The incoming minister was appalled to discover that, if a service provider sent their invoice to the National Disability Insurance Agency between 5pm and 6.30pm, they were paid immediately without any verification. And that 92 per cent of them were unregistered. And that there was no specified list of authorised services. Providers were charging the public purse some outrageous sums for some outrageous supposed needs: “What we have seen is the rise of opportunistic, unethical providers,” Shorten said earlier this year. “They’re selling snake oil. They’re selling stuff which frankly doesn’t work and shouldn’t be being paid for.” That included airline lounge memberships, sex work, pet costs, cigarettes and vapes, illegal drugs, tarot card reading, clothes, guns and cuddle therapy. So Shorten published a list of approved services, the first one, last month, banning all those categories, among others. Shorten’s awkward munching helped make democracy sausage word of the year in 2016. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen It’s no wonder that the costs of the NDIS blew out spectacularly. It’s now on track to become the most expensive item on the federal budget, overtaking the age pension, by 2030. The original 2011 estimates for the scheme were that it would cover 411,000 people and cost $13.6 billion a year. This year it has 660,000 participants with budgeted cost of $42 billion. It’s obvious that the scheme is succeeding in giving life-changing help to many but failing the test of sustainability. Unreformed, the scheme would have to be cut back or shut down. As its father, Shorten was best placed to fix it. And, crucially, the one most trusted to fix it. Last year, the government announced measures to restrain its annual cost growth of 14 per cent to 8 per cent by 2026-27. This is essential to achieve Shorten’s stated aim – to make it “politician-proof”. Among other reforms, he replaced 10 of the 11 top managers and recruited Kurt Fearnley as chair. Shorten persuaded state governments to increase their share of funding from next July. He tripled the number of staff at the Quality and Safeguards Commission to improve scrutiny. He created a Fraud Fusion Taskforce which, over its two-year lifespan, has put 50 people before the courts, prevented $60 million in fraud and currently has more than $1 billion in payments under investigation. Shorten played a key role in removing Kevin Rudd as PM in 2010 and then reinstalling him, at Julia Gillard’s expense, in 2013. Credit: Andrew Meares He’s not quite finished, but he has put the scheme on “train tracks” to sustainability , as he puts it. Compared with the outlay growth anticipated in 2022, Shorten’s reforms will have saved the taxpayer well over $100 billion over the course of a decade. In creating – and then repairing – such an important improvement to the lives of Australia’s people, Shorten shows Australian politics at its best. But he was also one of the faction chiefs who connived to destroy two elected Labor prime ministers, ushering in the “coup era” of Australian politics, the rampant regicide of the “revolving door” prime ministership that made Australia a laughing stock for a decade. If that only damaged Labor governments and destabilised the political system, that would be bad enough. But it did much more. We can now see that the factional fun and games in the corridors of Canberra inflicted enduring harm on the people’s trust in democracy. Shorten wasn’t the instigator of the threshold event, the 2010 lightning coup against Kevin Rudd. The motive force was Mark Arbib with sidekicks Karl Bitar, David Feeney, Stephen Conroy and Don Farrell. And, of course, the willing participation of Julia Gillard; you can’t have a challenge without a challenger. Shorten, with wife Chloe, concedes defeat after the 2019 election. Credit: AP But Shorten, as leader of elements of the Victorian Right faction, energetically joined the execution of the elected prime minister. He said at the time that he feared that he and his little gang would be cut out of the victors’ circle if the coup succeeded. His motives were self-interested and unprincipled. So he helped remove Rudd and install Gillard. Only to then connive against Gillard and help restore Rudd to the prime ministership as electoral oblivion loomed. The madness, of course, soon infected the Liberals, too. Rudd-Gillard-Rudd was followed by Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison. One consequence is that John Howard was the last Australian prime minister to be re-elected. But democracy is much bigger than politics, politicians, factions, parties, prime ministers and even elections. It is, at core, an act of the people’s confidence in the virtue of collective decision-making, of trust in our fellow citizens and submission to the greater good. So what happens when the people who are supposed to model these ideals expose themselves to be self-interested thugs, grasping opportunists and self-involved narcissists? Unsurprisingly, Australians have been discouraged and disgusted. People’s trust in democracy has not recovered from the era of the disposable leader. The ANU and Griffith University’s Australian Election Study shows that the public disapproved of every leadership coup, regardless of party or personality. Loading The proportion of Australians saying they are “satisfied with democracy” was in a healthy 80 per cent range in the late Howard and early Rudd years, the highest at any time since 1969. It peaked at 86 per cent in 2007, the year Rudd was elected. From the moment he was torn down, this proportion started to shrink non-stop until it hit bottom at 59 per cent in 2019. For perspective, this was its lowest since the dismissal of the Whitlam government. When the pandemic struck, trust in government recovered somewhat. But, to this day, satisfaction with democracy has not recovered to the pre-coup era, according to the Australian Election Study. Does Shorten regret his part in the destruction of two Labor prime ministers, the onset of the coup mania and the enduring damage to Australians’ confidence in democracy? “You do regret your mistakes, you don’t forget your failures,” Shorten said in his valedictory on Thursday, and for a moment the House held its breath in anticipation. Shorten resumed: “Oh, what I would give to go back to election day 2016 and turn that sausage in bread around the right way.” He got a laugh as the audience recalled that much-publicised lapse in democracy sausage etiquette when he approached it from the side instead of the end. But this was not any metaphor for political remorse, however. Asked for his political regrets, Shorten falls back on Frank Sinatra: “Regrets. I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.” When I ask him straight whether he regrets his part in the downfall of two Labor prime ministers, he disavows responsibility and only replies: “I regret that the instability occurred.” The journalist David Marr wrote a 2016 assessment of Shorten in the Quarterly Essay . It was titled “Faction Man”. Today, Marr looks back on Shorten’s political career and concludes that “he never ceased being a man of factions”. The best and the worst of Australian politics. Peter Hartcher is political editor. Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. License this article Political leadership Bill Shorten ALP Kevin Rudd Julia Gillard For subscribers Opinion Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Connect via email . Most Viewed in Politics Loading

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The Coalition will reveal details of its nuclear power plan this week, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton confirming long-awaited costings would be released in the coming days. Speaking to Sky News on Sunday morning, Mr Dutton said the Coalition has stuck to a "very deliberate process" of drip-feeding information about its plan to ensure the Australian public could consume and understand the proposal. "The damage that the Labour Party is doing to the Australian economy is staggering and particularly through their energy policy, manufacturers are fleeing our shores," Mr Dutton told Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell. Mr Dutton cited Frontier Economics which refuted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's claim electricity and gas bills would cost $12 billion, instead, a "conservative estimate" found energy bills would cost "well over $600 billion". Mr Dutton was pressed on the costings of his plan and whether it will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.+ The Opposition Leader said the estimates were done by Frontier Economics, the "most credible economic model in the country" and employed by Labor across the country. "Interestingly, the work that they did, which demonstrated that the cost of the renewables-only policy wasn't $122B, it was well over $600B, has not been criticised, nor has the government picked apart the assumptions that have been drawn by the conclusions that have been drawn by Frontier Economics," Mr Dutton said. "We're going to lose jobs and economic activity and capital is being taken from our country and going to other parts of the world by global boards who just don't want to invest under this government." Mr Dutton said 19 of the top 20 economies in the world had nuclear power or were in the process of developing technology, with Australia being the only one that has not signed up to it. The Opposition Leader said food prices were soaring due to unaffordable energy prices, not just for families, but for farmers as well. When asked if nuclear energy would be only 4 per cent of the grid, according to Energy Minister Chris Bowen, Mr Dutton flatly said "no". "There's more that we'll have to say in relation to cost and the way in which we can utilise the existing distribution network by ramping up the energy that we're producing out of our seven coal fired power stations with the latest generation nuclear technology," he said. "And that's a sensible way to do it because part of the government's policy is to roll out 28,000km of new poles and wires, which frankly will never happen. "The government's living this lie at the moment, and unfortunately we're seeing a three fold increase in manufacturing closures." On Thursday, Mr Dutton announced a Coalition government will cancel the controversial Port Stephens offshore wind zone if he is elected. The Albanese government’s planned wind farm has been expected to generate up to five gigawatts of power for about four million homes. During a press conference, Mr Dutton revealed he would scrap the project, citing concerns about the environment, economy and energy reliability. “It is in our country's best interest and in this local community's best interest if this project doesn't proceed,” Mr Dutton said. “The ongoing environmental impact, the emissions, the servicing, the oil that's required to run one of these turbines, all of that needs to be taken into consideration.” Instead, the Coalition has proposed nuclear power plants as an alternative energy source to provide more baseload power over a longer period. Wind turbines have a short lifespan of about 20 years, while small modular reactors have a life span of about 80 years.

Shaniqua Davis: Time to cut backYOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — EJ Farmer's 22 points helped Youngstown State defeat Oakland 66-50 on Saturday. Farmer shot 7 for 13 (5 for 8 from 3-point range) and 3 of 3 from the free-throw line for the Penguins (5-5, 2-0 Horizon League). Nico Galette scored 11 points and added nine rebounds and six assists. Juwan Maxey and Jason Nelson both added 11 points. Allen David Mukeba Jr. led the Golden Grizzlies (3-5, 1-1) in scoring, finishing with 17 points. Tuburu Niavalurua added 12 points for Oakland. D.Q. Cole had 11 points. NEXT UP Up next for Youngstown State is a Saturday matchup with Toledo at home, and Oakland plays Michigan State on Tuesday. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .

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