1 of 2 | President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23. Trump directed the Department of Justice not to enforce the TikTok ban for 75 days as he presses for a U.S. company to buy the app. Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License PhotoJan. 30 (UPI) -- The latest turn in the ongoing saga over TikTok in the United States has brought the balance of power among the three branches of government into the spotlight.Hours after TikTok went dark, it returned with a "thank you" message to President Donald Trump sent to its more than 170 million U.S. users. A day before being sworn into office, Trump wielded his influence to overrule a law passed by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, delaying enforcement of the TikTok ban.Advertisement"Welcome back!" the TikTok prompt read. "Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, Tiktok is back in the U.S.!"Norman Bishara, professor of business law and ethics in the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, told UPI the move sets up a struggle for power among the three branches of government.Advertisement"It's anybody's guess what will happen," Bishara said of the TikTok ban. "The level of uncertainty has greatly increased."The president has expressed his desire for a U.S. company to purchase TikTok, meeting Congress' requirements. He has also proposed a joint venture between a U.S. company and ByteDance to share ownership of the company.Trump suggested the app could be worth billions, if not trillions to a U.S. owner.With an executive order, Trump directed the attorney general to not take any enforcement actions for 75 days, allowing service providers to continue supporting the app. Some companies like Google and Apple remain cautious, refusing to allow new downloads on their app stores.A pause in enforcement is not an iron-clad guarantee that these companies are free of all liability, Bishara said."We're still trying to figure out behind the scenes what this means," he said. "There could be other liability there for them. There is some ambiguity when you see what's at stake."UCLA law professor Andrew Verstein told UPI the ambiguity or "opacity" around TikTok reflects the concerns Congress and national security experts had about the app in the first place. But as the occupant of the White House had changed, so too has the level of outward concern about the app as a national security threat.AdvertisementVerstein and Bishara agreed that Congress conceived a clear law to answer a valid concern about national security and China's access to U.S. users and their data. The high court affirmed its legality and former President Joe Biden, while still in office, signed off on it while sharing those concerns."This is Trump doing something that the statute plainly didn't envision happening and that is an assertion of executive power," Verstein said. "Trump didn't make it legal for TikTok to remain in operation. What he said is the attorney general is not going to punish anyone. That is something the executive branch will sometimes do. This is a pretty aggressive and big usage of that strategy."Coupled with some of Trump's other early actions as president, his decision on TikTok demonstrates his willingness to push the boundaries of his executive powers.A week after Trump's executive order, he again exercised his executive power to override Congress, ordering a sweeping freeze on federal aid, loans and grants. This unprecedented move set a pause on the distribution of funds that were congressionally approved.Congress has the constitutional authority to direct government spending and pass laws.On Monday night, within hours of this pause, acting Attorney General James McHenry fired the federal prosecutors in the cases against Trump in Florida and Washington, citing a lack of "trust" that they would assist in implementing Trump's agenda.AdvertisementFederal prosecutors are typically only removed due to conduct or poor performance. A president may remove them for any legal reason but their political alignment would not be one of them."One thing Trump realized when he came into office this time is we have a pretty complicated government. A lot of independent choices run through the executive office," Verstein said. "You might think Congress has the power of the purse. Congress can't hand out money unless the person who hands out the money hands out the money. That is an observation of how our government runs right now."The concerns shared by Congress and a slew of national security experts who gave testimony have not been erased in any apparent way. TikTok's ownership structure remains intact for now. It relocated its storage of U.S. user data to the United States more than a year ago and that did not sway Congress.Chief among the national security concerns was the possibility that a U.S. official or lawmaker could be compromised by an adversarial government. In a series of hypotheticals, lawmakers expressed that future officials and lawmakers could be compromised before rising to office.Meanwhile, lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have active accounts on TikTok. Trump also joined, though he has not been active since the election and largely used the app to campaign.Advertisement"It does seem potentially incongruent for some of the folks with the most sensitive data we would like to be least susceptible to foreign influence being on this platform," Bishara said. "There's a broader story we're seeing play out about the expertise of tech experts and political figures putting their views and experience ahead of other expert advice. This does seem to be a continuation of this relatively new story about the distrust of security experts."The focus has instead shifted away from national security and towards opportunity, according to Verstein.TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was alongside U.S. tech leaders and billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook at Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20. Trump, who originally called for the TikTok ban, has floated companies like Microsoft as potential buyers, touting its potential value.Because TikTok is not a publicly traded company, it is not guaranteed that the public would be notified if an investor bought into the company unless their stake was substantial enough.When a merger between major companies takes place, it is first scrutinized by the Department of Justice, which often demands that the public is notified. The Department of Justice has traditionally been wary of mergers that give the illusion of monopolization.AdvertisementLast year it entered an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation for allegedly monopolizing the live event market. The companies merged in 2010.The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act of 1976 requires that companies file premerger notifications with the Federal Trade Commission and the antitrust division of the Department of Justice."The president now in office is untroubled by the monopoly issues of a big tech firm buying TikTok," Verstein said. "We know the outgoing president was very worried about the monopolization of tech companies.""If one reads the room right now, it seems like what's changed is we have a president who is exerting muscular control over the Department of Justice and seems quite motivated to allow an American buyer to take TikTok over," he continued.This exertion of control by Trump has broader implications beyond TikTok, impacting how Congress writes laws, according to Verstein."Trump started to play a very scrappy, very technical game to remind everyone this is the 21st century. We're not a little government run out of the Potomac by George Washington anymore," he said. "It doesn't have to be this way. When you seize bargaining power and show people you have bargaining power, it can work for a while. They change accordingly. In the future, if Congress wants a TikTok ban to work regardless of the executive they can write a TikTok ban that gives every customer the power to sue Google or whomever for giving them TikTok. Trump noticed that's not the law they wrote."AdvertisementRead More