TikTok Moves to Block Enforcement of Divestment Law

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was on Monday barred from leaving the country by his own ministry of justice. The department is investigating him for briefly declaring martial law last week, on the suspicion that his actions—which included no notification of lawmakers and the use of soldiers to remove legislators from the National Assembly—amount to leading an insurrection. Yoon, himself a former prosecutor, survived an impeachment vote over the weekend, and it remains unclear whether he will resign his post. 
• Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, apprehended 26-year-old Luigi Mangione on Monday as a “strong person of interest” in the investigation into the midtown Manhattan shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week. Mangione, who was arrested on weapons charges while eating at a McDonald’s, was found with a gun similar to the one used in the shooting and a handwritten document expressing “ill will towards corporate America,” according to NYPD Detective Joseph Kenny. Mangione was charged in Pennsylvania with two felonies and several misdemeanors related to the weapon and fake IDs, and later charged in Manhattan with murder. He hails from Baltimore and is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with a last known address in Hawaii. He had liked online posts expressing support for the views of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. 
• A commissioner in Nevada blocked media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to amend his trust to ensure that his son, Lachlan Murdoch, would retain executive control over much of the Fox media empire, boxing out Lachlan Murdoch’s less conservative siblings. The commissioner, Edmund J. Gorman Jr., ruled that Rupert Murdoch had acted in “bad faith” to change the terms of his trust, which currently makes Lachlan and his three siblings equal beneficiaries. The decision will be appealed, according to Rupert Murdoch’s lawyer. 
• Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said Monday that his government was “working so that the transitional period is quick and smooth,” after a coalition of rebel groups toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, forcing him to flee the country over the weekend. United Nations officials claimed that government services had come “to a complete and abrupt halt” as frightened state employees refused to come to work. Meanwhile, the Israeli military confirmed on Monday that it had conducted airstrikes on Syrian chemical weapons sites and missile caches over the weekend to prevent them from falling into rebel hands.
• Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, announced on Monday that she was resigning from her position as RNC chairwoman. Serving since March with Co-Chair Michael Whatley, Lara Trump invested heavily in recruiting volunteers and lawyers for an “election integrity effort” and played a major role in the GOP retaking the Senate during the 2024 elections. On Sunday, she told the Associated Press that being appointed to fill Sen. Marco Rubio’s Senate seat, should he be confirmed as secretary of state, was “something I would seriously consider.”
• A New York City jury on Monday acquitted Daniel Penny of the charge of criminally negligent homicide, ending a criminal prosecution that began in May 2023, after a mentally disturbed and homeless rider, Jordan Neely, died following an altercation with Penny on the subway during which Penny restrained Neely with a chokehold. The case became a national story after the video of the incident went viral, sparking debates over vigilantism, untreated mental illness, and race relations. Penny is white and Neely was black.
• A Haitian human rights group said that at least 110 people had been killed over the weekend in the capital of Port-au-Prince by a gang leader who accused them of practicing witchcraft. The leader, Monel Felix, also known as Mikano, directed his men to round up and kill groups of mostly elderly people in the neighborhood of Cité Soleil after being told by a Voodoo priest that his son’s illness was caused by “witchcraft.” U.N. officials put the death toll of this weekend’s violence closer to 200 people, the latest episode in the ongoing lawlessness in the island country. 
• Lawyers for popular video-sharing app TikTok asked a federal court on Monday to temporarily block the implementation of a law passed by Congress that would force its Chinese parent company to sell the app or have it be banned from the United States, pending a Supreme Court decision on the law. On Friday, a panel of federal circuit judges unanimously ruled that the divestment law is constitutional and does not infringe on the First Amendment or other constitutional concerns raised by TikTok. The company has signaled it’s likely to seek the Supreme Court’s intervention. 
• The Supreme Court on Monday declined to wade into several controversial cases touching on social issues, rejecting cases involving public school transgender policies, race-based admissions at selective Boston public schools, and the prosecution of a man from Hawaii for carrying a handgun without a license. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in both school decisions, with Alito writing that he was “concerned that some federal courts are succumbing to the temptation” to rely on standing arguments to avoid weighing in on cultural issues, as the transgender case arose from a federal court rejecting the standing of parents whose children were not directly affected.

Inching Closer to a TikTok Ban

Your Morning Dispatchers have spent years covering the “will they, won’t they” debate over banning TikTok, the wildly popular video-sharing app (and have made some variation of the pun about the clock “ticking for TikTok” a frankly embarrassing number of times). And for years, the idea has seemed like the dog that won’t hunt. 

After a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., last week ruled against TikTok’s challenge to a law that would see the video app booted from the U.S. in January if its Chinese owner doesn’t divest, a ban looks more likely than ever—not that we’d bet on it, after all we’ve seen. TikTok on Monday filed a last-ditch effort to stay the ruling to give the Supreme Court a chance to weigh in on the issue—or President-elect Donald Trump the chance to block the law—though it’s not clear whether the gambit will succeed.

Policymakers have long been wary of TikTok over concerns about the app’s ownership by ByteDance, a Chinese company. National security hawks argue that via ByteDance, the app, its algorithm, and all of its user data, are inextricably linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has tight control over Chinese tech companies through its sweeping national security laws. There are also strong indications—though no definitive, publicly available evidence—that the CCP has meddled with the app’s algorithm to advance …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,807-word item on TikTok’s legal woes is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Writing in The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan “reviews” Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s newly published letters—but it’s really a look into her family’s long friendship with the Heaneys, spanning all the way from Berkeley to Belfast, from the counterculture to the Troubles. “So many of Seamus’s letters in the collection begin in apology—over and over again, he makes amends for being so egregiously late in responding to someone,” she wrote. “And yet, not 10 days after [her breast cancer] diagnosis, a letter arrived from Seamus and Marie. They were aghast at the completely ‘arbitrary insult upon health and beauty.’ Soon after, another letter: He’d heard I’d come through surgery, ‘as valiantly and gracefully as the great spirit you are and have been’ … Everyone who knew Seamus has a story like that. He had a sense of obligation to others that anyone else would be incapacitating.”
• Michael Horowitz argued in Foreign Affairs that unmanned weapons systems have broken down the traditional military dichotomy between “mass” and “precision” weapons: “The wheel has turned once again,” he wrote. “The United States no longer enjoys the vast lead in precision strike capabilities that it once did. The technology underlying those capacities—conventional munitions, sensors, and guidance systems—has become cheaper over time and accessible to many countries and militant groups beyond the United States. From Azerbaijan to North Korea, other forces can strike some targets with the precision, power, and range that were once the preserve of the U.S. military. They have benefited from advances made in the private sector in artificial intelligence and the widening availability of sensing and communications platforms, such as global positioning systems. With this proliferation of know-how, technology, and weaponry, warfare is changing.”

Presented Without Comment

BBC: Donald Trump Says Prince William ‘Looks Better in Person’

In the Zeitgeist 

Monday was a tough day for our friend and colleague—and TMD alum—James Scimecca, who also happens to be a Yankees fan. His team on Sunday lost star outfielder Juan Soto to the rival New York Mets in what, for good measure, was the largest player contract in the history of Major League Baseball and pro sports, to boot: a 15-year, $765 million deal to play in Queens instead of the Bronx. Pour one out for James—but not for the Yankees, because they are still the Yankees. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Kevin took on misconceptions (🔒) about health insurance and Nick discussed Biden’s near-total absence from the end of his presidency.
• On the podcasts: Sarah and David are joined by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to discuss the future of his state’s ban on gender transition treatment for minors on Advisory Opinions. 
• On the site: Joel Tannenbaum explains RFK Jr.’s exaggerated claims about the health benefits of and exaggerated warnings against different food items, such as raw milk, seed oils, and food dyes. Plus, Chris suggests that Biden should pardon Trump for the sake of moving forward.