BREAKING: Trump Claims Powers Even King George Didn’t Have

This isn't enforcement discretion. It's a revival of dispensing power — abolished in England in the 1600s and explicitly barred by the US Constitution.

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Dear friends

There’s something about the repeated delay to the TikTok ban that’s been quietly niggling at me. I’ll unpack the bigger picture in a future post — what’s really happening, and why — but for now, this development deserves your immediate attention.

Last week, documents released through a Freedom of Information Act request confirmed how the Trump administration has refused to enforce the TikTok ban. The details reveal a legal manoeuvre that goes far beyond a simple delay or the usual leeway presidents have in deciding how to enforce laws.

What these letters show is that Trump has asserted the authority not only to ignore a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, but also to excuse private companies from ever facing consequences for breaking it.

That kind of authority does not exist in the US Constitution. It was rejected in 1838 by the Supreme Court, and again and again by conservative legal scholars who have long held that American presidents, unlike English kings, don't have the power to suspend laws — and certainly not to grant advance permission to violate them. Yet that is what the Trump administration has now done.

On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order instructing the attorney general not to enforce the TikTok ban. That order has since been extended twice. Until now, it was unclear how the companies enabling the use of TikTok in the US had been protected from liability during this period. The newly released letters answer that question.

The attorney general informed these firms that they had committed no violation of the law, and that they were free to continue providing services to TikTok despite the statute clearly prohibited this. In several cases, the letters went further still, stating that the US government would permanently give up any claims against the companies —not just under this administration, but under any future one.

This is not ordinary enforcement discretion. It is the assertion of what legal scholars call a “dispensing power” — the idea that a president can personally excuse someone from obeying a law. This power was once claimed by English monarchs, but even they were forced to abandon the practice in the 17th century. By the time of the American Revolution, dispensing power had already been rejected in Britain — King George III didn’t have it, and the framers made sure the American president wouldn’t either.

That power therefore had no basis in American constitutional law. The Supreme Court made that clear nearly two centuries ago, and it has remained a point of consensus across generations of legal thought, including within the conservative legal movement.

The question now is not whether the president has crossed a legal line — he has. The question is whether any institution is willing to respond.

What the Law Requires, and What the Administration Did Instead

The TikTok ban was passed by large bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by President Biden. It took effect on 19 January 2025, one day before President Trump returned to office. The law prohibits US firms from distributing, maintaining, or updating TikTok unless its operations in the United States are fully separated from Chinese ownership. The purpose, as outlined by Congress and affirmed by the Supreme Court, is to prevent a foreign adversary — China — from accessing the personal data of American users.

The statute allows for a one-time, 90-day extension — but only if concrete progress toward divestiture is certified to Congress, including binding legal agreements. There has been no such certification. Despite this, President Trump has now extended his original non-enforcement order twice, most recently pushing the deadline to 17 September 2025.

But the extension is only part of the story.

The newly disclosed letters from Attorney General Pam Bondi show that the administration did not merely delay enforcement. It took the additional step of telling major tech companies that they had not violated the law by continuing to supply services to TikTok, and would never be held liable for any actions taken in defiance of it. In several cases, the Department of Justice pledged to permanently waive any potential legal claims — past, present, or future.

These letters — sent to Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, T-Mobile, LG, Akamai, Digital Realty Trust, and Fastly — all rest on the premise that enforcing the TikTok ban would interfere with the president’s constitutional authority over national security and foreign affairs.

This is a sweeping claim. It suggests that any law touching on foreign relations may be set aside at the president’s discretion. There is no precedent for this reading of the Constitution.

In effect, the administration is claiming the president can wipe away the consequences of legislation he disagrees with — without repeal, without a court challenge, and without any review by the judiciary.

The Legal Limits: Dispensing Power and Enforcement Discretion

American presidents do have some discretion in how laws are enforced. The executive branch is allowed to decide where to allocate limited resources and which cases to prioritise. That discretion is not unlimited, but it is broad. Courts have often upheld it as a necessary part of managing an overextended legal system.

But there is a line between choosing how to enforce a law and choosing not to enforce it at all. And there is another line between non-enforcement and telling others they are free to break the law with no consequence.

The Trump administration has crossed both lines.

In 1838, the Supreme Court in Kendall v. United States made it clear that the president does not have a “dispensing power”— the ability to suspend a law or let someone break it without facing legal consequences. The Court called that idea “entirely inadmissible” under the Constitution. The framers, wanting to avoid the dangers of monarchy, did not give the executive branch the power to overrule Congress or excuse illegal conduct in advance.

This principle has long been a cornerstone of conservative legal theory. Originalist scholars have repeatedly affirmed that American presidents cannot license the violation of law. Even during heated debates over executive power in the Bush and Obama years, this boundary was respected.

The letters released this week cross that boundary.

They do not cite limited resources or competing priorities. Instead, they argue that because the law relates to foreign affairs, the president can override it. On that basis, the attorney general has declared that violations of the TikTok ban simply did not occur. In several cases, she has gone further, stating that the United States will not, now or ever, take legal action for any past or future breaches.

That is not a delay. It is the functional equivalent of a civil pardon — granted not after a violation, but in advance of one, and not to an individual, but across an entire sector.

What This Precedent Creates — and What It Demands

Whether this move remains limited to the TikTok context or becomes a broader tool of presidential power will depend on what happens next. But even if never repeated, the precedent is now set: a president has claimed the power to shield private companies from the consequences of breaking a law he chose not to enforce — and no branch of government has stepped in.

That silence matters. The courts may be limited here, because it’s not clear who — if anyone — has the legal standing to bring a challenge, because without a specific person or group who’s been directly harmed, a lawsuit may not get far. That leaves Congress.

But Congress, so far, has done very little. No meaningful oversight. No hearings. No effort to use its constitutional powers to demand answers. The relevant committees weren’t briefed. The certification required for an extension was never submitted. And the administration’s argument — that this law interferes with presidential authority over foreign policy — has gone unchallenged by the branch of government that actually passed it.

If this stands, it’s not just a one-off. It becomes a licence. Trump could now use this same power to shield favoured industries, donors, or even political allies from the force of law—quietly excusing violations in immigration, environmental protection, antitrust, or anything else he deems inconvenient.

This is how legal norms crumble. Not with one big rupture, but through quiet permissions, untested claims, and no one pushing back.

This isn’t just about TikTok. It’s about whether laws passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court still mean anything — if the president can decide they don’t.

— Lori

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