Crypto News: A new twist in the TikTok saga

The TikTok video platform, which is wildly popular among young Americans, is set to be banned in the US, writes Bloomberg's Big Tech editor Sarah Frier, if it can't find an American buyer. Is this a job for… Elon Musk? Plus: A climate-hostile administration is on its way, and why we should appreciate Martha Stewart. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

The law that will ban TikTok unless its Chinese owner agrees to sell it to an American buyer was timed conveniently: to take effect in January 2025, after politicians had the chance to use the app as a tool in their election campaigns. President-elect Donald Trump invested heavily in reaching voters via the platform and won. Now, even though the idea to ban TikTok originated in his first presidency, he's changing his mind.

Those who worked on Trump's campaign tell me they perceive the platform as fairer to him, and to influencers in his network, than the other big social networks. It doesn't have the messy history of banning him after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook did—he didn't even have an account there until this year. When he joined, his audience grew rapidly, and his team shared reports of positive commentary from fans. Meanwhile, the apps of Meta Platforms Inc., though they restored Trump's accounts, stopped political content from going viral at all this cycle, making them much less useful to his campaign. (The chill on political speech is being felt inside the company as well; CEO Mark Zuckerberg won't even talk about elections on his earnings calls anymore.)

TikTok supporters at the Capitol in April. Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

TikTok, whose parent, ByteDance Ltd., sued to block the law, is awaiting a US Court of Appeals decision by Dec. 6—which the losing side could then appeal to the Supreme Court, further delaying the final resolution. As my colleague Alexandra Levine wrote, the path from there to save TikTok is unclear: "It's possible Trump could devise an alternative solution to a sale, urge Congress to roll back the law or instruct his Justice Department not to enforce it, but none of those scenarios are as simple as they sound." It's also possible that once he's president, with access to national security information about why it was targeted for a ban, he'll stick with the plan.

If he does, Trump has a strategic opportunity: to help find the future owner of a social media app used by more than half of Americans. He's already benefited from Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, which Musk turned into X and used to help Trump secure the presidency. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary in the first Trump administration, has already raised his hand as a potential buyer for TikTok. Trump has other friends in media and entertainment who may be very interested in the property. And he has a financial interest in social media himself, with his right-wing Twitter clone, Truth Social.

It's also possible that Trump will ask Musk, who's now a close ally, for advice. That conversation, if it hasn't happened already, would only add to Musk's ever-growing list of conflicts of interest, as X could benefit in a market where TikTok is weakened. But Musk, who's also a few hundred billion dollars richer than Mnuchin, could solve the problem with a bid of his own.

Applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since May.
Bluesky seizes the moment as some users turn away from Musk's X.
The government of Azerbaijan, host to this year's COP29 summit, is facing criticism for stifling dissent.

Trump at a Michigan rally in August. Photographer: Brittany Greeson/The New York Times/Redux

President-elect Donald Trump has been crystal clear: His second term will be an assault on climate policy. On the campaign trail, he vowed to "drill, baby, drill" for more oil and gas and inveighed against offshore wind farms. He attacked President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history, as the "green new scam." And he pledged to withdraw the US once again from the Paris climate agreement.

Abroad, it's feared that the incoming administration will "take a wrecking ball to climate diplomacy," says Rachel Cleetus, climate and energy policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Even before Trump takes office, his victory has cast a shadow over the United Nations climate conference COP29. Delegates there are grappling with how to navigate global climate action around the US in coming years.

There will be "a void for America's geopolitical competitors to fill," says John Morton, a former adviser to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a managing director at climate investment and advisory firm Pollination. At home, thanks to a Republican trifecta in Washington, Trump will be able to enact more sweeping changes than if Democrats controlled one or both chambers of Congress.

Leslie Kaufman writes more about the Republicans' energy-friendly agenda: Trump Aims a 'Wrecking Ball' at Climate Policy

RELATED: Money doesn't win US elections, but it often helps. Mark Glassman, Jeremy Cf Lin, and Laura Bliss break down in charts how Democrats and Republicans spent money this cycle and what impact it had: Political Ads Can't Buy the Presidency

Stewart. Photographer: Koury Angelo/Getty Images North America

After watching Martha, the new Netflix documentary charting the rise, fall and eventual redemption of Martha Stewart, it's difficult not to walk away with the vague urge to do something—throw a party, bake a pie, arrange some flowers, check in on your enemies. That's not the point of the film, which was released at the end of October, but Martha just has that effect on people.

Stewart's appeal as a titan of DIY homemaking and lifestyle media has long been described as aspirational, an unsurprising assessment given that the world she's spent decades building for her audience is one occupied by the moneyed elite. Stewart wasn't born rich—as she tells it in Martha, she and her siblings learned to garden at their home in Nutley, New Jersey, because they needed more food than her parents could afford; and she became a teen model because the money was better than what she could earn for the family by babysitting.

Once she moved to Manhattan in 1960 to attend Barnard College, wealth followed in pretty short order: She was introduced to an affluent classmate's brother, married him and eventually, after a stint as a Wall Street stockbroker, decamped to Connecticut with her husband and baby daughter.

If that description of Stewart's initial ascent sounds glib, that's not the intention. For all the accusations over the years that she's sold women a bill of goods about the ease of cultivating domestic bliss, Stewart doesn't really project ease. What she radiates, both in the documentary and in her own enormous body of work, is proficiency. And it's the enduring appeal of proficiency that's made her a singular figure in American domestic life.

Amanda Mull, in her latest Buying Power column, writes about the lifestyle guru and the pleasures of mastery: Martha Stewart's Empire Monetized More Than Just Domesticity

$2 trillion

That's how much money Trump says the US will net in government spending cuts from a new agency he's proposed. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, helmed by Musk, is likely to run into the same political opposition that doomed previous deficit-reduction efforts.

"They threw all the flowers away—I don't understand. We need to know more about the victims. I hope they will be seen."

Huang

A 23-year-old computer science student

Days after 35 people were deliberately mowed down by a motorist, the Chinese government's effort to tamp down emotions in Zhuhai risks making Communist Party officials appear unfeeling.

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