The U.S. Constitution requires the president to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Yet President Donald Trump has not only refused to enforce the federal law banning TikTok, but his administration has also told multiple tech companies that they may openly violate the TikTok ban "without incurring any legal liability" because the Department of Justice is "irrevocably relinquishing any claims" against the companies "for the conduct proscribed in the Act."
But wait, may the president do that? May Trump encourage private parties to violate a duly enacted federal law while simultaneously vowing to free them from present and future liability for their lawbreaking? Is that constitutional?
American presidents have certainly disagreed over the years with some of the laws that they were charged with enforcing. And some presidents have even flat-out declined to enforce what they found disagreeable. Thomas Jefferson, for example, viewed the Sedition Act of 1798 as wholly unconstitutional and therefore refused to effectuate it when he became president in 1800.
