is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
The first crack showed right before Inauguration Day. The year before, Congress had overwhelmingly passed a bill banning TikTok unless it broke ties with its Chinese parent company. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld it, and it was clear what needed to happen next: either the president could give TikTok another 90 days to complete a deal or it would be banned immediately.
But neither of those things happened. Outgoing President Joe Biden punted the decision to incoming President Donald Trump, and after a dramatic few hours where TikTok took itself offline in the US, it returned with a triumphant message thanking Trump for saving it.
Nearly a year and four extra-legal extensions later, TikTok remains in the States, owned by the same Chinese company lawmakers warned would gravely endanger US national security. It only recently announced it had finalized a deal to sell its US-based business, with a targeted closing date of January 22nd, 2026 — more than a year after it was first supposed to be banned. The whole ordeal felt like a comedy of errors, where ultimately everyone threw up their hands. The few details known about a supposedly coming deal raise questions about whether it will even comply with the law’s original requirements.
The failure to take any action at all against TikTok following the panic around its alleged national security risks is just one of many cracks to the federal government’s foundation this year. In March, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth communicated war plans over Signal — an encrypted messaging platform but not one meant for such a use case due to potential security risks on users’ devices — which we only found out about because Trump’s then-national security adviser apparently accidentally added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to that chat.
And then there was the biggest full-on rupture to the government in 2025: Elon Musk’s pet project, DOGE
There have been many other instances where democracy’s counterweights have shown signs of life, and at times, even bravery
Of course, the only true test of a democracy’s durability is to see how its checks fare when things break. The TikTok saga shows one example where — at least so far — they have weathered poorly. Congress has issued tepid statements about the executive branch’s unwillingness to enforce the law, but there’s no appetite to impeach Trump over it, and the judicial branch can’t or won’t force action, either. But there have been many other instances where democracy’s counterweights have shown signs of life, and at times, even bravery.
As 2026 approaches, political posturing for the midterms is likely to overshadow any real efforts at policymaking. With that will come a slew of messages from politicians promising to fix what was broken this year and also promising to break what hasn’t worked in far too long. Voters will choose who they think can best put it all back together. Only then will we find out how deep the cracks actually go.