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Four years ago, during his first administration, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump earned the nickname “TikTok Killer.” Now, as he prepares for his second term, he has become the self-proclaimed “TikTok Guardian.” With the popular Chinese video platform facing a potential ban in the United States by January 2025, the question arises: Can TikTok make a comeback under a second Trump administration?

According to reports from foreign media outlets, including the New York Times, President-elect Trump submitted a statement to the U.S. Supreme Court on December 27, requesting a stay on the enforcement of the “TikTok Ban Act” (a law aimed at protecting Americans from apps controlled by hostile countries), which is set to take effect on January 19, 2025. Trump intends to address the TikTok issue once he takes office.

Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, stated that “President Trump has no position on the merits of this dispute,” but he urged the court to consider delaying the TikTok sale deadline until after Trump’s inauguration. Sauer emphasized that “only President Trump has the skilful negotiation expertise and political will to address national security concerns while saving the platform.”

The TikTok controversy began during Trump’s first term when concerns arose over the Chinese government’s potential use of the platform to collect personal data from U.S. users. In 2019, the U.S. Department of defence banned TikTok from being used by military personnel, and in August 2020, the Trump administration issued an executive order banning TikTok and WeChat downloads. However, when President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the ban was rescinded but concerns about TikTok’s security and data privacy continued to grow.

In April, the U.S. Congress passed the “TikTok Ban Act,” which mandates that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, sell the platform. TikTok filed an injunction, arguing the law infringes on freedom of expression, but both the first and second trials upheld its constitutionality.

Now, TikTok’s last hope lies with President-elect Trump, who expressed a more favourable view of the platform during his presidential campaign. Following his election in November, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, and Trump expressed his support for the platform, noting it played a significant role in helping him gain favour with younger voters.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the injunction TikTok filed on January 10, 2025. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s request will have any impact. However, with Trump scheduled to take office on January 20, the day after the TikTok sale deadline, reversing Congress’s decision through an executive order would be a challenging task.

If TikTok is not sold by the deadline and its use is suspended, other social media platforms offering similar short-form content, such as YouTube and Instagram, stand to benefit. As Tom Grant, vice president of app analytics firm Apptopia, pointed out, “YouTube and Instagram, which each offer short form features on their apps, will be the biggest winners of the TikTok ban.”

With Baltimore County Executive John Olszewski set to resign on January 3 to represent Maryland’s 2nd Congressional District in the House of Representatives, the County Council has selected five finalists from a pool of 12 candidates to run for the executive position. A successor must be approved by at least four of the seven members of the County Council. The appointment will be made on Monday, January 6, for a term that will run through 2026.

Here are the candidates selected:

Jim Brochin
Jim Brochin, 64, served as a state senator from 2003 to 2019. Brochin narrowly lost to Olszewski in the 2018 Baltimore County Executive election by just 17 votes. Brochin emphasized public safety and fiscal responsibility, particularly focusing on balancing the budget without raising taxes or fees. He graduated from Pikesville High School in Baltimore, majored in political science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and earned a master’s degree in political science from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Katherine A. Klausmeier
Katherine Klausmeier, 74, served as a state representative from 1995 to 2003 and has been a state senator since 2003. Klausmeier emphasized her decades of experience representing Baltimore County in the Legislature, expressing her readiness to take on the role of executive. She also announced that she will not seek re-election in 2026.

George G. Perdikakis, Sr.
A native of Greece, George Perdikakis Sr. has worked as an engineer in both the private sector and local government. He has also served as the county’s director of environmental protection. Perdikakis highlighted his commitment to working collaboratively to move Baltimore County forward, drawing on his environmental background, and emphasized his readiness to make difficult decisions over the next two years.

Barry F. Williams
Barry Williams, former director of Baltimore County Recreation and Parks, emphasized the need for leaders who are visible, effective communicators, and able to remain calm in times of crisis. His experience in leadership roles is central to his vision for the county’s future.

Yara A. Cheikh
Yara A. Cheikh is a newcomer to the political scene, a community activist, and the chair of the Baltimore County Public Library Board. A mother of four, Cheikh envisions a Baltimore County where all residents can thrive. She focuses on a variety of areas to improve the quality of life, including housing, transportation, and education.

Major prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Brown have started announcing their early admission admissions results.

Harvard notified early admission applicants of their acceptances on the 12th.However, Harvard decided not to release statistics on the total number of early admission applicants and successful applicants starting this year, breaking with its practice of about 70 years.

Previously, Harvard released acceptance rates and statistics on successful applicants when announcing admissions results, but it has decided not to provide such information starting with the fall 2025 freshmen.

Harvard’s school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, reported that “this is the latest in a series of policy changes following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year to ban affirmative action in college admissions.”

Other Ivy League prestigious universities, Princeton and Cornell also notified their early admission admissions results on the 12th, but did not release detailed information such as acceptance rates.

Brown University announced its early admissions acceptances on the 13th. According to the Brown University Admissions Office, 906 out of 5,048 early admission applicants were accepted.

This year’s acceptance rate of 17.9% is the highest among Brown University’s early admissions in the past five years. This is because the number of early admission applicants decreased by about 19% from 6,244 last year to 5,048 this year, while the number of accepted applicants increased by about 1%, making admissions competition less competitive.

Meanwhile, among the Ivy League universities, Yale is planning to notify applicants of their early admissions acceptances on the 17th, Columbia on the 18th, and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) on the 19th.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 9th that a white youth who tried to subdue a mentally ill black homeless man on a New York subway and ended up dying was found not guilty in court.

According to the report, the Manhattan Criminal Court jury in New York found Daniel Penny (26), a former Marine who was charged with manslaughter, not guilty on that day.

Penny was accused of killing Jordan Neely (30 years old at the time) by subduing him in a headlock while he was causing a commotion on a New York City subway train in May of last year. The jury previously deliberated on Penny’s guilt on the charge of gross negligence homicide on the 6th, but ultimately failed to reach a consensus. The jury must reach a unanimous verdict to reach a guilty verdict.

The presiding judge asked the jury to consider the lesser charge of negligent homicide, which carries a lower sentence than gross negligence homicide, and the jury ultimately found Penny not guilty.

At the time of the incident last year, conservatives in the United States called Penny the “Subway Samaritan,” and criticized that his indictment would prevent other Samaritans from intervening in dangerous situations.

On the other hand, there was also criticism that Penny’s subduing was clearly an excessive response, and that the police’s decision to release him immediately after the incident was an act of racism.

When it was revealed that the deceased homeless person, Neely, was on the “Top 50” list of subway watchdogs that New York City was closely watching, criticism grew that the city’s failure to manage the incident was the root cause of the incident.

A recount is expected after Democrat Adrian Cortes defeated Republican Brad Benton by just 172 votes in Clark County’s 18th Senate District.

Cortes, a Battle Ground city council member, won 42,053 votes, or 50.1 percent, to Benton’s 41,881, or 49.9 percent, making him the first Democratic candidate to win a seat in the heavily Republican 18th District in more than two decades. The district’s incumbent, Republican Sen. Ann Rivers, is retiring at the end of the year and is not seeking reflection.

Washington state election law requires a machine recount if the two candidates are separated by less than 2,000 votes, or 0.5 percent of the vote, and a hand recount if the margin of victory is less than 150 votes, or 0.25 percent of the vote. The only recount this year will be in the 18th Senate District.

Democrats also gained seats in the House of Representatives when Addison Richards defeated Republican Jesse Young, a former state representative, in the 26th District (Gig Harbor). The district’s incumbent, Spencer Hutchinson (R), did not seek re-election. The Democrats, who have a perennial majority, will have a 59-39 House majority and a 30-19 Senate majority in the legislature next year. Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court race, Sal Mungia, who received the support of Gov.

Jay Inslee and other top Democratic officials, as well as eight of the nine incumbent justices, defeated Republican Dave Larson by less than 1 percent, or about 20,000 votes. Mungia will replace retiring Justice Susan Owens.

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing an executive order to expel all transgender soldiers from the U.S. military, the British daily The Times reported on the 25th (local time), citing multiple U.S. Department of Defence sources.

According to the sources, the executive order could be announced on January 20th of next year, when President-elect Trump is inaugurated as president. According to the executive order being prepared, President-elect Trump plans to discharge active-duty transgender soldiers currently serving in the U.S. military if he deems them unfit for military service due to medical conditions or other reasons. Transgender people will also be banned from newly enlisting in the military.

President-elect Trump has fiercely criticized the so-called “woke” culture promoted by some high-ranking officers in the U.S. military, claiming that they are more interested in diversity than in the military’s combat power. Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was nominated as the Secretary of Defence in Trump’s second term, also completely agrees with Trump’s position, criticizing the military’s support of transgender soldiers as an example of “trans madness” and insisting that “weak and feminine” leadership should be eradicated from the military.

In 2017, President-elect Trump issued an executive order similarly banning transgender people from serving in the military during his first term. Then-Democratic President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing transgender people to serve in the military immediately after taking office, reversing this measure. Unlike his first term, when he only banned transgender people from enlisting and allowed transgender soldiers already serving to remain in the military, President-elect Trump plans to expel all transgender soldiers already serving from the military.

Accordingly, under a second Trump administration, transgender soldiers could lose their positions even if they have served for decades, according to sources in the Department of Defence. They also expressed concern that if the estimated 15,000 active-duty transgender soldiers are forced to leave the military, the shortage of troops in the U.S. military, which is already struggling to recruit, could worsen. “These people will be forced out of the military at a time when the military is already unable to recruit enough soldiers,” a source familiar with the matter said, adding that among the U.S. military branches, “only the Marine Corps is meeting its recruitment goals, and some of those affected by this policy are in very high-ranking positions.”

The Pentagon says it is difficult to calculate the exact number of transgender soldiers currently serving due to privacy restrictions, but U.S. civic groups and media outlets estimate that there are about 15,000. The Times reported that in 2021, when the Biden administration allowed transgender service again, about 2,200 soldiers were diagnosed with gender dysphoria (a condition in which they feel they were born as a gender other than their biological sex), and that at least several thousand more transgender soldiers are currently serving.

The Times reported that active-duty transgender service members and civic groups supporting diversity in the military opposed President-elect Trump’s plan to expel transgender soldiers, saying that the plan to expel more than 10,000 soldiers at once could harm the competitiveness of the U.S. military.

“Given that the military was 41,000 soldiers short of its recruiting goal last year, abruptly separating more than 15,000 soldiers would add administrative burden to combat units, undermine unit cohesion and exacerbate the skills gap,” said Rachel Brenneman, executive director of the Modern Soldier Association of America, a group that supports LGBTQ service members.

Paulo Batista, a transgender military analyst who serves in the Navy, said the ban means that transgender service members in the military “are in positions from the highest officers to the lowest ranks,” and that “if you kick one of us out, other people have to take over, and it could take months or years to fill those positions.”

A Northern Virginia family driving their RV to Luray Caverns took the Express Lane to avoid traffic on Route 66. They expected to be charged a toll but were surprised to find they were charged $550.

At first, they thought it was a mistake, but they contacted the authorities, who told them the toll was fair, and they vowed never to use the Express Lane in an RV again.

Signs at the entrance to the 66 Express read, “Higher Tolls for Larger Vehicles.” However, most people do not know how much more they are being charged.

The rates are divided into nine levels depending on the size of the vehicle, with small trucks or RV vans being charged three times more, large trucks or RV buses being charged four to six times more, and larger trailers being charged up to eight times more. In other words, if a regular passenger vehicle is charged $80, an RV bus is charged $320 to $480.

The Washington Korean Community Service Centre (Jin-ah Kim) will hold an ’emergency first aid experience training’ with the Howard County Fire and Rescue Team.

The training will be held for one hour from 11:00 AM on Saturday, the 16th at the James Roby Public Safety Training Centre in Marriottsville. The training will cover CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), how to deal with airway obstruction (choking due to foreign bodies), and how to use an AED (automated external defibrillator). Participants will learn the ability to confidently provide CPR assistance until the paramedics arrive in the event of sudden cardiac arrest.

The target audience is youth aged 12 years or older, and those under 18 must be accompanied by an adult guardian.

All participants on the day of the event will receive a certificate from KCSC, and a $10 gift certificate will also be given after a 10-minute vaccine training session. For inquiries, call (240) 780-2326hyberg@kcscgw.org

The area where apartment rents increased the most in the Washington metro area was Laurel, Maryland, followed by Oakton and Annandale, Virginia, which also saw large increases.

Local media outlet Annandale Today reported on the 30th that real estate information provider Redfin analysed apartment rent data for September in metro areas across the country and found this. According to the report, the area where apartment rents in the Washington metro area rose the most year-over-year was Laurel, Maryland, which jumped by a whopping 23.2%, followed by Oakton, Virginia (19.1%) and Annandale (18.8%).

According to Apartment.com, an apartment information site, the median rent in the Annandale area is $1,984 as of September, while the rent for a one-bedroom apartment at Vistas of Annandale went up from $1,948 last year to $2,048, and the rent for a one-bedroom apartment at Parliament Apartments jumped from $1,923 to $2,585.

In addition, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment at Fairmont Gardens is advertised as $1,452 per month for a 15-month contract, or $1,699 per month for a 12-month contract. Meanwhile, the Washington area showed the largest rent increase in the nation with a 12% increase in rent over the past year, followed by Virginia Beach (11.3%) and Baltimore (10.6%).

According to experts, the reason for the sharp increase in rents in the Washington metro area is believed to be a strong local economy, income growth, and rising housing prices.

A woman who was a former military doctor and currently works for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Manassas, Virginia, shot and killed her husband.

According to police, at around 2:29 p.m. on the 21st, a report was received that a man had been shot at a house in the 9200 block of Brinkley Lane in Manassas. When they responded, they found the man dead, and the suspect was arrested at the scene and taken to the county jail. The circumstances of the incident are currently under investigation.

The media outlet Potomac Local reported that according to a business networking site, the suspect is Latoya Crabbe (34), who served as an officer at a military base in Rockville, Maryland and has been working at the FDA since May of last year.