Several U.S. government departments now have TikTok accounts, including the FBI
Multiple U.S. government departments launched official TikTok accounts this week, posting videos promoting the Trump administration to users on the popular video sharing app.
Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice stated that the ban against having TikTok on federal government devices is no longer in force due to the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a U.S.-government approved, majority-U.S. owned company earlier this year.
In a memorandum of opinion to President Donald Trump, the Office of Legal Council’s Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser noted that the president had “instructed that employees of Executive Branch agencies may download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion and consistent with all applicable workplace policies.”
Said agencies have wasted no time in signing up to the app now that the ban has been removed, with the official White House TikTok (@whitehouse) following 17 new accounts this week. These accounts joined the White House’s short preexisting follow list of Trump (@realdonaldtrump), Vice President J.D. Vance (@jd), and the Trump administration’s Cabinet in general (@cabinet), all of which were already on TikTok despite the ban.
The new official U.S. government TikTok accounts the White House is now following are:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (@hhsgov)
The U.S. Department of Labor (@usdol)
The U.S. Small Business Administration (@sbagov)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (@usdagov)
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (@dhsgov)
The U.S. Department of Energy (@energy)
The U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov)
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (@deptvetaffairs)
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (@nasa)
The U.S. Department of Transportation (@usdot)
The U.S. Department of the Interior (@interior)
The U.S. Trade Representative (@ustraderep)
The U.S. Department of Justice (@justicedepartment)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (@fbi)
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (@seckennedy)
U.S. Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz (@drozcms)
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is also listed in the White House’s follow list (@hudgov), however this TikTok page does not appear to be live at time of writing.
Though these accounts have not yet posted many videos, the few that have been published largely take on the same grandiose tone and rhetoric that is the Trump administration’s preferred form of communication. The Department of Education’s first TikTok proclaims it will “make education great again,” and features Trump climbing into a wrestling ring to AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security’s debut video is a montage of apparent immigration agents with blurred faces detaining people, set to Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like The Wind.” The video’s description reads: “Deportations all day, all night.”
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U.S. lawmakers have claimed that TikTok is a tool for the Chinese government to spy on American users (though there is no evidence of this occurring), and accused it of stoking support for Palestine. In 2022, former president Joe Biden signed a law prohibiting TikTok on U.S. federal government devices, before banning it from the country entirely in 2024. Despite this, Biden still continued to operate a TikTok account himself.
However, though this TikTok ban had been scheduled to go into effect one day prior to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, the new president repeatedly delayed its enforcement in hopes of negotiating a deal allowing it to stay. The U.S. government ultimately forced TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations to a new, majority-U.S. owned company earlier this year in order to keep it operating in the country.
Mashable
