California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Monday that he is beginning an investigation into TikTok due to reports of the platform suppressing content critical of US President Donald Trump.

Newsom and his team announced via X that they have received multiple reports from sources stating that the widely-popular TikTok platform had been recently suppressing the virality of any content being critical of the Trump administration.

The original post by Newsom was in response to a post stating that TikTok is not allowing any mention of Jeffrey Epstein to appear on the platform anymore. Newsom’s press office released a statement stating: “Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates California law.”

In response to this announcement, a TikTok representative alerted the public that TikTok has been suffering from a data center power outage, and that it would not be accurate to state that any problems with the app right now are caused by anything other than the outage.

This announcement comes after TikTok owners, ByteDance, revealed they came to an agreement on January 22 with a majorly-US owned joint venture, “TikTok USDS Joint Venture,” to secure US user data. The deal was settled at $14 billion and allows ByteDance to retain a 20% stake in the operation. This agreement was a result of President Donald Trump’s “sale-or-ban” ultimatum posed on ByteDance in 2025 after the Trump administration expressed its concern for national security and data privacy concerns for the over 200 million Americans who use TikTok.