Donald Trump has signed an executive order to save the ongoing operation of the social media platform TikTok in the United States — But he almost didn't.

The order came moments after Trump cast doubt on whether he would actually authorise the move, saying that if he were to sign the US should be entitled to owning half of TikTok's business.

He also suggested the US should be allowed to establish a joint venture to keep TikTok alive, and told reporters the new executive order gives the country the right to sell or shut down the app if the government wishes.

Some of the app's 170 million American users were impacted by the platform's temporary shutdown on Sunday, in the final days of the Biden administration.

Under a law passed last year and upheld on Friday by a unanimous Supreme Court, the platform had until the shutdown deadline to cut ties with its China-based parent ByteDance or shut down its US operation to resolve concerns it poses a threat to national security.

Here is the key wording from within Trump's order:

"I am instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans."

Watch the moment it happened, here:

The executive action shows that Trump has given a "full, complete and unconditional pardon" to everyone convicted over the January 6 insurrection, apart from 14 people.

Those 14 people have had their sentenced commuted to time served, which means they will be eligible for immediate release if they are in prison.

"This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation," the order says.

All pending charges relating to January 6 will be dropped, according to the order.

While signing executive orders in the Oval Office, Donald Trump is asked a simple question by a Brazilian journalist: "How do you see your relationship with Latin America and Brazil?"

Trump shrugs and replies:

"Great. Should be great. They need us. Much more than we need them. We don't need them, they need us. Everybody needs us."

A journalist in the Oval Office asks Trump if he's commuting the sentences of any January 6 offenders who assualted police.

"Well, I will say this," says Trump. "They've been in jail for a long time already. 

"I see murderers in this country get two years, one year, and maybe no time. So they've already been in jail for a long time.

"These people have been destroyed. What they've done to these people is outrageous."

 Donald Trump just realised that his predecessor Joe Biden left him a letter of farewell in the Oval Office.

The new president was asked by a journalist whether one had been left for him, to which he responded: "He may have".

It is tradition for outgoing presidents to write their successors a letter and leave it on the desk in the Oval Office.

Trump then checked the top drawer of the desk he has been sitting at while signing executive orders and found Biden's letter.

"Maybe we should all read it together?" Trump said to the media scrum in front of him.

Presidents typically keep the details of their predecessors' letters private, given they may include sensitive government information.

"Maybe I'll read it first and then we'll make that determination," Trump said a moment later.

"I left him one in the desk, just like this."

You can watch the moment here: 

With a stroke of the pen, 1,500 people involved in the January 6 riots appear to have been pardoned. 

A smaller number have had their sentences commuted, which could mean they're eligible to be released if they're in prison.

Trump says those cases need to be looked at more closely.

"We're looking at different things, but the commutations would be the ones that we'll take a look, and maybe it'll stay that way, or maybe it'll go into full pardons," he says.

The Senate has unanimously confirmed Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state (the US equivalent of a foreign minister), officially making him Donald Trump's first high-level cabinet member.

A more conventional pick than many of Trump's other nominees, Rubio put Senate Democrats at ease during his confirmation hearing when he voiced support for NATO, as well as a law he co-sponsored that states presidents cannot withdraw the US from an international alliance without Senate approval or an act of Congress.

He also labelled Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine "unacceptable" — despite Donald Trump once calling it "pretty smart".

Donald Trump is signing further executive orders in the Oval Office.

The first of the orders relates to people convicted in relation to the January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol. 

It's not immediately clear who, or how many, are being pardoned or having their sentences commuted.

"We hope they come out tonight," Trump says as he signs the order.

The second order he signed requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to "act immediately on the receipt of pardons and commutation orders".

Lina Khan, Joe Biden's chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has told staff at the commission she will resign in the coming weeks, Reuters reports.

Andrew Ferguson, a Republican commissioner, has been appointed the FTC's new chair by Donald Trump, a move which relegates Khan to the role of a regular commissioner.

A British-born legal scholar who was appointed to the position at the age of just 32, Khan made waves in 2017 when her article "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" was published in the Yale Law Journal, with The New York Times describing it as having "reframed decades of monopoly law".

She went on to lead the commission with the power to implement her ideas, most notably that the federal government should enforce strict competition policies to prevent large corporations from establishing monopoly power — making her one of the most progressive appointments of the Biden administration.

Under her leadership, the FTC successfully prevented a number of large corporate mergers, however other attempts to increase competition, including a ban on worker noncompete agreements, have been stalled in court.

Earlier my colleague Andrew Thorpe reported that Donald Trump said during his latest speech that he plans to issue pardons for at least some of those convicted over the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol — who he refers to as "hostages".

"Tonight I'm going to be signing on the J6 hostages' pardons to get them out," he says, prompting a massive round of applause.

"As soon as I leave I'm going to the Oval Office and will be signing pardons for a lot of people."

Reuters is now reporting that an official from the US Federal Bureau of Prisons says it is "possible" that some of the January 6 offenders will be released within hours.

Despite that, no formal paperwork has been received to authorise the order.

We'll keep you up to date with any further developments we receive.

Reporting with Reuters