Donald Trump called on the Supreme Court to pause its decision to ban TikTok until after taking office
President-elect Donald Trumplegal team request The Supreme Court blocked a law that would have required TikTok to be sold to an American company or shut down by January 19, the day before he took office. in one petition filed on Friday, the legal team argued that the incoming president will have the opportunity to “resolve current issues through political means” once he takes office.
Although the brief does not directly address the legal question at hand — whether banning the platform for the roughly 170 million Americans who use it violates their First Amendment rights to free speech. no — but it notes that “at this time,” Trump “opposes banning TikTok in the United States.”
Supreme Court agreed to hear the case earlier this month after a bipartisan measure—the Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act—passed Congress and was signed into law by the President Joe Biden. The law cites national security concerns and would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell to an American company or face a ban.
“President Trump alone possesses the impeccable deal expertise, electoral mandate, and political will to negotiate a solution that salvages the foundation while addressing concerns about national security concerns expressed by the administration – concerns that President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the summary said. , signed by Trump’s adviser and his choice for United States solicitor general, D. John Sauerread.
TikTok’s legal team and Biden Administration also submitted a brief for the court to consider in the weeks leading up to oral arguments on January 10. TikTok argued that Congress’s signing of the law was an “unprecedented effort to single out litigants and bans them from operating one of the nation’s most important speech venues” and is “deeply unconstitutional.” They added that the government “banned a lot of speech” and “misconstrued the facts in bothering to provide them.”
The Biden administration says the law “addresses the serious threats to national security posed by the Chinese government’s control of TikTok, a platform that collects sensitive data on tens of millions of Americans and would be a powerful tool for covert influence operations by foreign adversaries. .”
Other brieffiled on behalf of users of the service, acknowledges the ongoing geopolitical tensions between China and the United States, but argues that allowing the law to take effect is tantamount to “suppressing speech American” and “goes straight to our history, traditions and precedents.”
Trump’s more recent support for the app is a change from when, as president in 2020, he unsuccessfully tried to ban the platform, citing security concerns. national security. federal court stop his efforts.
Despite his expressed disdain for the Chinese-owned app, he is not the only government leader to use it to reach voters and campaign. According to one Analysis by NBC News, the 23 members of Congress who voted for the TikTok ban have verified accounts, and many of them use the platform to “campaign, defend trust, and manage their public image.” them — even if they think the app poses a threat to Americans.” users.”
EQUAL Vanity fair‘S Gabriel Sherman reported in March, Trump’s shift may be influenced by his complicated relationship with billionaires and major donors Jeff Yass. Yass, through Susquehanna International Group, invested several million dollars in ByteDance in 2012—an investment now worth about $40 billion, according to arrive Financial Times. The billionaire had previously urged Trump not to run and donated millions of dollars to his primary rivals, but with the former president’s electoral popularity and growing threats to TikTok, Yass invited Trump to speak at the Club for Growth donor retreat at The Breakers in Palm Beach in March.
