Trump Asks SCOTUS to Pause TikTok Ban ‘To Pursue a Negotiated Resolution’
President-elect Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court on Friday to pause an impending ban on the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok.
Trump’s legal team filed a friend-of-the-court brief requesting the justices pause TikTok’s ban, due to go into effect on January 19, to give the president-elect time to negotiate a deal to keep the platform operating in the United States. The effort to ban TikTok gained bipartisan support earlier this year as critics accused the platform of threatening U.S. national security by collecting data on Americans.
In April, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed legislation that included a ban on TikTok unless the social media platform can meet the terms outlined in the legislation, namely being sold off from its parent company, ByteDance. The legislation gave the social media platform 270 days to comply with the chance of an additional 90 days if the Biden administration assesses that ByteDance has made meaningful progress toward a sale.
TikTok sued the government over the ban, claiming that it violates the First Amendment.
“President Trump takes no position on the merits of the dispute,” Trump’s team wrote in its brief. “Instead, he urges the Court to stay the statute’s effective date to allow his incoming Administration to pursue a negotiated resolution that could prevent a nationwide shutdown of TikTok, thus preserving the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans, while also addressing the government’s national security concerns.” (Read more from “Trump Asks SCOTUS to Pause TikTok Ban ‘To Pursue a Negotiated Resolution’” HERE)
