Trump is asking the Supreme Court to temporarily halt a law that could ban TikTok via Reuters
Written by Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily halt a TikTok rule that would have shut down the popular social media app or forced its sale, as the U.S. president-elect argued that he should have time after taking office to move on. “political solution” to the issue.
TikTok and its owner ByteDance are fighting to keep the popular app online in the United States after Congress voted in April to block it unless the app’s Chinese parent company sells it in Jan. 19.
They want the law overturned, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. But if the court does not favor ByteDance and no split takes place, the app could be effectively banned in the United States by Jan. 19, one day before Trump takes office.
“This case presents an unprecedented, novel tension, and the tension that exists between the rights of free speech on the one hand, and foreign policy and national security on the other,” Trump said in his filing on Friday.
“Such a stay would give President Trump an opportunity to pursue a political solution that would avoid the need for the Court to decide these important constitutional questions,” the filing added.
Freedom advocates separately told the Supreme Court on Friday that the US law against Chinese-owned TikTok evokes censorship regimes imposed by the United States’ authoritarian enemies.
Trump indicated earlier this week that he would like to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States at least for a while, saying that it received billions of views on the social media platform during his presidential campaign.
The US Department of Justice has argued that Chinese control of TikTok poses a threat to national security, a position supported by most US lawmakers.
TikTok says the Justice Department misrepresented the social media app’s ties to China, saying its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States on cloud servers it uses Oracle Corp (NYSE:) while content moderation decisions affecting US users are also made in the United States.
