Trump asks Supreme Court docket to halt looming TikTok ban

Attorneys representing President-elect Donald Trump have requested the Supreme Court docket to remain a regulation that may pressure TikTok proprietor ByteDance to promote the short-form video app or see it banned in america.

If the app shouldn’t be offered, the ban is predicted to take impact in just some weeks, on January 19. ByteDance is difficult the constitutionality of the regulation – formally titled Defending Individuals from Overseas Adversary Managed Purposes Act – with the Supreme Court docket. scheduled to hear arguments on January 10.

In a new depositTrump’s legal professionals describe the ban or sale deadline, set a day earlier than his inauguration, as “unlucky timing” that interferes together with his “capacity to handle United States overseas coverage.”

The submitting doesn’t specify what strategy Trump would possibly tackle the problem, nevertheless it asserts that he “solely has the right negotiating experience, the electoral mandate and the political will to barter a decision to save lots of the platform whereas responding to nationwide safety issues. by the federal government. »

The submitting additionally states that he at present has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, “which permits him to evaluate the significance of TikTok as a singular technique of free expression, together with core political discourse.”

Supporters of the regulation claimed that TikTok introduced a nationwide safety menace as a result of the Chinese language authorities may use it to gather knowledge and unfold propaganda to American viewers. Whereas Trump tried to ban TikTok throughout his first time period as president, he expressed support for the application extra just lately. Throughout his presidential marketing campaign, he posted on Fact Social: “FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!” »

A number of civil liberties and free speech teams, together with the American Civil Liberties Union and Digital Frontier, have submitted its own brief supporting TikTok’s attraction and arguing that “the federal government has didn’t current credible proof of ongoing or imminent hurt brought on by TikTok.”