President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the TikTok ban, which is scheduled to take effect on January 19.
The ban will begin one day before Trump takes office unless it is sold to a new non-Chinese owner. TikTok parent company, ByteDance, has indicated that it is not open to a forced sale.
Trump’s nominee to be solicitor general, John Sauer, filed an amicus brief in the case on Friday.
The brief argued, “President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.”
“Consistent with his commanding presence in this area, President Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok with whom he actively communicates, allowing him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech. Indeed, President Trump and his rival both used TikTok to connect with voters during the recent Presidential election campaign, with President Trump doing so much more effectively. As this Court instructs, the First Amendment’s ‘constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.'”
The brief continued, “Furthermore, President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged.”
“This Court should be deeply concerned about setting a precedent that could create a slippery slope toward global government censorship of social media speech,” Sauer wrote in the filing. “The power of a Western government to ban an entire social-media platform with more than 100 million users, at the very least, should be considered and exercised with the most extreme care—not reviewed on a ‘highly expedited basis.'”
Trump vowed to “save” the app during his presidential campaign.
Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to discuss the matter.
“You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” Trump said during a press conference earlier this month.
Congress passed the ban earlier this year in response to widespread opposition to Israel spreading like wildfire on the app. It was signed into law by Joe Biden in April.
TikTok has over 170 million users in the United States alone.
