Last week I reported (story #1) that the US Supreme Court agreed to take up TikTok's appeal challenging a federal law that would ban the app next month, giving the social media app one last chance in court to fight the ban or divest law. The court agreed to take on the case just a day after TikTok filed its appeal and will hear oral arguments on Jan 10th before issuing a decision on whether the law holds.
On Dec 9th, ByteDance and TikTok filed an emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, requesting a temporary halt to the law's enforcement pending Supreme Court review. Although the Supreme Court agreed to take on the case last week, they did not grant the emergency motion to halt the law's enforcement.
Trump to the rescue?
In an amicus brief filed to the court — which is a legal document submitted to a court by a “friend of the court” who possesses a strong interest in the subject matter — Trump says he “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office,” and that he “alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform.”
In his Supreme Court filing, Trump asked for the bill’s January 19th deadline to be delayed, arguing that the deal he’d negotiate “would obviate the need for this Court to decide the historically challenging First Amendment question presented here on the current, highly expedited basis.”
Trump did not currently offer any details on what the deal would look like, or if it would require ByteDance to divest TikTok to an American-owned company, like the bill currently requires.
Trump argued that having over 14M followers on TikTok, along with his ownership of the social network Truth Social, gives him the unique ability to “evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech.” He also cited Brazil’s temporary ban of Elon Musk’s X as an example of “the historic dangers presented” by a government banning a social media platform.
It's not all sunny skies ahead for TikTok though… A group of senators and congressmen, including Mitch McConnell and Ro Khanna, alongside former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, filed petitions on Friday urging the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s appeal.