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The Supreme Court did not give TikTok a last-minute execution.
If popular social networks continue to operate in the US, it should be politicians or businessmen, not judges, who keep them.
And politicians — under pressure to assuage concerns about China and many American users of TikTok — know it. This includes the incoming president, who is a politician and businessman.
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, President-elect Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he would review the situation, but everyone should respect the Supreme Court’s decision.
“My decision on TikTok will be made very soon, but I have to have time to evaluate the situation. Stay tuned!,” he said.
Trump’s legal team had already watched as the Supreme Court deliberated on the case, asking the justices to delay the decision to give him time to find a solution.
“Only President Trump has the technical expertise, electoral responsibility, and political will to negotiate to save the platform,” the brief read.
They didn’t hear what they wanted, but several Trump supporters have since floated the possibility of the president’s executive order on Monday afternoon to delay implementation of the ban. Trump also spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the topic of TikTok came up.
Trump is keeping his foreign policy team with China hawks like Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz — who represent the popular right-wing view that communist China is an economic superpower, and a national enemy.
But Trump has also spent the past year campaigning for supporters on social media — and their young followers — many of whom are TikTok devotees.
If the incoming president can find a way to satisfy national security concerns while keeping TikTok up and running in the US, it would give him the chance to score a political victory in his second term and be celebrated by TikTok’s loyal users.
There’s something ironic about this, since it was conservatives — including Trump — who first pushed for the ban.
The Biden administration, for its part, seems happy to leave TikTok’s content on the incoming president’s agenda.
It was quick to issue a statement in response to the court’s decision, emphasizing that the purpose of the law is not to ban TikTok, but to force its sale to American ownership. As predicted, the outgoing Democratic president issued a ban on Donald Trump, who will become president on Monday afternoon.
The Supreme Court, in its unopposed opinion, avoided this kind of political calculation. The judges agreed with a lower court that supports the law that can ban social networks if they are not sold by midnight on Sunday.
Although the court’s opinion is narrow – the judges agree when they were forced to issue this decision – it proves that the protection of the law on the freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the US Constitution does not save TikTok.
Instead, the judges found that the ban on TikTok, which Congress justified on the basis of protecting national security by preventing the enemy from collecting the information of millions of American users, had more reasonable limits than the laws that directly regulate the voice. what it is.
The court left some issues open – such as whether China’s concerns over TikTok’s algorithm should be banned. But expect this to come up in future discussions in Congress.
With the court ruling, TikTok has ended its last legal recourse to prevent the ban from taking effect. For Trump, however, the TikTok ban is his first presidential challenge — and his first political opportunity.
