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Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay a legislative deadline that would have forced the sale or ban of TikTok to allow for a “political solution” after he is sworn in as president next month.
Under a bill approved by Congress in April, Chinese parent ByteDance would have to be eliminated tiktok by January 19 2025 — the day before Trump is inaugurated as president — or face a nationwide ban.
The legislation comes, in part, after US officials warned the platform posed a national security risk Bytedance Chinese law could force Beijing to share the personal data of the 170 million Americans who use the video app.
But Trump has asked the top court to suspend the deadline while it considers the case’s merits to give his incoming administration “an opportunity to resolve the political questions surrounding the case,” according to a brief. Filed on Friday.
On the campaign trail before his re-election, Trump said he opposed platform bans and made promises “Save” the app.
The effort to do so represents a U-turn from 2020, when then-President Trump issued an executive order blocking the app in the US and giving ByteDance 90 days to cut off its American assets and any data TikTok collects in the US. That order was blocked by the courts and eventually revoked by US President Joe Biden, who later signed the legislation at the center of the lawsuit.
The briefing said: “President Trump alone has the consummate dealmaking skills, electoral mandate and political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the administration — concerns that President Trump himself has acknowledged.”
The filing added that Trump “takes no position on the merits underlying this dispute.”
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The request throws Trump, who would not have authority over the Supreme Court as president, into the middle of a fraught legal process that will determine the fate of the popular app in the United States.
The apex court has fixed January 10 for oral arguments in the case.
Earlier this month the Supreme Court briefly decided to hear TikTok’s appeal against a lower court ruling that rejected its challenge to the law, as well as a request to halt the system pending further court proceedings.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the law earlier this month, rejecting TikTok’s claim that it was unconstitutional and violated First Amendment protections for free speech.
