Trump asks Supreme Court to delay TikTok sale deadline

(NEW YORK) — Two weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments over TikTok’s future, President-elect Donald Trump has asked the justices to delay a Jan. 19 deadline for the app to be sold to a new owner or face a ban in the U.S.

An amicus brief filed by Trump’s nominee to be solicitor general, John Sauer, is asking the court to grant a stay delaying the deadline so that the incoming president can work out a “negotiated resolution” that would save the app.

The filing casts Trump as someone who “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.”

Trump’s brief says he “opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture,” but does not express the view that the law requiring the sale violates the First Amendment, saying he takes no position on the merits of the case.

Instead, the filing from Sauer asks the court to put the deadline on pause to allow Trump’s incoming administration “to pursue a negotiated resolution that could prevent a nationwide shutdown of TikTok, thus preserving the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans, while also addressing the government’s national security concerns.”

TikTok, which has over 170 million U.S. users, has sued over the law requiring it to be sold by its current Chinese-based owner ByteDance by Jan. 19 or be banned in the U.S.

A federal appeals court earlier this month rejected the company’s request for an emergency pause in the deadline.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10.

President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was part of a massive, $95 billion foreign aid package passed by Congress, on April 24.

Biden and some congressional leaders argued that the ultimatum against TikTok was necessary because of security concerns about ByteDance and its connections to the Chinese government.

Trump originally tried to ban TikTok in his first term, but has since reversed course, vowing during the 2024 presidential campaign to “save” the app.

In Trump’s amicus brief, Sauer raised the idea of social media censorship, invoking Brazil’s recent month-long ban of social media platform X, the treatment of the Hunter Biden laptop story and government efforts to stamp out COVID-19 misinformation as incidents that should give the justices pause.

“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.’”

While Sauer acknowledged that TikTok may pose national security risks while it remains under ByteDance’s control, he also urges the justices to be skeptical of national security officials, whom, he said, “have repeatedly procured social-media censorship of disfavored content and viewpoints through a combination of pressure, coercion, and deception.”

“There is a jarring parallel between the D.C. Circuit’s near-plenary deference to national security officials calling for social-media censorship, and the recent, well-documented history of federal officials’ extensive involvement in social-media censorship efforts directed at the speech of tens of millions Americans,” Sauer wrote.

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