Donald Trump asks US Supreme Court to delay TikTok ban

nme.com:

Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay a potential TikTok ban.Trump’s lawyer filed a legal brief on Friday (December 27) saying he “opposes banning TikTok” and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office”.It follows TikTok, and its parent company, ByteDance, losing an appeal earlier this month, with a US federal appeals court panel deciding unanimously to uphold a law that will ban TikTok in the country.Legal representatives of the social media app argued that the ban infringes upon the country’s First Amendment, however this was rebuffed by the court which said they were seeking to protect free speech and to limit “a foreign adversary nation” being able to “gather data on people in the United States”.On 10 January, the court will hear further arguments on the law that requires TikTok to be sold off by, and break ties with, the China-based ByteDance – or be banned by 19 January – a day before Trump takes office.Trump, who clinched a historic win in the 2024 US presidential election last month, has publicly opposed the ban, though he did support one in his first term as president.“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” he said at a press conference earlier in December, though Kamala Harris received the majority of votes from young voters. “There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that,” he added.Per BBC News, Trump met TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.In his court filing, Trump said the case represents “an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other”.It went.