Trump asks the Supreme Court to postpone the TikTok ban, citing the need for a political settlement

Trump, the president-elect, asks the Supreme Court to postpone the TikTok ban in order to seek a political solution.

The US Supreme Court has been asked to postpone a planned TikTok ban by President-elect Donald Trump, who has stated that he plans to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue after he becomes office.

In a Friday court filing, Trump’s attorney contended that the president-elect “opposes banning TikTok” and wants to settle the dispute “politically.”

Arguments on a US legislation requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app to an American business or risk a statewide ban that would go into force on January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration, are expected to be heard by the court on January 10.

TikTok and ByteDance strongly dispute the US politicians’ and officials’ claims that the businesses had connections to the Chinese government, which is why the bill was created. In the US, there are more than 170 million TikTok users.

President Joe Biden signed the divest-or-ban measure into law in April after Congress passed it, citing national security concerns. Asserting that the law violates American free speech rights, ByteDance and TikTok have launched several legal challenges, although their attempts have not been very successful.

The issue presents “an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other,” according to Trump’s declaration. Although he did not express an opinion on the merits of the lawsuit, he asked the court to postpone the deadline so that his administration may have more time to work out a political solution.

Citing national security threats purportedly associated with TikTok’s Chinese ownership, the US Justice Department and over two dozen state attorneys general, including Austin Knudsen of Montana, back the legislation.

The statute was recently affirmed by a federal appeals court, which called it “the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and successive presidents.”

In spite of his first-term support for a TikTok ban, Trump has now openly criticized the proposal. Although official statistics indicates that the majority of young people backed his opponent, Kamala Harris, he said earlier this month, “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points.”

In the last days before the ban is set to go into force, the Supreme Court’s ruling on January 10th may decide TikTok’s case.