President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay a ban on TikTok so he can find a way to save the social media app that he once tried to bar from the U.S.
TikTok faces a ban if its parent company, ByteDance, does not follow a new federal law that requires it to be sold to a non-Chinese company by Jan. 19, the day before Trump is inaugurated. The law received bipartisan support from members of Congress, who said because the app can track and collect data on its 170 million American users, it poses a national security risk.
Trump took the same position in his first term as president, but successfully courted younger voters on TikTok this year and said after his reelection he has “a warm spot in my heart” for the app, where he has 14.7 million followers.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear TikTok’s First Amendment challenge to the law on Jan. 10. A brief filed with the court on Friday said Trump “takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute.” It warned about setting “a dangerous global precedent” on government censorship “by exercising the extraordinary power to shut down an entire social-media platform based, in large part, on concerns about disfavored speech on that platform.”
The brief says Trump “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,” ABC News reported.
Trump’s turnaround comes four years after he tried to ban TikTok through an executive order that directed ByteDance to divest its U.S. interests or face broad sanctions, The New York Times reported. The order, issued after Trump criticized China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, said the app “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage,” per The New York Times. A federal judge blocked the ban, saying Trump had overstepped his authority.
Earlier this year, Trump told CNBC he still considered TikTok a national security threat but that young people “will go crazy without it” and that banning it would empower Facebook, which he said he considers “an enemy of the people.”
Media outlets report that his change of mind came around the same time he met with Jeff Yass, a major Republican donor with financial ties to TikTok’s parent company. Trump said they didn’t discuss the company, per The New York Times, but critics said the connection underscores concerns that donors wield significant influence over policymaking.
Trump met last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew, The Associated Press reported. TikTok executives also have reached out to Elon Musk, who owns their competitor, X, and who has found success in guiding Trump on other issues, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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