With less than a month until the U.S. Supreme Court hears TikTok’s challenge to the government’s b@n on the app, President-elect Donald Trump has stepped in with a request to delay the hearing until after his inauguration later this month.
Trump’s legal team is trying to buy time to negotiate a settlement of the issue rather than have it resolved by court rulings.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, emphasized the president-elect’s desire to “reach a political resolution of this matter.” But the statute mandating the sale or bAn of TikTok would take effect on Jan. 19, 2025, the day before Trump is sworn in.
The timing, Sauer wrote, was “unfortunately inconvenient,” and the new president deserves more time to broker a settlement with TikTok.
Filings from TikTok’s legal team showed, too, that Trump should have negotiating potential, since he was a negotiator of deals and owned a social platform, Truth Social, along with an ability to settle issues without court intervention.
President 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—concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged.
What is interesting here, though, is how much the stand on TikTok contrasts today with his 2020 efforts to b@n it, citing national security. He now argues b@nning TikTok would be unfair to him, because it is a gift to Facebook, which he has labeled “an enemy of the people, along with much of the media.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments over the b@n on January 10, 2025, leaving the justices to decide whether to uphold, delay or strike down the b@n.
The law, passed in April, takes effect January 19 and offers ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, a nine-month window in which to sell the app. If no sale is consummated, TikTok would be pulled from app stores and web hosting in the U.S. A sale in progress does allow for a 90-day extension, provided such a sale is actively in the works.
Regardless of the outcome, the decision will have a significant impact on the U.S. social media landscape. While I’m not personally attached to TikTok, its immense popularity makes this a pivotal moment in determining its future. All eyes will be on the Supreme Court and the unfolding developments in the coming month.
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