President-elect Donald Trump believes he can cut a deal that would keep TikTok legal — while addressing the U.S. government’s national security concerns.
TikTok, under a law passed this year, faces a looming deadline that will make the video app illegal in the U.S. by Jan. 19 unless Chinese parent ByteDance divests its ownership stake. TikTok challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, and after losing an appellate court ruling is seeking an emergency injunction from the Supreme Court to block the law from taking effect.
Trump, in an amicus brief filed on his behalf with the Supreme Court on Friday, asked the high court to stay the Jan. 19 deadline — one day before Trump takes office — in order to “grant more breathing space to address these issues.”
“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,” the brief says. The Jan. 19 deadline “interferes with President Trump’s ability to manage the United States’ foreign policy and to pursue a resolution to both protect national security and save a social-media platform that provides a popular vehicle for 170 million Americans to exercise their core First Amendment rights.”
Trump’s brief does not explain what kind of deal his administration might work out to satisfy the concerns of the law’s supporters, who argue that TikTok is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, to keep the popular app legally available in the U.S.
SEE ALSO: TikTok Ban: Free-Speech Groups, Members of Congress Urge Supreme Court to Save App on First Amendment Grounds
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act was signed into law by President Biden on April 24, 2024, after the bill passed in Congress with solid bipartisan support. U.S. lawmakers have expressed deep concern about TikTok’s Chinese ownership, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime could use the app to spy on Americans or use it to spread pro-China propaganda.
“President Trump takes no position on the merits of the dispute,” the president-elect’s amicus brief says. “Instead, he urges the Court to stay the statute’s effective date to allow his 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. If achieved, such a resolution would obviate the need for this Court to decide extremely difficult questions on the current, highly expedited schedule.”
While Trump’s brief says he takes “no position” on the TikTok ban, it also says that “the First Amendment implications of the federal government’s effective shuttering of a social media platform used by 170 million Americans are sweeping and troubling. There are valid concerns that the Act may set a dangerous global precedent 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 continues, “Perhaps not coincidentally, soon after the Act was passed, another major Western democracy — Brazil — shut down another entire social-media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter), for more than a month, apparently based on that government’s desire to suppress disfavored political speech.” Trump’s brief also says the D.C. Circuit’s opinion rejecting TikTok’s challenge to the law as violating the First Amendment “grants only cursory consideration to the free-speech interests of Americans, while granting decisive weight and near-plenary deference to the views of national-security officials. Yet the history of the past several years, and beyond, includes troubling, well-documented abuses by such federal officials in seeking the social-media censorship of ordinary Americans.”
Trump also says in the brief that the Act raises “concerns about possible legislative encroachment on prerogatives of the Executive Branch under Article II” of the Constitution.
“This case 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 filing. “As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means.”
During his first term as president, Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to force ByteDance to sell majority control in TikTok to U.S. owners, also citing national security fears. Trump’s divest-or-ban executive order was found unconstitutional by federal courts on First Amendment grounds.
At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago compound this month, when asked about TikTok, Trump replied, “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” because of his belief that the app helped drive young voters toward his side of the ballot. On Sept. 4, 2024, Trump posted on Truth Social, “FOR ALL THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!”
Per the president-elect’s filing with the Supreme Court, Trump is in a unique position to obtain a resolution to the TikTok situation in part because he “is one of the most powerful, prolific and influential users of social media in history.” The brief notes that Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok “with whom he actively communicates, allowing him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech.”
In addition, Trump, as the founder of social media platform Truth Social, has “an in-depth perspective on the extraordinary government power attempted to be exercised in this case — the power of the federal government to effectively shut down a social-media platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform,” the brief says.
Also Friday, several free-speech groups and three members of Congress filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court advocating for the court to grant TikTok’s emergency injunction blocking the law on First Amendment grounds.
