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Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay the deadline for legislation that would force the sale or shutdown of TikTok to allow for a “political solution” once he is sworn in as president next month.
Under a bill Congress passed in April, Chinese parent ByteDance must split TikTok with January 19 2025 – the day before Trump is inaugurated as president – or face a national shutdown.
The law came after US officials warned the platform posed a national security risk, in part because ByteDance could be forced to share the personal information of 170 million Americans who use the video app with Beijing under Chinese law.
But Trump asked the Supreme Court to suspend the deadline while it considers the merits of the case to give his incoming administration “an opportunity to pursue a political solution to the questions in this case”, according to the brief. posted on friday.
On the campaign trail for re-election, Trump said he opposed the shutdown and promised to do so. “save” the app.
Efforts to do so represent a U-turn from 2020, when former president Trump issued an executive order to ban the app in the US and gave ByteDance 90 days to dispose of its US assets and any data that TikTok had collected in the US. The order was blocked by the courts and eventually revoked by US President Joe Biden, who later signed the legislation at the heart of the case.
The summary said: “President Trump alone has the savvy, electoral mandate, and political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the administration — concerns President Trump has acknowledged.”
The filing added that Trump “does not take a position on the fundamentals of this controversy”.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The request throws Trump, who as a president has no authority over the Supreme Court, into the middle of a complicated legal process that will decide the future of the popular app in the US.
The high court has scheduled oral arguments in the case on January 10.
The brief comes after the Supreme Court earlier this month decided to hear TikTok's appeal against a lower court ruling that rejected a challenge to the law, and its request to stay the rule pending further court proceedings.
The US appeals court for the District of Columbia Circuit earlier this month upheld the law, rejecting TikTok's claim that it was unconstitutional and violated First Amendment free speech protections.