Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The Supreme Court did not grant TikTok a last-minute stay of execution.
If the popular social media site is to continue to operate in the US, it will have to be saved by politicians or businessmen, not judges.
And politicians — pressed to balance national concerns about China with TikTok’s massive user base — are taking notice. This includes the president, the politician and the businessman.
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling, President-elect Donald Trump posted in Truth Social that he would review the situation, but everyone must respect the Supreme Court’s decision.
“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!” he said.
Trump’s legal team has already weighed in on the Supreme Court hearing this case, asking the justices to delay their decision to give them time to find a solution.
“Only President Trump has the excellent deal-making ability, electoral mandate and political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform,” the brief read.
They didn’t get their wish, but many Trump aides have raised the possibility of a presidential executive order delaying the ban’s implementation on Monday evening. Trump also spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the topic of TikTok came up.
Trump is stocking his foreign policy team with China hawks like Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz. They represent public opinion that the right-wing communists are more than just an economic rival to China, they are a geopolitical rival.
But Trump has also spent the past year campaigning for the support of social media influencers and their young followers, many of whom are fans of TikTok.
If the incoming president can finally find a way to satisfy national security concerns while keeping TikTok running in the US, it would allow him to post an early political victory in his second term and be celebrated by loyal TikTok users.
There is some irony in this, since it was conservatives – including Trump – who supported the ban.
The Biden administration, for its part, seemed happy to leave the status of TikTok in the incoming president’s lap.
He quickly made a statement in response to the court’s decision that the purpose of the law is not to ban TikTok, but to force its sale to Americans. As expected, however, the outgoing Democratic president handed over enforcement of the ban to Donald Trump, who will become president on Monday at noon.
The Supreme Court, in its unsigned, dissenting opinion, avoided weighing in on such political calculations. The justices upheld a lower court that upheld the constitutionality of a law that could have banned the popular social media service if it is not sold by midnight on Sunday.
Although the court’s opinion is narrow – the courts recognize the time pressure they were under to deliver this decision – it firmly establishes that the constitutional protection of freedom of expression contained in the First Amendment of the US Constitution does not save TikTok.
In fact, the judges found that the TikTok ban, which Congress justified by protecting national security by preventing an adversary from collecting databases of tens of millions of American users, had a lower limit than laws directly regulating speech. the content
The court sidestepped other difficult issues, such as whether concerns about Chinese influence on TikTok’s algorithm justified the ban. But expect it to come up in future policy debates in Congress.
With the court’s decision, TikTok has exhausted its last resort to not enforce the ban. For Trump, however, the TikTok ban is his first presidential challenge, but also his first political opportunity.
