The Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court of the United States this Friday night to reject President-elect Donald Trump’s request to temporarily suspend the application of the law that bans TikTok in the country if it does not stop being Chinese property. . The ban would come into force on January 19, the eve of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, if the social network is not transferred before. The Supreme Court has called an oral hearing to analyze the case next Friday, January 10, following the company’s appeal against the law.
The exchange occurs within the appeal that TikTok has filed against the application of the law, in which it fundamentally alleges that it represents a violation of the freedom of expression enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Trump presented a brief last week in which he asked for time to find a “negotiated solution” after taking office as president on January 20. His lawyer indicated that the president-elect “respectfully requests that the Court consider suspending the Divestment Act’s deadline of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case, thus allowing the incoming President Trump Administration the opportunity to seek a political resolution of the issues under discussion in the case.”
The Justice Department opposes that request. In a 27-page response to the allegations of TikTok and other parties that have intervened in his defense, he dedicates a paragraph to Trump’s request: “President-elect Trump does not take a position on the First Amendment issue of that this Court granted the certiorari [admitió el recurso a trámite]but urges the Court to ‘suspend the date of entry into force of the law to allow its incoming Administration to seek a negotiated solution,’ he states. “The requested relief is more appropriately characterized as an injunctive relief and is therefore appropriate only if the plaintiff [TikTok] demonstrates, among other things, a probability of success on the merits. In this case, the plaintiffs have not proven it, and the president-elect does not allege otherwise,” he adds.
The law allowed the president to grant a three-month extension if there was significant progress in the sale process, but that is not the case. The Department of Justice points out in the letter, signed by the Attorney General, Elizabeth Prelogar, that the law must be applied. “No one disputes that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) seeks to undermine US interests by amassing sensitive data on Americans and engaging in covert and malign influence operations,” he says. “No one can seriously dispute that the PRC’s control over TikTok through ByteDance represents a serious threat to national security,” he adds.
According to Prelogar, “TikTok’s collection of vast amounts of sensitive data on 170 million Americans and their contacts makes it a powerful espionage tool, and TikTok’s role as a key communication channel makes it a potent weapon for covert influence operations. “As long as TikTok remains under the control of the PRC, it could use these weapons against the United States at any time, for example, at a crucial moment during a crisis,” he argues.
TikTok itself also presented a letter this Friday requesting the suspension of the deadline set by law. He points out that there is no justification for treating TikTok differently from other Chinese-owned applications such as Shein or Temu that also store a large amount of data. “To be clear, plaintiffs are not suggesting that Congress should have also banned apps like these. Rather, the key point is that Congress’s decision to exempt them clearly suggests that they targeted TikTok for its social media content, not its data,” he clarifies.
The letter from the Department of Justice also answers these allegations. “That divestment requirement is fully consistent with the First Amendment and our nation’s tradition of prohibiting or restricting foreign control of communications channels and other critical infrastructure. By arguing otherwise, the petitioners portray the Law as an effort to suppress disfavored points of view,” it indicates. “But nothing in the Act would prevent a post-divestiture TikTok from presenting exactly the same content in exactly the same way. “The Act addresses control by a foreign adversary, not protected speech,” he continues.
A Washington appeals court in December rejected the company’s appeal against the law, which then went to the Supreme Court. The judges have processed it urgently and will have to make a decision before January 19 if they want to prevent the law from being applied. In any case, initially what would be blocked are new downloads of the TikTok application in the Apple or Google digital stores, but existing users could continue to access it.
Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term, but later changed his position. Both he and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris used it during last year’s election campaign. “Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?” Trump tweeted this Friday on his social network, Truth, attaching an image showing usage statistics for the application. According to those figures, Trump-labeled content has been viewed 36 billion times, including his own 1.4 billion times. Each of its publications, according to this data, is seen by an average of 36 million users.
