The News
A Washington court ruled Friday to uphold a law forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its stake in the video-sharing platform to avoid a US ban.
Shortly after, TikTok announced that it would appeal the ruling with the Supreme Court — meaning the timings could exceed the Jan. 19 limit set for the divestiture. This would leave TikTok’s fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who once backed a ban, but now describes himself as “a big star on TikTok.”
The Chinese-owned company is under scrutiny for its alleged political influence in the US and elsewhere: The European Union has ordered it to preserve data related to recent Romanian elections, amid suggestions that TikTok boosted the surprise pro-Russian winner’s videos at Moscow’s bidding.
SIGNALS
Trump’s top advisers at odds over the TikTok ban
Trump’s picks to fill senior posts in his incoming administration appear at odds over the TikTok ban, with both outspoken advocates and critics of the ban expected to join his cabinet. His top national security choices, Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio, have supported the legislation. By contrast, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have defended the app, with RFJ Jr. at one point vowing threatening legal action against the ban on constitutional grounds. While Trump started the process of banning the social media giant in his first term, he reversed his position after a back-channel lobbying campaign by TikTok arguing that the ban would be a win for Biden and Meta, which Trump believes hurt his 2020 re-election efforts, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Supreme Court unlikely to overturn the ban
It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will take up ByteDance’s appeal, although experts doubt it will reverse Friday’s ruling. “Who knows, but hard to see this overturned,” one researcher said. A law professor told The New York Times that the Court will likely freeze the law to prevent the app being shut down before Trump’s inauguration, leaving the matter for the new administration. If Trump does want to stop the ban, it will be hard to do so unless he can win over Congress, which overwhelmingly supported the legislation. Alternatively, Trump’s Justice Department could refuse to enforce the ban or the president-elect could try to push TikTok to take further steps to address security concerns, experts told ABC News.