Clock ticking on US ban Biden Administration suggests Supreme Court should reject Trump’s request to delay

The Biden Administration has suggested the US Supreme Court should reject Donald Trump’s request to delay a law that would ban TikTok in the US if it isn’t sold by its Chinese parent company. A week ahead of a courtroom showdown, the Justice Department urged justices to uphold the law despite Mr Trump’s argument that he could negotiate a deal after his inauguration. The department said TikTok hadn’t demonstrated it could prevail in its case to justify a pause, and that Mr Trump had not argued that the company could succeed. The US and TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, laid the groundwork in duelling briefs that pit national security concerns against free speech rights. In its latest filing, TikTok urged the Supreme Court to declare the law’s TikTok-specific provision unconstitutional or at least put a temporary pause on the statute to “carefully consider this significant question”. “The startling proposition that there should be no judicial scrutiny of a law shuttering a speech platform used by 170 million Americans would mean Congress could ban petitioners from operating TikTok explicitly because they refused to censor views Congress disfavours or to promote views it likes,” TikTok lawyers wrote.