Trump meets with TikTok CEO at Mar-a-Lago as company asks Supreme Court to intervene in fight over federal ban
By Kaitlan Collins, Devan Cole and John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump met with the head of TikTok at his Mar-a-Lago club Monday afternoon, a person familiar with the meeting told CNN, as the social media giant is asking the Supreme Court to wade into a court fight over use of the app in the United States.
The pre-scheduled meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Chew is believed to be the first time the men have met since Trump’s electoral victory in November, another person told CNN. Chew, who was seen at Trump’s Florida resort in early December, has been trying to meet with Trump since he was elected, and is just the latest meeting the president-elect is holding with top executives from some of America’s largest tech companies.
Just hours before, TikTok asked the conservative high court to weigh in on the legal dispute over a controversial law requiring that the platform be sold to a new, non-Chinese owner or be banned in the United States. That measure is set to take effect January 19.
After the January deadline, US app stores and internet services could face hefty fines for hosting TikTok if it is not sold. The president, under the legislation, may issue a one-time extension of the deadline.
Trump on Monday suggested he might take a different approach with the popular platform but has not detailed what that approach might look like.
“You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it,” Trump said earlier Monday at a wide-ranging press conference – his first since the election. (Trump lost 18-29-year-old voters to Vice President Kamala Harris by 11 points, according to CNN’s 2024 exit polls.)
The platform is one step closer to facing a ban in a matter of weeks, unless it can convince Chinese parent-company ByteDance to sell and find a buyer. ByteDance has previously indicated it will not sell TikTok.
TikTok wants Supreme Court to freeze law
Congress passed the ban with bipartisan support earlier this year and President Joe Biden signed it into law in April. It came in response to years of concern in Washington that TikTok’s Chinese parent-company poses a national security risk.
TikTok’s emergency appeal to the Supreme Court thrusts the justices into a high-profile fight between Congress, which has cited national security concerns over China’s control of the app, and the platform’s users and executives, who argue that the ban violates the First Amendment.
A federal appeals court unanimously upheld the ban in a ruling earlier this month that said the government had a national security interest in regulating the platform in the United States. If the Supreme Court does not intervene, the ban would take effect a day before Trump takes office.
The appeal landed on the high court’s emergency docket, which critics call the “shadow docket,” days after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals turned down the company’s request to temporarily block the law, handing another loss to the company in its bid to stave off enforcement of the ban next month.
Attorneys for TikTok are asking the Supreme Court to temporarily block the ban to give the company time to ask the justices to review their challenge to it. If the justices agree, the law would, at a minimum, remain on hold until the court decides whether it will hear the case.
The ban “will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” TikTok’s attorneys wrote. “This, in turn, will silence the speech of Applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern.”
The attorneys asked the Supreme Court to decide on their emergency application by January 6 to give the company enough time “to coordinate with their service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok platform only in the United States.” They also suggested that the court could agree to hear the case without needing to receive additional filings.
The company’s attorneys wasted little time flagging the incoming administration and Trump’s supportive remarks about the app in their Monday filing. Blocking the law from taking effect, they said, is “appropriate” because it would give “the incoming administration time to determine its position, as the president-elect and his advisors have voiced support for saving” TikTok.
The DC Circuit said in its ruling on December 6 that the law did not run afoul of the US Constitution, saying that it satisfies a legal standard known as strict scrutiny that must be met for government restrictions on speech to stand.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly delved into social media and First Amendment fights in recent years, including with an important decision in July in which a majority of the court signaled it believed that the platforms enjoy at least some protection under the First Amendment.
“In constructing certain feeds, those platforms make choices about what third-party speech to display and how to display it,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the court’s liberal block, who was joined by both conservatives and liberals in her opinion. “We have repeatedly held that laws curtailing their editorial choices must meet the First Amendment’s requirements.”
The appeals court repeatedly cited that decision in its ruling in the TikTok case. But First Amendment protections are not absolute, and the DC Circuit unanimously upheld the law on national security grounds.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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