Trump Urges Stay of S. Ct. Proceedings in TikTok Case, Delay of Statutory Effective Date
From Trump’s just-filed friend-of-the-court brief in the TikTok divestment case:
Introduction and Interest of Amicus Curiae …
Amicus curiae President Donald J. Trump (“President Trump”) is the 45th and soon to be the 47th President of the United States of America. On January 20, 2025, President Trump will assume responsibility for the United States’ national security, foreign policy, and other vital executive functions. This case presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other. As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means.
President Trump also has a unique interest in the First Amendment issues raised in this case. Through his historic victory on November 5, 2024, President Trump received a powerful electoral mandate from American voters to protect the free-speech rights of all Americans—including the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. President Trump is uniquely situated to vindicate these interests, because “the President and the Vice President of the United States are the only elected officials who represent all the voters in the Nation.”
Moreover, President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history. Consistent with his commanding presence in this area, President Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok with whom he actively communicates, allowing him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech. Indeed, President Trump and his rival both used TikTok to connect with voters during the recent Presidential election campaign, with President Trump doing so much more effectively. As this Court instructs, the First Amendment’s “constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.”
Further, President Trump is the founder of another resoundingly successful social-media platform, Truth Social. This gives him an in-depth perspective on the extraordinary government power attempted to be exercised in this case—the power of the federal government to effectively shut down a social-media platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform. President Trump is keenly aware of the historic dangers presented by such a precedent. For example, shortly after the Act was passed, Brazil banned the social-media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) for more than a month, based in large part on that government’s disfavor of political speech on X. See, e.g., Brazil’s Supr
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