Supreme Court May Announce Opinion Friday Morning With TikTok Divest-Or-Ban Deadline Looming

The Supreme Court will likely announce opinions at 1000 ET on a law that comes just days before TikTok’s divest-or-ban deadline on Sunday, one day before President-elect Trump is sworn in. 

“The Court may announce opinions on the homepage beginning at 10 a.m.,” a notice on the court’s website read, without specifying what case or cases might be decided, adding, “The Court will not take the Bench.”

Here’s the Supreme Court’s agenda for Friday:

CBS News noted, “The Supreme Court seemed likely to upload the law when it heard arguments over TikTok’s legal challenge last week, with the justices seeming sympathetic to the government’s claims that China could use TikTok to collect a vast amount of data on its American users and spy on them.” 

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, faces a Sunday deadline to divest the social media platform or risk an outright ban in the US. Failure to comply could leave the app’s 170 million US users in the dark. 

Goldman told clients on Thursday that “Tiktok refugees” were finding alternative video-sharing platforms worldwide, such as downloading the Chinese app RedNote… 

TikTok’s divest-or-ban deadline comes one day before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. Trump once viewed that app as a national security risk and has since commented that he wants to “save” the Chinese app.

On Thursday, Trump’s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends”: ”We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark.” 

Lawmakers across the aisle are also pushing for a delay in the law’s implementation….

“It’s time to take a breath, try to step back, buy some time, try to figure this out rationally. But in no way should we have TikTok go dark,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts wrote in a Thursday letter to President Biden. 

Markey continued, “It would be catastrophic with just so many small businesses, so many creators, so many communities that have been created with no alternative available.”

Translation: Banning TikTok would be politically devastating for the party that enforces the ban—mostly because the younger generation, future voters, use the app religiously. 

There were reports from multiple MSM outlets saying that Biden won’t enforce the ban on TikTok after Sunday.  

Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said ByteDance has had more than enough time to find a buyer with the deadline fast approaching. 

“TikTok is a Chinese Communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist propaganda,” Cotton said.

“If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear: Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use and has been great for his campaign and getting his message out. But number two, he’s going to protect their data,” Waltz said, adding, “He’s a deal maker. I don’t want to get ahead of our executive orders, but we’re going to create this space to put that deal in place.” 

On Tuesday, Bloomberg cited anonymous sources that said Elon Musk could purchase TikTok. However, a TikTok spokesperson called the report “pure fiction.”