US President-elect Donald Trump has requested the Supreme Court to delay a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app by January 19, 2025, a day before his inauguration. In a brief filed Friday, Trump's legal team argued that the court should stay the deadline to allow time for a political resolution.

During his first term (2017–2021), Trump sought to ban TikTok, citing national security concerns over potential Chinese government access to US user data and content manipulation. While those claims were denied by ByteDance and Beijing, Trump called for a US company to buy the app, a stance later reinforced by President Joe Biden, who signed legislation supporting a ban.

However, Trump has recently softened his stance, citing the need for competition in the tech space. "If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram—and that’s Zuckerberg," Trump told Bloomberg, referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Trump remains critical of Meta, which banned him from its platforms after the January 6, 2021, Capitol attacks, though those bans have since been lifted.

In the brief, Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, clarified that the president-elect takes no position on the case's legal merits but urged the court to delay the divestment deadline to allow the incoming administration to explore a political solution.