ICYMI: McConnell Urged SCOTUS To Uphold TikTok Ban-Or-Divestment

“[TikTok’s] arguments are meritless and unsound. … The Court should no more countenance it coming from foreign adversaries than it does from hardened criminals.”
Washington, D.C. – Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling denying TikTok an injunction against enforcement of the Protecting Americans’ Data From Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) submitted an amicus brief urging the Court to allow the ban-or-divest law to take effect. Read excerpts of his argument below, or the full text
here
:
On First Amendment merits:
“The Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024…is entirely consistent with the First Amendment. The right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment does not apply to a corporate agent of the Chinese Communist Party. …
“The core of the right to free speech is the principle that speech cannot be regulated by the government. … With force, it applies to a malign foreign government like Communist China, which is essentially demanding the ability to regulate speech on its TikTok platform. The topsy-turvy idea that TikTok has an expressive right to facilitate the CCP censorship regime is absurd. Would Congress have needed to allow Nikita Khrushchev to buy CBS and replace The Bing Crosby Show with Alexander Nevsky?
On TikTok’s dilatory appeal:
“Any such injunction will move the divesture date beyond that prescribed by law—and into a new presidential administration. TikTok clearly hopes that the next administration will be more sympathetic to its plight than the incumbent administration. In other words, delay is the point. …
“Their First Amendment arguments are meritless and unsound. While the forced divesture may cause them irreparable harm, any delay caused by an injunction would be contrary to the public interest. This is a standard litigation play at the end of one administration, with a petitioner hoping that the next administration will provide a stay of execution. This Court should no more countenance it coming from foreign adversaries than it does from hardened criminals. …
“The Foreign Adversaries Act was the product of a long and extensive legislative process. Successive congresses and presidential administrations realized the danger TikTok poses to American national security and went about carefully crafting a response to that adversary threat—the Foreign Adversaries Act.”
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