Pam Bondi punts on TikTok ban enforcement

U.S. Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi is keeping things vague, for now, on whether she’ll enforce a ban on TikTok if the social media app’s Chinese owner doesn’t sell it.

During a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bondi pointed to an ongoing Supreme Court case over the issue.

Until that’s settled, she said, she’s not going to side one way or the other.

“That is pending litigation with the Department of Justice,” she told Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. “I can’t discuss pending litigation.”

Blumenthal had asked Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General, if she would enforce provisions in a measure President Joe Biden signed in April requiring TikTok to find a new owner by Jan. 19, 2025, or be prohibited nationwide.

President-elect Donald Trump has since urged the Supreme Court to hold off on implementing the ban.

“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute,” D. John Sauer, Trump’s lawyer and pick for U.S. Solicitor General, told the Court in an amicus curiae brief last month. “Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment … while it considers the merits of this case, thus permitting (his) incoming Administration the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”

TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which has attracted increased scrutiny in recent years for the security risks it poses to Americans. While the app may be screened and initially declared safe by an app store, “there is no guarantee that future updates and patches will (not) include malware,” James Andrew Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in March.

Many advocacy groups have opposed the ban, citing First Amendment protections. In an article published Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the government has failed to show the ban is “the only way to prevent serious, imminent harm to national security.”

The group also pushed back assertions that China is “covertly manipulating TikTok’s content in the U.S.” to sow discord. But even if it did so, “courts have long held that the government cannot keep Americans from accessing foreign propaganda.”

The Supreme Court is expected to decide on the matter before the Jan. 19 deadline.