Senate Republicans have an immediate message after the Supreme Court upheld the law that would either ban TikTok in the U.S. or force its sale as soon as Sunday: It’s time to follow the rules.
Soon after the unanimous decision came down on Friday, Sen. Rick Scott said the federal government now needs to “comply with the law.”
“When I was governor of Florida, people would come to me and say, ‘Oh, we don’t like that law.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s the law in Florida, we are gonna enforce the law,’” he said. “I expect the laws to be enforced.”
Both President-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have said they’re interested in keeping TikTok available in the U.S. despite security concerns. After Friday’s decision, Trump told CNN the app’s fate “ultimately goes up to me, so you’re going to see what I’m going to do.”
Trump also said on Truth Social that he had discussed TikTok on a recent call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Sen. Susan Collins hopes that despite Silicon Valley’s efforts to court Trump, he still follows through on the law.
“The law is the law,” she said. “Congress has the law. It has now withstood judicial scrutiny by the highest court of the land. It’s my understanding that the decision was unanimous and the laws should be followed, of course.”
“What can I say, we are a nation of laws. Whether you like the law or not, we are a nation of laws,” Sen. Bill Cassidy told NOTUS.
“Should a president who is the executor of laws passed by Congress break the law? Well of course the answer is no,” Cassidy said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling, but said that due to the deadline TikTok faces, enforcement now falls under Trump.
“Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data,” Garland said, citing concerns about TikTok’s ownership in China. “The next phase of this effort — implementing and ensuring compliance with the law after it goes into effect on Jan. 19 — will be a process that plays out over time.”
Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, did not commit to proactively enforcing the TikTok law if she is confirmed.
“I can’t discuss pending litigation, but I will talk to all of the career prosecutors that are handling the case,” Bondi said during her confirmation hearings this week.
Biden signed the law in early 2024 that would ban TikTok in the U.S. It allowed the app to continue in the country if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sold it to an approved buyer. But for TikTok not to have found a suitable buyer, Sen. Josh Hawley said on Friday, only shows how much control the Chinese government has over the platform.
“The reason I gather that hasn’t happened so far is because Beijing won’t sign off on it. If you need any further evidence of Beijing’s control, just look at the fact that one entity preventing a sale is the Beijing government,” Hawley said. “I hope it’ll be sold and then it can continue operation.”
The Supreme Court ruling was “unsurprising,” Sen. Ted Cruz said, waving off censorship concerns raised by other lawmakers. He said that TikTok’s popularity with the American public made it a unique threat to national security.
“TikTok has very deep penetration into the U.S. market, a very heavy concentration among American kids is directly controlled by the Chinese government and is used aggressively, both for espionage and for propaganda,” Cruz said. “I don’t think there’s another app that’s remotely comparable.”
“The answer is that the Chinese communist government needs to give up ownership and control of TikTok. I’d like to see any American company to acquire TikTok,” Cruz added.
Sen. Marco Rubio, who is likely to be confirmed as secretary of state, welcomed the ruling and said he expects Trump to find a deal once he’s in office, as there are already some prospective buyers that would meet the law’s standards.
“My views on TikTok’s threat to America have been stated during my time here in the senate,” Rubio said. “The president has a 90-day period that he can extend or suspend any enforcement pending execution on a viable deal.”
“And there are apparently a couple of viable deals that would transfer ownership or control,” he added. “And so as long as that opportunity exists, the president has the power under the law that Congress passed to suspend its enforcement.”
Some opponents of the law, like Sens. Rand Paul, Ed Markey and Cory Booker, still hope that once Trump is in office, he can find ways to keep the platform accessible either through executive power or congressional action.
“I’m hoping, as Trump has been saying, that he’s not necessarily gonna enforce it and find a way for Congress to find a solution to this that works. We should not be banning TikTok,” Booker said.
Booker told NOTUS he hopes there’s enough bipartisan support for keeping TikTok available: “Obviously with the president of the United States and a lot of senators on the Democratic side.”
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Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Torrence Banks contributed reporting.