US asks court to reject TikTok’s bid to stave off law that could ban app

The Justice Department late on Wednesday asked a US appeals court to reject an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by Jan. 19 or face a ban.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia pending a review by the US Supreme Court. They warned that without court action the law will “shut down TikTok” one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms ”for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”