Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban

• The wildly popular app was on course to disappear for U.S. users as soon as Sunday, but President-elect Trump has said he would delay enforcement of that ban. TikTok's long-term future is still unclear.

Driving the news: The bipartisan law President Biden signed in April requires ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, to either sell TikTok or shutter it inside the U.S. on Jan. 19.

• The justices said that because the primary responsibility falls on a foreign company, and because all of the speech that's currently on TikTok could still be there under new ownership, the First Amendment does not apply.

What's next: Trump had asked the court not to let the ban take effect as scheduled, one day before his inauguration.

• Finding a way to keep TikTok alive may not seem like an emergency, but the app's sheer popularity will make it a top concern in the early days of Trump's new term.
• Only a few potential buyers could put together enough money to even make a serious offer for the dominant social-media platform. Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government was considering selling TikTok to Elon Musk, though ByteDance flatly denied that.

• But all sale discussions are in their early stages — in the months since the law took effect, ByteDance and TikTok have been more focused on avoiding the Jan. 19 deadline than finding a way to comply with it.