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

The Justice Department late on Wednesday asked a U.S. 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 U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia pending a review by the U.S. 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."