By Matthew Vadum Contributing Writer  The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue decisions Wednesday in pending cases, possibly including the TikTok appeal.  The court placed a terse announcement on its website indicating that “it may announce opinions” on Wednesday, without providing specifics.  During oral arguments on Friday, Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical of TikTok’s request to halt a federal law requiring indirect owner ByteDance to divest itself of the company by Jan. 19 or cease U.S. operations. The hearing covered two consolidated cases, TikTok Inc. v. Garland and its companion case, Firebaugh v. Garland.  President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20 and is himself a social media entrepreneur, also submitted a brief urging the justices to pause the law to allow him to develop a political solution when he returns to the White House.  According to the emergency application filed by TikTok, about 170 million monthly U.S. users uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos in 2023 that received upward of 13 trillion views, half of which occurred outside the United States. In the same year, users viewed content originating from abroad more than 2.7 trillion times.  President Joe Biden, who leaves office in a week, signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act on April 24, 2024, after bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate passed it.  TikTok is operated in the United States by TikTok Inc., a U.S. company that Cayman Islands-based ByteDance Ltd. owns indirectly.  TikTok acknowledges that ByteDance owns subsidiaries in China and other nations but denies that China influences its operations.  Echoing criticism of TikTok expressed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, the law cites national security-related concerns that the Chinese regime may abuse the personal data of American TikTok users, seeking strategic advantage over the United States and disseminating propaganda.  At the hearing on Friday, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said TikTok poses a threat to U.S. national security because China “has a voracious appetite to get its hands on as much information about Americans as possible, and that creates a potent weapon here because the PRC could command that ByteDance comply with any request it gives to obtain that data that’s in the hands of the U.S. subsidiary.”  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed to support upholding the law.  “TikTok can continue to operate as long as it is not associated with ByteDance,” she said.  Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?”  Justice Elena Kagan said that TikTok Inc. has First Amendment rights because it is a U.S. company, but questioned whether the law affected those rights.  TikTok attorney Noel Francisco said the law “singles out a single speaker for uniquely harsh treatment” and that this violates the First Amendment.  The post Supreme Court may decide TikTok’s fate on Wednesday  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.