The Republican attorneys general of Virginia and Montana recently filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to require TikTok to sever its ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the fate of the social media platform in the U.S. remains uncertain.

The amicus brief, filed Friday, came the same day President-elect Trump filed an amicus brief of his own, asking the Supreme Court to pause the TikTok ban and allow him to make executive decisions about TikTok once he is inaugurated.

In an announcement, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said he, along with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and other state legal officials, had recently petitioned the Supreme Court to uphold the divest-or-ban law against TikTok.

The social media company has been intensely scrutinized over its parent company, ByteDance, which is connected to the CCP. In his brief, Miyares argued whistleblower reports prove ByteDance has shared sensitive information with the CCP, including Americans’ browsing habits and facial recognition data.

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“Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the undeniable risks of having their data accessed and exploited by the Chinese Communist Party,” Miyares said in a statement. “Virginians deserve a government that stands firm in protecting their privacy and security.

“The Supreme Court now has the chance to affirm Congress’s authority to protect Americans from foreign threats while ensuring that the First Amendment doesn’t become a tool to defend foreign adversaries’ exploitative practices.”

GET TO KNOW DONALD TRUMP’S CABINET: WHO HAS THE PRESIDENT-ELECT PICKED SO FAR?

President-elect Trump smiles during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center Dec. 22 in Phoenix.  (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Trump’s brief said it was “supporting neither party” and argued the future president has the right to make decisions about TikTok’s fate. Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesman and the incoming White House communications director, told Fox News Digital Trump’s decision-making would “preserve American national security.”

“[The brief asked] the court to extend the deadline that would cause TikTok’s imminent shutdown and allow President Trump the opportunity to resolve the issue in a way that saves TikTok and preserves American national security once he resumes office as president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025,” Cheung said.

Trump’s brief notes he “has a unique interest in the First Amendment issues raised in this case” and that the case “presents an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other.”

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TikTok Inc. offices in Culver City, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

“As the incoming Chief Executive, President Trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means,” Trump’s brief said.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

When he came to power in 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was hailed as a progressive icon, a charismatic leftist with movie star good looks who promised to reform elections, tackle climate change and legalize marijuana. He quickly became one of the world’s best-known political figures, known for agenda-setting liberal policies — and for taking selfies with enraptured fans.

“He was seen as this Canadian rock star,” said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

Nine years later, Trudeau is deeply unpopular at home and fighting for his job amid growing calls that he step down.

Voters blame Trudeau for Canada’s sluggish economy, housing crisis and near-record levels of immigration. For months now, polls have shown that it is highly unlikely that he could lead his Liberal Party to victory in the next election, which is due by Oct. 20 of next year.

The election of Donald Trump last month has made things worse for Trudeau.

Conservatives and even members of his own Liberal Party insist he isn’t doing enough to counter Trump, who has threatened to levy heavy tariffs on imports from Canada, and who has trolled Trudeau in recent weeks by repeatedly describing him as “governor” of a 51st American state.

This week, one of Trudeau’s staunchest allies, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, abruptly resigned over her disagreement with Trudeau’s approach to Trump.

In a sharply worded letter announcing her departure, Freeland accused Trudeau of embracing “costly political gimmicks” instead of directly confronting the U.S. leader and of putting his own interests ahead of the best interests of Canadians.

Freeland’s resignation, part of a recent exodus of Cabinet members, has thrown Trudeau’s government into disarray and prompted fresh demands from members of his caucus and other allied parties that he step down.

At the same time, Canada’s three opposition parties are demanding that Trudeau call new elections.

“Everything is spiraling out of control,” Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, said Monday. “We simply cannot go on like this.”

The crisis facing Trudeau highlights the geopolitical havoc that Trump has wrought since his election, still weeks before his official return to the White House.

And it speaks to the same anti-incumbent headwinds and economic anxieties that helped doom the Democrats in recent U.S. elections.

“Everything that seemed bright and refreshing about Trudeau in 2015 now looks old and tired,” Bratt said.

Trudeau is the eldest son of the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who led Canada for 15 years beginning in 1968.

The younger Trudeau worked as a teacher before he entered politics. He was just 43 when he toppled the Conservative government of Stephen Harper by mobilizing legions of young voters energized by his promise to bring back social liberalism.

As prime minister, Trudeau legalized marijuana and enacted a national carbon tax that officials say will reduce the country’s emissions by a third by the end of this decade. He also became a prominent liberal counterweight to Trump, who was first elected in 2016.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk before a NATO meeting in England in 2019.

(Frank Augstein / Associated Press)

After Trump banned travel to the U.S. from several Muslim-majority countries in 2017, Trudeau announced that Canada’s doors were open.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” he wrote on the social media platform now known as X. “Diversity is our strength.”

Trudeau was largely praised for steering the country through a successful renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, a process that Freeland helmed.

But COVID-19 posed a challenge for Trudeau, with the country’s economic recovery more sluggish than that of the United States.

Recently, Trudeau has come under fire for allowing near-record numbers of migrants into Canada during and after the pandemic in an effort to spur economic growth.

An influx of temporary workers, international students and refugees helped push the country’s population from 38 million to 41 million in three years. Critics say it has increased existing competition for housing, healthcare and education.

Trudeau’s approval ratings continued to drop. Then Trump won reelection.

The incoming U.S. leader announced that on his first day in office he planned to levy a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico unless the countries curbed the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs into the United States.

Though many analysts believe Trump may be using the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tactic before he returns to the White House, the issue has caused deep anxiety in Canada.

It has also prompted a debate about what is the smartest strategy for Canada to deal with the pugnacious American leader: pushing back or taking a more conciliatory approach.

Trudeau appears to have chosen the second option. Last month he flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to dine with the president-elect. Then, in an apparent attempt to appease the incoming U.S. leader, Trudeau’s government announced a plan to beef up security along the U.S. border.

Freeland, on the other hand, has advocated a much tougher approach to Trump, one more in line with the stern response of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

“A division over how to respond to the U.S. is front and center in the rationale for Freeland leaving,” said Christopher Sands, head of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

Freeland’s resignation on Monday, when she was scheduled to deliver a key address on the country’s budget, “really shook the government,” Sands said. “I think this may hasten the end of the Trudeau government.”

Analysts say there are several possible outcomes for the current political crisis.

Trudeau could be forced by his own party to step down as leader of the Liberals, who would choose a new leader. Freeland is considered a possible pick. The Liberals would eventually have to call a new election, but their hope would be that a new leader at the top would help reduce their likely losses to the Conservatives, whom polls show with a large lead.

Alternatively, Trudeau could call for an election and lead the Liberals to the polls himself. This is what he says he intends to do.

Or the opposition parties in Parliament could introduce a no-confidence vote, which would trigger new elections. But their attempts to do so have so far failed.

Jonathan Malloy, a professor of political science at Carleton University, said it seems Trudeau’s days are numbered. “There’s a lot of pessimism and people are upset at government,” he said.

And Trump calling Canada the 51st state isn’t helping.

“It’s fair to say that Mr. Trump has a knack for finding people’s weak spots,” Malloy said. “And he struck directly at the main one in Canada, which is that the United States just views it as essentially the 51st state.”

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

New York State Sen. Dan Stec, a Republican and Navy veteran, is running for Congress.

Stec has tossed his hat in the ring to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who will vacate her seat in the House of Representatives to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. A special election for New York’s 21st Congressional District will take place once Stefanik officially leaves Congress.

“At the end of the day, it’s about representing the district, and for the last 12 years in Albany, I know what it means to represent the district and if I can do that in Albany I am certain I can do that in Washington,” Stec told WWNY in an interview on Dec. 24. 

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The North Country native, whose state senate district lies within Stefanik’s congressional district, argued he is the best candidate to win the seat for Republicans because he has the highest name recognition there. 

“My argument is that I am the most electable. If we are concerned about holding this seat and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, you want to put your most likely-to-win candidate forward and no one can compare the numbers like I do with how much of the district I already represent,” Stec told the outlet.

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Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, during a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. President-elect Trump tapped Stefanik to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.  (Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg)

He pointed to his record in the New York legislature and the 104,000 votes he won in the previous election for state senate, which is nearly half of the total Stefanik won in her bid for re-election, in support of his argument that he’s best positioned to defeat the Democratic candidate in the special election.

“I am proud of my track record, my resume, and my principles. I don’t have any votes that I am embarrassed that I would have to explain like maybe someone from the other side of the aisle I have worked with would have to explain,” Stec said.

WHO COULD RUN TO REPLACE STEFANIK IN THE HOUSE?

Sticker Mule CEO Anthony Constantino is also running for the GOP nomination to succeed Stefanik.  (Paul Antonelli)

Stefanik won a sixth term to represent the district which encompasses North County, New York, but President-elect Donald Trump chose her in November to fill the U.N. ambassadorship in his new cabinet. 

In the campaign to be the Republican nominee to succeed Stefanik, Stec joins Sticker Mule CEO Anthony Constantino, a political outsider whose claim to fame is a 100 ft. “Vote for Trump” sign he installed in upstate New York. Constantino is self-funding his campaign and has pledged $2.6 million to the effort. 

Other Republicans mentioned as possible candidates include state Assemblymen Robert Smullen and Christopher Tague; and Rensselaer County Executive Steven McLaughlin, according to WWNY. Possible Democratic candidates include Assemblyman Billy Jones, whose state district falls just east of St. Lawrence County, as well as past unsuccessful challengers to Stefanik such as Matt Castelli and Paula Collins.

There will not be a traditional Republican primary for the special election. Instead, both the GOP and Democratic nominees will be chosen by party chairs in the district.