On Friday, TikTok will get the chance to argue its case before the Supreme Court, which is deciding whether the government can ban the platform if it doesn’t sever ties with China. With the app’s fate hanging in the balance,

President-elect Trump's highly unusual intervention in the Supreme Court's TikTok case reads almost like a guy asking for a favor from an institution that still runs on formality. The big picture: Trump's last-minute effort to give TikTok a stay of execution is one more twist in a case that already scrambles every ideological dividing line.

The court, which hears arguments on Friday in a challenge to a law banning the app, has issued varying rulings when those two interests clashed.