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Sources: TikTok Prepares to Shut Down App in US on Sunday

FILE PHOTO: US, Chinese flags, TikTok logo and gavel are seen in this illustration taken January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US, Chinese flags, TikTok logo and gavel are seen in this illustration taken January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Sources: TikTok Prepares to Shut Down App in US on Sunday

FILE PHOTO: US, Chinese flags, TikTok logo and gavel are seen in this illustration taken January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US, Chinese flags, TikTok logo and gavel are seen in this illustration taken January 8, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

TikTok plans to shut US operations of its social media app used by 170 million Americans on Sunday, when a federal ban is set to take effect, barring a last-minute reprieve, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported President-elect Donald Trump, whose term begins a day after a ban would start, is considering issuing an executive order to suspend enforcement of a shutdown for 60 to 90 days. The report did not say how Trump could legally do so.
The law signed in April mandates a ban on new TikTok downloads on Apple or Google app stores if Chinese parent ByteDance fails to divest the site.
Users who have downloaded TikTok would theoretically still be able to use the app, except that the law also bars US companies starting Sunday from providing services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of it, Reuters reported.
The Trump transition team did not have an immediate comment. Trump has said he should have time after taking office to pursue a "political resolution" of the issue.
"TikTok itself is a fantastic platform," Trump's incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News on Wednesday. "We're going to find a way to preserve it but protect people's data."
The New York Times separately reported that Tiktok CEO has been extended an invitation to attend the President-elect's inauguration and sit in "a position of honor.”
A White House official told Reuters Wednesday President Joe Biden has no plans to intervene to block a ban in his final days in office if the Supreme Court fails to act and added Biden is legally unable to intervene absent a credible plan from ByteDance to divest TikTok.
However, a NBC report later said the Biden administration has been weighing options to keep the social media platform available to users beyond Sunday, in a bid to defer the decision to Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday.
"Americans shouldn't expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday," an administration official told the broadcast network.
US Senator Ed Markey on Wednesday sought unanimous consent to extend the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok by 270 days but Republican Senator Tom Cotton blocked the proposal.
If it is banned, TikTok plans that users attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban, the people said, requesting anonymity as the matter is not public.
"We go dark. Essentially, the platform shuts down," TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court last week.
The company also plans to give users an option to download all their data so that they can take a record of their personal information, the sources said.
Users took to social media platform X to express their disappointment with a potential ban on the app, in the run up to Sunday when the ban takes effect. They also expressed their happiness at reports on Trump considering ways to avert the ban.
The US Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to uphold the law and allow TikTok to be banned on Sunday, overturn the law, or pause the law to give the court more time to make a decision.
Shutting down TikTok in the US could make it unavailable for users in many other countries, the company said in a court filing last month, because hundreds of service providers in the US help make the platform available to TikTok users around the world - and could no longer do so starting Sunday.
TikTok said in the court filing an order was needed to "avoid interruption of services for tens of millions of TikTok users outside the United States."
TikTok had said that the prohibitions would eventually make the app unusable, noting in the filing that "data centers would almost certainly conclude that they can no longer store" TikTok code, content, or data.
The sources said the shutdown aims to protect TikTok service providers from legal liability and make it easier to resume operations if President-elect Donald Trump opted to roll back any ban.
Shutting down such services does not require longer planning, one of the sources said, noting that most operations have been continuing as usual as of this week. If the ban gets reversed later, TikTok would be able to restore service for US users in a relatively short time, sources said.
TikTok and its Chinese parent, ByteDance, did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
US tech publication The Information first reported the news late on Tuesday.
Privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic, while its founders and employees own 20% each. It has more than 7,000 employees in the United States.
President Joe Biden last April signed a law requiring ByteDance to sell its US assets by Jan. 19, or face a nationwide ban. Last week, the Supreme Court seemed inclined to uphold the law, despite calls from Trump and lawmakers to extend the deadline.
TikTok and ByteDance have sought, at the very least, a delay in the implementation of the law, which they say violates the US Constitution's First Amendment protection against government abridgment of free speech.
TikTok said in the court filing last month it estimated one-third of its 170 million American users would stop accessing the platform if the ban lasted a month.

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Kamala Harris Made History as Vice President. The Rest Didn't Go as Planned

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at a National Action Network event in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at a National Action Network event in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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Kamala Harris Made History as Vice President. The Rest Didn't Go as Planned

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at a National Action Network event in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at a National Action Network event in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

With Donald Trump’s return to the White House only days away, Kamala Harris ' staff packed into her ceremonial office to watch her sign the desk, a tradition performed by her predecessors for decades. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, stood behind her to take a photo as she wielded her Sharpie marker.
"It is not my nature to go quietly into the night," Harris said Thursday. “So don't worry about that.”
But what is next for her?
“I'll keep you posted," she said.
Harris hasn't made any plans for after leaving office Monday, apart from flying home to California. It will be the first time since 2004, when she became San Francisco's district attorney, that she hasn't held elected office.
There's talk that she'll write a book and speculation that she could run for governor or maybe president again. At 60 years old, Harris is still young in a political world where the last two presidents have set records as the oldest ever elected.
Donna Brazile, a longtime leader in the Democratic Party, recalled telling Harris that she needs to take a break and “learn what it's like to oversleep” for a while. They both laughed, and Brazile said, "Yeah, you’ll never go back to being ordinary.”
Brazile was campaign manager for Al Gore, the last sitting vice president to run for the top job.
“I’ve had more people call me about what’s next for Kamala Harris than called me about what’s next for Al Gore," she said.
Harris' term was both ordinary and extraordinary. Like many of her predecessors, she spent her time tending to a portfolio of issues — migration, abortion rights and maternal health among them — and representing the country overseas. Sometimes she struggled to distinguish herself, a common challenge in a job that comes with little constitutional responsibility.
But Harris also made history as the first woman, Black person or person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. And last year, Harris was thrust into an unprecedented situation when President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed her as his successor.
There were only 107 days left in the campaign, leaving Harris in a sprint for the presidency. She instantly reset the terms of the race against Trump, who is nearly two decades older than her, but was unable to defeat him.
Many Democrats blamed Biden for running in the first place and putting Harris in an impossible position. Harris faced her own criticism, too.
Some said she should have sent a more populist message instead of focusing on Trump's antidemocratic threats by campaigning with Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman. She also failed to separate herself from Biden, who remains deeply unpopular with voters.
Minyon Moore, who chaired last year's Democratic National Convention, downplayed the criticisms by saying “ifa, woulda, coulda, shoulda.”
With Harris facing such an unusual campaign, Moore said, “there was no road map for what she should have done.”
Harris hasn't answered questions about her loss, nor has she shared her own perspective on the election. Her public remarks have been limited to rallying cries for students and others who are disappointed by Trump's victory, especially after Democrats described him as an existential threat to the country.
“No one can walk away," Harris said in one speech. "We must stay in the fight. Every one of us.”
Harris hoped to close out her term with an around-the-world trip to Singapore, Bahrain and Germany, a final opportunity to showcase her role on foreign policy. But she decided to stay in Washington as wildfires spread around Los Angeles. Her own house, in the Brentwood neighborhood, has been in an evacuation zone.
Harris didn't travel to the area because she was concerned about diverting local resources from responding to the fire, according to an official in her office who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss her planning.
Despite canceling her overseas trip, Harris has signaled her interest in remaining involved on the global stage. She's spent time in her final week in office making calls to foreign leaders including King Abdullah II of Jordan, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.
On Wednesday, she was in the Oval Office to watch Biden give his farewell address. He described her as “a great partner,” and they embraced after the speech.
Biden chose Harris as his running mate after her first presidential campaign stalled four years ago. After taking office, her schedule was limited by the coronavirus pandemic and her obligations on Capitol Hill. With the US Senate evenly divided, she was often called on to cast tiebreaking votes, eventually setting a record as she helped advance judicial nominees and landmark legislation.
“She had to find her role," said Joel Goldstein, a historian who has studied the vice presidency. "It took some time to figure it out.”
Moore remembered an Oval Office meeting with Harris and other senior advisers as Biden deliberated whom to nominate for the US Supreme Court. Although it was unlikely that a liberal justice would have many opportunities to write majority opinions on a court dominated by conservatives, Moore said Harris focused on which candidate would harness the platform to issue dissenting opinions.
Harris wanted “somebody who could think through the nuances of writing those dissensions,” Moore said. Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, fulfilling his promise to put a Black woman on the bench, and she's often drawn attention for her sharp dissenting opinions.
One of Harris' original tasks, reducing migration from Central America, became a political burden. Republicans described her as the “border czar” and blamed her for illegal crossings. However, fewer migrants came from the countries where Harris focused her efforts.
She met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Munich shortly before the Russian invasion began three years ago, and she spent a week in Africa to lay the groundwork for renewed US engagement.
Harris also traveled three times to Southeast Asia as the administration tried to reorient foreign policy to confront China's influence.
“She had the perception that we could use even more of an emphasis on this occasionally overlooked part of the world," said Phil Gordon, Harris' national security adviser.
Abortion rights became a defining issue for Harris after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Biden was more hesitant on the topic, and Harris started headlining the White House's efforts.
Lorraine Voles, Harris' chief of staff, said the court decision was “a turning point" for the vice president.
“That opened up a lane for her in a way that maybe wasn’t there previously," she said. "People were not focused on the issue of maternal health and reproductive health until people began to see it threatened.”
Nadia Brown, a Georgetown University government professor who focuses on Black women and politics, said Harris will “certainly go down in the history books” for breaking down racial and gender barriers in politics.
She said Harris' time as vice president helped expand the views of "everyday Americans who might have misconceptions about what a leader could be or should be.”
The only question left is what Harris decides to do now.
“It’s not over," Brown said. "But I’m not sure what that next chapter is.”