Biden administration weighed options with impending TikTok ban, but decision will likely fall to Trump

The White House has looked into options to keep TikTok accessible to its 170 million American users if a ban that is set to go into effect Sunday continues as planned.

The White House has looked into options to keep TikTok accessible to its 170 million American users if a ban that is set to go into effect Sunday continues as planned. But White House officials say they don’t believe President Joe Biden has the authority to defer enforcement of a law he signed in April that required the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok to American ownership by January 19. If it is not sold, TikTok would be barred from US app stores. The ban is scheduled to take effect on the last full day of Biden’s administration, barring an unlikely last-minute intervention from the Supreme Court. A White House official said Thursday that because the ban’s timing comes at the end of Biden’s term, it will be up to President-elect Donald Trump’s administration to decide how to implement the ban. “Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership. Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement,” the official said. The law allows Biden to impose an extension of up to 90 days, but it requires the president prove that negotiations surrounding the purchase of TikTok make significant progress, and ByteDance has maintained that they have no intention to sell the app. Still, some lawmakers have urged Biden to grant ByteDance that extension. Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul wrote to Biden in December asking for a delay in the law’s implementation citing “its consequences for free expression.”