Lawmakers tell Apple, Google to prepare for TikTok ban

The top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) told Apple and Google on Friday to prepare to remove TikTok from their app stores, as a potential ban looms next month. 

Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) said in a pair of letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai that their companies “must take the necessary steps to ensure it can fully comply” with the law by Jan. 19. 

Under a law passed by Congress earlier this year, TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance is required to divest from the popular social media app or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores. 

The law gave ByteDance about nine months — until Jan. 19 — to sell TikTok. President Biden, who signed the law in April, could also give the company an additional 90 days to complete a sale. 

In a separate letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew on Friday, the two lawmakers urged the company to “immediately execute a qualified divestiture.” 

“Congress has provided ample time for TikTok to take the necessary steps to come into compliance,” Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi wrote. “Indeed, TikTok has had 233 days and counting to pursue a solution that protects U.S. national security.” 

TikTok’s future in the U.S. is increasingly uncertain, after a federal appeals court upheld the law last week. A three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that it did not violate the First Amendment, as TikTok had argued. 

TikTok now plans to appeal to the Supreme Court and has asked the D.C. Circuit to put the law on hold while it appeals the case. 

"The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” it wrote in a post on X.  

“Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” it added.