TikTok ban: all the news on the app’s shutdown and return in the US
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The TikTok US sale is finally happening
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
TikTok has finalized a deal to sell enough of its US business satisfy the divest-or-ban law, as initially reported by Axios, The Hollywood Reporter, and CNBC. According to a memo sent from CEO Shou Zi Chew to employees (included in full below) on Thursday, they are targeting a closing date of January 22nd, 2026. Once the deal is done, he writes that ownership stakes in TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will break down as follows:
After TikTok briefly went dark in the US in January, President Donald Trump granted TikTok a series of extensions to come up with a deal to sell a stake in its US-based operations. The US and China finally agreed on a “framework” for a deal in September, leading to yet another extension that expired on December 16th.
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Even the lawmakers behind the TikTok ban have no idea what’s going on
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images
Less than two years ago, TikTok was a crisis situation on Capitol Hill. The chair of the House Select Committee on China called it “digital fentanyl” that brainwashes young Americans into supporting Hamas. A former national security adviser said letting TikTok remain in the US under its Chinese owner “would be akin to allowing Soviet control of several major American newspapers and TV channels during the Cold War.” Lawmakers left classified national security briefings about TikTok sharing grave concerns. All of it culminated in the surprise frenzy of a bipartisan bill forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban, which swiftly became law.
But nearly a year after the app should have been kicked out of the US, TikTok remains widely available, thanks to intervention from the administration of President Donald Trump. A promised acquisition by US investors, brokered through Trump, has been stalled for months. And the lawmakers who passed the ban are largely staying quiet.
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TikTok is just another tool in Larry Ellison’s quest to run the world
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For most of his career Larry Ellison has been content to quietly let Oracle be the company, behind the company, behind the technology that makes headlines. Its biggest products being cloud computing and database products that it sells to enterprise customers like DHL, Northwell Health, and Fanatics. But, now in his 80s, Ellison has begun a second act shifting from Silicon Valley pioneer, to media mogul.
Compared to many of the other people at the top of the Forbes Billionaires list, Larry Ellison tends to keep a low profile. That’s not to say he hasn’t seen his fair share of headlines, especially in recent years. But he, and his company Oracle, aren’t being routinely dragged in front of congress for high profile shouting matches, or being accused of ruining an entire generation of children in op-ed pages.
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The TikTok deal raises more questions than answers
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Following months of delays, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that’s supposed to “save” TikTok. Trump claims the deal will make the app “American-operated,” fulfilling the divest-or-ban law that threatened the China-owned app’s presence in the US. But the Trump administration didn’t reveal any information about who will own TikTok’s US operations, or how much they’ll own. And questions remain about whether the new agreement — and the steps taken to get there — is even legal.
“The TikTok saga has been the single clearest articulation, the single most vivid example of the lawlessness of this administration, of its imperial conception of itself as above the rule of law,” Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, tells The Verge. During an interview, Rozenshtein calls into question Trump’s repeated deadline extensions that pushed back the enforcement of the TikTok ban law.
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Trump signs ‘Saving TikTok’ order to start resolving its big ban problem
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order recognizing the framework of a deal between ByteDance and the US that would satisfy the TikTok divest-or-ban law. The deal values TikTok’s US operations at $14 billion and puts it under the control of companies based in the US.
“I spoke with President Xi [Jinping], we had a good talk,” Trump said during a briefing. “I told him what we were doing, and he said, ‘Go ahead with it.’”
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Some details of the TikTok deal have been worked out.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that six of the seven board seats will be held by Americans, ByteDance retain less than a 20-percent stake, and that Americans’ data will be stored in the US with no access give to China.
“So all of those details have already been agreed upon, now we just need this deal to be signed and that will be happening, I anticipate, in the coming days.”
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Trump claims the US is about to get a tremendous fee for taking TikTok out of China
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A 10 percent stake in Intel, 15 percent of Nvidia’s China sales, a “golden share” of Nippon Steel — what price will Trump extract next in exchange for favorable treatment? Well, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump Administration is “expected to collect a multibillion-dollar fee” in exchange for negotiating a US takeover of TikTok’s US business.
That fee will reportedly come from TikTok’s US investors, including private equity firm Silver Lake and Oracle, with the new group getting half of TikTok, while TikTok China’s parent company ByteDance would still have under 20 percent.
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So… is there a TikTok deal or not?
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China and the US have “made progress” on granting permission for ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American consortium, fulfilling a nine-months-overdue legal requirement. After saying a tentative deal had been reached Monday and that approval would come Friday, President Donald Trump’s administration has issued an update that leaves the current status ambiguous and the details bare-bones.
“I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump posted on Truth Social, noting he and Xi Jinping would meet at the APEC Summit in Korea in October. “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!”
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Trump extends the TikTok ban enforcement deadline again.
As he has ever since taking office, Donald Trump again ordered the DOJ to ignore enforcing the TikTok ban law, this time until December 16th.
The president claims a deal is close, which the WSJ reports will hand control to a US consortium of investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreesen Horowitz.
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The China-US deal for TikTok could take another month to work out
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TikTok might not finalize its deal to sell its US operations for at least another month. Sources tell CNBC’s David Faber that the US and China might close on an agreement within the next 30 to 45 days, while Oracle will remain the app’s cloud partner, allowing it to continue routing US user data on American servers.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that the US and China have reached a “framework deal” for TikTok. He added that President Donald Trump would confirm the deal on Friday — two days after TikTok’s latest deadline to divest expires. Trump has already given TikTok three extensions to negotiate a deal, and it’s unclear whether he’ll grant TikTok another while the company finalizes an agreement.
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The US and China might finally have a TikTok deal
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The US and China have reached a “framework” deal to divest TikTok from its Chinese parent company, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters during trade talks in Madrid on Monday. As noted by Reuters, Bessent confirmed that “the framework is for a switch to a US-controlled ownership.” He said Trump will confirm the deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday — two days after the latest deadline to sell or ban the app.
The preliminary deal comes after months of rocky negotiations between TikTok and the Trump administration. The app faced a ban in January, but President Donald Trump granted TikTok an extension to work out a deal to sell its operations in the US, as required by the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Trump granted TikTok two more extensions after that, giving it until September 17th to reach an agreement. It’s unknown whether he will formally extend the deadline or consider this announcement sufficient to count as a divestiture; it’s also unclear whether the deal will satisfy the requirements laid out in the law.
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The White House just joined TikTok
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
While it was President Joe Biden who signed the law that would force ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok or face a ban, it’s his successor, Donald Trump, who has yet to fulfill his promise of arranging a deal to keep TikTok running, legally, in the United States. The current deadline for a deal is September 17th. Still, it hasn’t stopped Trump’s administration from creating @WhiteHouse on TikTok, which published its first post on Tuesday night: a video celebrating Trump’s accomplishments.
The ban has only seen TikTok shut down in the US for one day, and its impact has been delayed three times. The first time was in January, when Trump took office and signed an executive order delaying enforcement of the ban for 75 days; then there was another delay in April, after a potential deal fell through due to Trump’s harsh tariffs against China, and then in June, when he stated that he believed Chinese President Xi Jinping was open to a deal if a buyer emerged.
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Palestine was the problem with TikTok
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
In the last month, the war in Gaza has become an inescapable facet of the public consciousness as a new surge of images of Palestinian children — their faces impossibly sunken, their limbs reduced to skin and bone — flooded the internet. As the pictures became ubiquitous, the outcry became louder than ever.
These conditions of extreme deprivation are not new: in November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for using starvation as a method of war. Nevertheless, the situation now is piercing the mainstream in a way that official charges of war crimes could not. Maybe it was the video of guards at a food aid distribution site using stun grenades, pepper spray, and live ammunition on crowds of hungry Palestinians. Or perhaps it was the news, two weeks later, that 20 Palestinians had been killed — mostly by trampling — when a crowd at a distribution site panicked as stun grenades were used on them. Or possibly it was the open letter from the European news agency AFP, warning that its final remaining journalists in Gaza were at imminent risk of death by starvation. “Since AFP was founded in 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, some have been injured, others taken prisoner. But none of us can ever remember seeing colleagues die of hunger,” the agency wrote.
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Senator proposes calling off the TikTok ban — legally.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly ignored the bipartisan law banning TikTok from operating in the US unless it’s separated from Chinese parent company ByteDance. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is calling for a new way to avoid a ban without breaking the law. In a draft bill, Markey proposes letting TikTok operate in the US as long as it provides transparency into its content moderation and keeps US user data out of countries like China.
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TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
Even with the TikTok divest-or-ban law officially in effect since January, the app has only shut down service in the US for one day. Now, The Information reports that an agreement for a sale satisfying the law’s requirements is close and would come with a new, separate version of the app.
Any deal, however, would need approval from the Chinese government, which is also still wrangling with the Trump administration over tariffs.
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Here are the letters that convinced Google and Apple to keep TikTok online
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A Freedom of Information Act request has produced letters that the US Department of Justice sent to Google, Apple, Amazon, and several other companies in order to assuage their concerns about breaking a law that banned US web services from working with TikTok.
The documents — obtained by Zhaocheng Anthony Tan, a Google shareholder who sued for their release earlier this year — show Attorney General Pam Bondi and her predecessor Acting Attorney General James McHenry III promising to release companies from responsibility for violating the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required US companies to ban TikTok from app stores and other platforms or face hundreds of billions of dollars in fines. The law was intended to force a sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, due to national security concerns.
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The TikTok ban is banned, again.
The incredibly weird saga of the ordered, then reversed, then passed, then upheld, then ignored, then ignored even harder attempt to ban one of America’s most popular social networks continues — as it will continue until US-China tensions cool down, everyone forgets it ever happened, or the heat death of the universe.
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Trump gives TikTok another ban extension
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For the third time, President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for TikTok to spin out from its Chinese parent company or face a US ban. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a statement Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday extending the deadline another 90 days, landing the new deadline in mid-September.
The Trump administration will spend the next 90 days “working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure,” Leavitt said.
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Trump says he’d delay the TikTok ban again.
During an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, President Donald Trump said he’d “be willing” to extend TikTok’s June 19th deadline if its China-based parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t reach a deal to divest the app’s US business in time. China backed out of a potential deal last month after Trump imposed up to 145 percent tariffs on goods imported from the country.
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Trump apparently wants to “just delay” a TikTok deal.
That’s according to Semafor’s White House correspondent Shelby Talcott. The TikTok turmoil is just going to go on forever, huh?
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The US told Apple to keep TikTok in the App Store.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent Apple a letter “telling the company it should follow President Donald Trump’s executive order” extending ByteDance’s deadline to sell TikTok by 75 more days, reports Bloomberg. The outlet had reported a similar letter sent to both Google and Apple prior to their decision to restore the app to their online marketplaces in February, too.
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Trump’s tariffs killed his TikTok deal
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
Earlier this week, when it seemed as though TikTok’s fate in the US would actually be decided by April 5th, everyone — from Amazon to the founder of OnlyFans — was coming out of the woodwork to buy it.
As it turns out, none of them had a chance. And now, thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariff war, no one may get to buy TikTok.
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Trump’s TikTok delay is ‘against the law’ top Senate Intelligence Democrat says
Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s additional 75 day delay to TikTok’s sale-or-ban deadline leaves service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle on shaky ground, and, according to one influential Democrat, is straight-up “against the law.”
After Trump announced the extension on Friday, 12 Republican members of the House Select Committee on China, including Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI), released a joint statement in response. The statement did not address legal concerns with the second extension, but it said that “any resolution must ensure that U.S. law is followed, and that the Chinese Communist Party does not have access to American user data or the ability to manipulate the content consumed by Americans.” The letter says signatories “look forward to more details” on a proposed deal.
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Trump delays TikTok ban again
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Donald Trump’s initial 75-day delay against enforcement of the TikTok ban law would’ve expired this weekend, but on Friday, he announced on Truth Social that “I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”
This week, Trump announced new taxes on products coming into the US, including a 34 percent tariff rate against China. He has said that he would consider lowering that rate in exchange for China agreeing to a TikTok deal, but with the deadline closing in, it’s Trump who decided to extend the delay instead of having TikTok’s app shut down again.
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‘TikTok America,’ Amazon, and other rumors about who might buy TikTok
After President Donald Trump pushed back a deadline for banning TikTok in January, the 75-day delay will run out on April 5th, but there’s still no word on a deal that could satisfy the law by shifting control of TikTok away from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
The Information reports that later today, Trump plans to announce a plan for “TikTok America,” a new company with 50 percent ownership by unnamed new US investors, a one-third stake for existing ByteDance investors, and a 19.9 percent share for ByteDance. It would apparently license TikTok’s algorithm from ByteDance.
