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President-elect Donald Trump said he would “most likely” extend the deadline for ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to divest the video app which faces a nationwide ban that is set to come into effect on Sunday.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump said he was considering issuing a 90-day extension to the deadline. His comments come one day after TikTok warned that its 170mn users would face an imminent blackout after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the divest-or-ban law that Congress passed last year to address China-related national security concerns.

“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation . . . If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday.”

On Friday, Trump said he had spoken to President Xi Jinping and discussed TikTok with the Chinese leader. Chinese state media said the two leaders had spoken but did not specify if TikTok was part of the conversation.

The Biden administration on Friday said it would leave decisions about enforcement of the law, which comes into effect at midnight on Saturday eastern time, to the incoming Trump administration.

That means the companies that provide the video platform — including Apple, Google and Oracle — have to decide whether to risk violating the law between the midnight deadline and Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

Apple and Oracle declined to comment, while Google did not immediately respond.

TikTok said statements from the Biden administration “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans”.

It also warned that the video app would “go dark” on January 19 unless the Biden administration “immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement”.

In an overwhelming bipartisan vote last March, Congress passed a law that required ByteDance to divest TikTok to avoid a nationwide ban on the app.

Lawmakers and US security officials believe that Chinese ownership of the app poses a national security risk because it could be used for espionage and disinformation by the Chinese Communist party. TikTok has denied that the Chinese government has any influence over the app.

In his first term, Trump issued an executive order to block TikTok from operating in the US, but it was stymied by the courts at the last minute. In early 2024, he came out in opposition to the congressional divest-or-ban measure on the grounds that it would help Facebook, which banned him from its social media platform for two years.

Trump has appointed several China hawks who oppose Chinese ownership of TikTok to his administration, including Mike Waltz, a former green beret and Florida congressman, who will serve as national security adviser.

Earlier this week, Waltz said the incoming administration would put “measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark”, saying the legislation allowed for an extension as long as a “viable deal” was on the table.

Following the TikTok statement on Friday, Rush Doshi, a former senior Biden administration China official, wrote on X that the company only had itself to blame.

“TikTok had 268 days to sell itself so it wasn’t operated by China. That would have solved everything. But they didn’t even try. China wouldn’t let them,” Doshi said.

“Now, with time short, they want Biden to ignore a bipartisan law SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the US) upheld 9-0. If they shut down, it’s on them.”

Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy and Michael Acton

President Joe Biden announced on Friday that, as far as he’s concerned, the Equal Rights Amendment is the “law of the land,” a somewhat symbolic move that is poised to allow more women across the country to sue their states for gender discrimination—including challenges to abortion bans.

The ERA, originally drafted over a century ago and passed by Congress in 1972, has faced a long and hard-fought journey toward ratification and implementation as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. If formally recognized, the ERA would constitutionalize gender equality.

“The Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land—now!” Biden said in a speech to the United States Conference of Mayors. “It’s the 28th amendment to the Constitution—now.”

While Biden’s declaration is expected to spur legal and political repercussions nationwide, the president’s announcement isn’t so simple.

Immediately following Biden’s announcement on Friday, the National Archives, which publishes constitutional amendments, stated it had no plans to formally add the ERA to the Constitution. When Congress passed the ERA over 50 years ago, the initial preamble required that 38 states move to ratify within seven years (that deadline was extended to 1982). By that year, the amendment was three states short of implementation.

Thanks to anti-abortion, anti-feminist activists like Phyllis Schlafly, the ERA was squashed. It wasn’t until 2020 that Virginia became the crucial 38th state to ratify the ERA. Yet, because the deadline had long passed and thanks to Donald Trump’s Justice Department saying at the time that ratification took too long, the ERA has remained outside of the founding text—even as about eight in ten US adults, including majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike, say they at least somewhat favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, according to Pew.

United States Archivist Colleen Shogan, a Biden appointee and the first woman archivist, has repeatedly stated that the ERA’s eligibility has expired and could not be added to the Constitution now unless Congress acts. Last month, Shogan and the deputy archivist released a statement saying they could not certify the ERA “due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.” On Friday, the Archives reiterated its position. “The underlying legal and procedural issues have not changed,” they said in a statement. Biden is also not going to order the archivist to certify and publish the ERA, the White House told reporters.

Biden’s Friday announcement about the ERA comes as the president has filled his last moments in office with sweeping executive measures, including designating national monuments in California, removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, blocking a Japanese company’s takeover of United States Steel, extending protected status to nearly 1 million immigrants, and commuting the sentences of almost everyone on federal death row, as detailed by The Washington Post this week.