A TikTok ban could hit the U.S. in days. What to know — and how to prepare

 While Trump previously disparaged the app as a national security threat and even tried to ban it during his first term, he has since become a staunch defender of the platform and even asked the Supreme Court last month to pause the start date of the law in question.

As Ruane sees it, Trump has three choices for how to proceed once in office, and all of them are complicated.

For one, he could try to convince Congress to repeal the original 2024 law that requires ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations — a law that both the House and Senate passed with overwhelming support.

"That's pretty straightforward, but it's also politically incredibly difficult to do because it would require the changing of votes for many, many, many members of Congress," Ruane says.

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Trump's second option is to direct the Justice Department and attorney general to not enforce the law, essentially giving Google, Apple and others the option to continue providing services to TikTok.

But Ruane says that's also easier said than done, as lawyers within those companies would still see — and likely seek to avoid — "gigantic legal risk" in flouting the law, which includes hefty penalties.

"So if anybody uses your service to access TikTok and you are in violation of the law, it's $5,000 per person that does that," Ruane says. "If you were to take the president up on his offer and continue to provide services to TikTok, even though you're technically in violation of the law, that's $5,000 times hundreds of millions of people."

The third potential option has been posited by Alan Rozenshtein, an associate law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and research director at Lawfare. As he told NPR's Fresh Air in December, Trump could "just declare that the law no longer applies."

Trump could choose to use his broad authority under the statute to determine that ByteDance has engaged in a "qualified divestiture" of TikTok after all, as long as it has taken certain steps to that effect.

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"There's a scenario in which ByteDance could move some papers around, shift some assets from one corporation to another corporation, do some fancy legal work, and that would give Trump enough, basically, cover to declare that TikTok is no longer controlled by ByteDance," Rozenshtein said.

That's not an airtight approach either, Ruane says, since it could be challenged in court either by competitors or the entities involved.

One option under discussion among TikTok stakeholders is bringing back a national security agreement known as Project Texas, which involves tapping Austin-based Oracle to host all U.S. user data. Oracle would also oversee all data flows between TikTok's U.S. operation and Beijing. The plan would also allow the federal government to invoke a "kill switch" that would shut down TikTok if terms of the agreement were violated.

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The deal initially had support in the Biden administration, but talks stalled. People close to talks about TikTok's future say it is possible that Trump could bring Project Texas back, with Trump potentially determining that the agreement makes TikTok in compliance with the divest-or-ban law.

At the end of the day, Ruane says, it's unclear what, if anything, Trump may do to try to bring back TikTok — an app she says is "not immediately replaceable," even as new and existing platforms are sure to vie for its many displaced users.

NPR's Bobby Allyn contributed reporting.