Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said Sunday he is aware that the possible TikTok ban “is controversial,” yet the app “has a national security risk to it.”
“I imagine [there’s going to] be a disruption in the service here, you know, starting on the 19th,” Kelly told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”
“I know this is controversial. I know there are folks out there that earn a living, you know, on TikTok, but it has a national security risk to it,” he added.
A law that passed Congress with expansive bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden last April requires TikTok to face a ban in the U.S. starting on Jan. 19 unless it divests from ByteDance, its Chinese-based parent company.
TikTok is currently fighting at the Supreme Court to save the platform in the U.S., but it has received a cold response from the nation’s highest court. The social platform has said that divestment is practically impossible.
A former solicitor general representing TikTok, Noel Francisco, previously told the Supreme Court that the app would in effect “go dark” and that the ban clashes “with the First Amendment.”