President Trump’s plan to save TikTok is putting him at a crossroads with some Republicans as questions mount over the legality of delaying a ban on the popular video-sharing app.

Trump said over the weekend he plans to issue an executive order to extend the deadline for the ban on TikTok, which went into effect Sunday after its Chinese parent company ByteDance failed to divest from the app.

Former President Biden said he wouldn't enforce the ban during the final days in the White House, but the app still shut down for more than 12 hours beginning Saturday night — then came back online Sunday following Trump’s announcement that he planned to delay the ban.

Some China hawks in Congress are already breaking from the newly inaugurated president on the issue, standing firm that the app should not be available in the U.S. without an official divestiture deal on the table.

“We commend Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft for following the law and halting operations with ByteDance and TikTok, and we encourage other companies to do the same,” Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) wrote in a statement Sunday. “The law, after all, risks ruinous bankruptcy for any company who violates it.”

If enforced, the law would impose hefty fines on app store providers, like Apple and Google, as well as cloud computing firm Oracle, which provides internet hosting services for TikTok. The companies could face some $850 billion in fines for continuing to make the app accessible to Americans.

Cotton also suggested companies servicing TikTok could face “ruinous liability” from........

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