TikTok requests emergency motion to stop ban from taking effect
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(WASHINGTON) — TikTok on Monday requested the emergency pause of a law set to ban the popular social media app next month.
A temporary lifting of the measure would afford the Supreme Court time to determine whether it should review the law, the company said in a court filing.
The filling arrives days after TikTok — which boasts more than 170 million U.S. users — lost a challenge against the measure in a federal appeals court.
A pause of the law would afford the Supreme Court time to determine whether it should “review this exceptionally important case,” TikTok said in the court filing on Monday.
The law would impose a nationwide ban of TikTok on Jan. 19, 2025, unless the company finds a different owner.
The ban would take effect one day before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has signaled that he would seek to reverse a possible ban.
The legal pause would also allow the Trump administration an opportunity to decide its approach to TikTok, the company’s legal filing said.
TikTok had challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that a potential ban would deny American users access to a popular venue for public expression. Attorneys for the company also disputed claims that the app poses a national security risk.
In a ruling on Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s bid to overturn the law.
The federal court found merit in security concerns about potential data collection or content manipulation undertaken by the Chinese government.
Each of those two concerns “constitutes an independently compelling national security interest,” the court opinion said. The court cited previous instances in which the Chinese government had pursued data, noting the government’s use of relationships with Chinese-owned businesses.
The China-based app has faced growing scrutiny from government officials over fears that user data could fall into the possession of the Chinese government and the app could be weaponized by China to spread misinformation. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has denied those claims.
There is little evidence that TikTok has shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government or that the Chinese government has asked the app to do so, cybersecurity experts previously told ABC News.
In a statement on Monday, TikTok urged the Supreme Court to intervene on its behalf.
“The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue,” the company said. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people.”
Amazon delivery drivers and third-party workers for the nation’s predominant shopping platform have walked off the job in the past week, seeking what they consider a fair labor agreement — and triggering widespread concern among consumers about a potential disruption of deliveries amid a surge of last-minute shopping just before Christmas.
But experts who spoke to ABC News — all of whom study the e-commerce giant’s vast distribution network — said there is little indication that the nationwide demonstrations have imposed significant delays of package delivery, let alone cancellations.
“I haven’t seen evidence that the strike has been effective because of the high level of complexity of the Amazon network,” Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of maritime business administration at Texas A&M University-Galveston who studies Amazon’s freight distribution, told ABC News.
“You’re dealing with a hydra. You can try to chop off one of its heads, but there are other heads,” Rodrigue added.
However, the protests could delay deliveries by one or two days near major cities where efforts are focused.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in a statement that thousands of its Amazon-affiliated members are striking in areas including New York City, New York; Atlanta, Georgia; San Bernardino, California; San Francisco, California; and Skokie, Illinois.
The union has focused its efforts on delivery centers that carry packages over the “last mile” to a customer’s home, Barry Eidlin, a professor of labor sociology at McGill University, told ABC News.
Demonstrations in recent days appear to have occasionally slowed trucks passing in and out of the delivery centers, which could delay local package deliveries in those areas by a few days, Eidlin added.
Speaking to “Good Morning America” on Friday, the second day of the protests, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said the union had heard some “success stories” in its effort to disrupt deliveries.
“We are slowing the packages down,” O’Brien said, later adding: “We’ve got to use our leverage. Unfortunately, it may come at the inconvenience of the consumer.”
In that case, he urged consumers to have patience — and to fault Amazon for any delivery delays.
“Amazon is the one that caused this issue, not the drivers, not the Teamsters union,” O’Brien said.
Teamsters began participating in what they are calling a strike at seven Amazon delivery centers across the country last week.
They were joined by unionized Amazon workers at a 5,500-person warehouse in Staten Island, New York, on Saturday, the Teamsters said. Some company workers at an air hub facility in San Bernardino also joined over the weekend, the Teamsters added.
However, Amazon doesn’t consider the situation a “strike,” since there hasn’t been a work stoppage, according to Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for the e-commerce titan.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, Nantel said the striking workers are not Amazon employees and that the demonstrations have had no impact on Amazon’s operations.
“What you’re seeing at these sites are almost entirely outsiders — not Amazon employees or partners — and the suggestion otherwise is just another lie from the Teamsters,” Nantel said. “The truth is that they were unable to get enough support from our employees and partners and have brought in outsiders to harass and intimidate our team, which is inappropriate and dangerous.”
Amazon also said in a statement to ABC News that the federal government has not ordered the company to bargain with Teamsters-affiliated workers — and it said that none of its workers have paid dues to the Teamsters.
Overall, nearly 9,000 Amazon workers, across 20 bargaining units, have affiliated with the Teamsters, according to the union.
This means that the protesting workers represent less than 1% of the company’s 800,000 operations employees in the U.S.
And the picket lines involve a small fraction of the company’s roughly 585 delivery centers, making it unlikely that such demonstrations will meaningfully impact package delivery, even for nearby customers, said Marc Wulfraat, president and founder of logistics consulting firm MWPVL.
“For the Teamsters to have a meaningful impact, they would have to penetrate a significant number of those delivery stations in order to really cause Amazon heartburn,” Wulfraat said.
The headline-grabbing protests could also inspire some workers to organize unions at new facilities, posing a future threat to the company’s distribution network — but the protesters appear far from attaining the scale necessary for such impact, the experts said.
“We appreciate all our team’s great work to serve their customers and communities, and thanks to them, we’re not seeing any impact to customers’ orders,” Nantel said in her statement to ABC News.
Regardless of whether the protests meaningfully impact Amazon’s operations, the public attention could dissuade some customers from ordering out of fear of a possible delay, experts said.
“It’s possible a small percentage of customers might choose to buy elsewhere,” Rob Handfield, a professor of operations and supply-chain management at North Carolina State University, told ABC News.
Public awareness of the labor effort could also draw more employees to the Teamsters, building union momentum and posing a threat to the company’s distribution network in the coming months or years, experts observed.
“There certainly could be some kind of snowball effect. If I was an Amazon leader, that’s what I’d be most afraid about,” Rodrigue said.
But he also noted that the workers appear fairly far from threatening a major disruption, adding: “They still have a ways to go.”
(WASHINGTON) — In a major change that could affect millions of Americans’ credit scores, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday finalized a rule to remove medical debt from consumer credit reports.
The rule would erase an estimated $49 billion in unpaid medical bills from the credit reports of roughly 15 million Americans, the CFPB said.
That could help boost those borrowers’ credit scores by an average of 20 points, helping them qualify for mortgages and other loans.
“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement touting the new rule.
She announced the proposal for the rule last June alongside CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
“This will be life-changing for millions of families, making it easier for them to be approved for a car loan, a home loan or a small-business loan,” Harris added.
Major credit reporting agencies have already announced voluntary steps to remove medical debt from their reports.
The final rule is set to take effect in March – but that timeline could be delayed by legal challenges.
Debt collection industry groups like the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals have opposed the change, saying it would result in “reduced consequences for not paying your bills, which in turn will reduce access to credit and health care for those that need it most.”
(NEW YORK) — Nearly half of U.S. states are set to raise their minimum wage at the outset of 2025, boosting pay for millions of workers stretching from California to Maine.
In all, 21 states will raise their wage floors on Jan. 1 in keeping with inflation-adjusted increases or as part of scheduled hikes that take effect at the beginning of each calendar year.
The pay increases will affect about 9.2 million workers, who will gain a combined $5.7 billion over the course of 2025, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, or EPI.
After the wave of wage hikes, Washington will become the state with the highest minimum wage, offering workers $16.66 per hour. Workers in California and New York will enjoy the second-highest wage floor, as both states implement a minimum hourly wage of $16.50.
Pay increases set to take hold in the new year will bring the wage floor to $15 an hour or higher in Washington, D.C., as well as 10 states, among them Delaware, Illinois and Rhode Island. Those areas play host to one of every three U.S. workers, EPI found.
Overall, the states set to raise their minimum wage on Wednesday include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
The nation’s highest wage floors will take effect in some of the nearly 50 cities and other localities that will impose minimum pay hikes.
Twenty-nine cities in California will see pay hikes, including a $17-an-hour wage floor that will take effect in Oakland. Seven localities in Washington will increase their minimum wage, among them the country’s highest wage floor: $21.10 an hour in Tukwila.
The latest round of pay increases, however, will not affect more than a dozen states concentrated in the South that lack a minimum wage or offer a minimum wage that does not exceed the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
The last federal minimum wage hike took place in 2009, when Congress raised the pay floor to its current level. When adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage stands at its lowest level since February 1956, nearly 70 years ago, EPI found.
