Asiye Latife Yılmaz
20 January 2025•Update: 20 January 2025
ISTANBUL
A 19-year-old man was arrested early Sunday after setting a fire in protest of discussions to ban TikTok at a strip mall housing the district office of a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, according to The New York Times.
The suspect, who has not been identified, was arrested near the site of the incident in Fond du Lac, where the office of US Republican Representative Glenn Grothman is located, the city’s police department said in a statement.
Police said no injuries were reported, and the mall was empty when officers and firefighters responded to the scene.
A spokesperson for Grothman declined to comment on the fire. The congressman, who has been a vocal critic of TikTok, has previously warned that the app poses a national security threat by exposing Americans' data to China and using deceptive methods to collect personal information.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court upheld a law that would ban TikTok unless its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, divests from the app. After going offline earlier Sunday, TikTok announced it was in the process of restoring services to its US users following assurances from President-elect Donald Trump.
