• The Supreme Court was hearing arguments Friday morning in ByteDance's appeal of the congressional act banning TikTok unless it's sold to an American owner. The government's position is that China now has access, via the app, to a trove of sensitive information about today's young people, who could be tomorrow's government and military officials, exposing them to potential blackmail or espionage. [New York Times]
• Trump became the first president in US history to be sentenced as a felon this morning. His sentence was immediately discharged by the New York judge in the hush money case, Judge Juan M. Merchan, who said that "Donald Trump the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant" would not have been given the protections were he not elected president. [New York Times]
• One proposal recently floated for the redevelopment of the Howard Terminal site at the Port of Oakland envisions a "laser-blasted" tunnel from the port to a new "inland port" in Tracy, eliminating semi-truck traffic on East Bay freeways. [SF Business Times]
• The Watch Duty app, which was founded in Sonoma County amid the annual wildfire threats there, saw a record number of downloads this week in Los Angeles as people sought information about the fires there. [ABC 7]
• Some residents of Altadena returned to pick through the rubble of their destroyed homes in the Eaton Fire on Thursday. [New York Times]
• LA County Fire mistakenly sent a push notification to the entire county Thursday about a new evacuation warning that was intended only for a small area around the newly sparked Kenneth Fire in West Hills. [Bay Area News Group]

Photo: Solen Feyissa