TikTok hearing set for Sunday before Trump ban takes effect

U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols will hold a hearing in Washington, D.C., after TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance asked the court to block President Trump’s ban that is scheduled to begin Sunday night.

This comes after Nichols said Thursday that the Trump administration would have until 2:30 p.m. EDT on Friday to either delay the banning of TikTok from Apple and Google app stores or file documents in defense of the action.

TikTok on Wednesday filed for an injunction to halt the app store ban, which was a result of an executive order signed by Trump last month targeting ByteDance’s video platform, as well as the WeChat messaging app owned by China’s Tencent technology company.

The ban had been delayed a week by the U.S. Department of Commerce after a deal in Trump’s order provoked national security concerns.

Within the order, Trump submitted a deal to be approved by the Treasury Department that would create an American company called TikTok Global to control the app’s operations around the world.

ByteDance claims it will own 80 percent of TikTok Global, while Oracle, the company looking to buy TikTok with Walmart in a Trump-approved move, wants to push ByteDance out of the company altogether.

Trump initially announced the ban on TikTok last month, with the Justice Department raising national security concerns at the time that the app could give China’s government the ability to collect data from American citizens.