TikTok to Sue Trump Administration Over US Ban as Soon As Tuesday

TikTok plans to sue the Trump administration as soon as this week, challenging the president's recent executive order to ban the short-form video sharing platform from the United States.

tiktok logo
According to a source who spoke to NPR, TikTok will file a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Southern California, where its American operations are based, as early as Tuesday.

NPR has learned that the lawsuit will argue that President Trump's far-reaching action is unconstitutional because it failed to give the company a chance to respond. It also alleges that the administration's national security justification for the order is baseless, according to the source.

"It's based on pure speculation and conjecture," the source said. "The order has no findings of fact, just reiterates rhetoric about China that has been kicking around."

White House spokesman Judd Deere declined to comment on the potential lawsuit, and instead defended the executive order. "The Administration is committed to protecting the American people from all cyber related threats to critical infrastructure, public health and safety, and our economic and national security," he said.

Trump on Friday signed two executive orders that would officially ban any U.S. transactions with the Chinese companies that own TikTok and WeChat in 45 days, in an escalation of the ongoing technological cold war between the two countries.

TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, said it was "shocked" by the executive order and that it would respond in court, if necessary. In a statement, TikTok said, "The text of the decision makes it plain that there has been a reliance on unnamed 'reports' with no citations, fears that the app 'may be' used for misinformation campaigns with no substantiation of such fears, and concerns about the collection of data that is industry standard for thousands of mobile apps around the world."

Microsoft has publicly confirmed its intention to purchase TikTok in the United States within 45 days, and the company is currently in discussions with ByteDance. Twitter has also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring the service. A previous report suggesting Apple is interested in buying the app turned out to be inaccurate.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: TikTok

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Top Rated Comments

Donnation Avatar
55 months ago

I hope you are realising that if Apple has to remove these apps from the app store globally that they will incur a huge loss of income. And a huge a loss of income will result in less R&D money and new products.
Lol, I think they will be fine. People will move on to another app and TikTok will just become another Vine app that died out.
Score: 41 Votes (Like | Disagree)
826317 Avatar
55 months ago
It's kind of funny that a Chinese company is using America's constitution to defend itself, a defence that wouldn't fly in their home country.
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
hagjohn Avatar
55 months ago

Hopefully Facebook is next.
Facebook and Twitter are a bigger threat to our freedoms than TikTok.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BootLoxes Avatar
55 months ago
Might be the first time I am rooting for Trump... get that chinese spyware out of here!

EDIT: RIP my notifications inbox
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tmoerel Avatar
55 months ago

Might be the first time I am rooting for Trump... get that chinese spyware out of here!
I hope you are realising that if Apple has to remove these apps from the app store globally that they will incur a huge loss of income. And a huge a loss of income will result in less R&D money and new products.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Paradoxally Avatar
55 months ago

I hope you are realising that if Apple has to remove these apps from the app store globally that they will incur a huge loss of income. And a huge a loss of income will result in less R&D money and new products.
They will be fine. It's just another dumb social media app. Apple has billions and this isn't their core market.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)