On February 11, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to put on hold its review of the Trump-era ban on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app.
This request came a day after the administration asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for a similar hold on the case considering the Trump ban on the Chinese mobile video-sharing platform TikTok.
Lower U.S. courts had previously enjoined the enforcement of the Trump bans. WeChat users and TikTok had sued to block enforcement. Trump banned the apps because they were, he correctly contended, collecting “vast swaths” of data and censoring Americans.
