The Trump administration on Friday appealed a federal judge’s injunction that prevented the federal government’s ban of WeChat.
WeChat is a social messaging app owned by the Chinese company Tencent. The Department of Commerce sought to ban all U.S. transactions with WeChat last month, but federal Judge Laurel Beeler granted a nationwide injunction against President Trump’s order authorizing the ban.
On Friday, the Department of Justice appealed the injunction from Judge Beeler to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Alongside Mr. Trump’s action against WeChat, he also authorized a blockade of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media app, from being distributed by app stores operated by Apple and Google.
In separate litigation over the TikTok ban, federal Judge Carl Nichols granted a preliminary injunction in September against the app store ban of TikTok but declined to take action against other aspects of the Trump administration’s ban of TikTok that are still set to take effect in November.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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