Trump Declares a National Emergency Over TikTok, Officially Signs Executive Order to Prepare Ban

President Donald Trump is moving one step closer to banning the social media app TikTok in the United States and he just declared a national emergency over the app, according to BuzzFeed.

The executive order will ban TikTok and its parent company ByteDance from operating in the U.S. in 45 days unless it’s sold to an American company. A similar order has been placed on the Chinese social networking app WeChat.

Trump says that TiKTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and claims the Chinese government could use the info against American interests. The order also said that TikTok “may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.”

The order said that Trump has the power to enact the ban thanks to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act.

A popular social media app just introduced a new feature that will seemingly serve as a place for TikTok users to go.