CLOCK TICKS ON TIKTOK BAN

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance filed a petition Tuesday asking the courts to extend a Thursday deadline for the company to divest the popular video-sharing app as outlined in an executive order from President Trump, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed to The Hill Wednesday.

In the petition filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Beijing-based ByteDance asks for an extension since a proposed deal tentatively approved by Trump in September has yet to be finalized, according to reports. The proposed deal would establish a U.S.-headquartered TikTok Global with partial U.S.-based owners, Oracle and Walmart.

“In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Facing continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted, we requested the 30-day extension that is expressly permitted in the August 14 order,” the spokesperson added.

With the imminent Thursday deadline and “without an extension in hand” TikTok said it had no choice but to file a petition in court and defend the rights of the company and its more than 1,500 employees in the U.S.