A D.C. federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction that halts Donald Trump’s attempted ban on TikTok, according to court documents obtained by The Verge. In his opinion accompanying the ruling, U.S. district judge Carl Nichols noted “the government likely exceeded” the limitations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law that allows Trump to ban transactions between the U.S. and foreign entities, by taking “arbitrary and capricious” action to regulate communication. As such, he granted TikTok’s preliminary injunction against the Commerce Department’s prohibitions. Back on August 6, Trump issued an executive order giving the app 45 days to be sold, before blocking transactions between U.S. companies and TikTok’s Chinese parent company, Byte Dance, to which TikTok was like, “Let’s do it, baby, I know the law.”
Nichols previously granted a preliminary injunction on September 27, allowing people to continue downloading the app in the United States. On October 30, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled in favor of three TikTok creators who argued the ban would impede their ability to make a living, effectively squashing it. As a result, the Commerce Department backed down, saying it wouldn’t enforce the order on the November 12 deadline set by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. A follow-up deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok was set for December 4, but a new Bloomberg report says the Trump administration is letting its own deadline fizzle out. The current deadline will “be overlooked while the discussions continue.” Sure, Trump. Inauguration Day is just over a month away. TikTok, TikTok, TikTok …
