Second Federal Judge Rules Against Trump Order to Ban TikTok
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration's attempt to ban new downloads of TikTok in the United States, the latest defeat in the White House's efforts to outlaw the app in the country (via TechCrunch).
President Trump in August signed an executive order that would officially ban any U.S. transactions with TikTok if its Chinese parent ByteDance did not reach a deal to divest it to a U.S. company. Commerce Department officials later said they were taking the unprecedented step of banning the app because of the risks posed by its data collection practices and Chinese ownership.
On Monday, however, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington concluded that President Trump had overstepped his authority in using his emergency economic powers to try to put the wildly popular app out of business.
Nichols wrote that the government "likely exceeded IEEPA's [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act] express limitations as part of an agency action that was arbitrary and capricious." Nichols is a Trump appointee and the second federal judge to rule against the president's ban.
Should the order have gone into effect, Apple and Google could have been forced to remove TikTok from their respective app stores, and users who already have the app installed would no longer receive updates. However, in October, a federal judge granted TikTok a preliminary injunction that temporarily halted the banning order while TikTok owner ByteDance sought a way to divest the app's U.S. operations to an American-based company.
ByteDance's deadline to divest itself of the social media app TikTok elapsed on Monday, but talks are set to continue with the U.S. government about a sale without another deadline extension. ByteDance has reached a proposed deal with Oracle and Walmart that would divest it of the social media app and create a new U.S.-based company called TikTok Global.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Popular Stories
While the spotlight has been on CarPlay Ultra lately, the regular version of CarPlay is set to receive some enhancements alongside iOS 26.
Apple will announce iOS 26 at WWDC 2025 next week, and the software update is expected to upgrade the CarPlay experience in at least two ways.
The first iOS 26 beta should be seeded to developers shortly after Apple's keynote, and the update will...
Apple is planning to announce several new features for the Messages and Phone apps on iOS 26, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In a lengthy report outlining his WWDC 2025 expectations today, Gurman said that the two main changes in the Messages app will be the ability to create polls, as well as the option to set a background image within a conversation.
9to5Mac was first to report...
Designer Sebastiaan de With has published an impressive preview of what Apple's rumored iOS redesign might look like, complete with detailed mockups and a design philosophy that he believes could reshape how users interact with their devices.
With WWDC just days away, de With – co-founder of photography app maker Lux and former Apple designer – has created what he calls "Living Glass"...
The 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference is coming up quick, with less than a week to go before the big keynote event. We're sharing a series of rumor recaps this week, for those who want to get a sneak peek at some of the features expected in Apple's upcoming software updates.
iOS 26 is definitely the OS that we've heard the most about, and rumors suggest that it's going to get a major...
If the Mail app on your iPhone is not working lately, you are not alone.
A growing number of iPhone users are seeing a blank screen in the Mail app, according to comments posted across the MacRumors Forums, Reddit, Apple Support Community, and other online discussion platforms. Affected users are unable to view any emails in their inboxes, and the app can also become glitchy and...
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the ultra-thin device.
Overall, the iPhone 17 Air sounds like a mixed bag. While the device is expected to have an impressively thin and light design, rumors indicate it will have some compromises compared to iPhone 17 Pro models, including worse battery life, only a single ...
The Apple Watch provides highly accurate measurements of heart rate and step count, but their estimates of calories burned can be significantly off, according to a new peer-reviewed meta-analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Mississippi (via CNET).
The study reviewed 56 previously published studies evaluating the Apple Watch's performance against gold-standard clinical tools ...
