US judge halts Trump’s ban on TikTok downloads

Washington (ANI): US federal judge on Sunday (local time) suspended President Donald Trump’s ban on TikTok downloads. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, a federal judge halted the Trump administration’s ban of downloads of the video-sharing app TikTok, hours before it was supposed to go into effect late Sunday night (local time).

Earlier, the US Commerce Department had said it is postponing the planned block of new TikTok downloads until September 27. Trump had announced that Oracle and Walmart will need to have “total control” over the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok in order for the United States to approve a deal between the company and its two US partners.

On August 6, Trump signed an executive order banning any US transactions with ByteDance, set to take effect in 45 days.  Later on August 14, he issued another executive order, requiring ByteDance to divest its interests in TikTok’s operations in the US within 90 days. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed TikTok and other applications like WeChat are feeding data directly to China’s national security apparatus.