#TikTok Ban Delayed Again After Judge’s Ruling

In a ruling issued just a few hours before a midnight deadline on Sunday night (September 27), a federal judge has blocked a ban on new downloads of TikTok. According to the Washington Post, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols issued an injunction on the grounds that the company hasn’t had sufficient time to defend itself in response to the executive order that the Trump administration levied at the beginning of August. 

Citing national security concerns in the original order, Trump threatened to “terminate” TikTok’s stateside operations if the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance did not divest from U.S. operations. A ban on new TikTok downloads was set to go into effect on September 20, along with a ban on the app WeChat. On September 20, however, that deadline was pushed back a week after Trump approved a tentative deal for Oracle and Walmart to each purchase a 20% stake in TikTok. (The restrictions on WeChat were also delayed.)

Nichols’ ruling did not affect the original November 12 deadline that the Trump administration set for a completed sale.

Check out Pitchfork’s “TikTok Report” column, covering the good, the bad, and the straight-up bizarre songs spreading across the platform via dances and memes.