US Judge Sets Up Fresh Roadblock in Trump Bid to Ban TikTok

On Friday, a U.S. federal judge issued an injunction that temporarily suspended President Donald Trump's executive order to ban TikTok, throwing a legal roadblock ahead of the November 12 deadline.

The order would have knocked offline the Chinese-owned video-sharing app by cutting it off from US businesses offering website hosting, data storage, and other necessities needed to function, reports AFP.

But TikTok influencers suing the president over the ban forced Wendy Beetlestone of the US District Court to issue an injunction against it.

It is the second restriction issued by US judges in favor of TikTok against a series of executive orders issued by Trump that aimed to prohibit fresh downloads of the app starting in September and to outright ban it by 12 November.

In a separate suit filed by TikTok itself, a temporary injunction issued in September prevented the government from banning it from mobile application download platforms.

Judges said in decisions in both cases that the odds of arguing in court that Trump exceeded his authority were good.

They also equated TikTok to films, photographs, and news wires with legal protections.

In her decision, Beetlestone acknowledged that concerns voiced by the US in defending the ban were hypothetically articulated.

Due to national security issues, the Trump administration has focused on the need to block TikTok, which has 100 million users in the US.

The White House claims TikTok has links to the Chinese government through its parent firm ByteDance.

TikTok has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of data transfers to the Chinese government

It says its servers where user information is stored are located in the United States and Singapore.

The company also claimed that the ban is unnecessary because talks are ongoing to restructure TikTok's ownership to resolve national security concerns posed by the administration.

A preliminary agreement was announced to make Silicon Valley giant Oracle TikTok 's technology partner and a stakeholder in a new entity to be known as TikTok Global.