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. The TikTok ban had been set to take effect at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said earlier that he would decide by the end of the day whether the Trump administration’s national-security concerns were urgent enough for it to go through with the ban, which would have prevented new TikTok downloads by people who don’t already have the app and restrict current users from downloading upgrades that keep it fresh. TikTok argued in court Sunday that the ban on downloads would harm its business. “This is just punitive,” TikTok lawyer John Hall said during Sunday morning’s arguments. “This is just a blunt way to whack the company now while doing nothing to achieve the stated objective of the prohibitions.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-makes-its-case-for-last-minute-reprieve-from-u-s-download-ban-11601225594 Government lawyers argued the president had a right to take national security actions, and said the ban was needed because of TikTok’s links to the Chinese government through its parent firm ByteDance. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/28/us-judge-temporarily-blocks-trump-order-banning-tiktok-app-store-downloads
