Judge blocks Trump order banning TikTok from mobile app stores

WASHINGTON, DC — A federal judge on Sunday postponed a Trump administration order that would have banned the popular video sharing app TikTok from U.S. smartphone app stores around midnight.

A more comprehensive ban remains scheduled for November, about a week after the presidential election. The judge, Carl Nichols of the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia, did not agree to postpone the later ban.

The ruling followed an emergency hearing Sunday morning in which lawyers for TikTok argued that the administration’s app-store ban would infringe on the company’s First Amendment rights and do irreparable harm to the business.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump declared that TikTok was a threat to national security and that it must either sell its U.S. operations to U.S. companies or be barred from the country.