Social-Media
Trump's government appeals yet another TikTok decision
The Trump administration has recently acquired some experience losing to the judge, and has experienced a setback after a setback in its stand that TikTok should be barred in the US. Still, the pursuit of the video sharing software continues. On Monday, the Department of Justice lodged an appeal against a judge's order that prohibited the entry into force of prohibitions on TikTok in the United States.
US District Judge Carl Nichols released an injunction on 7 December that blocked the Commerce Department's limitations on TikTok, which would have prohibited new software purchases from US app stores. The order of Nichols mirrored the October order of US District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Pennsylvania, who requested an injunction against the ban. In that case, three content owners argued that a ban on TikTok would have a detrimental impact on their profits. And on Monday, the DOJ appealed the ruling of Nichols to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
The TikTok-Trump saga started back in August, when President Trump released an order declaring that security issues regarding TikTok and WeChat, both China-based applications, constituted a national emergency. It invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which requires the President to prohibit transactions between US and foreign entities. President Trump then released an order on 14 August granting ByteDance a parent company 90 days to either sell or spin off its TikTok business in the United States. The order was set to come into force on 12 November and would have stopped the US activity of the app.
On September 18, the US Department of Commerce released an order to restrict downloads of the US software. But a day later, the president said he had accepted "in concept" an offer by cloud computing company Oracle to become TikTok's "trusted tech partner." The agreement called for the development of a new organization, TikTok Global, to be headquartered in the US and take over processing and storage for all US-based TikTok customers.
But then the presidency of Trump... It appeared to have forgotten about the entire matter. TikTok filed a petition on 10 November requesting a 30-day extension of the deadline of 12 November, and the firm said it had received "no substantive feedback" from the Trump administration for some time. The administration approved an extension until 27 November and again until 4 December. The government then said that it would not impose its own deadline.
The shape of the appeal in the final days of the lame duck presidency remains to be decided, but the US ban on the app is becoming less and less likely to happen. TikTok did not respond immediately to a request for comments on Monday.
