Second judge says Trump can’t ban TikTok

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction that should keep the US Commerce Department from banning transactions with TikTok.

The Trump administration issued an executive order on August 6th that would have blocked transactions between US companies and TikTok and WeChat’s Chinese parent companies, ByteDance and Tencent. Trump declared TikTok and WeChat a “national emergency,” citing privacy and security concerns. That order invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a law that allows Trump to ban transactions between the US and foreign entities.

However, in his opinion accompanying today’s decision, US district judge Carl Nichols said that “the…

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