U.S. Judge Halts Trump's TikTok Ban, The 2nd Court To Fully Block The Action

A federal judge on Monday fully blocked the Trump administration's attempt to ban TikTok in the U.S., the latest defeat in the White House's legal crusade against the video-sharing app.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington found that Trump overstepped his authority in using his emergency economic powers to try to effectively put the wildly popular app out of business. He was the second judge to rule against the president's ban.

Lawyers for TikTok demonstrated that Trump officials' "failure to adequately consider an obvious and reasonable alternative before banning TikTok renders the crackdown against the app "arbitrary and capricious," wrote Nichols, who is a Trump appointee.

Citing a threat to national security, Trump's Commerce Department had sought to prevent the app from being downloaded in app stores and attempted to outlaw transactions between Americans and TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance.