Commerce Department Remembers It Was Supposed To Ban TikTok; Says It Won't Enforce For Now

Yesterday we noted that TikTok had made a filing with the government asking what the fuck was going on with the supposed ban on their application that was supposed to go into effect this week. While a court had issued an injunction saying the Commerce Department couldn't put the ban into effect, the Trump administration basically hadn't said anything since then, and the ban was set to go into effect yesterday.

Late yesterday, the Commerce Department put out a notice basically saying that it's complying with the injunction issued by the court, and therefore not implementing the executive order and the ban:

However, on October 30, 2020, the District Court issued an Order granting the Plaintiffs'renewed motion for a preliminary injunction. This Order enjoined the Department fromenforcing the Identification and the prohibition on transactions identified in Paragraphs 1-6above.

The Department is complying with the terms of this Order. Accordingly, this serves as NOTICEthat the Secretary's prohibition of identified transactions pursuant to Executive Order 13942,related to TikTok, HAS BEEN ENJOINED, and WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT, pendingfurther legal developments

Of course, the Commerce Department saying it won't enforce the order doesn't answer the larger question of whether or not the US government is still demanding that it sell off all of its US assets -- or even whether or not the grifty non-sale to Oracle will suffice.

Basically, highlighting how much of a joke this whole thing was, it seems that the supposed "national security" rationale behind all of this was complete garbage, and since Trump has his hands full trying to pretend he won the election he very clearly lost, everyone's just going to let this slide until the Biden administration comes in and likely drops the executive order altogether. But kudos to Larry Ellison for getting a lucrative hosting deal.