UPDATE: Commerce Dept. reportedly will challenge judge’s WeChat order

The U.S. Commerce Department reportedly plans to challenge a U.S. judge’s order that blocked its order banning WeChat downloads, according to Reuters.

In California, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said in an order that WeChat users who filed a lawsuit “have shown serious questions going to the merits of the First Amendment claim, the balance of hardships tips in the plaintiffs' favor,” Reuters reported Sunday morning.

The judge’s order blocked the Commerce Department’s order requiring Apple and Google to remove WeChat from their U.S. app stores, Reuters reported.

The U.S. government had earlier argued that it is not restricting free speech because WeChat users still “are free to speak on alternative platforms that do not pose a national security threat.”

Specific evidence about WeChat posing a national security threat was also “modest,” according to Beeler.

Beeler’s preliminary injunction, which was dated Saturday, also blocked the Commerce order that would have barred other transactions with WeChat in the United States that could have degraded the site’s usability for current U.S. users, Reuters reported.

The dispute over WeChat and TikTok is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to counter the influence of China. Since taking office in 2017, President Donald Trump has waged a trade war with China, blocked mergers involving Chinese companies and stifled the business of Chinese firms such as Huawei, a maker of phones and telecom equipment.

On Friday, the Commerce Department said it would ban Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores on Sunday and would bar the apps from accessing essential internet services in the U.S. — a move that could effectively wreck the operation of both Chinese services for U.S. users. That apparently has been put on hold, according to Bloomberg.

TikTok won’t face the most drastic sanctions until after the Nov. 3 election.

The order, before it was blocked Sunday morning by Beeler, cited national security and data privacy concerns. It followed weeks of dealmaking over the video-sharing service TikTok. Trump has pressured the app’s Chinese owner to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to a domestic company to satisfy U.S. concerns over TikTok’s data collection and related issues. The president gave his “blessing” to a deal Saturday.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News the government will ensure that under the TikTok-Oracle-WalMart deal, no American’s data would end up in the possession of the Chinese government.

Trump noted that TikTok was “very, very popular,” said “we have to have the total security from China,” and added that “we can do a combination of both.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.