President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 90 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.
"As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Tuesday.
Trump disclosed the executive order on the Truth Social platform Thursday morning.
It is the third time Trump has extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when a national ban - approved by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court - took effect. The second was in April when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump's tariff announcement.
It is not clear how many times Trump can - or will - keep extending the ban as the government continues to try to negotiate a deal for TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance. While there is no clear legal basis for the extensions, so far there have been no legal challenges to fight them . Trump has amassed more than 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year , and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. He said in January that he has a "warm spot for TikTok."