The Department of Justice has told federal employees they may now download TikTok on their government-issued devices, reversing a ban that had been in place since 2022, according to Reuters.
A DOJ memo, reported in July 2026, states that President Donald Trump has cleared “employees of Executive Branch agencies” to “download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion and consistent with all applicable workplace policies.”
The change affects federal workers across the executive branch, with individual agencies retaining discretion over whether to permit the app under their own workplace policies.
The DOJ’s position is that the 2022 law banning TikTok from government devices no longer applies, citing a deal that transferred ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a joint venture backed by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. Under the arrangement, Oracle serves as the security partner for the new joint venture, while previous owner ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake.
The government-device ban had been one layer of a broader effort to restrict TikTok in the United States. The app faced a wider national ban that took effect early last year, though it went down only briefly before Trump repeatedly delayed enforcement and urged service providers to restore access.
The DOJ’s updated guidance suggests the ownership restructuring — particularly Oracle’s role as security partner — was sufficient to address the national security concerns that originally drove the federal ban. Whether individual agencies will broadly permit employees to use the app remains subject to their own internal policies.
Source: TechCrunch