Twelve state attorneys general have sued to block the corrupt and illegal merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Here’s what will happen next.

On July 13, 12 state attorneys general sued to block the proposed $111 billion merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. California Attorney General Rob Bonta led the multistate lawsuit, joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.

“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” Bonta said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

How we got here

Free Press has worked with incredible allies to drive opposition to this merger, which would create a media colossus with CBS, CNN, HBO, Nickelodeon and the Warner Bros. and Paramount film studios — among other major media properties — all under one roof. We’ve helped steward a broad coalition of First Amendment advocates, unions, consumer-rights groups, and Hollywood actors and directors. 

Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison and his tech billionaire dad Larry Ellison have been sued by a Paramount shareholder who alleges they cut an "illegal" deal with President Donald Trump to secure U.S. governmental approval for the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

When it comes to broadcast news, our country could do with a little less Hollywood and a little more local reporting from communities across the country. The FCC’s plan to switch from a national ownership cap to a case-by-case review allows exactly that.

Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromised the commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of tickets by CBS or its parent company.

Five months earlier, Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty cast a decisive vote approving Paramount’s historic $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. Now, the commissioner and a guest enjoyed the star-studded celebration thanks to tickets gifted to her by Paramount worth more than $12,000, according to ethics disclosure records obtained by ProPublica.

The other commissioner who approved the merger watched from a prized perch. FCC Chair Brendan Carr and his wife sat in a private skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other executives from Paramount and CBS. Such seats sold for $125,000 a ticket, according to Kennedy Center guidelines.

The Paramount-Warner merger challenge looks odd, but that's only because all the other cops are bought off. Here are the arguments for and against the deal, and the process going forward.

Yesterday, 12 states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, filed a complaint asking a Federal judge to stop the $110 billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, which would otherwise be the largest combination of Hollywood studios in history. The states alleged this deal would put too much power in the hands of the billionaire Ellison family.

Then today, another shoe dropped. The Writer’s Guild East and the Writer’s Guild West filed another case opposing the deal, this one on grounds that it would give the Ellison’s too much power over workers in Hollywood. The complaint from the writers unions included statements from well-known creative power players in the tv and movie business, the people behind The Office, Spiderman, Stepbrothers, and so forth. And that’s not all. The states also filed for an emergency injunction to pause the deal, with the first hearing on Friday morning at 10am. More action could be coming.

In this piece, I’m going to explain what is happening, the arguments involved, and next steps. But make no mistake, this legal case is the most significant fight over corporate power and media we may see in this Trump term.

A telecom executive urges Congress not to block FCC review of a spectrum proposal meant to give America a backup to GPS.

Commercial pilots flying near conflict zones watched their instruments report positions miles from where they knew their airplanes actually were, while also navigating ground proximity alarms triggering unexpectedly. In parts of the Middle East, consumers are struggling with food delivery, ride-sharing, and countless other apps that depend on accurate location data. In Finland, soldiers are relearning how to navigate with paper maps.

The culprit is Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming and spoofing, a disruption of the satellite signals that are foundational to modern life. Except this threat isn’t just confined to far-off war zones. Airports in Dallas, Denver, and New Jersey have each experienced high-profile GPS disruptions. Solar storms have impacted GPS signals, affecting farming from Minnesota to Nebraska at the height of planting season. In America, GPS underpins everything from emergency response and critical infrastructure to finance, energy, logistics, and the smartphones we carry every day, and we are incredibly reliant on it.

DERBY — Derby and Holland are the latest Northeast Kingdom communities to gain access to high-speed fiber internet and home telephone service through NEK Broadband.

The eastern portion of Derby now has service, with additional areas under construction. In Holland, where residents have lacked telephone and internet upgrades for decades, 75 percent of addresses now have access to speeds up to 2 gigabits per second for both uploads and downloads through NEK Broadband’s Ultra service tier.

Abbott previously outlined a broad regulatory framework around data centers amid backlash from rural communities around their impact on residential neighborhoods.

Gov. Greg Abbott called for blocking new data center development in rural parts of the state during a campaign stop in East Texas on Tuesday.

“We must prohibit them from building AI data centers in rural Texas neighborhoods,” Abbott said at the Bullard event, which primarily discussed his plan to cut property taxes, adding that this issue “dovetails right into fighting for East Texas values.”

Abbott’s push for a prohibition in rural neighborhoods appears to go further than a sweeping regulatory framework he unveiled earlier this month, which called for data centers to add new power generation to the grid, pay for their own infrastructure costs, reuse their own water and implement measures such as setbacks, among other proposals aimed at limiting their impact on residential communities.

Twenty-three years ago, a scandal emerged on Wall Street. Henry Blodget, an equity research analyst who’d become well-known for his bullish coverage of some of the world’s hottest internet stocks during the dot-com boom, turned out to be privately bearish. In emails to colleagues Blodget described many of the stocks he’d publicly recommended as “crap,” “dogs,” and “POS.” After the bubble popped and valuations tanked, Blodget was charged with securities fraud, and the SEC banned him from the securities industry for life.

Blodget was the posterchild, but he wasn’t alone. At Salomon Smith Barney, another analyst who’d publicly rated one company as a “buy” was discovered to have called that same company a “pig” in private. Another analyst at Lehman Brothers admitted in an email that “ratings and price targets are fairly meaningless anyway,” and that the “little guy” might get misled. “Such is the nature of my business,” he wrote. It was an epidemic: By the year 2000, three-quarters of all stocks carried buy recommendations, and only two percent carried sell recommendations. I don’t need to tell you what happened next.

Why would Wall Street analysts recommend stocks they knew to be junk? One word: incentives. Since IPOs and equity offerings are important sources of revenue for investment banks, analysts are incentivized to publish glowing research about companies in order to win deals and generate fees. This conflict of interest was summarized well by a Merrill Lynch employee in 2002, who lamented to a colleague that “John and Mary Smith are losing their retirement because we don’t want [an investment banking client] to be mad at us.”

After the bubble popped, the SEC realized it’d better do something about this.

12 states sued to block the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros., arguing the combination would mean lower revenues for theater owners and cable distributors, and therefore higher prices for moviegoers and cable subscribers.

The case, filed in the Northern District of California by the state’s attorney general Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general across the country, went for the easiest and most explicable theory of harm: The combined studio would have the leverage to force higher splits with theaters for the biggest films, and the highest fees from cable companies for carriage of their networks.

We are 'deeply concerned about some providers' ability to carry out their commitments,' said CWA in a letter urging NTIA to release BEAD performance tests.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is adding its voice to those calling on the NTIA to release BEAD winners' performance testing results to the public, with a stated concern that "some providers" may not be able to meet their commitments.

The labor union's request came in the form of a letter to Arielle Roth, NTIA chief administrator, dated Tuesday, July 14. In addition to CWA, the letter was signed by representatives from public interest groups including Public Knowledge, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and Open Technology Institute at New America, among others.

Unregulated AI data centers will not, surprisingly, turn your struggling rural West Virginia town into a modern techno-Utopia.

I really "enjoyed" (read: didn't enjoy at all) this recent piece in The Atlantic (non-paywalled archive link) proclaiming that the backlash to AI data centers is "overblown." It's part of a broader effort by our affluent brunchlord press to dismiss the massive bipartisan opposition to AI data centers as a sort of inauthentic hysteria or un-American foreign influence op.

One lie that companies have been telling local municipalities is that if they greenlight a massive local AI data center, it will immediately bring a flood of savvy innovators to your podunk-ass town.

The Atlantic piece introduces the lie this way:

The FCC announced it wants to eliminate the 39% national television ownership cap, the same law we’ve been fighting to enforce in filings at the FCC and in our case against the Nexstar/TEGNA merger.

We filed a 143-page petition to block that deal, took the FCC to court, and although the court just concluded the FCC decision could not be reviewed at this time, a separate federal judge agreed that the merger must be stopped while its legality is considered. Now, the FCC wants to wipe that law off the books.

Commissioner Gomez is right that this is unlawful. Congress wrote the 39% number into federal law in 2004. The FCC can’t erase it because the broadcast industry wants it gone. Nexstar and the National Association of Broadcasters put out celebratory statements within hours. They’ve been lobbying for this for decades.

July 14, 2026 - The lead official at the FCC is one of several policy officials and lawmakers expected to participate in the one-day summit .

The summit, scheduled for Wednesday in Washington, will feature interviews and panel discussions with members of President Donald Trump’s administration, congressional leaders from both parties and senior government officials.

July 13, 2026 (DENVER) – Attorney General Phil Weiser today joined a coalition of 12 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit challenging the $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. by Paramount Skydance Corporation. The proposed merger would combine two of Hollywood’s five major film distributors and two of the five major basic cable companies.

The combined company would eliminate competition between Paramount and Warner Bros., and inflict substantial harm on movie theaters, basic cable distributors and, ultimately, audiences nationwide. In the U.S. alone, if allowed to merge, the combined titan would control nearly one-third of theatrical motion pictures, and nearly one-third of basic cable programming. The coalition has asked Warner Bros. and Paramount not to close the merger until after the judicial process concludes, and if they do not agree, the coalition will request that the court issue a temporary restraining order.

“More concentration in motion picture production and in the cable network sectors threatens harm to consumers and to a robust marketplace of ideas,” said Attorney General Weiser. “As Colorado welcomes the Sundance Film Festival next year, we are acutely aware that preserving competition in the motion picture industry will help ensure the distribution of a wide variety of the best films to movie theatres. And as reflected by our challenge to the Nexstar/Tegna merger, we are also committed to ensuring that cable and satellite platforms can offer consumers the best possible packages of basic service by preserving competition in the basic cable TV environment.”

The FCC has granted AT&T approval to shut down copper services to about 184,000 customers in California by next year. That decision is part of a multi-step process linked to AT&T's copper shutdown plans in the state.

That process targets a subset of AT&T customers who are still using copper-based services in the state. Under the plan, those customers can keep their existing service until it is discontinued on or after June 1, 2027. AT&T has developed a POTS (plain old telephone service) alternative called AT&T Phone–Advanced that can run on fiber or wireless connections and support legacy phones, fax machines, home security systems and medical monitoring devices.

Following Governor Kathy Hochul’s executive order today creating the nation’s first statewide pause on new hyperscale data center development, the American Economic Liberties Project issued the following statement:

“New York is taking an essential step to make sure the rapid growth of data centers does not come at the expense of families and communities,” said Pat Garofalo, Director of State & Local Policy at American Economic Liberties Project. “For years, Big Tech companies have negotiated data center deals behind closed doors, securing enormous public benefits while leaving residents high and dry to absorb the costs, including higher energy demand, pressure on local infrastructure, and increased strain on natural resources. Before more projects move forward, communities deserve a clear picture of what these facilities will cost and who will pay.”

“This moratorium creates an opportunity to build rules that put the public interest first,” Garofalo continued.