BREAKING WSJ: The Trump Justice Department's senior leadership closed an investigation of Paramount's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery before career staffers who were concerned about the acquisition had an opportunity to object, according to people familiar with the matter. wsj.com/business/media/justi…

@MonopolyBusters Chairs on @JusticeATR waving through Paramount-Warner: "This antitrust nightmare is exactly the kind of corporate power grab our laws were written to stop. The Trump administration has made it clear whose side it’s on and it’s not yours." Full statement below.

The DOJ just approved Paramount’s bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. This is not the end, not by a long shot: The European authorities, the UK authorities, and most importantly 10 American state attorney generals (both Democrats and Republicans) are all actively looking at the deal right now. I still think it will be blocked. But in the meantime, some thoughts on the DOJ’s analysis: (1) The merger would combine the second and fifth largest film studios in the country. They will load the combined company down with $79 billion in debt, which they will need to service while they are trying to cut $6 billion in “synergies.” Mind you, Paramount/Skydance just laid off 2400 people last year when Skydance bought Paramount. It is painfully obvious that the combined Paramount/WBD will struggle to keep up its pace of high quality theatrical releases. (Indeed, what's most likely is that the merged firm starts releasing AI slop, re-releasing old movies, or re-releasing old movies with new AI slop.) The DOJ just doesn’t see it. (2) The DOJ also appears to be unaware of the market for documentaries, which has three major buyers: CNN, HBO, and Netflix -- and Netflix mostly buys crime, celebrity, and cult docs. Gone is Showtime and gone is MTV films; PBS/CPB have had their budgets existentially slashed. When it comes to documentary, this is a three-to-two merger to duopoly. That's on the buying side. On the inputs side, there are four key TV news archives in the United States: ABC, NBC, CBS, and the crown jewel, CNN. This merger will make it three. And if public reporting is correct, it will result in two of the four archives being under the control of one person, Bari Weiss. The DOJ sees none of this either. (3) President Trump’s closest ally in organized labor is Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien. He warned that this merger “threatens the livelihoods of the very workers who built these studios into industry giants.” The Teamsters’ Motion Picture Division director, Lindsay Dougherty, called the merger yet another example of “greed-fueled consolidation of corporate power [that] is a direct threat to good union jobs.” The DOJ didn’t see this problem either. They relegated their analysis of labor markets to four sentences at the end of the statement. According to them, they see no impact on output and hence no impact on labor. (4) Paramount’s leaders have lavished the President with gifts, censorship of his critics, and with promises of future censorship of his critics. They gutted CBS News and 60 Minutes. According to the Wall Street Journal, they also promised to gut CNN. They canceled Stephen Colbert. They held a strange, lavish banquet in honor of the White House and “the First Amendment” at a federal building — and the President and the Acting Attorney General joined them. The President even said he “would be involved” in the decision of merger approval. And so he was. Do not look away from this corruption. Do not act like it's normal. Because this is how we got to this result today.

The merger of Warner Bros and Paramount is not a done deal and remains under investigation by my office.

New Yorkers came out last minute in Binghamton today to say NO CONSTITUTION PIPELINE and NO #FRACKING! We showed up because Trump's EPA head @epaleezeldin came to shill for the gas industry and try to run roughshod over our state's authority. WE SAY NO! @GovKathyHochul

When there are fewer buyers for shows, writers take fewer risks. When writers take fewer risks, "you will laugh less"

If the provision in the NDAA to integrate/synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries (section 224) makes it out of committee, I’ll offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor. We are a sovereign country. armedservices.house.gov/uplo…

"At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before." Here's the story: 🧵

HUGE: The California legislature is officially closer than it's been in a quarter century to banning illegal monopolization. The COMPETE Act, AB 1776 (Aguiar-Curry), passes the Assembly by a vote of 44-16. The most lobbied bill of the session moves to the Senate.