Twelve Democratic attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta, filed a lawsuit last month to block the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. by Paramount Skydance Corporation. Trying to force Bonta and the other attorneys general to drop the lawsuit, Paramount is threatening to move its operations out of the state of California. So now prominent Democrats, most notably Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, and Governor Gavin Newsom, are publicly urging Bonta to quickly cut a deal with Paramount. (A scheduled meeting between Bonta and Paramount leaders on Monday was postponed.)
Pathetic. The undermining of Bonta and lack of forceful opposition to this merger by many top Democrats is the latest example of a center-left party establishment that refuses to fully embrace economic populism, constantly capitulates rather than fighting the right, and fails to understand its true enemies. No wonder Democrats have spent the last decade losing elections and policy fights to Donald Trump and the MAGA right.
Let’s start with economic populism. We are in an era of massive income inequality. The superrich not only hold a higher percentage of the nation’s wealth than in decades but are using that money to dominate politics and other parts of our society. Corporate mergers help the super-wealthy by making industries less competitive, giving workers and consumers fewer choices. That’s why Joe Biden, hardly a radical lefty, appointed people skeptical of corporate mergers to a number of key posts.
Having two of the biggest companies in film and television and other parts of the entertainment industry merge will almost certainly be a great deal for the shareholders of Paramount and Warner Bros.—and terrible for everyone else. Paramount is threatening to move up to 30,000 jobs from California if Bonta blocks this merger. But if the merger happens, there will likely be even more economic pain. No matter what Paramount claims now, the company will almost certainly cut thousands of jobs, including in California, if this merger is approved. That’s what merged companies always do—fire staffers whose jobs overlap even slightly.
And no matter what Paramount claims now, the prices that consumers, including those in California, pay for streaming channels, movies, and other products currently offered by the two companies will almost certainly go up. That’s another thing merged companies do—take advantage of the shrunken market to charge higher prices.
In 2026, the position of anyone who cares about making the U.S. economy work for average Americans and protecting American democracy by limiting the outsize power and wealth of the superrich should be strong, reflexive opposition to mergers of the biggest companies in virtually any industry. So why don’t Bass, Becerra, and Newsom, some of the most prominent Democrats in the country, have that position?
I suspect because they, like many other Democratic politicians, haven’t adjusted to the realities of today’s political economy. Politicians, particularly governors and mayors, have traditionally worked hard to keep companies in their communities, because they provide jobs and tax revenue. But Paramount isn’t a normal company. It’s a megacorporation. And it’s not asking California for a break on its taxes but for the state to accept a merger that will dramatically worsen several different industries.
Massive, billionaire-owned companies like Paramount aren’t going to subject themselves to the whims of elected officials or even the public. They don’t really believe in democracy. That’s why other such companies are trying to build AI data centers despite massive public opposition. Bass, Newsom, and other Democratic politicians must stop pretending to negotiate or appeal to the goodwill of these mega-companies and billionaires. Instead, they should emphatically join with Bonta and others to oppose these kinds of mergers, hoping to either stop them or require concessions that limit the size and scale of the new combined entities.
Adopting an anti-merger mindset in 2026 doesn’t require you to be a socialist or even a progressive. It’s just common sense. Does anyone want another monopoly-ish company like Google, Microsoft, or Amazon, except for their shareholders? Hell no.
So Bass, Newsom, Becerra, and anyone who calls themselves a liberal should be opposed to mergers of huge companies these days. But they should especially be opposed to mergers that place David Ellison in charge of more news organizations. Ellison, who runs Paramount and would helm the merged company, hired Bari Weiss to run CBS News. She’s firing stellar journalists, hiring terrible ones, blocking news segments that accurately depict the horrific actions of our authoritarian president, and single-handedly dismantling 60 Minutes. Ellison just published a disingenuous op-ed in The New York Times pretending that Weiss’s actions at CBS are good journalism and suggesting CNN would benefit from a similar approach if the merger happens. (CNN is owned by Warner Bros.)
I know we are in an era when the audiences and influence of traditional media are in decline. But CBS and CNN still matter. They employ a ton of journalists. They have the budgets to allow those journalists to report stories in depth. What they cover and don’t cover shapes what people see on social media. It would be a huge blow to both democracy and the Democrats if Weiss spends the next few years ordering CNN’s journalists to cover Democratic presidential candidates more negatively than they deserve while soft-pedaling the foibles of JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and other Republican 2028 hopefuls. The prospect of Weiss and Ellison controlling CNN alone should be enough for Democrats like Bass and Becerra to strongly oppose this merger.
So why aren’t they making this case? The Democratic Party is, well, stupid about the media. The party for decades ignored how the GOP was tilting news coverage to the right by both creating a conservative media ecosystem and blasting the mainstream media as liberally biased. Over the last year, even as liberal journalists have repeatedly pointed out how Weiss is changing CBS, Democratic politicians continue to appear on the network as if nothing has changed.
In reality, Weiss and Ellison are bigger threats to the Democratic Party than most Republican politicians. Viewers probably ignore anti-Democratic talking points coming from GOP members of Congress. In contrast, having prominent, trusted anchors constantly cast Democratic politicians as crazy and antisemitic, a hallmark of CBS coverage these days, is hugely valuable to the GOP.
Even if Bass, Newsom, Becerra, and other Democrats aren’t wary of corporate mergers or a Weiss-run CNN, surely they could let Bonta and the other attorneys general do their legal work first? After all, Bonta’s threats to take the merger case to trial would seem more credible (and therefore more fertile ground for a settlement on his terms) if his state’s most prominent Democrats weren’t undercutting him. That brings me to my third point. If you have watched Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, or Chuck Schumer over the last decade, you’ve seen this “let me show how reasonable I am” negotiation style full of rhetorical and actual concessions to the other side. Many Democratic politicians are uncomfortable with real fights and are desperate to avoid them. Advantage GOP, and in this case, David Ellison.
There is some good news here. Bonta canceled the meeting with Paramount, accusing the company of leaking confidential information about the negotiations. The attorney general does not seem afraid of this fight. He gets it. The problem is so many other Democratic politicians don’t. It would be terrible if a billionaire who has spent the last two years doing everything possible to appease Donald Trump gets to buy HBO and CNN and fire hundreds or even thousands of entertainment industry employees. It would be even worse if David Ellison gets to do all of that in part because Karen Bass, Xavier Becerra, and Gavin Newsom basically laid the groundwork for him.
