Democrats Slam Trumpist Takeover of Warner Bros.

Democratic lawmakers slammed Paramount Skydance’s advancing efforts to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, after Netflix announced Thursday that it would back away from the monthslong bidding war to purchase part of the company.

Paramount Skydance is owned by Larry Ellison, a Trump megadonor, and run by his son David, who has overseen a right-ward cultural shift at CBS since taking it over last year. If Paramount Skydance acquired Warner Bros., Trump allies would have even greater control over media, including CNN, another broadcast news company that has been regularly targeted by the president.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the potential merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. as “an antitrust disaster threatening higher prices and fewer choices for American families.”

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had visited the White House Thursday, after President Trump demanded the streamer knock Susan Rice, a former Obama administration official, from its board of directors. Shortly after Sarandos arrived for the meeting, WBD announced that Paramount Skydance had offered the “superior deal.” Soon after, Netflix announced that it would back away from the bidding war.

“What did Trump officials tell the Netflix CEO today at the White House?” Warren pressed.

“A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want. With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law,” she added. At the federal level, only the Department of Justice could sue to block the deal.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s office pushed a reminder to Larry Ellison that he’d previously offered to testify before the Senate if his company’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. proved successful.

“In light of today’s announcement that Warner Bros. Discovery has designated Paramount’s offer a Company Superior Proposal, next week’s hearing presents a timely and appropriate opportunity for Mr. Ellison to make good on that commitment,” Booker’s aide told Deadline.

Democrats from California also weighed in on the deal that has major ramifications for the entertainment industry.

California Senator Adam Schiff said that either company’s efforts to own Warner Bros. would be subject to the “highest level of scrutiny” and should be “free from White House political influence.”

“Oligarchy in full effect,” Tom Steyer, a Democratic candidate for governor, wrote on X.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is boasting that he bullied Scouting America into altering its policies by threatening to remove DOD funding.

Hegseth posted a video on X Friday morning saying that the Pentagon would continue supporting the organization after it agreed to several “key reforms,” such as “reviewing and replacing politicized, divisive and discriminatory language throughout the organization, programs, and all publications. No more DEI. Zero.”

Scouting America also will also end its “citizenship in society” merit badge, which a DOD press release claims “made it mandatory for those with the rank of Life Scout to ‘realize the benefits of diversity, equity, inclusion and ethical leadership,’ prior to being allowed to advance to the rank of Eagle Scout.”

The organization will restrict itself to only allowing the sex designations male and female, and the sex noted on scouting applications has to match the applicant’s birth certificate. The organization will also introduce a military service merit badge, and will waive registration fees for the children of members of the military, whether active duty, reserve, or National Guard.

Hegseth warned that Scouting America had to stick to these commitments, and the DOD plans to “vigorously review” the organization’s progress in six months. If it finds that Scouting America hasn’t lived up to its commitments, the DOD will stop supporting the organization.

“We hope that doesn’t happen, but it could,” Hegseth said. “Ideally I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men. Maybe someday.”

Hegseth and his fellow conservatives had lamented that Scouting America began accepting gay youth in 2013, and ended its ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. It also announced nine years ago that it would accept transgender scouts, and began accepting girls into the Cub Scouts in 2018 and Boy Scouts (renamed Scouts BSA) the next year. Over 6,000 girls have since gone on to reach the top Eagle Scout rank.

Hegseth has had the Scouts in his crosshairs for years, saying on Fox in 2024 that the organization “has been cratering itself for quite some time.”

“This is an institution the left didn’t control. They didn’t want to improve it. They wanted to destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing,” Hegseth said at the time. In November, a draft memo written by Hegseth to Congress first floated the idea of ending DOD support for Scouting America. Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that it was reviewing its relationship with the organization.

Now, Hegseth has gotten Scouts to cave, at the expense of young people whose presence in the organization will be discouraged. A service organization with a strong history and reputation in the U.S. is now effectively in the Trump administration’s pocket.

The Pentagon used a laser to accidentally shoot a Customs and Border Protections drone out of the sky in Texas on Thursday.

“This reported engagement occurred when the Department of War employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace,” the Pentagon, CBP, and the Federal Aviation Administration said in a joint statement. “These agencies will continue to work on increased cooperation and communication to prevent such incidents in the future.”

The statement failed to mention that the “unmanned aerial system” the Pentagon shot down belonged to the U.S. government.

This incident, occurring just weeks after the CBP shut down El Paso airspace to shoot down some party balloons, continues to highlight the brash, reckless, and overly gung-ho mentality that has come to define the Pentagon in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tenure.

“Our heads are exploding over the news that DoD reportedly shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using a high-risk counter-unmanned aircraft system,” ranking House Committee on Homeland Security member Bennie G. Thompson and other Democrats said in a joint statement. “We said MONTHS ago that the White House’s decision to sidestep a bipartisan, tri-committee bill to appropriately train C-UAS operators and address the lack of coordination between the Pentagon, DHS and the FAA was a short-sighted idea. Now, we’re seeing the result of its incompetence.”

The Department of Justice is claiming that it removed a photo of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein from its released Epstein files because it was flagged for nudity. 

The photo was initially posted online to the public but was later removed, and shows Lutnick and Epstein walking on Little St. James, Epstein’s private island. There’s no visible nudity in the picture, which includes three other men  alongside Lutnick and Epstein. In a statement to The Daily Beast, the DOJ said the photo was “part of a batch of files that had been flagged for nudity.”

“The batch of thousands of images was pulled for review and is being uploaded with necessary redactions on a rolling basis,” a department official said. “No files are being deleted.”

It’s not a good excuse, especially considering that the DOJ has recklessly released nude photos to the public of Epstein’s victims. Lutnick used to claim that he cut off ties with Epstein in 2005, but many newly released files blatantly contradict his assertions, showing a personal and business relationship that continued for years afterward. 

Was the DOJ belatedly trying to protect the embattled Lutnick? If so, it failed, because every file in its Epstein archive is closely scrutinized, making any after-the-fact attempt to redact or retract a file easily noticed. In this case, the photo had already been logged by jmail, a website run by two tech workers who created a searchable database of Epstein’s email account. The DOJ later reuploaded the photo to its public database. 

Various high-profile figures around the world have faced consequences after the released files exposed Epstein’s relationships, including resignations and prosecutions, but not so much in the U.S. That’s because the DOJ is trying to protect people in the Trump administration and neglecting to open investigations into other powerful Americans to appease the president, who wishes it would all go away. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon officials took to X to whine about their failed deal with AI company Anthropic, whose Claude program is already deeply entrenched into the military.

The deal fell apart around Tuesday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to lift his restrictions on the Pentagon using his Claude AI program for mass surveillance and unmanned weapons systems.

“The Department of War has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement. This narrative is fake and being peddled by leftists in the media,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote Thursday on X. “Here’s what we’re asking: Allow the Pentagon to use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes. This is a simple, common-sense request that will prevent Anthropic from jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk. We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions. They have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide. Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk for DOW.”

“Anthropic hates Western Civilization,” billionaire Elon Musk posted, and Hegseth reposted.

Parnell is being facetious. The Defense Department’s primary demand to Anthropic was that it remove the contractual safeguards that stopped Claude from being used for mass surveillance or unmanned weapons systems. And why would anyone over the age of 25 believe that the U.S. government—including the Pentagon—isn’t interested in mass surveillance and autonomous weapons?

“OK, if that’s true, then the Pentagon should affirmatively agree that its use of AI will not include autonomous weapon development OR mass surveillance,” civil rights attorney Patrick Jaicomo wrote back to Parnell. “That would make this ‘fake news’ response a lot more believable, Sean.”

“So weird. Anthropic says ‘you guys can use claude all you want, as long as you aren’t doing A or B,’” another user wrote. “You say ‘we’re not gonna do A or B, that’s fake leftist news. Anyway the deal saying we can’t do A or B is unacceptable. We need a deal that allows us to do A and B.’”

The Pentagon is currently searching for “alternatives” to Claude.