Greetings from Seattle, and welcome back to In the Room. What’s one to do without Wimbledon or the World Cup?

In tonight’s issue, an examination of a development both remarkable and wholly unsurprising: regulators’ apparent lack of appetite for any CBS News–CNN discussion in the suit backed by 12 attorneys general challenging David Ellison’s proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. merger. While some may have hoped the political class would make more of the specter of Bari Weiss & co. running two of the nation’s most-storied TV news brands, any such thinking looks to have been seriously misguided.

Also: Be sure to check out my partner Matt Belloni’s What I’m Hearing private email tonight; he’ll have an exclusive interview with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is spearheading the challenge.

🎙️ Plus, on tomorrow’s episode of The Grill Room: Stephen Dubner, the Freakonomics author and podcast host, drops by to unveil his new YouTube show, Better in Person, and to discuss the art and architecture of the longform interview. We’ll also discuss how format changes have impacted the influencer economy. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen.

Also mentioned in this issue: Trump, Pete Hegseth, David McCraw, Kash Patel, Aron D’Souza, Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Zaz, Bill Cohan, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, Larry Ellison, and more.

Open Tab

Oh, Big Brother: The Trump administration has subpoenaed several New York Times journalists who reported on security vulnerabilities regarding the president’s Qatari-donated Air Force One plane. At the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that the Pentagon and the Justice Department had launched a joint task force to identify and prosecute people who leak sensitive government information. Both moves drew scrutiny from journalists and First Amendment advocates. In a statement, Times lawyer David McCraw said the administration’s actions “should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects.”

Nota bene: The Times pointed out that the White House took the irregular step of instructing F.B.I. director Kash Patel to oversee the investigation into the Times reporters. Patel reportedly spent eight hours at the White House on Friday focused on the effort.

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Objection, overruled: Aron D’Souza, the lawyer and entrepreneur who recently founded Objection.ai, a journalism “tribunal” site with backing from Peter Thiel, has rebranded the venture as “The Primary” and is refashioning it as a site that scores and ranks journalists based on “the rigor of their reporting.” Officially, the pivot was inspired by Aron’s realization that “verdicts punish failure” but “don’t fix the incentive.” It’s also quite likely that there wasn’t sufficient market demand for a service that enlisted former FBI agents to fact-check journalists.

In any event, this is certainly an interesting idea, but one that would probably resonate better with journalists if it weren’t coming from a team that was so antagonistic toward the people it is now trying to index. Aron, as you probably know, is the guy who led Peter and Hulk Hogan’s litigation against Gawker Media, which ended the business.
And finally…: Zaz is selling nearly $60 million worth of WBD stock.

And now, the main event…

Let CNN & CBS News Eat Their Cake

As the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger has played out alongside the Bari-fication of CBS News, there was a sense among some in the media class that regulators might make hay of the deal’s proposed combination of two of the nation’s most storied brands. Any such notion turned out to be seriously misguided.

Dylan Byers

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta materialized on a dusty patch of trail in front of the Hollywood sign to announce that he and 11 fellow state A.G.s had sued to block the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger. His complaint dutifully catalogued the threats to moviegoers, theatrical distributors, and cable operators, as well as the familiar harms: extensive job losses, weakened competition, fewer movies and TV shows. But despite months of Beltway and media-class yarn-spinning about Bari Weiss and the ostensible destruction of the news media, it was strikingly indifferent to the prospect of two of the nation’s most storied brands, CBS and CNN, coming under the same corporate roof.

In retrospect, this was both remarkable and wholly unsurprising. Yes, the reliably self-obsessed professional media class tends to overindex on the significance of its own affairs, and both the Bari factor and the impending CBS–CNN merger have been an especially present leitmotif hanging over the deal—particularly in political circles. As I’ve reported, Bari and her team are already measuring the drapes in Atlanta, and anxieties have been high.

Alas, Bonta fired his opening salvo against David Ellison without any real paeans to the plight of his newsrooms. “This merger will mean fewer journalists informing the electorate,” Bonta said. “It’ll mean fewer opportunities for Americans to hear the full breadth of information and opinions on a subject…” That was it. And so, despite all that Bari-inflected sturm und drang, the final hurdle to David’s grand merger is now really just another Hollywood consolidation story.

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In truth, Bonta and his fellow state A.G.s have a weak case here. The antitrust reflex is to conflate big with bad, and Bonta & Co. say that this deal would “extinguish competition.” In fact, the real question plaguing David is whether this combined WarnerMount will be big enough to play in this brave new market, where everyone competes with everyone for viewer attention. Does anyone reasonably think even a combined CBS–CNN would be on equal footing in an information ecosystem that includes YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and whatever A.I.-powered entertainment platforms are coming? Whether Bonta is truly or willfully ignorant of these marketplace dynamics is beside the point. As my partner Bill Cohan has noted, Bonta feels the need “to show fellow Democrats that he’s a real political player,” even when he’s playing with a weak hand.

In truth, this is a political fight, steeped in partisan antipathies. To state the obvious, the Democratic A.G.s’ aversion to this deal is not merely fueled by a perceived threat to “the consumer.” It’s also driven by suspicions about David’s designs on WarnerMount that have been fueled by his rather overt courtship of Trump, his father’s politics, and, to some extent, the decision to put Bari in charge of the news operation. If David had had to secure this deal in a Harris administration and make the corollary sacrifices and prostrations—presumably in a Napa wine cave rather than ringside at a UFC match—one presumes it would have been Bonta’s Republican colleagues who would be seeking to block it.

But that, too, is telling. Lost amid the political theater surrounding the Paramount–WBD deal—really, lost amid any discussion of David—is a true appreciation for his actual politics. Most sources close to him describe him as a moderate or moderate Democrat, noting that he donated $930,000 to Biden in 2024. But, in truth, he is nothing so much as a corporate pragmatist who is willing to do whatever it takes to get this deal across the finish line, even if that means throwing a private event for Trump before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner or pacing the halls of the Capitol Building with the late Lindsey Graham. Meanwhile, at the risk of drawing the ire of some already voluble critics, any honest assessment of Bari’s tenure at CBS News should be able to discern that, the “Inside CECOT” debacle notwithstanding, she’s not actually transforming it into a MAGA-fied right-wing network. (Seriously, folks, watch it.)

Presumably, David is now determining what olive branches he can still extend to Bonta and the other A.G.s, since a commitment to 30 films a year with a 45-day theatrical window wasn’t enough. CNN itself is apparently not a bargaining chip, as Bonta has now said he’s not asking for David to divest the cable news network—as those around the A.G. had once widely believed he would, my partner Matt Belloni recently reported.

Alternatively, David could start playing hardball. On Sunday, Semafor reported that David’s “friends and advisors” had been encouraging the Paramount chief “to consider shifting his business out of the state.” The float was perceived by many media insiders as a mere bluff to deter the suit. But several sources close to David assured me that such drastic measures are not out of the question. After all, they reminded me, David’s father, Larry, relocated Oracle to Austin from Redwood City six years ago. “Let’s see how far [the A.G.s] want to take this,” one insider said.

Indeed, the entire premise of David’s pursuit of a media empire is that he intends to compete with the real players and won’t be moored by legacy. “Think about who’s in his ear, think about his dad,” one source who knows David told me. “David has spent his life surrounded by people who are thinking far beyond Hollywood.”

Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday.

A professional-grade rundown on the business of sports from John Ourand, the industry’s preeminent journalist, covering the leagues, players, agencies, media deals, and the egos fueling it all. Plus, the latest intel from Eriq Gardner on the sports legal beat.

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