Block the Paramount-Warner Merger and Hold FCC Accountable

Hold hearings on the FCC's approval of the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger and push to restore meaningful media ownership limits. This deal hands control of CNN and CBS News to David Ellison while giving Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar a combined 49.5 percent equity stake in the entity that will run two of America's three most important news networks. The so-called "editorial independence board" protecting these outlets will be hand-picked by the Ellisons themselves — the exact same arrangement Rupert Murdoch used when he took over the Wall Street Journal in 2007. California's attorney general caved. The FCC, under Brendan Carr, blessed foreign authoritarian money flowing into American newsrooms. Every commitment Ellison made can be voided by a force majeure clause, and a sunset provision kills all obligations in five years. In every country that has slid into autocracy over the past half-century — Russia, Hungary, Egypt, the Philippines — the first move was putting the press in the hands of regime-friendly billionaires. We are watching that playbook run in real time. Congress needs to act: restore the media ownership rules Clinton dismantled in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and enforce antitrust law before there is nothing left to protect.