Resistance is not futile, no matter what the doomers say
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| California Attorney General Rob Bonta |
Locutus of Borg was wrong about resistance being futile, and so are our real-world demons of despair.
For months, we were resigned to Paramount, run by a right-wing billionaire friendly with Donald Trump, would merge with Warner Bros./Discovery. Not only had Paramount ruined the Tiffany Network of CBS and its once-vaunted jewel, CBS News, but now it was going to destroy another news network, CNN. CBS News editor Bari Weiss was slated to take the same role at CNN. This is much what happened in Hungary; former prime minister Viktor Orbán, as head of government, had control over the public broadcaster, and had his cronies buy up private media so that all that Hungarians would read, see, or hear would be government-approved. We were all doomed, and Trump's state seizure was unstoppable.
And then? Well.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, with a coalition of eleven other states, filed a lawsuit to stop the merger on antitrust grounds. The merger had been quickly approved by the Trump Justice Department, which saw no adverse effects to the deal. And Paramount thought it could get the suit either dismissed or fast-tracked.
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have agreed to delay closing their $81 billion merger well into next year, a stunning move that arrives as a judge continues to consider a challenge from 12 states seeking to block the deal altogether.
Paramount said in a filing Friday that it won’t close its Warner buyout until either a court ruling is made on the states’ claims or June 1, 2027. The agreement comes just days after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a temporary restraining order to freeze the transaction for weeks, noting that the states had raised some “serious questions” and made a strong case about the merger’s potential to “substantially lessen competition.”
The cute thing about this is that Paramount declared this a victory. That's just whistling past the graveyard, as these quotes from a Status News article detail:
John Newman, Herff Chair of Excellence, University of Memphis School of Law:
Paramount put itself in a tough spot here. Paramount seems to have been assuming this deal would sail through review, and even if it drew a challenge, Paramount’s lawyers could quickly persuade a judge to dismiss the case. That strategy predictably failed, leaving Paramount stuck between a rock and a hard place. Merging companies often do abandon their deals when facing the prospect of protracted litigation, as Nvidia did with its purchase of ARM a few years back. At some point, Paramount will start to face serious shareholder pressure, and that can create pressure to walk away from a bad deal.
George Hay, Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law, Cornell:
A combination of the costs and a mounting concern that this may not be such a great deal for Paramount given the high debt they will incur and, of course, a nontrivial risk that the courts will ultimately reject the deal. Don’t be surprised if they pull the plug.
Since the merger won't be concluded in the time agreed, David Ellison will start to incur fees for failing to close the deal. And since Paramount was going deep into debt to service this merger, that amounts to real money.
Obviously, scuppering this deal would be the best outcome. But even if it doesn't collapse, the states could place onerous conditions on the merger for it to settle the case.
That is the glory of our federal system. Power doesn't reside only in Washington, D.C. States also wield a lot of power. And where California goes, it may as well be as if the federal government itself intervened.
(Ellison laughably threatened to relocate Paramount out of California because of the suit. AG Bonta smirked at the threat.)
I say this often, both on this blog and online: Don't ascribe powers to our opponents that they do not possess. People like Ellison and Trump want to browbeat us into submission, to make their actions seem like faits accomplis, with no recourse save to acquiesce in sullenness. But, if that were the case, then I, certainly, would be in a gulag by now, and so would many of you.
We're in a dark time. But they are no darker than the oppression which Black Americans faced for a hundred years after "freedom" from slavery. They are no darker than the genocide of Native Americans. They are certainly no darker than those which Jews faced in Europe, or our ancestors faced during the Great Depression. We are in a dark time, but also a dumb time. Trump and his ilk yearn for the power to subjugate this nation and the world. But, they do not have it. They never had it. The worst they can do—and yes, I know, it's bad enough—is to wreck things and do untold damage. But we can repair damage. We can rebuild that which has been wrecked. But we can only do this if we remain resolute, if we do not give in to despair, if we remember that in the end we have the power to change and better this world. All they have is destruction. And that is no long-term plan.
Yes. Acknowledge that we are in a dark time. But we have, in fact, faced darker times. And all those previous times have taught us lessons for today. We do not go into a gun fight holding a knife. We go into it with an artillery battalion. Don't ever forget that.