by The Associated Press | Sep 21, 2026 | Business, News
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a settlement Monday that effectively paves the way for Paramount’s mega merger acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, with some new commitments.
The $81 billion blockbuster deal will bring together two of Hollywood’s oldest studios, key TV networks like CBS and CNN and streaming platforms HBO Max and Paramount+, as well as decades of libraries with titles ranging from “Harry Potter” to “Top Gun.”
But terms of Monday’s agreement include what Bonta called “court-enforceable” requirements for Skydance-owned Paramount to increase domestic production. The entertainment giant has agreed to establish a “news editorial independence board” to safeguard the journalist freedom of CNN and CBS News, Bonta said, as well as an independent monitor to ensure adherence to all the terms.
The settlement still needs final court approval.
Bonta maintained that Monday’s agreement “is not a vote of support for this merger” — but that he was always willing to come to the table and “find a strong solution that protects competition and consumers.”
Paramount CEO David Ellison, whose father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has ties to the Trump administration, thanked Bonta and the other attorneys general, as well as the Writers Guild of America.
“Our shared aim was an outcome that best serves consumers, workers and — most importantly — the creative community so vital to the art of visual storytelling. We’re confident this agreement does exactly that,” David Ellison said in a statement issued through Paramount.
The coalition of states — including entertainment heavyweights like California and New York — sued to block the $81 billion merger back in July, alleging a Paramount-Warner combo would “extinguish competition” and lead to fewer choices
by Jacques Berlinerblau | Sep 16, 2026 | Business, culture, Opinion
“South Park,” or, per recent rebranding, “South America,” kicks off its 29th season Wednesday night. The name change, according to the show’s creators, was “inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google,” tech giants who valiantly obeyed President Donald Trump’s decree that we henceforth refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America.
If “South America” stays true to “South Park” form, I predict three things will transpire in the new season. First, Trump, his administration and his enablers are going to be ceaselessly, mercilessly skewered. Second, the skewering is going to be of the oh my God I can’t believe they just joked about that! variety. And third, the mockery will be so relentlessly vulgar that we will all wonder if “South Park” is daring this government to retaliate.
What makes me nervous is that this government just might.
The mockery will be so relentlessly vulgar that we will all wonder if “South Park” is daring this government to retaliate.
I’m a little less concerned (but concerned nonetheless) about the effects that such relentless partisan sniping may have on the quality of the comedy itself. Then again, it would likely be even more troubling if the animated series suddenly stopped dropkicking its target in the White House; that would be an example of the same “capitulation,” in the words of the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, that they see in their parent company Paramount’s engagement with the Trump administration.
So, roast or retreat? If the series keeps up its pace of lampooning Trump, it risks falling into an obsessive rut of comedic predictability. If it backs off, it’s a dereliction of artistic
by Hannah Holland | Sep 16, 2026 | Business, culture, Opinion
For the second time in just over a year, actor Sydney Sweeney is at the center of an advertising controversy that illuminates lurking realities of American culture. This time, Sweeney posed nearly nude, strategically covering her body with various sports equipment, for sports predication market platform Novig.
At one point, while wearing soccer cleats and little else, Sweeney looks at the camera and says, “No betting on wars or deaths and no politics. Just you, your takes and sports.”
No politics, eh?
I find it hard to argue that politics have no bearing on an intentionally provocative ad for a prediction market platform featuring a blatantly sexualized woman during a time when women’s reproductive rights are under attack.
Rage bait works. Hot takes work. Spectacle works. Algorithms reward engagement.
In what appears to be a response to the considerable backlash to the ad, including post after post from Olympic and collegiate athletes showing “what a woman in sports looks like,” Sweeney posted a series of photos from ESPN Magazine’s “The Body Issue.” Discontinued since 2019, the long-running issue featured athletes nude or partially nude, showcasing the power, strength and physicality required for athletic excellence. What Sweeney conveyed in the advertisement is wholly different, namely because she is not, nor is she claiming to be, an athlete of any kind.
Sweeney’s previous marketing firestorm — a campaign for American Eagle — became so polarizing and so contentious that I got death threats for writing about it.
Then, among other things, my column posited that advertisements, like Sweeney for American Eagle and Kendall Jenner for Pepsi, reflect what is pervasive in American culture at that time. And while I
by Ja'han Jones | Sep 16, 2026 | Business, News Analysis, Science, White House
Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Thiel takes Antichrist lectures to Tennessee
MAGA-aligned tech oligarch Peter Thiel is bringing his bizarre Antichrist lecture series to Tennessee later this month after hosting similar events at the Vatican and in San Francisco.
As The Tennessean reported:
Details about the lecture series appear sparse and secretive. The event page describes the series as a “closed-door, off-the-record event” hosted by The Pamphleteer, an online news publication in Nashville that bills itself as an alternative to “corporate and progressive” media, and Meriwether Academy, a Nashville-based nonprofit that says its mission is to “grow fraternal networks and educational societies across America” with the ultimate goal of developing boys’ schools in every state offering a classical and outdoor education.
It’s a curious decision for a Big Tech leader to take such talks to Tennessee of all places, given that the state is at the heart of the backlash to artificial intelligence data centers. Vice President JD Vance, a protégé of Thiel’s, has also pushed rhetoric about an Antichrist possibly living among us, an assertion that has come as he has publicly derided liberal Christians.
Read more at The Tennessean.
Crypto bill crashes
Three Republicans joined Democrats in opposition to a bill on cryptocurrency regulation that many in the GOP — and the president, in particular — have sought to pass. Democrats have raised concern about the so-called Clarity Act’s potential to help enrich President Donald Trump, who raked in more than $1 billion from the crypto industry in 2025, and his family.
Read more at The Hill.
Regulatory oversight of AI
At a
by Zeeshan Aleem | Aug 17, 2026 | Business, Economy, Opinion, White House
President Donald Trump always seems to be cooking up some new scheme to profit off the presidency. And yet his administration is escalating its efforts to crack down on suspected small-scale fraud involving government-funded programs. Trump’s inordinate focus on relatively minor offenses should be understood as a bid to vilify programs meant to help vulnerable people. It also serves as a tool to distract from the misbehavior of him and his cronies.
The New York Times pointed out the Justice Department’s new and unusual focus on small-dollar fraud. A food truck in Santa Ana, California, caught prosecutors’ attention because of a suspiciously large proportion of transactions using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards. A cashier at a Los Angeles grocery store was accused of accepting about $10,000 worth of SNAP (food stamps) cards as payment and giving undercover federal immigration officers cash for them.
Trump himself is exploiting the extraordinary power of the presidency in ways that constitute a defrauding of the public.
These are striking low-level cases for federal law enforcement. As the Times notes, federal prosecutors have “generally observed minimum-dollar thresholds in fraud cases, and in many U.S. attorney’s offices in large cities, “the threshold sits around half a million dollars.” Jacqueline Kelly, a former federal prosecutor, told the Times that a food truck “is not the kind of case you would typically see federal law enforcement resources being poured into.” Such cases are typically handled by state or local officials.
One thing that stands out about these cases, beyond how relatively minor they seem, is that they involve people allegedly misusing SNAP benefits. Fraud using SNAP benefits is rare. But in the
by Ja'han Jones | Aug 12, 2026 | Business, Opinion, Science
Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.
Zuckerbot’s populist manifesto
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg yet again appears desperate for a populist rebrand.
After years of sidling up to the MAGA movement, Zuckerberg just unleashed a 6,500-word manifesto outlining his vision for artificial intelligence titled “The Future Is for Everyone.” And it reads like an AI chatbot’s poor attempt to relate to humans.
Zuckerberg criticizes people who predict AI “doom,” while arguing for the industry to adopt Meta’s open-source model strategy — that is, rather than the proprietary models offered by Meta’s competitors at OpenAI and Anthropic. Put another way: What’s best for the AI industry is what serves Zuck’s company best. Otherwise, he says, AI labs other than his own will control access to “superintelligence.”
If you’re thinking Zuckerberg may not be the best messenger for this kind of populist rhetoric, you’re not alone. Over at Tech Crunch, Russell Brandom rebuked the Meta CEO’s dismissive tone, explaining that distrust toward Meta and social media more broadly makes him difficult to take seriously on this matter. Brandom also argued against the sunny portrayal of AI tools, saying: “Even as Zuckerberg tries to paint a picture of the wonderful future abundant superintelligence will bring, he keeps reminding us of all the ways it’s likely to go wrong.”
Read more at Tech Crunch.
Truth Social special access
Donald Trump’s media company said more than 10 customers have agreed to pay $60,000 to $100,000 monthly for the brazenly corrupt feature on Truth Social that allows Wall Street to obtain early access to the president’s social media posts.
Read more
