Connecticut's attorney general admitted Democrats demanded David Ellison sell off CNN as the price of his merger.
They settled for a CNN babysitting board instead, but five Paramount subscribers refused to let the merger go.
So they rushed an emergency plea to Elena Kagan on the eve of closing.
AGs Wanted CNN and CBS News Stripped Away
Twelve Democrat state attorneys general, led by California's Rob Bonta, sued to stop Paramount's $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount had already beaten Netflix in a bidding war, and the Justice Department cleared the deal in June.
The states' fight was never really about movie theaters.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the coalition "wanted and demanded full divestiture of CNN and CBS News."
Divestiture means forcing a company to sell.
In plain English, Democrats wanted two of the biggest newsrooms in America pried away from a new owner they didn't trust.
The reason isn't hard to figure out.
Ellison – whose father is AI bigtimer and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and who is now a major owner of TikTok after selling Congress on it being a national security threat – had already put Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion writer, in charge of CBS News.
In September, the AGs folded.
Their settlement, joined by the Writers Guild of America, sets up a board to guard editorial independence at both networks.
Paramount also agreed to put 30 films a year in theaters and spend an extra $1.5 billion on movie production over five years.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved the deal.
Five Subscribers Took One Last Shot at the Supreme Court
That should have been the end of it.
It wasn't for Pamela Faust and four other consumers, who had sued back in April claiming the merger would kill competition between two rival studios.
Martinez-Olguin refused their request for a restraining order on September 30.
The subscribers claimed she brushed past evidence in the record, including Paramount's plans for layoffs.
The Ninth Circuit turned them down two days later.
So they went to the Supreme Court with an emergency application, warning that a later court victory would come too late.
They told the justices that "later relief cannot restore the period of competition that was lost."
Kagan handles emergency requests out of California and the rest of the Ninth Circuit.
She rejected this one in an unsigned order, without a word of explanation.
On October 6, the deal closed and the combined company became Skydance Corporation.
One company now holds CBS, CNN, HBO Max, Paramount+, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and TNT Sports, with more than 200 million streaming subscribers.
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders walked away with about $31 a share in cash.
Skydance is also promising more than $6 billion in yearly savings within three years, which on Wall Street usually means job cuts.
Mark Thompson, the CNN chairman who ran the network under Warner Bros. Discovery, is staying on under the new owners.
"Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry," Ellison said.
Faust and her fellow subscribers are left with a lawsuit against a merger that already happened.
Antitrust Law Fails Once Again
Rewind to 2017.
When Trump's Justice Department sued to block AT&T from buying Time Warner and CNN, Democrats and the media accused him of abusing antitrust law to punish a news network.
Judge Richard Leon let that deal through in June 2018, and an appeals court backed him up the next year.
Fast forward to 2026, and a dozen Democrat attorneys general tried the exact move they once condemned.
Only this time, William Tong said the quiet part on the record.
Bonta's office had warned the merged giant would control close to a third of the movie business and a third of cable programming.
Then Bonta signed a settlement that leaves every bit of that in one company's hands.
What the Democrats walked away with was oversight of two newsrooms.
Norman Eisen, the lawyer House Democrats brought in for Trump's first impeachment, now runs a group called Democracy Defenders that has promised to monitor CNN and CBS News around the clock.
That's not a fight over ticket prices or streaming bundles.
It's a fight over who gets to decide what millions of Americans see on the evening news.
The attorneys general wanted a veto over who owns America's newsrooms.
They didn't get it – in this case they probably should have.
Because one family owning so much of major American media can’t be good for America or the MAGA base.
https://twitter.com/Truthtellerftm/status/1923893470894190975
CNN changed hands anyway.
Sources:
- John Sexton, "Democrats Agree to Settle Paramount Merger With Protection for CNN," Hot Air, September 21, 2026.
- Gavin J. Quinton, "Supreme Court Rejects a Last-Ditch Effort to Block the Paramount-Warner Merger," The Washington Sun, October 5, 2026.
- Matthew Vadum, "Supreme Court Nixes Last Ditch Effort to Block Paramount Merger," The Epoch Times, October 6, 2026.
- David Zimmermann, "Justice Kagan denies last-minute bid to halt Paramount-Warner Bros. merger," Washington Examiner, October 5, 2026.
- Kelsey Reichmann, "Consumers file Hail Mary at SCOTUS to block Paramount-Warner merger," Courthouse News Service, October 5, 2026.
- Skydance Corporation, "Paramount Completes Acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery," PR Newswire, October 6, 2026.
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