Colleagues with the scoop.

In a few minutes, the TRO hearing on the lawsuit by California and other states challenging the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal. Zoom details here: cand.uscourts.gov/judges/amo/m...

I love this story (and also hate it). www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/t...

And the Paramount case has now been transferred to Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland with a hearing on the states request to block the deal from closing next week scheduled for tomorrow at 10 am

Paramount has filed a motion seeking to force Judge Casey Pitts to recuse from the antitrust case brought by California and other states since he served as legal counsel to the Writers Guild in litigation before joining the bench.

As Acting AG Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing kicks off this morning, a look at the criticism he faced from a federal judge in Miami just two days ago for how he handled DOJ's deal to settle President Trump's $10B lawsuit against the IRS buff.ly/SRuBbS2 The hearing is live here: buff.ly/lvGSzUK

it will never not be funny that Jeff Kessler is the lead trial attorney for the state AGs in the LiveNation antitrust trial AND the lead trial attorney for the ParamountSkydance antitrust trial against the state AGs

"Gift Article" 💔 "The End of Reading is Here" "A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

With @sisco.bsky.social: The TransDigm-Stellant deal is at least the third merger that the antitrust division has recommended challenging, only to face resistance from Woodward — a defense attorney who represented President Donald Trump’s valet before joining DOJ.

RIP Independent Agencies.

Slaughter is an earthquake: SCOTUS has overturned a 90-year-old precedent that facilitated much of modern governance by granting many agencies meaningful independence from the president. Now SCOTUS crushes that independence ... for seemingly every agency except the Federal Reserve.

And there is it. Supreme Court overrules Humphrey's Executor, ruling president must be able to fire anyone: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

This is also a pet peeves of mine with SCOTUS. I still remember when I found out that the EU courts tells reporters what day to expect a ruling on a case (and my colleagues were all confused about why I thought that was novel)

Can't help but read this as foreshadowing for Slaughter, where the court is likely to overrule its 1935 precedent on independent agencies. (That plus the fact they're saving it for last)

NEW: Unsealed records detail a secret court fight between Google and DOJ over what the company protested was a "grossly overbroad" warrant in 2023 to identify hundreds of users based on their search histories in connection with the 2021 DC pipe bombs investigation www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

As we reported on Friday, the Justice Department closed its antitrust review of the Paramount-WBD deal. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

AICOA is back! The Big Tech antitrust bill that died in 2022 after making it out of both House and Senate committees was reintroduced in the Senate yesterday. Bipartisan sponsors. Fact sheet here: www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

The FTC is taking credit for forcing a company to go out of business. www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

Earlier this week, the UK ordered that Google must allow publishers to opt-out of having their content used for AI Overviews. (The US DOJ had asked the Google search court for that as well and the judge said no) www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

NEW from Chris Strohm: US officials are continuing with an agreement that bars the government from probing past tax filings from President Donald Trump and his businesses, according to a person familiar with the matter, while a plan to set up the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" is on hold buff.ly/xeC7Ac3

New -- Valve: anticorporate hero or big tech but small? Gamers know Valve as a freewheeling enterprise, but previously unreported docs show controversial business practices that, critics say, restrict both gamers and game-makers. Feature w @austincarr.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

New from @sisco.bsky.social

...Really wasn't expecting it to be a female judge...

I love him.

Sure, we live in hell BUT ALSO Denali Park has a sled dog puppy webcam www.nps.gov/dena/learn/p...

Pro-tip: If a trial is more than a week and you are required to sit on the court benches (as opposed to in a press room with a better chair), you absolutely need a cushion. Otherwise you will be wrecked by the end.

Thank goodness someone finally wrote this. I've always sort of felt that people who complain about Bluesky are just proving them don't understand the platform...and that they can make it how they want if they would just bother to put in some effort.

In a filing with the DC Circuit, the FCC says that it will consider the Media bureau's order allowing the Nexstar-Tegna sometime "this year." The FCC needs to consider how the order alongside the injunction in the antitrust case and a separate rulemaking on removing the ownership cap

"There's something both frustrating and deeply patronizing about justices choosing to issue unexplained rulings in the middle of the night, only popping their heads out for fawning interviews when they've got a shitty book to sell, and then scolding us for not understanding

With @kelcee.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

That was a soul-crushingly boring hearing in US v Google about confidentiality of third-party info during the remedy. The DOJ and states argued that Google isn’t entitled to everything given to the Technical Committee. Google says it needs some stuff or it won’t be able to know when to object

Congrats to my colleagues for winning a Pulitzer for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for this piece:

Today the Justice Department held a press conference to confirm something and then say very little else about it.

Moonlighting over at the FCC today.

New from @sisco.bsky.social @allisonmcneely.bsky.social and me:

To prep for a SCOTUS argument last year, I researched how often the court has officially overturned decisions related to constitutional rights. The Roberts Court has only "officially" overturned 10 cases -- because it prefers to instead go all the way up to the line but not step over it