The Stock Market Flashes a Warning as Investors Get Bad News About President Trump’s Economy. History Says This Will Happen Next.

Trevor Jennewine, 

The Motley Fool
Sat, October 10, 2026

The U.S. stock market has overcome economic headwinds to deliver solid returns this year. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX:^IXIC) have advanced 14% and 18%, respectively. But investors recently got bad news about the economy, and the blame lies with inflationary pressure created by President Trump's tariffs and his decision to launch military operations in Iran.

Consumer sentiment continued to decline in October, reaching its second-lowest level in history. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is sounding an alarm for the first time since the dot-com crash in 2000. Here's what it means for the stock market.

Consumer sentiment continued to fall in October, reaching its second-lowest level on record

Each month, the University of Michigan publishes the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS), a metric based on a 50-question survey covering personal finances, business conditions, and buying conditions. Higher scores indicate that consumers are more confident in their financial situation and the overall economy, while lower scores indicate a more pessimistic outlook.

Consumer sentiment fell to 46.3 in October 2026, the second-lowest reading since the University of Michigan began collecting data in 1952. Persistent inflation was the primary reason for the drop. The latest survey results show consumers think inflation will reach 4.7% in the next year. Year-ahead inflation expectations have risen substantially from 3.4% in February because the Iran war has disrupted global oil supplies.

Low consumer sentiment is bad news for investors because consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP), making it the primary engine of economic growth. The stock market is forward-looking, meaning share prices reflect expectations concerning future corporate financial results. A decline in consumer sentiment can pressure stocks by raising concerns about slower economic growth and weaker corporate earnings.

Historically, weakening consumer sentiment has often been a precursor to stock market losses. Here are two recent examples:

Consumer sentiment peaked at 96.9 in January 2007, then fell to 55.3 by November 2008. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 peaked in October 2007, then dropped 57% by March 2009.

Consumer sentiment peaked at 88.3 in April 2021, then fell sharply to 50 by June 2022. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 peaked in January 2022, then dropped 25% by October 2022.

In short, consumer sentiment has historically peaked and bottomed ahead of the stock market. That makes the recent weakness particularly concerning: Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, consumer sentiment has averaged 54.7, down from 74 in December 2024. That persistent pessimism hints at a potential stock market downturn.

The stock market flashes a warning last seen during the dot-com bubble

The S&P 500 had a cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio of 40.6 in September. That is well above the 20-year average of 27.8. In fact, excluding the current year, the stock market has not been so expensive since the dot-com crash in September 2000.

More alarmingly, the S&P 500's CAPE ratio has only topped 40 in 26 months since the index was created in January 1957, meaning the stock market has only been more expensive 3% of the time throughout history. And past incidents have generally preceded big losses.

There are two noteworthy data points in the chart. First, the S&P 500 has generally declined over the one-year and two-year periods after a monthly CAPE ratio of at least 40. Second, the S&P 500 has never delivered a positive three-year return following a monthly CAPE ratio of at least 40. In short, history says the S&P 500 could decline 30% by October 2029.

Of course, past performance is never a guarantee of future results, and the chart above is based on a relatively small data set. Additionally, the CAPE ratio is a backward-looking indicator, meaning it does not account for the possibility that S&P 500 earnings could grow faster in the future as artificial intelligence drives efficiency and productivity gains.

Nevertheless, the stock market is historically expensive, so investors should be cautious in the current environment. That means focusing on quality stocks and never purchasing any stock you aren't prepared to hold through volatility.

Trevor Jennewine has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Spain’s housing crisis takes centre stage ahead of snap election

Longstanding anger over unaffordable housing in Spain has become a central issue in next month’s general election, as rising rents, a shortage of public housing and a boom in tourist rentals put growing pressure on households.


Issued on: 09/10/2026 -  RFI

People hold up keys as a sign of protest during a demonstration demanding stronger laws to protect renters in Madrid, Spain, 3 October 2026. © AP Photo/Andrea Comas

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday called a snap election for 29 November, after parliament rejected housing relief measures proposed by his minority government.

It came after tens of thousands of protesters marched in Madrid and other cities to demand affordable housing, galvanised by the forcible eviction of an elderly woman, who died in hospital this week.

Maricarmen Abascal, 87, was evicted on a stretcher on 23 September after the real estate firm that owned her Madrid apartment drastically hiked the rent.

By the time she died on Wednesday, she had become the symbol of a crisis that cuts across Spanish society – young and old, renters and buyers, workers and pensioners.

The uproar at her eviction triggered national demonstrations, with hundreds of people camping in central Madrid's Puerta del Sol square.

Protesters set up tents in Puerta del Sol square, on 28 September 2026. © REUTERS - Juan Medina

On Thursday, the square turned into an improvised memorial to Abascal.

Protesters in the square wept and embraced each other after learning the news. Hundreds marched towards parliament on Wednesday night, some calling the death a "murder".

A deal had been reached with the real estate firm allowing Abascal to return home at a lower rent, but she ultimately spent her final days in hospital.

"She didn't have to die this way. Maricarmen wanted to die in her house," said Valeria Racu, a spokeswoman for the Madrid Tenants' Union, which supported Abascal in her years-long legal battle against the company.

Unions have called for a national minute's silence at noon on Friday.

Chronic shortage

As in other European countries, housing has long been a major public concern in Spain, particularly for young adults. Priced out of the market, many live with their parents into their 30s and beyond.

Growth in housing prices has outstripped wages in recent years.

According to the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the average gross monthly salary in Spain is around €2,460. Meanwhile, renting a 50-square-metre apartment in Madrid cost an average of €1,170 per month in September, according to real estate portal Idealista – around half of a normal income.

Meanwhile Spanish inflation hit 4.9 percent in September – its highest level since February 2023.

Many residents in popular destinations like Barcelona complain that short-term tourist accommodation is limiting supply and driving up prices.

Investment funds with large housing portfolios are also accused of acquiring properties and hiking rents to maximise profits.

Protesters hold a picture of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old pensioner whose eviction triggered nationwide protests over Spain's chronic housing crisis, after her death on 7 October 2026. © AFP - THOMAS COEX

A limited supply of public housing is another major factor.

Madrid has only around 10,000 social housing units for its 3.5 million inhabitants. Such is the demand for them that some public apartments are allocated by lottery.

A history of private home ownership partly explains the small public housing stock. Under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975, authorities encouraged people to buy.

But the model is breaking down, especially for the young. While almost three in four households own their main residence, more than half of under-30s rented in 2025, according to the INE.

Jorge Galindo, director of the Centre for Economic Policy at Esade business school, said the 2008 global financial crash was a turning point for the Spanish housing market. The bursting of a real estate bubble sparked the "collapse" of construction and "the destruction of a million jobs" in the sector, Galindo told French news agency AFP.

Since then, supply has fallen from around 260,000 new builds per year in the 1990s to 92,000 in 2025, he said.

The expert warned that the country of around 50 million people risked becoming "a society of inheritors" in which home ownership depends on parents passing property to their children.

Election pressure

Successive governments have struggled to resolve the problem, which will be a central debate of next month's snap election.

Last week, Sanchez's leftist coalition proposed a series of measures including more restrictions on evictions, a ban on the speculative purchase of homes and the automatic renewal of tenant contracts.

But the minority government failed to pass them in parliament, leading Sanchez to bring forward a vote originally scheduled for 2027.

Spain's main unions have called a general strike for 11 November to increase pressure on the government over housing, wages and the cost of living.

In 2023, Sanchez's government passed a law that provided for more social housing, the regulation of rents in areas under the greatest stress and punishments for owners who left their properties empty. But the law has not stopped prices spiralling.

Right-wingers say the leftist central government has been unable to tackle the crisis after eight years in power. The main opposition, the conservative Popular Party, advocates a building boom to make up the deficit between supply and demand.

Sanchez, who is trailing in most polls, has accused the Popular Party and far-right Vox of siding with speculators and large investment funds by voting down his housing measures.

For Galindo, the debate contains a "paradox".

"Those who suffer most from the housing crisis are those with the least weight at the ballot box: young people, who vote less, and immigrants."

If AI Is Crashing, The Story Should Be Jail In, Not Bail Out – OpEd


By Dean Baker

Key Takeaways:

The author treats Oracle’s selloff and Sam Altman’s uncertainty as a possible AI-bubble warning, and argues the real risk is a 2008-style bailout justified by a “second Great Depression” claim he calls false.

Predicted rescues include taxpayer stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX, below-market loans, extra contracts, and loan guarantees—sold as cost-free but, he says, transfers to owners who already fund both parties.

He wants the market to stop overbuilding data centers, and criminal liability for AI systems that break into other firms’ systems, not self-regulation or soft government oversight.

The end-of-the-week meltdown of Oracle, coupled with Sam Altman’s admission that his Open AI team has no idea what it’s doing, has many hoping that the AI bubble is about to burst. It’s too early to know whether we have yet seen the Bear Stearns moment of the AI bubble, but we should be on guard against another bad moment of the housing bubble: the bank bailouts.

To remind folks, when most of the major banks’ greed put them at the edge of bankruptcy as the housing bubble collapsed, the government rushed to the rescue with trillions of dollars of cash, loans, and guarantees. They justified this massive intervention with the Big Lie: if we didn’t save the banks, we would be hit by the Second Great Depression.

The Big Lie was solemnly repeated in both opinion and news pieces across the political spectrum. Leading Democrats, like soon-to-be President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pushed it as hard as then-President George W. Bush and his cabinet. Dissenting opinions were largely excluded from polite discussion.


To be clear, allowing the free market to work its magic and put most of our largest banks out of business, along with many smaller ones, would have made the recession worse. But it would have done more to reduce wealth inequality than twenty Piketty wealth taxes. (Everyone’s bank accounts were guaranteed by the FDIC, so all but the wealthy would still have full access to their money.) However, the idea that we would have faced a decade of double-digit unemployment without the bailouts was complete nonsense.

We know how to get out of a depression: you spend money. That’s what we did with World War II. We spent a ton of money, and the economy came roaring back. It’s true this was due to a huge war, but war does not have a magical impact on the economy. If we spent the same money ten years earlier on building up the nation’s housing and infrastructure, as well as our health care and education system, we would not have the first Great Depression.

In the crash of the housing bubble case, we could have spent big time on health care, childcare, and other needs, quickly boosting the economy back to full employment. We managed to do that just over a decade later in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the politicians, the big money folks, and the media were not going to allow reality into the discussion. They wanted the taxpayers to save their banks and the bloated financial industry. They were prepared to say whatever was necessary to accomplish this goal.

The Second Great Bailout?

This digression is useful because people should be aware of how reality can be tossed by the wayside when the rich and powerful demand something from the government. We can’t know yet whether the Oracle meltdown, and the AI leaders’ admission that they don’t know what they are doing, will be enough to force the big money actors in the stock market to look at arithmetic, but we can hope.

And if they do see reality, and the bubble begins to deflate, and the big AI companies head towards bankruptcy, we can predict what the politicians they bought will look to do: give them huge piles of taxpayer dollars. It wasn’t for nothing that Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the rest showered Donald Trump with money. They also have many Democratic politicians on their gift list as well. So, we need to ask what the bailouts can look like.

The most obvious one is handing OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX huge piles of money with the idea that the government is getting a stake in these companies. The claim that this would be a good idea follows the illusion that the AI companies are about to make unbelievable profits. There is no reason to think this is the case, as many of us have been arguing, and the markets might now be realizing. This would just be giving massive sums of money to some of the richest and worst people on the planet.

The idea that a government stake will allow more effective control is almost as wrongheaded. Can anyone really believe that Donald Trump, with top-level appointees like Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., and Sean Duffy, will assign serious people to oversee the government’s stake in AI companies?

The widely recognized safety concerns with AI (it’s smaller-level disasters, not human extinction) should best be dealt with as criminal matters. Instead of begging the AI companies to slow down, we should be demanding legal action that threatens the company’s money and possibly means jail time for top execs. It is illegal to break into another company’s website. And to be clear, it was done on purpose, since they designed AI systems which they did not understand. They don’t have to do this; they did it for profit.


And to be clear, breaking into websites in the past has been taken very seriously. The Justice Department prosecuted Aaron Swartz, a young computer whiz, threatening him with 35 years in prison. This eventually drove him to suicide. His crime was breaking into JSTOR, a system for academic publications, with the intention to make them freely available online. Compare that to Sam Altman hacking into possibly thousands of systems, with the goal of making himself a trillionaire.

If we can knock the straight handout idea off the table, the next possibility is loans. This gives the convenient line that “it doesn’t cost us anything; they will pay us back, with interest.” A first point should be clear: we will be giving loans at below the market rate, since if we weren’t, there would be no point. Giving hundreds of billions, or trillions, in loans at below-market rates could be a great deal of money.

The other point is that we can end up piling loans upon loans to keep the AI companies and the illusion alive. This is the old story of throwing good money after bad. If we have $500 billion that the government could lose in a bankruptcy, isn’t it worth coughing up another $50 or $60 billion to keep OpenAI or SpaceX alive? There will also be the temptation to throw these companies government contracts, where we overpay or pay for items that are not needed. (This is also true where the government has a stake.)

The other bailout route is guarantees. In this case, they can again use the line that it doesn’t cost us anything. This also is nonsense. There is a huge market for credit default swaps, which are essentially insurance that bonds are repaid. If we provide guarantees for hundreds of billions of dollars for loans to the AI companies and/or the hyperscalers, this could amount to a massive handout to the AI boys.

What we should really want is for the market to work its magic. If the demand for the frontier AI models doesn’t justify the trillions of dollars of investment currently scheduled, and/or the risks outweigh the benefits, we should stop it as soon as possible. The resources in building out the data centers can be better used elsewhere.

That’s what the market would be telling us in a meltdown. It would be a good idea to listen this time.


All that said, here are the numbers for the past week:






This article was published at Dean Baker’s The AI Bubble Monitor


About Dean Baker
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.
View all posts by Dean Baker →

 

When AI behaves like us, we still don’t think it is conscious

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

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A new LMU study finds that people are reluctant to attribute consciousness to artificial intelligence, even when AI behaves exactly like a human.

Stories about AI systems deceiving users, cooperating with one another or pursuing their own goals increasingly invite us to talk about them as if they had minds of their own. But do people really believe that AI is conscious? A new LMU study suggests that they draw a surprisingly sharp line between intelligent behaviour and consciousness.

What level of consciousness do people attribute to AI?

The study, recently published in the journal Cognition, was led by Dr. Louis Longin from LMU’s Chair of Philosophy of Mind together with his colleagues Dr. Bahador Bahrami, Professor Ophelia Deroy and other collaborators. “Whereas previous studies have typically asked general questions about whether AI actually has mental states, our study is the first to directly compare how people attribute the same mental states to AI and humans behaving in exactly the same way, under identical circumstances,” says Longin.

“We may be using mental terms to refer to AI, but this may only be because we lack better words,” says Ophelia Deroy, philosopher and a senior author of the study. “After all, AI is trained to act and speak like a human, so these descriptions seem natural.”

The team ran experiments involving nearly 1,100 participants. Some of them read short scenarios in which artificial agents were more or less responsive to what was happening around them, for instance by reacting to sounds or the emotional states of others. A second group read the same scenarios, but with human protagonists. All the participants were then asked to rate how conscious or aware the relevant protagonist was of its surroundings.

Behaviour and choice of language: What influences the assessment of consciousness

The result of the experiments is that the more responsive the artificial intelligence or human in the text was to their surroundings, the more conscious and aware they were judged to be. But attributions of consciousness and awareness were remarkably different: Attributions of consciousness showed a clear gap between AI and humans, and even the most responsive AI was judged to be less conscious than the least responsive human. Attributions of awareness, by contrast, followed much the same pattern for AI and humans.

“There is a growing worry in public discussion that people will see AI behaving in a human-like way and start treating these systems as if they had human-like mental states,” says Longin, lead author of the study. “We found something much more nuanced: People are quite willing to say that an AI notices things and is aware of its surroundings. But they clearly draw a line when it comes to the term ‘consciousness’. People consistently attribute less consciousness to AI than humans – even when their behaviour is identical.” The word “conscious” may sometimes be used loosely to describe the behaviour that AI agents display, but the participants nevertheless maintained a clear distinction between humans and AI.

AI is perceived to be aware, but not conscious

According to the researchers, the contrast with the term “awareness” is equally revealing. Less-loaded, more technical terms like “awareness” are applied much more similarly to AI and humans; they seem to match more closely what an agent does and do not run into deep differences regarding subjective experiences.

“Our study teaches us lessons for how we communicate about AI,” says Bahador Bahrami, who is also a senior author of the study and an expert in social neuroscience. “Companies and journalists often reach for hyped descriptions of AI models, and credit them with intentions, plans, or even moral conscience and hesitation. What our study shows is that everyday judgements are much more discriminating: People do not simply put AI and humans on the same mental scale. But the boundary also depends on which terms we use. For more neutral descriptors such as ‘awareness’, the distinction can largely disappear. That makes our choice of language important.”

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Journal

Cognition

DOI

10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106733

Article Title

AI is not as conscious as humans: Essentialism in mental state attributions to artificial systems

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2026

 

Three-pillar framework for integrating AI in higher education outlined in University of Phoenix white paper

New white paper shares institutional model for integrating generative artificial intelligence across curriculum, learning experiences and processes

University of Phoenix

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University of Phoenix has published a new white paper, Three Pillars for Embracing AI at University of Phoenix, by Christina Neider, Ed.D., and Marc Booker, Ph.D., outlining the University's institutional framework for integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) across academic programs, student learning experiences, and institutional processes, policies and workflows while helping prepare working adult learners for an AI-enabled workforce.

As generative AI continues to reshape workforce experiences across industries, the white paper examines the role higher education institutions can play in helping learners develop the knowledge, skills and judgment needed to use AI effectively and responsibly. Drawing on University of Phoenix's generative AI implementation work, authors Christina Neider, Ed.D., Vice Provost of Colleges, and Marc Booker, Ph.D., Vice Provost for Strategy, share a scalable, three-pillar framework for AI adoption aligned with workforce relevance and student success.

How the AI integration framework is organized

The University’s three pillar approach is informed by the human-centered Digital Education Council AI Literacy Framework and reflects the University's broader commitment to helping learners develop foundational AI knowledge, practical skills and responsible-use habits. The three pillars of AI integration are:

• Embedding AI into programs and course content
• Leveraging AI tools to enhance the learning experience
• Weaving AI into processes, policies and workflows

Together, these pillars reflect an institution-wide approach to AI adoption designed to balance innovation, ethical use and learner outcomes.

“The rapid evolution of Generative AI is forcing institutions to transform in order to best support students,” said Dr. Booker. “The imperative with AI in higher education is to take a wholistic institutional approach that integrates thoughtfully across governance, tools, processes and curriculum. This framework helps organize that approach in a way that builds on policy to strengthen cross-departmental connections as well as operational and academic functions.”

How the framework is being implemented

• Embedding AI into programs and course content

The authors note that learners increasingly need foundational AI knowledge, practical application skills and the ability to evaluate AI-generated content critically as AI tools become more integrated into professional environments. At the University, students all have access to a generative AI platform and an elective introductory GenAI course. In order to facilitate AI understanding across all programs and courses, University of Phoenix developed a set of brief, self-paced AI essentials modules, embedded in the learning management system, where students can take to help develop AI literacy and confidence. The Phoenix Success Series, the introductory course sequence for first-year students, will also introduce generative AI as a support tool for student learning in 2026. The University has also deployed an interactive tool for creating Socratic dialogues in five courses, reaching approximately 1,300 students across disciplines through scenario-based, faculty reviewed practice. More than 20 degree programs have been strategically selected for curriculum revisions, with at least two AI-integrated summative assessments planned in each by March 2027.

• Leveraging AI tools to enhance the learning experience

The paper describes how AI tools have been implemented in thoughtful way to support students and faculty, focused on improving the learning experience by making it easier to navigate so students. These tools include use cases currently being piloted and available to users at every level, such as general AI assistance for students, academic services related questions in the classroom environment, faculty-specific AI assistance, and course-specific AI assistants supporting students with content and curriculum related inquiries connected to the course they are enrolled in.

This pillar also includes forms of AI-enabled support, from broad student-service assistance to course-connected academic help inside the learning environment.

• Weaving AI into processes, policies and workflows

The paper emphasizes that meaningful AI implementation extends beyond students and includes faculty, staff, policies, training and operational practices that encourage responsible use.

The authors describe how the university is applying AI to improve both academic and business efficiencies, and how this pillar reflects the position that ethical AI use requires institutions to bring policy into practice. An established philosophy on generative AI in 2023, has informed the policy development, faculty guidance and creation of AI literacy resources designed to support responsible use across the institution. Further, the paper describes how its Center for AI Resources was foundational to this effort, and has resources designed for students, faculty and staff, with over 90,000 users to date.

The framework reflects the opportunity for institutions to help learners build AI-related skills that align with evolving employer expectations and workplace demands.

“Working adult learners need meaningful opportunities to practice, improve outcomes and understand the ethical considerations that accompany AI use,” said Dr. Neider. “AI literacy requires human judgement as well as practice. By embedding AI throughout the academic experience, we can help students develop the skills and responsible-use habits increasingly valued by employers.”

About the white paper

Three Pillars for Embracing AI at University of Phoenix is an institutional white paper by Christina Neider, Ed.D., and Marc Booker, Ph.D., describing the University’s generative AI implementation experience as a scalable model for higher education. The paper describes the University’s three-pillar approach, informed by the Digital Education Council AI Literacy Framework, to integrating AI across curriculum, learning experiences, policies and institutional processes, with a focus on responsible use and working adult learners.

The complete white paper is available here.

About University of Phoenix

University of Phoenix is Built for Real Life. 50 Years Strong. The University innovates to help working adults enhance their careers and develop skills in a rapidly changing world through flexible online learning, relevant courses, academic AI pillars, and skills-mapped curriculum for associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. Active students and alumni have access to Career Services for Life® resources including career guidance and tools. For more information, visit phoenix.edu.

Visual illusion reveals what today’s AI vision is missing – York University study

Using a classic visual illusion, York University researchers identify a history-dependent computation present in primate vision that current AI models fail to reproduce

York University

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Our eyes do not always tell us exactly where things are – and that may be a feature of how biological vision works, rather than simply a flaw. A new study by York University researchers uses a common illusion to ask if artificial intelligence is meant to see more like us, should it make some of the same systematic perceptual “mistakes”?

For example, after staring at something moving steadily in one direction, a stationary object viewed immediately afterward can appear slightly displaced in the opposite direction. This well-known visual illusion, called a motion aftereffect, gives scientists an unusual window into the computations underlying perception: the image itself has not moved, but our experience of where it is has changed.

“Today’s AI vision systems are impressive, but they still do not always see the world the way we do. This study captures the promise of NeuroAI and what it can do when neuroscience and artificial intelligence are brought together. By using smart experiments to reveal the computations biological vision uses and AI still lacks, we can use those insights to build better, more brain-like artificial systems,” says senior author York Assistant Professor Kohitij Kar, the Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience and a member of York’s Centre for Vision Research and Centre for Integrative and Applied Neuroscience.

Current AI vision systems can often determine where an object is accurately, but they generally do not reproduce the way recent visual experience can reshape that answer. In humans, staring at motion can make a subsequently viewed stationary object appear displaced even though its pixels have not moved. The researchers found a corresponding change in the primate visual cortex – but not in the AI models they tested.

To gain better insight into the issue, the researchers examined whether artificial neural network models capture the same history-dependent changes in spatial representations seen in biological vision, or whether their position representations primarily reflect the physical properties of the image. The researchers, including the paper’s first author and York graduate student Elizaveta Yakubovskaya, used precise measurements to find out where AI differs from biological vision and how that gap could be bridged.

“Combining recordings from primate visual cortex with human perception experiments, we used motion adaptation to induce a visual illusion and make a stationary object appear slightly shifted in position, then asked whether the brain and AI showed the same effect. Human observers reported the illusion, and neural representations of position in the primate inferior temporal (IT) cortex shifted in the same direction, even though the image itself had not changed,” says Yakubovskaya.

The researchers leveraged motion adaptation to show where perceived and pixel-based positions diverge, allowing them to test the behavioral relevance of IT codes. The findings not only further our understanding of IT’s role in spatial information encoding but provide a new benchmark to evaluate dynamic vision models.

“There is a growing question in AI about whether increasingly capable systems will become more like us or increasingly different from us,” says Kar of the Faculty of Science and a member of the York-led Connected Minds. “If we want AI that works with humans and understands the world in more human-compatible ways, we cannot focus only on whether it gets the right answer. We also need to understand the computations that produce human perception and behavior. Neuroscience gives us a way to discover those computations and, potentially, build them into AI,” adds Kar.

The study titled, The macaque IT cortex but not current artificial vision networks encode object position in perceptually aligned coordinates, is published today in Current Biology.

###

About York University

York is a modern, multi-campus, urban university located in Toronto, Ontario. Backed by a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, we bring a uniquely global perspective to help solve societal challenges, drive positive change, and prepare our students for meaningful life and career paths. York's Glendon Campus is home to Southern Ontario's Centre of Excellence for French Language and Bilingual Postsecondary Education. York’s campus in Costa Rica offers students exceptional transnational learning opportunities and innovative programs, while at the Markham Campus, innovation, technology, entrepreneurship and industry collaboration are built into every program. York’s new School of Medicine, the first Canadian medical school to focus on community-based primary health-care education, will welcome its first cohort in September 2028 (subject to accreditation). York was recently named one of Canada’s Greenest Employers for the 14th consecutive year. Together, we can make things right for our communities, our planet, and our future.

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.019

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

The macaque IT cortex but not current artificial vision networks encode object position in perceptually aligned coordinates

Article Publication Date

2-Oct-2026

Trump's approval rating plunges to 'extremely rare' level as midterm message flatlines

Matthew Chapman
October 1, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump looks at media members after returning to the White House from Scotland, Britain, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

President Donald Trump's handling of inflation has become a defining liability of his presidency, with new polling showing roughly 8 in 10 Americans disapproving of his approach to the cost of living.

A new AP-NORC poll released Thursday found Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of cost-of-living issues by a staggering 82 percent to 17 percent margin. Reuters-Ipsos and Marquette Law School polls also put his approval in the high teens, while Marquette and CNN separately found disapproval at 80 percent. Such a level of unity against the president, wrote CNN's Aaron Blake, is "extremely rare" in American politics.

Even within Trump's own coalition, cracks are showing, with at least half of Republicans disapproving across four separate polls, 29% of self-identified MAGA Republicans souring on his handling per Fox News polling, and between 63 percent and 72 percent of white voters without college degrees, historically among his strongest supporters, expressing disapproval as well.

Few issues in recent presidential history have generated this kind of consensus. Economic troubles came close for past presidents; George W. Bush faced heavy criticism over the 2008 financial crash, and Jimmy Carter dealt with similar backlash amid runaway inflation and unemployment decades earlier, but neither reached quite the same depths Trump is seeing now.

Past scandals offer a similar contrast. Ronald Reagan weathered serious backlash over Iran-Contra, and Richard Nixon faced widespread public anger during Watergate, yet both stayed below the threshold Trump has now crossed on economic frustration alone. Even Gerald Ford's deeply controversial decision to pardon Nixon didn't generate disapproval this severe.

The closest Trump himself previously came to matching these numbers was over his decision to pardon violent January 6 defendants, which also fell a few points short of where his inflation numbers sit now.

Despite the historic unpopularity, Trump pushed back in a new Time magazine interview published Thursday, insisting Americans shouldn't blame him for affordability struggles and pointing fingers at Biden instead, even though inflation is currently running higher than when Trump took office. Polling suggests that messaging isn't landing: a clear majority of Americans hold Trump's own policy choices responsible for today's high prices, a far larger share than blamed Biden's policies at a similar point before the 2022 midterms.

‘Dangerous for Democracy’: Paramount Merger Opponents File Emergency Motion to Fight Settlement Deal

“We believe the consent decree fails to meaningfully address or mitigate the harms that will be caused by this monopoly merger.”


Demonstrators protest the proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery at Paramount Pictures Studio on September 3, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Variety via Getty Images)


Jake Johnson
Sep 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


A coalition of advocacy groups fighting the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger said Thursday that the judge overseeing the case granted their emergency motion to allow opponents of the combination to file briefs against a settlement reached earlier this week by Paramount and a dozen state attorneys general.



‘Don’t You Dare’: Alarm as State AGs Weigh Deal to Advance Paramount Megamerger

‘Massive Betrayal’: Fury at Newsom and Bonta Over Merger Deal With Paramount

“The consent decree the state AGs agreed to in a backroom deal is weak, unenforceable, and leaves workers, journalists, and consumers in the dust,” members of the anti-merger coalition said in a statement. “The settlement fails to address the grave dangers this merger poses—and no amount of spin can change that. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín’s ruling will allow the public to weigh in on this important issue and ensure the interests of those who will actually pay the price for the Ellisons’ sweetheart deal that the AGs failed to adequately represent are heard. We look forward to explaining that in further detail in our brief due at midnight tonight.”

Earlier:

Opponents of Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery filed an emergency motion in federal court on Thursday asking the judge overseeing the merger proceedings to grant them an opportunity to formally oppose a settlement deal that Paramount reached earlier this week with a coalition of state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta.

The merger opponents’ filing asks Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the US District Court for the Northern District of California to give them “an opportunity to be heard” before she rules on the proposed consent decree between Paramount and the 12 state attorneys general—a deal that drew widespread outrage. The anti-merger coalition—which includes Free Press, the Committee for the First Amendment, the Future Film Coalition, and other groups—described the tentative deal as “dangerous for democracy.”

The coalition’s filing was submitted shortly before a court hearing that’s scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm ET. Martínez-Olguín set the hearing to “address certain outstanding questions regarding the factual and legal underpinnings of the parties’ proposed consent decree.”

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a constitutional rights litigator who serves on the steering panel for the Committee for the First Amendment, said in a statement that “we believe the consent decree fails to meaningfully address or mitigate the harms that will be caused by this monopoly merger to the entertainment industry, diverse storytelling, independent filmmaking, consumer interests, a free press, First Amendment rights, and fundamentally, democracy.”

“It does not serve to benefit anyone except the owner family of Paramount and those holding political power, who will use this corporate consolidation as a proxy force for First Amendment suppression of disfavored expression and viewpoints,” Verheyden-Hilliard added.

Paramount is headed by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world and a megadonor to President Donald Trump.

If Martínez-Olguín approves the proposed consent decree and the merger is finalized, Paramount would control both CBS and CNN, as well as other major media properties such as HBO.

As part of the consent decree, Paramount committed to “News Editorial Independence Boards” for CBS and CNN comprised of five “established journalists.” Critics, including the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), have characterized the proposed editorial independence boards as “worthless” and a potential “First Amendment nightmare.”

“The solution for the Ellisons letting Donald Trump and [Federal Communications Commission Chair] Brendan Carr police journalism is not to let attorneys general and judges police journalism too,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at FPF, part of the anti-merger coalition.

“It’s to keep the government out of the newsroom, period,” Stern added. “No one seriously believes the Ellisons (or their rumored new investor Elon Musk) will do that, with or without a self-appointed sham editorial board, which is why this merger cannot proceed.”

The League of United Latin American Citizens and a group of religious leaders filed a separate motion on Thursday asking Martínez-Olguín to “defer entry of the decree” to “ensure this court has sufficient opportunity to consider the important issues raised” in the case.

“The proposed consent decree raises grave doubts whether the parties’ settlement adequately addresses the harms alleged in the plaintiff states’ complaint,” the filing reads.

Billionaire Trump Suck-Ups Owning More News Outlets Is an Existential Threat

This is critical stuff: no democracy can survive the assault of what Jefferson referred to as “an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents” when only one family or political perspective dominates the media.


Oracle co-founder, CTO, and executive chairman Larry Ellison listens as US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on February 3, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Thom Hartmann
Sep 24, 2026

Common Dreams


A CNN insider told Variety magazine yesterday that the mood inside CNN right now is “like a funeral.” Nepo-baby David Ellison, bankrolled by his father who’s one of the richest men in the world and a major Trump suck-up and donor (and is in the Epstein Files), is on the verge of taking over the company that owns the news network.

The day-before-yesterday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a group of Democratic state attorneys general rolled over and agreed to stop trying to block the $111 billion takover of Warner Bros. Discovery, now to be almost 50% funded by rightwing dictatorships in the Middle East who’ve given billions in gifts, loans, and investments to Trump and his family.

California Governor and presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom hailed the agreement, saying it would both protect California jobs and preserve CNN’s “editorial independence.”

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge for you in Brooklyn.

As The Lever reported yesterday, the fine print tells the entire story:

Going forward, CNN and CBS will be overseen by an “editorial independence board” composed of people hand-picked by the Ellisons and their agents. When Rupert Murdoch took over The Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft family back in 2007, he ran the same scam, as CBS News then reported:
“As part of the deal package that cemented Rupert Murdoch’s longstanding effort to acquire Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., the two sides agreed to create an editorial board that would act as a buffer between the media mogul and the newspaper…”


That worked out real well, right?

There are also squishy promises for movies and jobs that are not backed up with any meaningful enforcement mechanism, and all of Ellison’s commitments can be set aside via a force majeure clause that lets Paramount off the hook in the event of “strikes, labor disruptions, [or] economic recessions.” So, all Trump has to do is extend the Iran war another few months to crash our economy and the oligarchs are free to do what they want!

And if that doesn’t happen, there’s still the sunset clause that ends all their commitments in five years. Lee Hepner of the American Economic Liberties Project called it “a countdown to a cliff.”

These are the same billionaires who handed Trump a check for $16 million to “settle” a frivolous lawsuit against 60 Minutes, then cancelled Stephen Colbert’s show days after he referenced that as a “big fat bribe,” then reportedly offered the Trump White House up to $20 million in free “public service announcements” and installed a Trump-humping “ombudsman” at CBS News to police “bias” at the network.

The simple reality is that in every country that’s slid from democracy into strongman rule over the past half-century, the first step was capture of the media by friends of the regime.


And the FCC, run by Trump’s favorite brown-noser Brendan Carr, has blessed Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar taking a 49.5 percent equity state in the new entity that will control two of the three most important news networks in America.

Don’t expect any future analysis of Saudi involvement in 9/11, critical exploration of what Trump gave up in exchange for a $400 million 747 jet, or the billions that have gone to Kushner and the Trump boys, Uday and Qusay.

Because of momentous decisions made by presidents Reagan and Clinton, freedom of the press in America is now as much an economic issue as a political one. As I laid out in The Hidden History of Monopolies (with a foreword by Ralph Nader), when Reagan came into office 90 percent of the American media landscape was scattered among over 50 companies; now a mere five conglomerates dominate that 90 percent of the media Americans consume.

Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (and others) in 1983, leading to the “M&A Mania” of mergers and acquisitions that characterized the late 1980s and 1990s. As a result, there’s not a single major industry in America that’s not dominated by a handful of companies that generally behave like cartels, and the average American family pays an annual “monopoly tax” — in additional costs for pretty much everything — of around $5,000, according to economist Thomas Philippon.

Cell phone service that costs $15 a month in France or $12 a month in Australia bills out at an average of $61.85 per month in the United States. High-speed broadband that’s a bit over $31 a month in France or $36 in Germany (for higher speeds and better reliability than almost anywhere in the United States) averages nearly $70 per month in the US.

Similar metrics are found with pharmaceuticals, airfares, and medical costs, among dozens of other product and service categories.

But it’s most deadly to democracy when it comes to the media.

Since Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — which eliminated most of the rules about how many outlets one family or company could own — oligarchic monopoly of the media has spread its cancerous tentacles into politics, as well, destroying the ability of government to make policy that allows free people to make their own decisions about their own lives.

As Teddy Roosevelt, the great trust buster, said:
“There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task...”


And as Adam Smith wrote, in Wealth of Nations,
“...the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained...like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.”


And this is no small project by billionaires who explicitly distrust democracy and want complete control over America and her people. I’ve seen how this works up-close and personal when a Republican billionaire came after a media business I helped start.

In 2003, Louise and I had sold our last business and were retired in Vermont; that Thanksgiving, we drove to Michigan to visit my family for the holidays and all the way there I kept tuning across the radio dial looking for an intelligent conversation to occupy my mind while driving. In city after city, all I could find was Sean Hannity.

The outcome of that trip was my writing the initial business plan for Air America Radio and starting the radio show I’m still hosting 23 years later as a “proof of concept.” We were leasing stations from Clear Channel and reached over 90 percent of America; many credited Obama’s 2008 victory to our being on the air.

So, of course, billionaire Mitt Romney — with an eye to running for president in 2012 — had his company Bain Capital buy up all of the Clear Channel radio stations and, one at a time, take us off the air until we didn’t have enough of a signal to make money selling advertising. The network died in 2010 (and Romney lost).

The people who own the media pipes, in other words, get to decide what flows through them.

Remember when Uber was offering rides for half the price of taxis, until they’d put so many of the taxi companies out of business? Or Walmart offering goods at little to no margin just to drive local competitors out of business? Monopolists and wannabe monopolists understand exactly how this works.

While Rupert Murdoch reportedly lost an average of $80 to $90 million a year for about five years before Fox News turned a profit, he never viewed that as a loss: it was an investment. Economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan later did the math and found that Fox News succeeded in shifting 3 to 8 percent of its audience toward the Republican Party, which in Florida alone in the 2000 election was worth more than 10,000 votes for George W. Bush in a state he carried by fewer than 600.

Had there been no Fox “News,” in other words, there would have been no war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis and Afghans would still be alive. And there would have been no Bush tax cuts, so our national debt would be nowhere near so bad. And Al Gore would have done something about the environment.

This is critical stuff: no democracy can survive the assault of what Jefferson referred to as “an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents” when only one family or political perspective dominates the media.

Franklin D. Roosevelt — the Bernie Sanders of his day — saw all of this coming. On April 29, 1938, in his Message to Congress on the Concentration of Economic Power, he told the country what fascism actually is:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”


FDR understood that when a monopolized industry gets big enough, its main rival then becomes the government itself because only the government has enough remaining power to break it up. Adam Smith made the same point in Wealth of Nations in 1776, writing that the East India Company and its allies had, “like an overgrown standing army,” become “formidable to the government” and could “intimidate the legislature.”

The simple reality is that in every country that’s slid from democracy into strongman rule over the past half-century, the first step was capture of the media by friends of the regime.

— Four days after Vladimir Putin was inaugurated in May, 2000, ICE-like masked agents raided the offices of Media-Most, the company that owned Russia’s largest independent national TV network (NTV). They threw its owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, in prison on fraud charges and confiscated his stake in Gazprom, then took over the network with the deal finalized in April of 2001. That same year Boris Berezovsky was forced to sell his share of the ORT network to Roman Abramovich, a fellow oligarch but one who’d pledged his total loyalty to Putin. Within a few years, every national channel in Russia was in the hands of the state or a Putin-friendly billionaire, and still are.

— Viktor Orbán’s people were slightly more sophisticated in 2018, having his oligarch buddies buy up media properties after he sued dissenters into bankruptcy by claiming libel. By the following year, the media monitor Mérték estimated that 77.8 percent of Hungary’s news media was directly or indirectly controlled by Orbán’s party, which is why when Péter Magyar successfully ran against Orbán he had to visit virtually every city and town in the country to get around the media blackout on his candidacy.

— In Egypt, el-Sisi was less elegant in his approach to the media. He had his version of the FBI — the General Intelligence Service — use a front company called Eagle Capital to buy up virtually every TV network, radio station, and newspaper in the country. Reporters Without Borders found that a dozen once-powerful media owners were pushed to sell to intelligence-linked companies, while the handful of businessmen who backed Sisi got to keep theirs. The spy agency’s media group now owns the ON, CBC, Al-Hayah, and DMC networks, and those Egyptian journalists who dared criticize the regime all went to prison.

— Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines used regulatory power the same way Trump lickspittle Brendan Carr’s FCC does. The country’s largest newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, was forced to sell to a billionaire Duterte ally under threat of imprisonment for breaking “media rules.” Duterte’s rightwing buddies in Congress then refused to renew the broadcast franchise of ABS-CBN, the nation’s biggest network, which had made the mistake of exposing the extrajudicial killings of his so-called drug war. Eleven thousand people lost their jobs, and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa’s little opposition newspaper The Rappler was ordered shut.

Almost without exception, this is the process autocrats use to destroy democracies, as documented brilliantly by people like Timothy Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

First the strongman’s friends acquire the newsrooms, then the coverage softens, then the elections start experiencing “anomalies,” and by the time most people notice, there’s nobody left on the air to expose the oligarchs and fascists.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1786:
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”


So, here we are. Bonta and Newsom have caved, and only the attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Minnesota tried to hold out. You may want to call your own state attorney general and ask where they were on this case; you should be able to easily find their number with a quick internet search.

We should also contact our members of Congress (202-224-3121) and demand hearings on the FCC’s corrupt behavior, restoration of our anti-trust laws, and a return to the media ownership limits that Clinton blew up in 1996.

And please share this piece and hartmannreport.com with anyone who still thinks it can’t happen here. It has already happened everywhere else that’s seen their democracy disintegrate, and the first thing to go into oligarchic hands was always the news.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.
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‘Massive Betrayal’: Fury at Newsom and Bonta Over Merger Deal With Paramount

“Today, billionaires have yet again bribed, censored, and bullied their way to the top.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta speak during a press conference in Sacramento, California, United States on October 28, 2025.
(Photo by Tayfun Cokun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Sep 21, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS


A coalition of state attorneys general led by California’s Rob Bonta reportedly reached a deal on Monday to let Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery proceed, an outcome that press freedom advocates and antitrust campaigners condemned as a disaster for journalism, entertainment industry workers, and American democracy.

The deal, which is set to be formally announced later Monday, will pave the way for the creation of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, helmed by the son of a billionaire megadonor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

If the merger is finalized, the resulting media behemoth would control nearly 30% of both wide-release theatrical film distribution and basic cable channel licensing in the US. The combination would also put CNN under Ellison’s control, heightening press freedom concerns that have intensified since Paramount’s takeover of CBS.

“The AGs’ capitulation marks a new low.”

“Today, billionaires have yet again bribed, censored, and bullied their way to the top,” Alvaro Bedoya, senior adviser at the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement. “As a result, a billionaire media conglomerate closely allied with the president will soon own one of its closest rivals, including some of the nation’s most critical news outlets. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund will co-own those outlets, too.”

Bedoya criticized Bonta and California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who privately pushed the state attorney general’s office to settle the lawsuit out of court. Xavier Becerra, the frontrunner to succeed Newsom, also called for a settlement, citing Paramount’s threat to leave California if its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. was blocked.

“People want champions who are not afraid of rich bullies. Newsom, Becerra, and Bonta did not meet that mark,” said Bedoya. “The people who work in the film and TV industry and the small businesses who support it will suffer as a result. And so will everyone who values dissent in our democracy.”

Jessica González, co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, also denounced Bonta for reneging on “his promise to enforce the law and protect consumers and workers.”

“Hundreds of thousands of people called on our state AGs to stand up to the Ellisons, who have engaged in a campaign of corruption and extortion to pave the way for this unlawful merger. We can no longer rely on the federal government to enforce the law and protect regular people. That much is clear. But the AGs’ capitulation marks a new low. It’s a sad day for all of us who have been opposing this merger because it will cut jobs and raise prices, all as it consolidates the media even more to enable authoritarians.”

Actor Mark Ruffalo, an outspoken opponent of the merger who was subjected to what critics called a corporate “smear campaign” because of his stance, trained his ire on California’s governor in response to news of the settlement.

“Gavin Newsom hands huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies,” Ruffalo wrote on social media.

The trial was scheduled to begin in March of next year. In its original lawsuit against the proposed merger—filed shortly after the Trump Justice Department dropped its investigation of the proposed purchase—the coalition of 12 attorneys general warned the deal would “combine two of Hollywood’s five major film distributors and two of the five major basic cable channel owners, extinguishing competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. and inflicting substantial harm on movie theaters, basic cable distributors and, ultimately, audiences nationwide.”

The settlement deal reached Monday also reportedly includes the lawsuit filed by the Writers Guild of America, which represents TV screenwriters and others in the entertainment industry.

Bloomberg reported that the attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, and other states that had pushed back during settlement talks were able to secure “independent editorial boards for CBS and CNN as part of the deal”—though it’s unclear how such boards would function.

“The terms are said to include a financial penalty if the company fails to make good on a promise to distribute 30 films per year in theaters,” Bloomberg added.



The Los Angeles Times noted that Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. “will be heavily leveraged.”

“The company’s bankers have lined up nearly $80 billion in debt to finance the merger. [Paramount CEO David] Ellison’s father, billionaire Larry Ellison, late last year agreed to backstop the $47-billion in equity needed to complete the acquisition. Royal families from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to chip in $24 billion for an equity stake by assuming some of Ellison’s financial commitments.”

González of Free Press warned Monday that “consolidating the media in the hands of friendly oligarchs is right out of the authoritarian playbook.”

“What’s exceedingly clear is that our laws and our political system are not strong enough to resist the pressure and manipulation of corrupt billionaires,” said González. “We need to strengthen democratic systems of government, including getting money out of politics, and pass laws that break up big media conglomerates. We need to ensure that a few billionaires can’t drown out the masses to dictate bad policy.”

‘Outrageous’: Sanders Slams FCC for Approving Saudi and UAE Ownership of Paramount-Warner Bros.

“We don’t need Middle East dictators to control American media.”

Brendan Carr, commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, speaks at the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee oversight hearing in the US Capitol Building on December 17, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday joined a growing chorus of critics angered by the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of foreign investment in the company that would be created if Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery are allowed to merge.

Led by Chair Brendan Carr, an appointee of President Donald Trump, the FCC on Thursday approved Paramount’s petition to allow foreign investors to hold over 25% of ownership. The commission concluded it would be in the “public interest” to greenlight a plan for 49.5% foreign ownership, including 38.5% from investment funds based in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“Trump’s FCC just approved Trump pal David Ellison’s deal to allow Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to own nearly 50% of a merged Paramount-Warner Bros,” Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media Friday, referring to Paramount’s chair and CEO—and the son of billionaire Republican megadonor Larry Ellison.

The merged company would include CBS, CNN, HBO, the Discovery Channel, BET, Fandango, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, PlutoTV, Showtime, TBS, The CW, TNT, Warner Bros., and more, the senator noted. He added: “Outrageous: We don’t need Middle East dictators to control American media.”

Anna Gomez, the sole Democratic commissioner, was similarly critical: “The FCC just let some of the most repressive governments in the world indirectly control nearly all of a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. An investment this large in one of America’s biggest media companies doesn’t just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and made.”

“That’s why I called for this new and novel issue to go to a full commission vote given what’s at stake,” she noted. “Instead, the FCC snuck this ruling out as a staff-level decision, with no public vote and no accountability for a call of this magnitude.”



Welcoming Gomez’s comments, Michael Sozan pointed to his and Andrew Miller’s June article for the Center for American Progress highlighting that “the three Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes have deep financial relationships with Trump and his family, and... long records of human rights abuses and engage in media censorship.”

“These autocracies could leverage Paramount’s news outlets and other media properties to advance their own interests at the expense of the United States’ national security and foundational rights, including press freedoms,” the pair warned. “Given these factors, these foreign ownership levels are another reason why regulators must rigorously review this merger and take all lawful actions to block it.”

As the Los Angeles Times reported:
Several groups, including the 1st Amendment nonprofit Free Press, asked the FCC to consider additional safeguards to shield the news organizations—CNN and CBS—from foreign control. One suggestion was to spin off CBS and CNN into a subsidiary that would be wholly owned by Americans.

Paramount and the FCC were dismissive, arguing “the concerns raised in the record... are speculative and unsupported,” according to the FCC ruling.



While a Paramount spokesperson welcomed the FCC’s decision not to block the plan—and pointed out that “when the proposed transaction with Warner Bros. Discovery closes, the Ellison family and RedBird will collectively hold the largest equity stake in the combined company and 100% of the voting shares, with no other equity participant having any governance rights”—fresh outrage mounted over the already widely criticized $111 billion merger.

Lee Hepner, an antitrust lawyer and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, addressed the questions: “But it’s just indirect equity interests, right? What about the condition that the Saudis, UAE, and Qatar cannot interfere with or even comment on any decisions related to content?”

As he explained: “The only way that firewall is conceivably enforceable is if the FCC assigns an independent monitor to sit in on every meeting, taps every burner phone, and is invited to every Signal chat between any representative of Paramount and its new financial backers. The point is not that that should happen, but that this condition is patently unenforceable. Which is all to say, the FCC just approved the sale of a crown jewel of the entertainment and media industry to foreign interests that relish in exercising economic, political, and regional military leverage over the United States. All based on a pinky promise.”

“The reality is that ownership alone, even of nonvoting, indirect equity interests, creates its own financial leverage and influence,” he warned. “To the extent Paramount’s new owners are prohibited from exercising influence, it’s patently paradoxical. Paramount won’t approve anything that risks losing half of its financial backing, including criticizing a regime that not too long ago ordered the execution of a Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, who became an international figurehead for politically persecuted journalists.”

“Does anyone think CBS’ new leadership has the will, much less fortitude, to prioritize truth over financial ruin?” he added. “If this all sounds like a total mess, that’s because it is. And it only becomes doubly worse if Paramount acquires Warner Bros.-Discovery.”



Due to legal pushback from state attorneys general and unions, the merger—which some opponents have condemned as an “existential” threat—is on hold until the outcome of a trial scheduled to begin in March.