Trump Pledges to Make Hormuz a "Territory of the United States"

A U.S. Navy destroyer operates in Hormuz during the last reported American transit, April 2026 (USN)

Published Aug 16, 2026 3:33 PM by The Maritime Executive

Amidst the ongoing Iranian campaign to control and close the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump promised Friday to make the waterway a "territory of the United States" - the first American overseas territory comprised of water rather than land. 

"After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump said in a speech Friday in New York. "We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to . . . Essentially, [a territory is] what it is."

Legal and political questions aside, practical matters remain on the question of U.S. sovereign control, starting with lack of presence and tactical vulnerability. Iran is rapidly reconstituting its ballistic missile force, according to Israeli intelligence, and it routinely hits merchant tankers in the southern stretch of the strait with drones. On Friday evening, it struck a vessel belonging to UAE state oil company Adnoc for the 19th time, Emirati media reported.

Meanwhile, U.S. Navy warships do not operate in Hormuz. The Navy operates a successful blockade of Iranian traffic in the Gulf of Oman, outside the strait, but no publicized U.S. Navy surface transits of the strait itself have occurred in four months. The service's top leaders have described the lack of access to Bahrain's storehouses as an obstacle to resupply operations for its Arabian Sea task force, implying that U.S. Military Sealift Command auxiliaries do not access the Gulf.  

"It’s clear the US president, with a chuckle as he said that, even himself, is not taking this particularly seriously," Al Jazeera reporter Kimberly Halkett said. "What the US president is not backing down on is the fact that there is a naval blockade by the United States in effect."

Iran maintains that it should have the right to fully control navigation in the strait, including the right to levy fees for passage. At minimum, it believes that control should belong jointly to Iran and Oman (the strait's coastal states), and it is negotiating with Omani officials on a mechanism for shared management. 

"The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command," responded Iranian deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi in a statement aimed at Trump. "As long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and cease your fanciful delusions, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade."

Despite the Iranian blockade, oil continues to flow out of the strait at a reduced rate. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright estimates the volume at 9 million barrels per day, while independent analysts put it at 4-5 million barrels daily. Adnoc is known to be supply logistics for not only its own oil, but for Iraqi volumes as well, largely by the use of a trans-Hormuz shuttle program it operates using its own tanker fleet. 

Bloomberg's Javier Blas suggests that these covert flows are part of the reason that oil prices remain well below $100 per barrel, despite the ostensible shutdown. In addition to demand destruction and a sharp (and as-yet-unexplained) drop in Chinese imports, pipeline volumes to Fujairah and Yanbu have soared and the Adnoc shuttle route is moving more crude than previously believed - all despite Iranian efforts to shut off its GCC neighbors from the sea. 

Iran Claims to Have Seized Tanker as It Continues Targeting UAE Shipping

Iran claims to have seized a UAE tanker that was attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz (file photo)

Published Aug 17, 2026 5:00 PM by The Maritime Executive

Iranian media is carrying unconfirmed reports on Monday, August 17, that it has detained a tanker linked to the UAE for violations of its rules for the Strait of Hormuz. It comes after the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the end of last week “strongly condemned and denounced” Iran’s attacks, calling them piracy.

Farh News Agency is repeating the reports from Iranian state TV of the seizure without providing the name or details on the tanker. It says the vessel was seized in the Strait of Hormuz for “violating Iranian maritime laws.” It cites the need to follow the Iranian route as one condition and “payment for services and Iran’s permit” as other conditions. The tanker was reportedly taken toward Qeshm Island.

The rumors immediately rattled global oil markets, which were already on edge. The price of a barrel of Brent crude futures quickly jumped above $91 a barrel. It compares with a price of below $70 a barrel before the U.S. and Israel started the campaign against Iran at the end of February.

The Emirates has been one of the targets of Iranian aggression. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the reports of attacks on vessels affiliated with ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. It demanded that Iran halt these unprovoked attacks.

“Using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion or blackmail represents acts of piracy by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the Ministry wrote in its statement.

Two tankers linked to ADNOC reportedly came under attack on August 14 while attempting a dark transit of the Strait of Hormuz. Maritime AI data firm Windward is identifying them as a Singapore-flagged oil product tanker and a Liberian-flagged Aframax tanker. A third ADNOC tanker was attacked on August 8, with other reports saying as many as 19 vessels, including bulkers and other types, linked to ADNOC have been targeted by Iran.

Despite the U.S. assertion that traffic continues to move through the Strait, Kpler data shows a dramatic fall-off over the weekend after news of the latest targeting of the ADNOC tankers. Kpler data cited by Reuters says only five tankers exited with their AIS signals transmitting on Saturday, August 15, and none on Sunday. That is down from 31 tankers the previous weekend. 

Kpler notes that its data does not include tankers traveling “dark.” Bloomberg separately contends in its reporting that the majority of tankers are transiting in the dark, and that is what was keeping oil prices in check.

Donald Trump told reporters on Monday afternoon that he would not be extending the so-called memorandum of peace with Iran, which expires today. He asserted that Americans are paying “only a little more” for gasoline and that it was worth it because Iran was being defeated. 

U.S. Central Command reports that as of August 17, U.S. forces have redirected 64 commercial vessels, disabled three, and boarded two to ensure compliance with the blockade. It calls it “America’s US steel wall blockade,” with U.S. officials saying it can be maintained indefinitely.
 

Anas Al-Sharif One Year Later: The Systematic Killing of Palestine’s Journalists

Michael Leonardi

 August 14, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Art by Gianluca Costantini

One year ago this week, the Israeli military killed Anas Al-Sharif. He was a young Palestinian journalist working in Gaza, one of the many who continued to report under bombardment, displacement, and the constant knowledge that the camera itself had become a target. His death was not an accident of war. It was one act in the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza — a genocide that has included, as a deliberate and central component, the systematic elimination of those who document it.

Al-Sharif’s killing joins a list that has grown so long it has become a statistic rather than a series of individual lives. Since October 2023, close to three hundred Palestinian and now Lebanese journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces. The Committee to Protect Journalists documents at least 209 killed by Israel in Gaza and in Israeli detention centres. Palestinian press associations and the International Federation of Journalists put the figure higher, in the mid-to-high 260s. These were not combatants. They were reporters, camera operators, producers, and fixers — many of them wearing clearly marked press vests, working for local outlets or international networks, trying to show the world what was happening to their cities, their schools, their mosques, their hospitals, and their families as the genocide unfolded.

This is not merely the deadliest conflict for journalists in the modern era. According to analyses from Brown University’s Costs of War project, more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the U.S. Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including Cambodia and Laos), the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan — combined. The comparison is not rhetorical flourish. It is a measure of the scale of a genocidal campaign that has treated the press as an enemy to be erased. What took place across the major industrial wars of the twentieth century, across continents and decades, has been surpassed in a single strip of land in less than three years. That fact alone should end any pretence that these deaths are the ordinary hazards of covering combat.

Among the dead is Shireen Abu Akleh, the American-Palestinian journalist for Al Jazeera, shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in Jenin in May 2022 — more than a year before the onset of the current genocide in Gaza. She was wearing a helmet and a press vest while covering a military raid. Her killing was captured on video. Investigations by independent outlets and human rights organizations concluded that she was deliberately targeted. The Israeli government first claimed she was killed by Palestinian fire, then shifted stories, and ultimately faced no meaningful accountability. Her targeted killing was an early and clear signal of the policy that would later be applied on a mass scale as part of the genocide: the press is the enemy.

Photograph Source: Davide Mauro – CC BY-SA 4.0

The pattern is consistent with the logic of genocide. Journalists are killed in their homes with their families, in marked press cars, while live-streaming from hospital courtyards, while sheltering in media offices that Israeli officials had been informed were civilian. Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau was repeatedly struck. Local reporters who remained after international staff were evacuated became the primary chroniclers of the mass killing, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the forced starvation of the population — and therefore the primary targets. Israel’s repeated claim that it does not target journalists is contradicted by the body count, by the documented strikes on known media locations, and by the statements of Israeli officials who have treated the Palestinian press as a legitimate military objective within a broader campaign of destruction.

Yet some have survived the same violence and refused to stop. Wael Al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s long-time Gaza bureau chief, lost his wife, two of his children, his infant grandson, and later his eldest son Hamza — himself a journalist — in successive Israeli strikes. He was injured more than once. Within days of burying family members he returned to the camera. “If we don’t continue reporting,” he has said, “there will be no one left to tell the story.” Even after leaving Gaza for medical treatment, he has continued to speak for the colleagues still inside. Others who narrowly escaped the August 2025 strike that killed Anas Al-Sharif and four of his colleagues — among them Ayman al-Hassi, Mohammed Qita, and Anas’s cousin Mohammed al-Sharif — returned to the same work. Younger reporters such as Nour Khaled stepped into the gap left by the dead, choosing to remain in Gaza City rather than evacuate, insisting that the coverage must continue.

These survivors operate under conditions that would be unimaginable in any other context: no safe shelter, no reliable electricity, chronic hunger, and the knowledge that the next airstrike may be aimed at them specifically. Freelancers without institutional protection, local stringers, and the remaining staff of networks that still broadcast from Gaza keep documenting the genocide because no one else can. Their persistence is itself a form of resistance against the attempt to erase the record.

This is a genocidal attack on freedom of the press, inseparable from the genocide itself. When a state kills the people who record its actions at a rate that exceeds the combined toll of the great wars of the twentieth century, it is not simply committing war crimes against individuals. It is attempting to erase the possibility of an independent historical record of the genocide. The images that did get out — of children pulled from rubble, of mass graves, of hospitals turned into morgues — were produced at extraordinary personal cost. Many of the journalists who filmed them are now dead. Those who remain keep working.

The names of those killed are not abstract. They are maintained and updated by Palestinian institutions themselves. The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (نقابة الصحفيين الفلسطينيين), working in close coordination with the International Federation of Journalists, has published sequential lists of the martyred journalists and media workers. A public, regularly updated record of the killings can be found on the IFJ’s dedicated page for the war in Gaza, which draws directly from the Syndicate’s documentation. Additional named lists and ongoing monitoring are available through the Shireen Observatory (مرصد شيرين) at https://www.shireen.ps, a Palestinian project dedicated to documenting attacks on journalists. These are the primary Palestinian sources for the identities of those silenced.

Last week in New York City, like in many places across the world, demonstrators marked the one-year anniversary of Anas Al-Sharif’s killing. Organized in part by the Palestinian Youth Movement, the march moved from the New York Times building to Times Square, demanding accountability for the journalists killed in Gaza and spotlighting Western media’s role in manufacturing consent for the ongoing genocide. Among those present was Palestinian American activist Roland Bennett, president of the Tree Water Initiative, a non profit dedicated to supporting sustainable life in Gaza. “Remembering Anas means refusing to let the record be buried,” Bennet said. “Every journalist still reporting from Gaza is carrying the weight of those who can no longer speak. Our task is to make sure the world cannot look away.”

The international response has been a mixture of muted statements and continued arms transfers. Western governments that speak of press freedom at home have remained largely silent about the industrial-scale killing of Palestinian journalists as part of the genocide. The same governments that demanded accountability when journalists were killed in Ukraine have found reasons for caution when the perpetrators are their close ally. The double standard is not subtle. It is structural.

Anas Al-Sharif was one name among hundreds. His colleagues continue to report from the ruins. Their work is an act of resistance against both the genocide itself and the attempt to erase its documentation. One year after his death, the least that can be demanded is that the record remain unbroken: these killings were not tragic accidents of a complex war. They were the systematic targeting of the people who refused to look away — a campaign so extensive that it has outstripped the journalist death tolls of World War I, World War II, and the major conflicts of the modern era combined, and one that forms an integral part of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The silence of the powerful is part of the crime. The work of the remaining journalists who seek to expose the truth is its contradiction and a part of the resistance to these unfathomable and ongoing atrocities continuing to happen before our eyes.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com

With Oral History Project, Journalists Remember ‘Fearless’ Colleagues Killed by Israeli Forces in Gaza

“He never wavered for a single moment from carrying out his mission, reporting the news, delivering the truth, and exposing the atrocities of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip,” said one journalist of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif.


Al Jazeera correspondent Anas 

al-Sharif reports near a hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on October 10, 2024.
(Photo: AFP via Getty Images)


Julia Conley
Aug 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Just over a year after six journalists—Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Mohammed al-Khalidi, and Moamen Aliwa—were assassinated in an Israeli strike on their tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, a collective of media workers on Wednesday set out to ensure that all 270 Palestinian reporters who have been killed while covering Israel’s nearly three-year assault on the exclave are remembered by the world.

The New York War Crimes collective, a project of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), said it initially aimed to gather remembrances of al-Sharif, a 28-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent who was born in Jabalia refugee camp and started his career as a volunteer for Al-Shamal Media Network before becoming internationally known for his “ceaseless coverage” of Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza.

The responses the collective got, said the organizers, “transformed the project. Anas, his colleagues told us, would not have wanted to be remembered as a singular hero, but as a servant of the Palestinian cause.”

“So, over the course of the following year, we gathered spoken testimonies from fellow journalists, photographers, cameramen, journalism professors, students, and workers across the media sector in Gaza,” reads the website for the project, titled A Living Record. “Each contributor was asked to record a personal remembrance of one or more martyrs, to tell a small part of the history that, as [journalist] Samira Nassar says, should be written in gold.”



A number of journalists spoke to WAWOG about al-Sharif, who reported from northern Gaza while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were heavily restricting humanitarian aid there as they waged intense attacks there on refugee camps and other civilian infrastructure.

“All the journalists were in awe—really in awe—of him,” said Isra al-Madallal. “Just the fact that he was in the north while all the other journalists were in the south was enough to make everyone keep asking, ‘How are you? Where are you? What are you doing? What is happening? May God keep you steadfast.’ And the starvation—that was something that they lived through together, something intense.”

Another colleague, Doaa Shaheen, said Al-Sharif served as “the voice of Jabalia, the voice of the north as a whole; he never left

“He never wavered for a single moment from carrying out his mission, reporting the news, delivering the truth, and exposing the atrocities of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip,” said Shaheen, adding that when her fellow Jabalia camp native was killed she thought: “So that’s it? He’s been martyred? So where is Anas’ voice?”



Freelance journalist Baraa Lafi remembered Mariam Abu Dagga, a visual journalist who extensively documented how children were being affected by Israel’s attacks, which have been called a genocide by leading human rights groups and Holocaust scholars. She photographed overwhelmed hospitals as medical workers struggled to care for sick and injured Palestinians, as well as documenting the impact of Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid.

Lafi was wounded in the Israeli double-tap strike on Nasser Hospital that killed Abu Dagga, as well as Moaz Abu Taha, Hussam al-Masri, Ahmad Abu Aziz, and Mohammad Salama, just weeks after Al-Sharif and his colleagues were killed.

“As a journalist, Mariam was brave. Braver than many men,” said Lafi. “Everyone could see that. Mariam in the field was not unassuming and timid—no. She was fearless. She ran toward the fire, she was first on the scene. If she saw an injured child in distress, she would stop and comfort them. If she saw someone upset, she would stop and stay by their side. If Mariam saw a mother searching for her children—whether during famine or bombardment—she would stop filming and stay by her side, going with her from hospital to hospital to help her find them.”



WAWOG collected remembrances from several reporters of “journalists as a collective,” with Bisan Owda, who won the Peabody Award in 2024 for her coverage of the war on social media, saying that despite Israel’s slaughter of more than 73,000 Palestinians and decimation of the exclave’s civilian infrastructure, “there’s still goodness here, in this small place, in the ground underneath us, in those who fight the evil spreading through the rest of the world. To me, those are the people and journalists of Gaza.”

“To me, these individuals were daring enough to dream, to believe that we can make a difference,” said Owda. “We are brave. We are the ones who have the courage to document with our cameras, to change the narrative, change our current conditions, and to draw attention to our people’s oppression. To change what is happening. You are dealing with the bravest people on the face of the Earth. They are the ones spreading the truth to combat every false narrative in the world.”

As The Living Record was published Wednesday, protesters rallied outside The New York Times headquarters in New York City to demand accountability for the killing of journalists in Gaza, while Drop Site News correspondent Mohamed Awad was detained by Israeli forces in Ramallah, the West Bank.

WAWOG said that in the fall, as the third anniversary of Israel’s assault on Gaza approaches, it plans to publish more eulogies of Gaza journalists who have been killed in the exclave.

Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal on Ice

Dina Demetrius 

 August 12, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Classic logo for Paramount Pictures – Public Domain

An antitrust lawsuit by twelve Democratic states’ Attorneys General against the Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery merger, valued at $111 billion, promises to be the most high-stakes—and potentially industry-changing—case in generations.

Paramount and state AGs struck an agreement on July 24 to bypass the legal wranglings of court injunctions in favor of going directly to a full trial. The outcome would determine whether a tech scion—Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison—backed by his billionaire father, Oracle founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison, and three Gulf sovereign wealth funds, will control a significant portion of the global entertainment and news industries, or if states opposed to the merger have the teeth to stop it.

Per detailed reporting in the New York Times, the direct road to a trial was set by Paramount’s lead trial attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, with a call to the states and the Writers Guild of America. He suggested the merger be put on hold pending the outcome of a trial, or the deal’s end date of June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. The agreement between the parties came on the heels of the states’ lawsuit and request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) on July 13, granted for two weeks by Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The WGA filed its own separate lawsuit on July 14, arguing the merger harms writers’ compensation and work opportunities.

Judge Martínez-Olguín stated in her ruling that the states’ suit had made “a strong showing” that the deal would harm competition. In reinforcing the merits of the states’ case, the judge cited the newly combined company’s potential control of 27 percent of the distribution of widely released films as potentially violating antitrust laws.

Paramount was subject not only to the temporary restraining order, but also faced a potential preliminary injunction in August that would have paused the deal indefinitely. In earlier responses, the company stated it did not want to delay legal battles or closing past September when “ticking fees” kick in. The merger agreement stipulates a $7 million fee per day—amounting to $650 million per quarter—owed to Warner Bros if the deal doesn’t close by September 30, 2026. It also includes a $7 billion “breakup fee” if the deal fails.

Paramount’s legal counsel decided going straight to a full trial would strengthen their ability to make the case that the merger is legal. The company points to larger streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney, and Hulu as the true measure of where market strength lies. Its case is also bolstered by the USDOJ approval in June, and by the recent European Commission approval of the merger, joining sixty-four other regulatory agencies, including large-market countries like China, Canada, and Australia, which either approved the proposed merger or chose not to fight it. The UK is still investigating the deal.

Both sides declared the current pause a win, with Paramount stating that a trial was the “fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading the states’ suit, called the agreement “a major victory.”

Former USDOJ antitrust attorney Doha Mekki, who spoke at a Capitol Forum conference on Hollywood in March, said antitrust trials show prosecutors’ confidence in the merits of the case on behalf of the public. They also give the public the chance to examine how their economic interests in the marketplace are being discussed.

Mekki helped bring the Biden DOJ’s sweeping anti-monopoly case against Live Nation. In April, a jury determined that the bipartisan coalition of thirty-four state AGs, who continued with the case even after the current DOJ forged a settlement with the company, had proven that Live Nation and Ticketmaster violated antitrust laws by eliminating competition and driving up costs. Live Nation is set to unwind its hold on Ticketmaster pending appeals. The states’ win in that case is seen as a hopeful precursor by groups opposed to the Paramount merger.

The twelve states’ case against Paramount relies on the Clayton Act of 1914. That law outlines scenarios in which companies create competitive harm, something the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 did not clearly define.

The AGs are specifically employing Section 7 of the Act, a merger-control mechanism, arguing the new company would harm competition in the areas of widely released films, distribution of “tentpole” movies (blockbusters), and consolidation of cable channels potentially leading to higher licensing fees. The suit also points to reduced competition of streaming services and less independence for decision-makers in news outlets owned by the company—Paramount’s CBS News and CNN, which Warner Bros. owns.

While the antitrust case centers on the two studios’ larger entertainment businesses, its potential impacts on smaller news broadcasting divisions have propelled opposition from journalists, politicians, and high-profile groups including the Committee for the First Amendment, SAG-AFTRA, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and coalitions comprised of thousands of Hollywood creatives and network journalists. The deal would put one of the largest global news organizations, CNN, under the control of Paramount’s CBS News, now run by its embattled Editor-in-Chief, Bari Weiss. Weiss is the founder of the online commentary site The Free Press, often described as “anti-woke” and critical of legacy media.

In an August 4 New York Times op-ed, David Ellison wrote that he believes criticism of the merger and the states’ lawsuit have more to do with his potential ownership of CNN than a combined company’s market share. He insisted that he does not want “to bend their newsrooms,” while adding that he’d like to see these newsrooms “reflect the whole world, not one side of it.”

President Trump has paid singular attention to this aspect of the merger, his administration openly stating the desire to see the Ellisons take over CNN, a news network he continually maligns. The Ellisons have reportedly made assurances to the president that changes to his liking would be made at CNN should the merger succeed. Paramount has denied this, saying no commitments have been made to any governmental body.

Meanwhile, changes at CBS News to appease the White House have been clear, if chaotic, since Ellison’s Skydance bought Paramount in 2025, with the regulatory help afforded by a $16 million lawsuit settlement with Trump. Since Bari Weiss’s installation last October—handpicked by David Ellison—the network has experienced two rounds of significant layoffs, reports of editorial interference, and the departure of top correspondents who critically covered the Administration. A staff-wide town hall in January, led by Weiss, didn’t calm internal distrust or resistance.

The most public controversy involving Weiss’s leadership has been her overhaul of “60 Minutes.” A battle with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi over her report on abuses in CECOT prison, where the United States is detaining immigrants, became public. By the end of the storied show’s season in May, Weiss fired Alfonsi, acclaimed correspondents Scott Pelley and Cecilia Vega, and Executive Producer Tanya Simon, who had attempted to keep a firewall between Weiss and the show. All three correspondents have said they were subject to unprecedented editorial interference.

Seeing the writing on the wall, CNN is beginning to shed top reporters even amid the network’s ownership limbo and a particularly difficult job market for journalists. Correspondents and hosts are either jumping ship early, not renewing longer contracts, or stating they would not work under Weiss’s management.

Despite many public promises about producing thirty films per year as a sign of the merger’s importance to the entertainment industry, Ellison and Paramount spokespeople have yet to mention the deal’s impact on the companies’ respective news organizations.

“They haven’t shared plans on CNN, so there’s no reason to trust them given how they run CBS News,” Clayton Weimers, executive director in Washington, DC, for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told Project Censored. “They’re putting their thumbs on the scale for a particular ideology. And to make the deal more efficient, they’ll need more layoffs. That means less access to information for news consumers, and fewer people deciding what stories get to be told.”

Even if the Paramount-WBD merger falls apart, the pattern Weimers describes is repeated elsewhere. The now-paused merger of station owners Tegna and Nexstar Media Group has already eliminated local reporters. And billionaire media mogul Byron Allen, who recently bought Buzzfeed (which owns HuffPost), is now overseeing cuts to over a third of Buzzfeed’s staff. Recent media consolidations and billionaire buys have forced more journalists to leave the profession or stake out independent platforms for ethical reasons, options that are financially precarious for them and, overall, corrosive for consumers who rely on a healthy media ecosystem for trustworthy news and information.

The battle for a trial date began Friday with the latest court filing—the states requesting April 5, 2027, and Paramount countering with November 4. Judge Martínez-Olguín will decide. Regardless of its start date, the case will mark a pivotal moment in media, US business, and the culture at large. At stake is whether states’ antitrust authority and public opposition will be enough to prevail. It will be a test to see what impact vocal challenges and states’ antitrust authority in opposition to the merger will have on the case’s outcome.

“The lesson is these things are not inevitable,” says Weimers. “We were told we can’t stop it. But here we are, and we’re closer to seeing the deal fail. We can fight back, and we can win.”

This first appeared on Project Censored. 

Dina Demetrius is a 5-time Emmy Award-winning news correspondent and producer, most recently reporting national stories for Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien and CBS News. She began her career at ABC News in Washington, DC, at Nightline with Ted Koppel and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Over the years, Dina has reported and produced in-depth investigative, public policy, and underreported stories for KCET/PBS, Spectrum News 1, Reuters International, and Al Jazeera America. Her current reporting, essays, and podcasts are available on Substack at The Compass with Dina Demetrius.