Tons of stories have been written about the internal machinations at CBS that led to these top news executives’ leaving. But the long and the short of it is that Paramount, the parent company of CBS, is trying to push through a merger with Skydance Media, and that merger must be approved by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission. Everybody knows Trump is a vindictive little shithead who uses the entire federal government to settle his petty scores. Trump sued CBS for $20 billion after it aired an interview with Kamala Harris during the campaign, and while his lawsuit is meritless, everyone involved believes that the Paramount/Skydance merger will not happen unless CBS is humiliated and reaches a settlement with Trump.

For independent journalists, the news is our business. For corporate media, the business is oversaturating the market with Star Wars skins or selling nipple covers or flying to Mars. News is a sideshow, and an unprofitable one, which is allowed to exist only as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the real business.

I don’t know what anybody can do about all that, other than to support independent media. This newsletter is not a fundraising e-mail (that, best believe, will come later). I just honestly wanted to respond to the destruction of CBS News by saying thank you, to all of you, who make sure some of us are not destroyed.

• In a surprise 4–4 ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed an Oklahoma State Supreme Sourt decision blocking the creation of a Catholic charter school with the use of public education funds. It’s a huge victory for public education, and an unexpected setback for the otherwise undefeated religious right in front of this Supreme Court. But there is a mighty big catch. Jesus-triumphalist Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case because the godmother to some of her children was a plaintiff on behalf of the Catholics. The court was evenly divided only because she didn’t take part in the case. Assuming Barrett isn’t close friends with literally every conservative Catholic litigant in the country, a case from some other Catholic charter school looking to steal public funds will be presented to the Supreme Court in the future, and the result will be different.
• Remember how Senate Democrats, during the Biden administration, let the Senate parliamentarian tell them they couldn’t pass a minimum-wage hike with a simple majority vote? I do. But the Republicans don’t play such games. In their zeal to murder the environment, Senate Republicans simply ignored the Senate parliamentarian and moved to revoke California’s vehicle admissions standards on Wednesday. Democrats are allegedly “furious.” But I’d like to ask them if they’ve learned anything from this display of how a party might actually use power.
• Emil Bove, the Trump Justice Department official most responsible for the illegal purges of federal lawyers, is being floated for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The seat is open because Democrats would not confirm Biden’s nominee to the post, Adeel Mangi. Mangi is Muslim, and that was pretty much the only objection Democrats had against the man. I ask again: Senate Democrats, have you guys learned anything these past few months?
• The Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to deport 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States by revoking their temporary protected status. Presidents can revoke “temporary” status, but Trump’s procedural methods and reasons for doing so here are, as usual, unlawful and racist.

• Adam Serwer gets to the heart of the Trump administration’s arguments in the birthright citizenship case that was heard by the Supreme Court last week. He explains that the Trump administration’s objections to the nationwide injunctions are tantamount to Trump’s being “tired of courts telling him he’s breaking the law.”
• To be entirely honest, I don’t have a large appetite for stories about “rural” voters. My bitterness and anger toward the racism, sexism, and rank stupidity they vote for outpaces my capacity for empathy. But… I try to be a better person than that, and examinations like this one, from Jamelle Bouie, on how Trump’s policies are hurting these folks, help me. I just need to take short sips from the milk of human kindness before the rest of it curdles.
• The great Elisabeth Spiers wrote for The Nation about Trump’s corrupt “ambassador factory.”
• Speaking of corruption—and the Democrats’ apparent inability to learn—The Nation’s Chris Lehmann wrote about the Democrats who backed Trump’s disastrous crypto bill.
• I don’t work for Above the Law anymore, but The New York Times did a very nice profile of the place where I worked and wrote for 11 years. I’m very proud of the publication, and all the people who work there.

We need federal regulation of AI. We desperately need federal labor protections regarding the use of AI. And anyone who has read any of Issac Asimov’s books or short stories (literally, pick one—READ ONE GODDAMN SENTENCE FROM ASIMOV, YOU COWARDS) knows that we need ethical standards for AI.

The current administration, run as it is by tech oligarchs who would sell humanity into a world where doctors are replaced by OpenAI and Grok produces all artwork, is wholly incapable of providing such regulation, standards, or protections. We know that.

But the states, especially California, are in a good position to step into the power vacuum left by the federal government and provide some regulation and oversight of this technology that literally has the power to destroy our perception of what is real. This budget provision would short-circuit all of that and make AI one of the only things that cannot be regulated by state law.

Think of how insane that is. States can regulate what drugs you put into your body. They can regulate where you can plant a tree. They purport to regulate whom you can marry, where you can protest, and precisely how many particulates of poison can be expelled into the atmosphere from within their borders. But this bill says that states cannot regulate whether your voice can be stolen, uploaded to the Internet, and forced to say “I voted for Donald Trump” for the delight of incels. This provision is madness.

Luckily, the rule is receiving a lot of pushback, including from some Republicans.

Weirdly, I’m hoping the AI-to-wild-pornography loop can be made clear to some of the Christofascist Republican Senators to get them to vote against the provision. Some sick bastard needs to make a Deep Fake of John Thune having carnal relations with a horse while singing the Soviet National Anthem.

This provision simply has to be stopped. I cannot fight a freaking Terminator, yet.

• Democrats and progressives need to make LaMonica McIver, the congresswoman charged with “assaulting” ICE officers because she stood in their way, a star.
• If you didn’t catch my “Open Letter to Clarence Thomas” in this month’s magazine, you should check it out. It was a good-faith and earnest plea—without being delusional and without ceding to that evil jerkface one inch of intellectual ground.

Nonetheless, I live in this world, and I cannot deny that criminal trials are important. One important trial happening right now is the one involving Sean “Diddy” Combs and the various federal allegations against him.

It has been hard to keep up with the weeks-long affair. No cameras are allowed in the courtroom (hiding criminal trials from public view makes the whole process of covering them worse). Most of the reporting that’s been leaking out from people who are actually there is just telling me stuff I already know.

But there has been one reporter whose work has shined throughout the Diddy trial, and she is the viral true-crime TikToker Stephanie Soo, who goes by the handle “Rotten Mango.” Her reports have been, and I hate to say this, fantastic. She’s been accurately reporting, clear as I can tell, about the allegations surfacing at trial, while being engaging and, well, funny. She’s converted some of her stuff into podcast format, and that podcast knocked Joe Rogan off the number-one ranking this week.

So yeah, if you want to follow the Diddy trial, follow Rotten Mango? I started off this newsletter praising independent journalism and… Soo counts. She certainly counts. Soo probably represents the future of this industry far more than CBS-Dance-ParaNews.

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