Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned Thursday that corporate mergers approved under the Trump administration, including the pending $111 billion combination of Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Skydance, could be undone by a future administration, as she accused the administration of operating a “pay-to-play scheme.”
“After 2028, we’ll have new players in Washington, and everyone who’s engaged in this merger frenzy right now is aware of that,” Warren said in an interview. “The deals that are being cut today are occurring in the shadow of a coming political tsunami of anger against these giant corporations that think they can mow through one industry after another and run up prices and suck out profits and never be held accountable.” She added: “By 2028, they may find out they have badly miscalculated.”
Warren’s remarks, which also came during a speech to the Open Markets Institute in Washington, follow the Justice Department’s approval earlier this month of Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, parent company of CNN and HBO. Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Ellison family, already owns CBS News after acquiring it last year. The deal has prompted concerns that Larry Ellison, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, and his son David could influence CNN’s coverage to favor the administration. After gaining control of CBS News, David Ellison appointed Bari Weiss, a conservative commentator with no television experience, as editor-in-chief.
“One ultimate decision-maker decides what’s important and what’s not” at two of the country’s biggest news outlets, Warren said. “A bigger problem is that Ellison himself wants to inject a tilt into the news, and that means, where Americans turn for news, they can depend less and less on hearing independent, unbiased reports, and increasingly hearing a predigested version of the world that is comfortable for the new management of these news outfits.”
Warren also accused the Trump administration of turning a blind eye to the merger wave’s harmful effects on consumers in exchange for political donations. “As soon as Trump took office, corporations came knocking at the White House door to get their pro-monopoly deals approved,” she said in her speech. “Have you wondered why companies keep donating millions of dollars to Trump’s gold-encrusted ballroom, his arch, or his library? It looks a lot like a pay-to-play scheme.”
Beyond media, the administration has approved several other large transactions, according to Warren’s remarks and the interview: Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion acquisition of US Steel; Omnicom’s $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic, creating the world’s largest advertising agency; and the $35 billion merger between Capital One and Discover Financial.
State attorneys general have reportedly planned a lawsuit to block the Paramount-Warner deal but have not yet announced one. Warren said she “wouldn’t draw a lot of inferences” from the delay, noting that bringing such a case requires significant resources and coordination among states as they decide “how they’re going to pool their efforts to go up against a giant like Ellison.”
Warren is not alone among Senate Democrats in threatening to undo mergers approved under the Republican administration. In February, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted on social media that Paramount “should enjoy its growing news monopoly while they have it because when Democrats win back power we are going to break up these anti-democratic information conglomerates. All of them.”
The senator acknowledged that legislative action would be difficult with Trump in the White House. “What we’ll be able to change in the law will be tough, with Donald Trump still sitting in the White House and able to veto anything he doesn’t like,” Warren said. However, she noted that antitrust law permits retroactive breakups of mergers “if they are later determined to violate those laws.”
November’s midterm elections could put Democrats back in control of the Senate and House of Representatives. Warren, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said returning to the majority could offer her party some limited opportunity to push back on the administration’s merger policy.