Crooked New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted and waged endless war against President Donald Trump while also being indicted for tax fraud in Virginia, is back at it again. This time, she’s trying to block a TV merger that Trump personally blessed.
The merger in question is the $6.2 billion combination of Nexstar and Tegna. Trump gave his thumbs up to it, writing on Truth Social that we need more competition against the “Fake News National TV Networks” and urging regulators to “GET THAT DEAL DONE!”
The FCC approved the merger, as it typically does with major media deals that pass regulatory review.
But go figure that “Tish” James greeted all this by rounding up seven other Democrat attorneys general and suing to kill the deal outright. Those other liberal luminary AGs are from leftist hellholes like California, Connecticut, Illinois, and of course, Portlandia (Oregon as it is also sometimes known).
Tishany and Company pushed the litigation into California, getting it in front of an Obama appointee in order to get a favorable ruling. You know, like judge-shopping but at a national level. And the Obama judge did what Obama judges do: slapped a preliminary injunction on the merger and put the whole thing on ice. For now.
A Dem judge stopping something done by the federal government under Trump with an injunction, you say? Gee that never happens!
There’s a weird twist to this one, though. It’s not just James and her Democrat gal pals fighting the merger. In a pretty obvious show of naked self-interest, Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, has come out in opposition to the deal, putting himself crossways with Trump, all because he thinks a bigger Nexstar could make life harder for Newsmax — and his bottom line. Ruddy took his case to the Senate, filed formally with the FCC, and continues to fight the administration on this.
It isn’t the first time that’s happened, by the way. Back during Trump’s first term, Sinclair TV tried to take over a rival media company, and Ruddy fought that equally hard. Oh, and he teamed up with leftists like John Kerry on that one, too. Even though it would have massively expanded conservative megaphones in a liberal-dominated media sphere.
Now, the FCC isn’t doing anything especially unusual here in approving the deal or waiving the cap. The agency has a long track record of approving large broadcast mergers and making case-by-case adjustments to ownership rules along the way. Critics can argue about whether those rules are being stretched too far this time, but the idea that this is some unprecedented Trump-driven power play — as the lib media + Tish James + Chris Ruddy would have you believe — doesn’t hold up. In fact, just last year, more than 20 conservative groups and leaders, including Heritage Action and Grover Norquist, pushed the FCC to rethink the ownership cap, warning that local broadcasters are getting steamrolled by Big Tech.
As Brendan Carr put it, local stations have an “inherent disadvantage” against YouTube, TikTok, and the rest because of the rule. I mean, those apps face no such limits, obviously. Those companies, left-wing without exception, just reach whatever households in whatever markets they want. No cap, as the kids say (I think). “Without reform, valued local broadcast radio and television services could disappear entirely,” the conservative groups argued.
But what is unusual is the level of political attention. Big media mergers happen all the time, and they usually draw the same predictable regulatory scrutiny. What they don’t usually get is this kind of multi-state, activist-style legal pile-on led by a high-profile political opponent of the sitting president.
Now, all that doesn’t make the case for the merger (or against it), but that’s not what this is about. The deal went through already. Like I talked about with the Washington Post and Spirit yesterday, the question at hand is about the facts of the opposition. It’s about how this situation even exists in the first place, and who is trying to stop the deal, and their real motives. And on that front, the answer is pretty clear: it’s the same political actors who have made a full-time job out of opposing Trump at every turn.
It isn’t just about one merger anymore, no matter what the courts decide here. Because when a deal can clear federal regulators, go through the full legal process, get the go-ahead, and then still get frozen by a coalition of comically obvious, overtly politically motivated actors, it tells you something about how these fights are being waged now. And it tells you that no matter the issue, be it media, business, or anything else, no aspect of American life is safe from the organized left anymore.
Oh, and they’re coming for SCOTUS too. Ain’t that grand?