You Can Mock Legacy Media Right Up Until It’s Gone
The Ellisons are getting Warner Bros and CNN. Plus: AI guardrails are woke now, apparently. Another day, another unannounced military laser. And women’s sports get the celebration they deserve.
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We are in a period of remarkable transformation. How Americans get information, how wars are fought, how AI reshapes the economy — the old structures are giving way and what replaces them is still taking shape. This week offered a sharp look at the fault lines.
After a conveniently timed White House meeting with Trump’s attorney general, Netflix dropped its bid for Warner Bros Discovery. Paramount, owned by the son of Trump-ally Larry Ellison, will absorb one of the last major independent media companies in America. To borrow from Succession: congratulations on saying the biggest number. The Ellisons will soon control CBS News and CNN, plus a huge chunk of the entertainment ecosystem. You may think legacy news is irrelevant in the age of Substack and social media. It’s not. CBS and CNN have the resources, experience, and history most independents don’t — to put teams in the field, fund investigations, and drive a story into the national consciousness. Lose them, and someone has to figure out how to fund the journalists who’ll keep up that reporting without a network behind them. Otherwise we lose the ability to know what’s true at the scale that matters.
The Pentagon escalated its standoff with Anthropic, demanding the right to use its technology without safeguards against mass surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons. Anthropic said no. Trump called them a “woke company” run by “leftwing nut jobs.” It’s the first major showdown between an AI powerhouse — the one known as the “ethical AI” company (ethical is a relative term here) — and a government hungry for what it can do. Chalk messages appeared on the sidewalk outside Anthropic’s offices from people cheering them on (see the photo at the top of this newsletter).
Also this week, former Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey set off a debate about the future of jobs when he fired nearly half of his fintech firm Block, claiming AI makes them unnecessary.
Nothing you see right now is necessarily permanent. That’s unsettling, but it also means there’s still room to influence what comes next. You’re already here paying attention. That’s the first step.
One more thing: I had a chance to write for Jenna Bush Hager’s Substack, Voices at the Table, about something personal — five practices I’ve developed to manage the anxiety that comes with doing this work every day. Some of you say you want advice to manage your news anxiety. These tips might help. You can find them here.
We end with News That Doesn’t Suck about the Olympics and something worth looking up for in the night sky this weekend.
Here Are Your Headlines
Deus Ex Machina: If you thought big media was too big before, just wait. Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) on Friday agreed to be acquired by Trump-ally David Ellison’s Paramount, after Netflix — under very 2026 conditions — declined to match Paramount’s latest offer. This sets the stage for Ellison to further consolidate his control over America’s media and news companies. Here’s the 2026 twist: Thursday Netflix’s CEO went to the White House to meet with senior Trump administration officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and the acting head of the DOJ’s antitrust division. The topic: how Trump regulators might view a Netflix/WBD merger. That same day — after months of back and forth — WBD’s board declared Paramount’s bid “superior,” then Netflix withdrew its bid, calling the deal “no longer financially attractive.” Trump has described David Ellison and his father, Larry, as “friends” and “big supporters of mine” who will “do the right thing.” He’s said he’ll “be involved” in the battle for control of WDB. Netflix’s stock jumped 10%, as investors wary of the deal cheered its end. At Paramount, employees popped champagne. But the mood at Warner Bros was somber. One person described it to me as “devastated.”
Glidepath? Paramount’s bid still faces regulatory scrutiny from the US and EU. While Trump administration approval is all but assured, some analysts expect state intervention. California, which has intervened in multiple major mergers in recent years, announced it “is taking a very close look” and said it is “committed to fighting market consolidation that we find unlawful.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called the deal an “antistrust disaster.” Sen Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned, “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.”
News At Risk: If Paramount is successful, owner David Ellison and his father will own or have large stakes in CBS News, CNN, and Tiktok, plus culture shaping properties including HBO. They’ve already started making waves at CBS, which we’ve written about here, here, and here. One Warner Brothers exec told Variety the sale is a “gut punch” that is “obviously very upsetting to employees,” and an insider warned, “Look at what they’ve done to CBS News.” Today veteran CBS news producer Mary Walsh announced she’s leaving the company after 46 years, writing to her peers, “We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.” TikTok users say that since the takeover by US investors their posts are being suppressed — including when they post about Jeffrey Epstein and ICE’s raids in Minnesota. The co-CEO of media watchdog group Free Press said that the Ellisons “already promised the Trump administration they’ll make sweeping changes to CNN and we know what that means: firing journalists, spiking important stories, and replacing the news with empty propaganda.” CNN and 60 Minutes are keystones of accountability journalism — their reporting and investigations help Americans know what Washington is actually up to and sort what’s real from what’s invented. Gut them, and we’re all left making sense of power with less and less to go on.
Interesting Timing: Trump last week warned Netflix would “pay the consequences” if it refused to fire Susan Rice, a board member and former Biden and Obama White House official who said companies that “took a knee to Trump” would face accountability from Democrats in the future.
Matter of Trust: Trump on Friday ordered “every federal agency … to immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology,” after the AI developer refused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demand it allow the Pentagon to use its AI model, Claude, without key safeguards. And Hegseth designated the company a supply chain risk, prohibiting anyone that does business with the Pentagon from working with Anthropic. Both Trump and Hegseth said Anthropic will continue to provide its services for a few months for what Hegseth called “a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.” Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said he “cannot in good conscience” agree to the Pentagon’s demands, and warned that “in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.” The company doesn’t want its AI used to operate fully autonomous lethal weapons or conduct mass surveillance of Americans; the Pentagon says it won’t do either, but refuses to let Anthropic set those rules. Pentagon officials said they acknowledged in writing existing laws and policies regarding surveillance and autonomous weapons, but Anthropic said the language “was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.” The Pentagon’s chief technology officer, a former Uber exec, accused Amodei of being “afraid of the power of AI,” having a “god-complex,” and wanting “nothing more than to try personally control the US military.” Hegseth said that “America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.” One man’s ethics are another man’s whims…
Do Your Job: A bipartisan group of Senate defense leaders on Friday urged the Pentagon to extend its deadline for cutting off Anthropic. And retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) (who just speaks his mind these days) asked, “Why in the hell are we having this discussion in public?… Congress needs to weigh in if they have a tool that could actually result in mass surveillance.”
Laser Focused: The Defense Department on Thursday shot down a drone with a high-energy laser, causing chaos and confusion — again. As happened last month, the DoD failed to tell the FAA it was deploying the laser, forcing the FAA to close nearby airspace to protect air traffic. The drone was operated by Customs and Border Protection, which reportedly failed to inform the DoD it was launching the aircraft. The two agencies put out a statement Thursday insisting they are “working together in an unprecedented fashion.”
Chopping Block: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on Thursday says he is firing almost half of the workforce at his fintech company Block because of AI. Dorsey said that he’s late in replacing humans with AI, adding, “Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion.” The tech world is debating whether Dorsey’s move is a sign that the anticipated AI “jobs apocalypse” is here. Or whether Dorsey used AI to spin other more quotidian reasons he had to downsize, and jobs are safe for another beat. Shares for the company, which owns Square and Cash App, soared over 20% on Friday. An MIT report from August found that “95% of organizations” that invest in AI “are getting no return,” and an NBER study released in February concluded that over 80% of firms using AI see no impact on employment or productivity. I’m told by tech executives those numbers won’t be true 3 months from now.
Knife’s Edge: US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Friday told some staff in the embassy in Israel to leave “TODAY.” Several countries have warned against travel to the region, and the UK on Friday temporarily closed its embassy in Iran. The latest round of US-Iran talks were “positive,” one senior US official said, but ended Thursday without a deal. Trump said he is “not thrilled” with Iran’s refusal to “give us what we want to have,” and on Friday warned that “sometimes you have to use force.” On the other hand, negotiators say a deal is still possible and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is heading to Israel March 2 and 3 to discuss both a deal with Iran and Trump’s Gaza peace plan.
Tit for Tat: Pakistan’s defense minister on Friday declared “open war” against Afghanistan, as long-simmering tensions flared into deadly clashes. Fighting began Thursday, when Afghanistan launched unprecedented assaults on multiple military targets in Pakistan, which responded with aerial bombardments of major Afghani cities, including the capital. The attacks have left dozens dead, likely including civilians. The Taliban accuse Pakistan’s government of killing civilians during unprovoked attacks on Afghanistan. Pakistan, which for decades supported the Taliban and welcomed its return to power in 2021, accuses it of harboring the Pakistani Taliban, which has carried out multiple terrorist attacks against Pakistan. One terrorism expert told NBC that open conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan would likely strengthen global terrorist groups, which “undermines US homeland security.”
Tidal Wave: It’s been less than a week since the Supreme Court ruled Trump’s retaliatory tariffs are illegal, and already over 100 companies have filed new lawsuits seeking refunds. As of Friday, the Trump administration is facing over 2,000 tariff lawsuits.
Comic Book Villains: Immigration agents on Thursday morning used lies to detain a Columbia student — and then released her later that day after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani personally intervened with Trump. According to Columbia’s acting president, plainclothes agents told the superintendent of a university-owned apartment building they were looking for a missing child, even showing a picture of the supposed child; the agents then detained a student, refusing to produce a warrant despite repeatedly being asked to do so. Mamdani happened to be meeting with Trump that day to discuss a housing project. He gave the president a mock newspaper with a flattering headline — and convinced Trump to release the detained student.
Keep reading for information on…
🕵️ What the Clintons testified to lawmakers seeking answers about Jeffrey Epstein
🧑⚖️ Why two judges are losing patience with ICE
🪩 How a misogynistic joke turned into a three-day party for women athletes, courtesy of a famous rapper
🪐 Where to see a rare astrological phenomenon on Saturday
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