See you in court
This morning Disney will have its day in court, seven weeks after suing President Trump’s FCC for violating the First Amendment.
Judge Loren AliKhan will hear arguments in her DC courtroom over Disney’s request for a temporary restraining order to block Brendan Carr from further challenging ABC’s local station licenses.
The license challenge is widely seen as an act of retaliation by the Trump administration. Disney says the court’s intervention is necessary to stop an “extraordinary assault on free speech.”
The lawsuit is a major example of a media company fighting for its rights – but not the only one.
On Thursday, lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico will be back before Judge Timothy Kelly seeking a preliminary injunction to stop Trump’s ban. The existing restraining order expires the same day.
Outlets like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are also continuing to defend themselves in court.
And the president is continuing to show why defense is necessary. In a Truth Social screed yesterday, he wrote that “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.”
How did Disney reach the point where it felt compelled to sue the Trump administration? NPR’s David Folkenflik laid it all out here, and the WSJ’s Joe Flint profiled Disney’s top lawyer Horacio Gutiérrez, who will be in court today.
Of course, Carr still claims this fight is all about Disney’s DEI initiatives. During the FCC’s open commission meeting last week, he said the First Amendment lawsuit is a “very odd choice,” lodged “in the wrong court” and at “the wrong time.”
About that: “Legal experts are split on ABC’s chances of success,” the NYT’s John Koblin and Jim Rutenberg wrote in this curtain-raiser piece. Carr’s supporters “say the FCC could persuasively argue that ABC was seeking to short-circuit the ordinary legal process, while FCC opponents say ABC has a good chance of persuading the court that the agency’s proceedings were in fact infringing on ABC’s rights.”
“Legal experts agree that ABC’s success in the case will hinge on making a convincing argument that it is suffering immediate harm through the FCC’s adjudication process,” the pair added.
Judge AliKhan could rule from the bench, though a ruling later this week appears more likely.
Last night the legal team for the three banned news outlets filed its final arguments ahead of Thursday’s hearing before Judge Kelly. CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand and Katelyn Polantz summed up the filing here.
That filing came on the same day that the White House blocked Politico from traveling on Air Force One. The result was another remarkable show of solidarity, this time by the news outlets that make up the print pool.
The White House tried to enlist other news outlets to take Politico’s place on the trip, but “it was unable to find a replacement,” per an internal email to the pool. Here’s my full story about what happened.
In response, a White House spokesperson told me that Trump “will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press.” His recent actions, however, show a desire to pick and choose who asks questions and documents his presidency. Yesterday he lashed out at CNN’s Kristen Holmes for asking a perfectly reasonable question…
It’s official: The Paramount–Warner merger is complete and the newly combined company, Skydance, is now trading on the NYSE. Those of us at CNN noticed the change first thing this morning: Our company-issued computers now have Skydance wallpaper.
As Clare Duffy and I wrote here this morning, the merger is a stunning achievement for CEO David Ellison and one that symbolizes Big Tech’s ascendance in Hollywood.
Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz plan to take cues from tech companies as they seek to transform the entertainment industry. This morning they promised that consumers will see improvements to products like HBO Max and Paramount+, “which will unify into a single service over time.” And they said great stories will “remain at the heart of everything we do.”
Ellison and Kreiz’s memo also acknowledged inevitable layoffs: “Integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce. We are committed to handling this process thoughtfully and respectfully.”
>> Business Insider’s Peter Kafka is out with a smart new profile of Kreiz, who will be “getting his hands very dirty.”
The stakes of this merger are especially high because the new company is incredibly highly leveraged, with roughly $80 billion in debt and an aggressive timeline to pay it down. This week Fitch downgraded Skydance’s credit ratings due to “materially higher leverage after the acquisition and significant execution and integration risks.”
To better understand the financial underpinnings, I recommend this Variety story by Cynthia Littleton titled “Skydance’s High-Wire Act Begins.”
The stock, newly christened $SKYD, declined about 2% in early trading. As the FT noted here, “Ellison is expected to lay out his vision to employees and investors” later today.
As we wrote yesterday, CNN and CBS News will remain separate for the time being, with Mark Thompson continuing to run CNN and Bari Weiss continuing to run CBS News. Everyone expects Skydance to look for “synergies” in the not-too-distant future, however.
“It’s a very exciting day for the company,” Weiss said on the CBS editorial call this morning. “In our newsroom,” Tom Cibrowski “and I know that it raises infinite questions about CBS News, about what’s next, and we wish that we could answer all of those questions. The truth is, there is a lot that we still don’t know.”
“This is a process that’s going to unfold over time,” Weiss continued, and “the best guidance that we can share is that we should focus always on the work that we do.” CBS News has “a lot of momentum” right now, she said, so “we should be focusing on delivering scoops, exclusives, revelatory journalism that you can’t get anywhere else.” Let’s “focus on what we do best.”
Cibrowski added, “The main thing is that momentum word, the big M word that Bari said. We’ve got that, the work is fantastic, and now is the time to double down and focus on our work at CBS News.”
So many excellent new releases today. Here are just a few. Kevin Roose is rolling out “The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence.” Matthew Pressman is releasing “The People’s Paper: The Rise and Fall of the New York Daily News.”
Michael Lewis is already in the top 10 on Amazon with “Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State.” Sen. Thom Tillis is out with “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents: The Trouble with Sycophants, Courage Outsourcing, and Partisan Groupthink.” And longtime NYT Rome bureau chief Jason Horowitz is releasing “The Italian Job: A Memoir of an American Reporter in Rome,” which NY Mag excerpted here.
More breaking news this morning: The Emmys are leaving broadcast TV. Amazon Prime Video has nabbed the exclusive streaming rights to the award ceremony in a six-year deal that starts in September 2027. “The Emmys will stream for free and not require a Prime Video subscription,” the aforementioned John Koblin wrote. Amazon “will also make the event available all over the world.”
TV Academy chair Cris Abrego told Koblin that the jump from broadcast is “a pretty big step,” saying “television in itself is evolving in real time.” He added: “But I actually think the distinction between broadcast and streaming is becoming less meaningful every year. Most of our longtime broadcast partners themselves are part of companies with major streaming platforms…”
Andrew Kirell writes: Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was back on Fox News yesterday, this time with daytime anchor Martha MacCallum. It made for compelling TV once again.
Clips of the at-times contentious interview spread widely on progressive social media. As Max Tani observed, “There’s a real appetite among the Dem base for their politicians to go on Fox and hold their own. Abdul, Zohran, Gavin, Pete all got positive partisan press and clips by appearing on Fox.”
And it’s not just about satisfying partisan clip watchers. The GOP’s unfolding midterm panic creates a significant opening for lefty candidates to show up where viewers usually hear about Democrats and give them a chance to hear from Democrats — especially when some of those viewers might be having second thoughts about Trump and his party.
El-Sayed is framing those appearances as a necessity. “If you can’t buy attention, then you have to earn attention, which means that you’ve got to go everywhere and you’ve got to talk to everybody,” he told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes last night. “When you know what you believe, then you’re not afraid to go and have conversations with folks.”
>> Trump raged on Truth Social this morning: “FoxNews spends more time covering the Jihadist and Dumocrat candidates than they do the good old fashioned Republicans.” He said MacCallum tossed El-Sayed “softballs,” adding, “She never interviews me like that.”
New data suggests Candace Owens’ subscriber growth has hit a ceiling: Her show “added only 239 subscribers from June 30, 2026, to Sept 30, 2026, which was statistically zero growth,” Howard Polskin’s TheRighting shared exclusively with us, noting that her “remarkable run of four consecutive quarters of dramatic YOY subscriber growth may be ending.”
Owens still tied with Megyn Kelly for the largest year-over-year subscriber growth among right-wing podcasts tracked by TheRighting on Castbox, each up 33% — but almost none of her gains came in the latest quarter.
“That suggests there may be a ceiling to what right-wing audiences will tolerate when it comes to extremist points of view,” Polskin writes…
Disney is testing how far it can push Super Bowl ad prices — and how much additional spending it can secure across its business. The company “is seeking between $10 million and $12 million per 30-second spot, as well as what is known as a ‘match’ of another tranche of money for other parts of Disney ad inventory,” Variety’s Brian Steinberg reports.
>> First reactions to Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” are in. “Now it’s clear why Amazon didn’t want to release ‘Artificial’: It’s withering AF,” Steven Zeitchik writes. (THR)
>> “Mistral on Tuesday unveiled a new AI model it said ranked among the best open models in the world, as Western companies race to close the capability gap with Chinese developers in the market.” (CNBC)
>> 🤔 ChatGPT is generating New Yorker-style cartoons, some of which come bearing real cartoonists’ signatures, Andrew Deck reports. (NiemanLab)
>> “Uncensored, the media company founded by Piers Morgan in February 2024, is launching its first paid subscription product.” (Adweek)
>> Taylor Swift’s “Patient Zero” has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, “becoming her 16th career leader.” (Billboard)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.