DL Open Thread: Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Absolute Corruption–Trump Mobilizes To Stop WBD/Netflix Merger Because…:
Simply extraordinary stuff coming out this morning about the battle over what used to be Time Warner and now goes by the name Warner Bros Discovery (which includes CNN in addition to the more lucrative media stuff). The company had agreed to be acquired by Netflix. So Paramount — now the vehicle of the Ellison family successor and a Trump state media entity-in-the-making — has launched a hostile takeover effort to swoop in and gobble up WBD for itself. In its public pitch, it has openly advertised to shareholders that it is the better acquirer because the Ellisons are tight with Trump, and the White House will never let a Netflix deal go through. Trump, in comments yesterday, as much as agreed. Trump has refashioned antitrust oversight to be little more than a personal veto for the Trump family. Friends can do mergers; foes can’t. Indeed, the indifferent and uncommitted can’t either. You need to get right with the Trump family.
When you ask why so much of corporate America is beholden to Trump now, this is why. A big diversified corporation simply cannot compete and thus, in practice, can’t exist with a determinedly hostile administration.
Now we learn this: who else is part of the hostile takeover bid? None other than Jared Kushner. Yes, Jared — international M&A man when he’s not cutting “peace” deals in Israel-Palestine or Ukraine. And wait, there’s more! Just moments ago I saw that it’s not just Jared: the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis are also in on the deal. Backstopping the deal is a fund, RedBird Capital, seen by many as a stalking horse for China.
I can’t even…
For Barristers Only: Legal Beagles parse the nuances in the Supreme Court’s seemingly-inevitable evisceration of ‘independent agencies’:
On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a case that will decide whether Congress can require cause before the president removes the heads of most independent agencies.
To assess the arguments and explore the vast implications, Kate Shaw, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Will Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown and the author of “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.”
If it reminds you of the rabbis at the Seder table discussing the number of plagues visited upon the Egyptians, you’re right there with me.
Trump ‘Defers’. Because he’s so deferential:
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump denied saying Wednesday that he was open to releasing the video — despite doing so on camera — and then attacked the journalist who asked him about his previous comments, calling her “fake news.”
Ho-kay. I take that to mean that they’re gonna try to ‘Epstein files’ the footage of the war crime.
How Opposition Leaders Are Dealing With Authoritarianism:
Stefania Kapronczay (Hungary), former head of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union:
“Trump’s consolidation of power in the US echoes prime minister Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian power grabs in Hungary, says Kapronczay. But with one important difference.
“It’s happening much faster, and it’s surprising for me that so many private companies and institutions just complied with the perceived or expressed will of President Trump,” she said. “I didn’t expect so many people would be so risk-averse.”
Kapronczay says she’s learned that opposition leaders need to pay closer attention to pocketbook issues. “Standing up for democracy, resisting and all this very abstract language will not reach the majority of society,” she said. “It’s only a very small progressive circle that resonates with that kind of messaging.”
But the authoritarian turn also “posed an opportunity for self-reflection”, she said. “If our previous tools are no longer working, how can we serve our mission in a more impactful way?”
““When they come to power for the second time, they feel more ruthless, and they behave as if there are no boundaries any more,” said Temelkuran. “I think especially in the leader’s head, that association of ‘me and the country’ [being] the same thing becomes very prominent when they seize power for the second time.”
After writing about Erdoğan and other autocrats for more than two decades, Temelkuran says Americans need to gear up for a “long game” of fighting to rebuild democracy. “It took Erdoğan 15 years to do what Trump did in 100 days,” she said. “If [Americans] do not accept the fact that this is a long game, and it will be brutal, I think you won’t have the patience and stamina to bear it.”
Claudia Ortiz (El Salvador), federal deputy with the opposition Vamos party:
You cannot make authoritarian leaders the center of your narrative,” said Ortiz. “You have to make the people the center of your narrative, and you have to be passionate about it.”
She said that means doing more to engage with citizens – and being prepared to be surprised by what they say. “A part of the cure for this is listening to people,” she said. “Don’t be so certain about what they want, what they need. You have to ask.”
“The parties that ruled the country in the past decades weren’t capable of building a solid democracy that delivered results in the daily life of people,” she said. “But we think that the road to overcoming that is not to destroy institutions, but to make them actually work.”
“Authoritarian systems give the appearance of performing, but their solutions are not thorough, they are not sustainable, and they are not fair,” she went on. “They will decay because the way they function is to exclude, abuse, and allow massive corruption.”
NCC Council: A Buncha Bozos–And Cowards:
The New Castle County Council will delay its vote on a controversial proposal to regulate the fast-growing, data center industry the new year, the sponsor of the legislation said.
Following a series of tense debates last month, Councilman Dave Carter told Spotlight Delaware he needs more time to come up with a compromise to the ordinance, which would require data centers to have buffer zones, and to use energy-efficient backup generators, among other mandates.
Carter first proposed the sweeping set of rules four months ago amid a backlash to a developer’s plan to build a massive, power hungry data center on about 580 acres north of the Delaware City Refinery.
At the time, many residents and elected officials feared the facility would exacerbate an energy crunch that was already impacting the region.
By October, the public sentiment may have shifted after powerful labor unions expressed support for the plan. (That is not true. First, those unions are only ‘powerful’ in the eyes of cowards or sycophants. Second, they are small in number. Survey after survey demonstrate how unpopular these data center proposals are.)
Still, opponents to the regulations fear that Carter’s ordinance could cause the state to lose the Delaware City data center project entirely, along with the tax revenue and jobs it would bring.
Council members Janet Kilpatrick and Tim Sheldon, both opponents of the legislation, each told Spotlight Delaware that they now agree with Carter that the council needs more time to find compromises.
“We got one shot at getting this right, and there’s got to be compromises on both sides,” Sheldon said.
Why? So that Tim can keep his members from slashing up someone’s tires? BTW, I’m reminded by a valued reader that Gov. Meyer has already expressed his opposition to the project:
“Having a large data center come here and just draw electricity off the grid is just a non-starter for me. I will do everything I can to make sure something like that doesn’t happen,” he told Delaware Public Media.
Gov. Meyer says while he doesn’t want to dismiss the amount of construction jobs the project could bring to the state, he notes the center would not provide a lot of permanent positions for Delawareans.
Question for our Governor: What, exactly, is ‘everything I can’?
What do you want to talk about?
Re: Data centers. Unions are not our friends, and they aren’t even reliable allies. This is umpteenth example of it.
Tax revenue? What tax revenue? The land it will sit on is nearly worthless, so I doubt they’ll pay more than a couple million in property taxes. There will be 100 or so permanent jobs, far fewer than would be worth the 7% increase (that’s the estimate, the truth will be more) in everyone’s electric bill this will cause.
There is no economic incentive for anyone to support AI development unless they’re actually in that industry. Janet Kilpatrick can and should go fuck herself.
Given how much trouble it causes the rest of the state, I’d be in favor of razing Delaware City to the ground to put it out of its misery. It started in the 1800s as a land development scheme and 200 years later it still hasn’t achieved lift-off.