America is in the middle of something that doesn’t have a clean name yet. It’s not a normal partisan fight. It’s a systematic consolidation of power over our courts, our elections, our borders, and now, our information. A blind refugee left to die in a frozen parking lot while the government lies about it. A potential military strike on Iran as diplomats scramble. Trump and Gabbard laying the groundwork to seize voting machines ahead of the midterms. And the media companies that are supposed to hold power accountable being absorbed, one by one, into a web of billionaires and Trump allies. This is what the end of the free press looks like if we let it happen.
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CNN and CBS: The Merger That Could Silence The Press
Netflix walked away from its $83 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, and what’s left has journalists at CNN and CBS News genuinely worried. Paramount Skydance is now the likely buyer, which would put the two networks under the same corporate roof for the first time.
The fear isn’t just about job cuts. The deeper concern is ideological. David Ellison has acknowledged having conversations with Trump that touched on CNN. His father Larry Ellison, the largest Paramount Skydance shareholder, reportedly discussed with a White House official the possibility of removing CNN anchors who have drawn Trump’s anger, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar.
Then there’s Bari Weiss, appointed CBS News editor-in-chief last October as a concession to Trump-aligned regulators, with no prior television experience. A CNN producer said, “If Bari Weiss takes control of CNN, it will be the end of the global network Ted Turner founded.” Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Foundation warned Ellison would sacrifice the First Amendment and CNN’s journalists if they stood between him and profit. WBD CEO David Zaslav called it an opportunity to “create tremendous value for shareholders.”
The deal still needs DOJ antitrust review. State attorneys general could challenge it. Nothing is final. But the direction is clear.
When a handful of billionaires can decide which journalists stay and which ones go based on whether they flatter power, that’s not a free market of ideas. That’s oligarchy tightening its grip on the one institution that was designed to check it. If we lose independent media, we don’t just lose stories. We lose the shared factual ground a democracy depends on to function at all.
A Blind Refugee Died In A Frozen Parking Lot. The Government Lied About It.
Nurul Amin Shah Alam was a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar. He barely spoke English, walked with a stick, and was nearly blind. On February 19th, Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a Tim Hortons in Buffalo, New York, calling it “a warm, safe location near his last known address.”
Shah Alam was found dead five days later.
Surveillance footage obtained by The Washington Post and Investigative Post tells a different story. The Tim Hortons was closed. Shah Alam was left in the parking lot, alone, in below-freezing temperatures, more than an hour after the store shut. Agents did not contact his family or his lawyer. DHS continued pushing the “warm, safe location” claim even after the footage emerged.
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan called it “disturbing” and “preventable.” New York Reps. Grace Meng and Tim Kennedy called it “a profound failure of duty and basic human decency.” There will likely be no accountability. That’s the part that’s hardest to process.
When a government can abandon a vulnerable human being to die and then casually construct a false narrative about it, we’re looking at more than cruelty. We’re looking at the normalization of state deception. Democracies don’t collapse overnight. They erode when lies replace accountability and when the powerless learn that their lives don’t count in the calculus of power.
The U.S. May Be Days Away From Striking Iran
The State Department has ordered non-essential government workers and their families out of Israel. Ambassador Mike Huckabee sent a 12:04 a.m. email telling staff to book flights anywhere, just get out today. American citizens were told to consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available.
That’s not routine language. Talks between the U.S. and Iran in Geneva ended Thursday without resolution. Witkoff and Kushner issued no statement. Two carrier strike groups are positioned and ready.
Oman’s foreign minister flew to Washington immediately after Geneva collapsed, seeking an emergency meeting with Vance to argue enough progress has been made to hold off. Vance told the Washington Post there is no chance America will be drawn into years of war but also said he doesn’t know whether Trump will authorize a strike. The two sides are scheduled to meet again in Vienna next week. Whether that happens is now an open question.
War has a way of concentrating power at home while it destroys lives abroad. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war for a reason. When military action inches forward through executive impulse and late night emails instead of open debate, the American people are sidelined from the gravest decisions a nation can make. That’s not strength. That’s democratic backsliding wrapped in the language of national security.
Trump And Gabbard Are Building A Machine To Break Your Vote
Last month, the FBI raided the Fulton County elections office using a debunked affidavit. Tulsi Gabbard was there. Before that, she led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines, hauling equipment out of the territory. Around the same time, Trump told Dan Bongino’s audience that Republicans should nationalize the voting and take over elections in at least 15 places. These are not coincidences.
The legal framework runs through Executive Order 13848, written in 2018 to allow sanctions for foreign election interference. Miles Taylor, who helped draft it, says it was never meant for this. But amendments allow property to be blocked without proof during an active investigation, meaning voting machines could be seized, evidence classified, and states left unable to certify what they can’t access.
The goal isn’t to find foreign interference. It’s to sow enough doubt to justify disruption before the 2026 midterms. A last minute seizure of machines in key jurisdictions would crater early voting and tie up results for weeks. Former White House counsel Bob Bauer believes legal challenges would succeed, but disruption doesn’t require winning. It only requires delay. Puerto Rico had already switched to paper ballots before Gabbard arrived. She wasn’t fixing a problem. She was establishing a precedent.
If you can control the machinery of voting, you don’t have to win arguments or persuade a majority. You just have to manufacture confusion long enough to undermine trust. Self government only works when losers accept results as legitimate. Once faith in elections is shattered on purpose, the door opens to permanent minority rule dressed up as patriotism.
The Bigger Picture: Who Owns What You Read And See
The CNN and CBS story does not exist in isolation. Saudi Arabia, the government that ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has financial exposure in this Paramount deal. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Larry Ellison is acquiring CNN and HBO. Elon Musk owns the platform that shapes what political information hundreds of millions of people see. The Los Angeles Times is being gutted by its billionaire owner. Silicon Valley controls the algorithms that decide which journalism survives.
This is not a trend. It is a consolidation. And it is nearly complete.
When the same tiny economic elite owns the platforms, the pipelines, and increasingly the politicians, democracy starts to look like a brand instead of a system of shared power. The founders feared concentrated power for a reason. If we don’t rebuild antitrust enforcement and revive a culture that values the public good over quarterly profits, we’ll wake up in an America where the news is just another asset class and the truth is whatever serves those at the top.
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Democrats Demand $1,700 Tariff Refund for American Households. After the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s ability to impose tariffs via national emergency, Democrats are pressuring the administration to issue refunds to American households. Democratic Governors Kathy Hochul of New York, Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois have all demanded billions in compensation for their constituents after studies found American consumers paid the vast bulk of Trump’s tariffs out of their own pockets.
