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President Donald Trump has received another setback in his ongoing quest to control U.S. elections. In a 5-4 split, the Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots do not need to be received by Election Day to be counted, as long as they were postmarked by then. Although a "rare victory for voting rights," the conservative justices' assertion that voting by mail is prone to fraud — a disproven theory that Trump blames his loss in the 2020 election for — is "very disturbing," says Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. "My fear is that this is going to embolden Republicans to double down on their efforts to try to get rid of mail voting, including the SAVE America Act, Trump's sweeping voter suppression bill, which he seems desperate to go to any lengths to try to pass," says Berman, who also comments on the court's decision to strike down a federal law limiting campaign spending.
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(First column, 3rd story, link)
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The Trump administration has approved media conglomerate Paramount's $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros., one year after Paramount and Skydance Media signed a similar merger that placed Paramount's movie studio, streaming service and broadcast network CBS under the control of the multibillionaire Ellison family, founders of Skydance and close allies of Donald Trump. The Warner Bros. merger, if completed, would bring an even larger slice of the industry's market share into Ellison control. It's been contested for months as a likely violation of antitrust laws amid a wider trend of corporate consolidation in the media and entertainment industry. "This has been one of the most shallow and corrupt merger review processes we've ever seen," says Craig Aaron, co-CEO of the advocacy organizations Free Press and Free Press Action (not to be confused with Paramount Skydance's conservative news outlet The Free Press), about the Justice Department's greenlighting of the merger.
The deal will place two of the largest U.S. broadcast news networks — CBS News and CNN — under the control of a single company that "has shown it is willing to warp and manipulate news coverage to please the president," Aaron says. He warns that the many violations of press freedom committed by CBS News since its acquisition last year could soon be seen at CNN, including "getting rid of independent journalists asking hard questions [and] spiking stories about crimes being committed by the Trump administration." In a consolidated media landscape, he adds, "we get fewer and fewer choices, and we get more and more of the same kind of cookie-cutter content produced."
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