Just a couple of months ago, someone was still suing[1] to block Alaska Air/Hawaiian. This is a merger that already entirely went through. I would predict equal likelihood of some state lawsuit derailing a merger like this.

[1] https://viewfromthewing.com/passengers-demand-court-undo-ala...

If it isn’t red states the current admin won’t care at all. If it’s mostly or entirely blue states, they’ll just default to siding with the merger out of spite.

Sure they have ability, they are just not doing it often enough

Which is funny because regardless of whether or not those states succeed in blocking the merger, those legacy video entertainment businesses will become irrelevant whether they are one business or two, due to the fierce competition from TikTok/Instagram/Reddit/Youtube/Whatsapp/computers/anything on the internet in general.

It's probably the most inconsequential merger, from a consumer standpoint.

Not anti-trust, but you can apparently bribe the FCC to get a merger through. This just came out today.

https://www.propublica.org/article/paramount-mergers-fcc-ken...

I was curious so to get a very rough ballpark figure. So I went to the Wikipedia List of largest mergers and acquisitions article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_ac...)

Added up all the free market enterprise section completed deals where the purchaser was indicated as US based

Obama era:

2009: 6,

2010: 1,

2011: 4,

2012: 1,

2013: 4,

2014: 5,

2015: 7,

2016: 6

Trump term 1:

2017: 4,

2018: 8,

2019: 13,

2020: 7

Biden term:

2021: 4,

2022: 4,

2023: 7,

2024: 4

Trump term 2 so far:

2025: 11*,

2026: 9*

Obama average: 4.25 / year

Biden average: 4.75 / year

Trump term 1 average: 8 / year

*Most of the last two years are indicated as still pending, so not sure if they will go through or not.

Not exactly the most scientific data gathering or study. But it does suggest that large mergers and acquisitions have generally been made more frequently under Trump.

> Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations

Well... we certainly know that preemptive appeasement is a thing [1]. IMHO, this is equivalent to a bribe - a favor, just not in monetary form.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/sep/26/kimmel-controv...