AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

Twelve Democratic-led states have sued to block Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance is run by David Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is the billionaire founder of Oracle, a prominent ally and financial backer of President Trump. Under the proposed deal, CNN and CBS News, streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+, as well as film and television studios, would all be combined under a single entity controlled by the Ellisons.

Meanwhile, the U.K. is weighing whether to take on the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Last month, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said it saw no evidence that the media megamerger would harm consumers, writing instead the deal would, quote, “increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem,” unquote.

Well, we’re joined now by California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by the 12 attorneys general.

Attorney General Bonta, thanks for joining us. Explain why you have sued.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ROB BONTA: Well, in short, we sued because this proposed merger breaks the law. It breaks century-old antitrust law. It’s anti-competitive. It will raise prices. It will lower quality. It will lessen content. This is a proposed merger of two entertainment titans who have been competitors for years, and it will extinguish the competition between them when they merge, and will have massive anti-competitive effects in a number of different markets.

And so, this is about affordability for everyday Americans, who are already struggling to afford their lives, whether it be groceries or gas or healthcare or housing, and now their cable bills will go up, and their satellite bills will go up, and it will be more expensive to experience a joy of life to go see a movie at the movie theater for a special occasion. So, this is also going to lead to job loss and lower wages. So, from job loss and lower wages to lower-quality choice, competition, higher prices, this is a bad deal for California and for Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain the significance of what this means, and also possibly the U.K. suing to prevent this merger, what it means to have CBS, owned by Paramount, and CNN and HBO all put together. President Trump has repeatedly attacked, to say the least, CNN. CBS’s 60 Minutes is now being gutted, with, what, the most recent fire, Scott Pelley.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ROB BONTA: Well, this is going to be a entertainment behemoth that will have under one roof multiple news channels, multiple streaming sources, channels, multiple basic cable channels, multiple studios, film distributors, all with — under one roof. And we’ve seen — sorry for the pun: We’ve seen this movie before. When massive studios merge, like Fox and Disney, it leads to lower quality, less output, less viewpoints.

So, let me talk about that for a second. You’re going to have less — less viewpoints, less stories being told, fewer perspectives, less journalists truth-telling and truth-seeking and informing the American public about their world and their country, less reporters holding the powerful accountable and holding their feet to the fire and doing investigative journalism that reveals truth and tells the world what’s going on. You’ll have a less — smaller diversity of stories being told. A smaller, more narrow type of content will be greenlit. And stories that need to be told that we don’t know need to be told, things that we need to hear about that we don’t yet know we need to hear about, that can inspire and inform and broaden our perspective about the world, won’t be told anymore. So, from art to news, there will be less content and less diversity of perspectives.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what exactly would be accomplished by your lawsuit?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ROB BONTA: Well, our lawsuit seeks to block the merger, pure and simple. We have a clean and clear and straightforward complaint that we filed in federal court that sets forth the monopolistic outcome of this proposed merger, the anti-competitive impacts of this merger. And it asks for one remedy: block the merger. Keep Paramount and Warner Bros. as separate companies.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you can talk about the open letter that was signed by hundreds, if not thousands, of producers, directors, actors? Of course, they also were calling on you, the attorney generals of New York and California and others, to take this on. I wanted, though, to talk — to end with the Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr speaking in March at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. In this clip, he boasts about Trump successfully defunding PBS, NPR and the end of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show.

BRENDAN CARR: President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far: PBS defunded, NPR defunded, Joy Reid gone from MSNBC, “Sleepy-Eyed” Chuck Todd gone, Jim Acosta gone, John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership. And soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s FCC Chair Brendan Carr. If you can end by talking about what’s happening to the media in this country and the control by the Trump administration?

ATTORNEY GENERAL ROB BONTA: I mean, those comments are so outrageous, they speak for themselves. This idea that the federal government, our government, the people’s government, is working overtime and bragging about it to shut down the free, independent press, to silence journalists from doing their job, telling the news and doing investigative journalism and holding the powerful accountable, is completely outrageous, antithetical to our democracy, anti-democratic and un-American. It is wrong in every way I can say it. And the fact that he’s bragging about it and he’s getting cheers is dangerous and problematic. You know, the federal government has completely retreated and abdicated from its role to enforce antitrust law, to prevent mergers — 

AMY GOODMAN: Rob Bonta, we’re going to have to leave it there.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ROB BONTA: — that hurt the economy, hurt everyday people. That’s why we’re stepping in.

AMY GOODMAN: I have to leave it there, but I want to thank you for being with us, California Attorney General Rob Bonta. We’ll link to your recent piece for Variety titled “Why I’m Suing to Block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger.”

I’ll be in Kansas City this weekend.