Hannah Garden-Monheit’s father had his leg amputated. UnitedHealth denied him rehab and denied him a prosthetic leg. A tragic must-read story about how private health insurers use prior approvals to pad their profits at the expense of the people they’re supposed to help:

Happy to report that Mr. Hsieh is home. *Thank you* to everyone here who spread the word. (Deleting the post!)

"Hollywood" evokes an Ozempiced executive lunching with George Clooney. More accurate? An industry veteran with dozens of major credits with no health insurance. An Oscar-nominated filmmaker who can't get work. These are the blue collar workers warning us about a Paramount takeover of Warner Bros.

Paramount said the deal would sail through. Then a judge paused it, paused it again, the company agreed to delay it for months, and now their stock has hit a new low. It’s time to recognize that this is an illegal deal and the emperor has no clothes.

For the $100B we've lost to the Iran war we could've had the healthcare subsidies that were "too expensive", we could've fed every kid lunch at school AND given free childcare to 1.6 million toddlers. Instead we have 17 dead Americans, 160 dead schoolgirls, and 1 more endless war

Billionaires will tell you they’re invincible. That what they do is inevitable. Don’t believe them. Paramount refused to pause their mega merger with Warner Brothers. There’s nothing to see here, they told a judge. So the judge paused it for them.

It's a strong, traditional lawsuit. If you merge 2 of the biggest 5 studios, they'll feel less pressure to make new movies. If you merge a company that owns an alphabet soup of channels with another company that owns an alphabet soup of channels, people will pay for that on their cable bill.

Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass (1st Ed., 1855)

1/ "What are you hopeful about?" "Can you give me hope?" I get asked this a lot. For me, hope doesn't show up with a "HOPE" t-shirt and a blowhorn. It shows up in little moments. Here are some of those moments from a talk between Lance, an Iowa farmer, and Kirby, an Emmy-winning filmmaker.

At this stage, Americans know that Congress can be crooked. They certainly know that presidents can, too. Unfortunately it is time to recognize that, when it comes to corporate power, our Supreme Court is a billionaires' fan club.

Today, the Supreme Court gave Wall Street bankers an above-the-fray independent regulator -- and stuck the rest of us shmucks with loyalists.

This Court said corporations are people and can buy our elections. They said corporations can hurt you and deny you your day in court. They said when CEOs bribe the President, he's immune to charges. And today they gave Wall Street an independent regulator and stuck the rest of us with loyalists.

When you take on $80 billion dollars in debt to buy a film & TV company (hi David Ellison!) you don't ask yourself "how can I make amazing film and TV?" You ask yourself "How the hell can I get these guys their money back?" Take it from the film and TV workers in Atlanta

6/ Professor Ethan Tussey explained that even if all you care about is sports, you should oppose the Paramount/WBD merger.

5/ Roger Thacher is the guy who makes sure that if there's a laptop open, it's open to a green screen. If there's a glass of water, the level in that glass stays the same. His job was shipped to Canada when Disney took over Hulu. It's been years since he's had union work.

4/ Christalyn Hampton's short, The Devil is Busy, was nominated for an Oscar. But the market for her work has dried up -- in significant part because the old buyers have been consolidated into larger companies. And she's watched Atlanta, the heart of Black film & TV, gutted by mergers.

3/ Jamie Rosegren is a set decorator and labor leader who attended the event in a personal capacity. She's seen higher rates of depression and suicide among her members due to job losses -- while her bosses become less and less skilled at actually doing the work.

2/ The Paramount merger also won't just result in layoffs. It would mark the next step in the financialization of the film & TV industry, where even *Oscar-nominated* documentary filmmakers can't find work... if it's not about cults, celebrities, or true crime.

1/ Paramount's merger with WBD won't just cut jobs in LA and New York. It'll also decimate *Atlanta* where people have had their lives torn apart by merger after merger, and where they are on the chopping block due to overlap with Paramount operations. From our town hall last week🧵

Here's just one of the workers we talked to last Tuesday in Atlanta. The moment the Disney/Fox merger went through, Roger Thacher's job was shipped to Canada. People in Atlanta oppose the Paramount/WBD merger because they have lived through these mergers and know about the job losses that follow.

The Walking Dead. Stranger Things. Black Panther. Ozark. The men and women who actually *made that for you* showed up at the Plaza Theater. And with one voice they said we have seen these mergers, they fired us, they forced us to sell our homes, we DO NOT WANT THIS. Video tomorrow.

if you think film and TV are from LA or New York, take a look at this poster for a while

“That is so disturbing. And I’m so angry I didn’t know this.” Sen. @booker.senate.gov finds out in real-time that Paramount’s takeover of WBD would move half of the country’s TV news archive into the editorial control of one family.

The career DOJ lawyers who had spent months investigating the Paramount/WBD merger thought it was illegal and wanted to sue to block it

A television writer on the Paramount-WBD merger: "I want to be able to have the conversation on censorship and the types stories we get to tell, but my worry is that we won't have the people to tell them."

A Paramount-WBD merger would hit Atlanta *hard*: - 6K in predicted layoffs will hit ATL heavy due to overlapping back-end ops - Turner/WBD’s Techwood campus may be sold - Fewer films = less work for Trilith, Assembly, Shadowspace - This comes AFTER huge cuts at TCM, Adult Swim & Cartoon Network

Turns out that if you gut CBS news, gut 60 Minutes, promise to gut CNN, cancel Colbert, get $29B in Saudi, Qatari & UAE money, and hold a weird lavish banquet for the President and acting AG in a federal building… you can get your illegal merger approved by DOJ

Paramount says that its merger with Warner Brothers Discovery will somehow result in *more* content. So why is it already hitting the breaks on projects *currently under development*?

Agustin Rossi to @jorgeramosnews: Ignore the idea that AI will control us or take over the world. Listen to Pope Leo: Don't let AI divide us, make sure AI *augments* workers rather than replacing them, and make sure it doesn't steal content from creators.

There are four key TV archives in the US: ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN. This is the footage filmmakers use to tell our history. If Paramount buys Warner Brothers, two of those archives - including 45 years of CNN footage- will be controlled by one company and likely one person, Bari Weiss.