For years, Democrats warned that Donald Trump represented a threat to democratic institutions because he supposedly blurred the line between politics and law enforcement. Now many of the same people are doing exactly that.
Democratic attorneys general just issued subpoenas tied to the proposed Paramount-Skydance merger with Warner Brothers. Officially, the investigation concerns antitrust and regulatory questions. In reality, almost nobody believes this fight is primarily about consumer welfare or market concentration.
It is about politics. Specifically, fear that one of America’s most influential media companies may drift away from progressive political alignment.
The panic on the left has been remarkably open. CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour practically said the quiet part out loud this week when she warned that many on the center-left fear new ownership could reshape the ideological direction of the company. That is the real issue.
If Paramount were moving further left, there would be no emergency campaign against the merger. No moral outrage. No sudden concern about corporate concentration in media.
Proof? These leftist AGs did not issue subpoenas about the potential acquisition of Warner Brothers by Netflix, where serious antitrust concerns about anti-competitive market dominance existed (and where the merger would have promoted progressive/leftist ideology). The resistance to the Paramount merger exists because many progressives view legacy media institutions not merely as businesses, but as political assets.
New York’s Zohran Mamdani vowed to fight the merger “tooth and nail,” while Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) have signaled hostility toward it for months. Progressive activists in Hollywood are mobilizing against it as well.
None of that is especially shocking. Politicians acting politically is nothing new.
The real problem begins when people holding legal authority start acting the same way.
This pattern has become impossible to ignore. Prosecutors, attorneys general, regulators and bureaucratic agencies are increasingly used as instruments in broader ideological fights.
Look at the campaign against energy companies. For decades, oil and gas firms operated legally under rules established by elected governments and regulators. Suddenly, state officials began pursuing massive retroactive liability campaigns against them, often using legal theories that would have been laughed out of court twenty years ago.
Or look at the pressure campaigns directed at banks and payment processors to isolate politically disfavored groups such as sporting goods stores. Or the extraordinary coordination between parts of the federal government and social media companies during the pandemic to silence opposition views. Or the selective outrage that appears depending on who is protesting, rioting, speaking, or donating.
Voters are not stupid. They can see when the rules are being applied unevenly.
That is why trust in institutions keeps collapsing.
The danger here is larger than Paramount. Large mergers should certainly face scrutiny when legitimate antitrust concerns exist. But there is a difference between applying the law neutrally and using the law as a political weapon to protect ideological influence.
And increasingly, many Democrats no longer seem interested in that distinction.
The modern progressive movement often treats institutions as legitimate only when they produce outcomes favorable to the left. Universities are independent until they tolerate dissent. Courts are sacred until rulings go the wrong way. Free speech matters until somebody says something unacceptable to the governing elite narrative. Corporate autonomy is celebrated until ownership changes politically.
The Paramount fight fits neatly into that pattern.
What makes this especially shortsighted is that Democrats are normalizing tools they will not control forever. Every precedent created to punish political opponents eventually changes hands.
Washington used to understand that.
The American legal system is supposed to operate independently from partisan pressure — precisely because democratic societies become unstable when citizens view prosecutions and investigations as extensions of political warfare.
Yet that line has steadily eroded over the past decade.
If opponents of the Paramount merger believe the deal will hurt journalism or damage the media landscape, they are free to make that argument publicly. They can criticize the ownership. Organize advertisers. Build competitors. Persuade audiences.
What they should not do is turn state criminal and regulatory enforcement power into a mechanism for ideological enforcement.
At some point, Democrats need to decide whether they actually oppose “lawfare” — or whether they simply object when Republicans respond in kind to hold accountable those who engaged in it.
John C. Eastman is the Founding Director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
