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There are several new headlines this morning about Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and what it might mean for CNN.

First, “Paramount’s lawyers met European Commission enforcers working on the deal in Brussels” yesterday “in a bid to hash out a path forward for regulatory approval,” Bloomberg reports. “The EU has a current deadline of July 7 to decide whether to escalate its probe or not.”

Paramount is trying to avoid any escalation, of course, and is talking with European regulators about measures known as remedies to address potential market harm.

The FT’s Barbara Moens reports that progress is being made: “Brussels is set to approve” the deal “provided the company accepts certain remedies,” she writes.

Per “two people involved in the discussions,” the remedies “could include a requirement for Paramount to exit its joint venture with Universal Pictures, which distributes films in several international markets. They cautioned that a final decision had yet to be taken.”

A Paramount rep had no comment on the EU discussions. As “the foreign clearances are falling into place,” the biggest X factor remains in the US, where state attorneys general are “preparing to sue to block the deal — possibly within weeks,” The Ankler’s Sean McNulty writes in this piece about what a lawsuit might say.

Larry Ellison, who is personally guaranteeing the financing for his son David’s Paramount-WBD deal, has largely stayed out of the press spotlight in recent months. But he is on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal in a story titled “Ellison’s $45 Million Helped Seal Ties With President.”

Emily Glazer, Annie Linskey and Jessica Toonkel reveal that the elder Ellison gave “roughly $45 million to a political nonprofit group supporting Trump’s election efforts in 2024, according to people familiar with the fundraising.” Larry has also “given millions more to groups that support Trump since the election, the people said, with some of the funds going to Trump’s legacy initiatives” in DC.

The story explores the Ellison father-son’s “symbiotic friendship with Trump” and re-ups the Journal’s previous reporting on what Larry might have told the president about Paramount-WBD last winter.

During the WBD bidding war between Netflix and Paramount, “Larry Ellison told Trump that if Paramount landed the Warner deal, it could overhaul CNN. Both men aren’t fans of the cable news channel, believing it is biased toward liberal news and against the administration, according to people familiar with the matter.”

You’ll recall that Trump signaled last December that he favored Paramount’s bid while saying it was “imperative that CNN be sold.”

Notably, a Paramount spokesperson issued a new statement to the Journal, disputing that Larry made any “commitments” about CNN:

“No commitments from either David or Larry Ellison have been made to any government body, State AG or federal agency regarding the future of CNN or any other news property, other than the goal to deliver truth-based journalism.”

The reference to “any other news property” could mean CBS News, which has been owned by the Ellisons for nearly a year now. And as I’ve written before, people should judge what CBS News is actually producing, not what they hear others say about it.

Today, CBS published two original investigative stories that run totally counter to the popular perception that “CBS has gone MAGA.”

On “CBS Mornings,” Jonah Kaplan and Michael Kaplan had this in-depth story: “Wounded soldiers, families accuse Army of downplaying war injuries.” And The Free Press alum Gabe Kaminsky is out with this “first on CBS” story: “A Trump-linked firm is lobbying for pardons. Its first client already paid $500,000.”

>> Encouraging words: Gerry Cardinale, a key financial backer of the deal, told Breaker’s Lachlan Cartwright that he and David Ellison are “huge believers” in CNN. He praised CNN CEO Mark Thompson and COO Alex MacCallum, and suggested that post-merger Paramount should go slow in tinkering with the network: “We’ve got to spend time really getting in there and listening.”

Last week, the L.A. County Department of Economic Opportunity came out with a report saying “the merger places about 2,495 jobs in Greater Los Angeles County and about 6,000 globally at potential risk, mainly in corporate, tech, real estate, and other shared functions due to duplicative roles across the two companies.” Deadline’s Dominic Patten detailed the findings here.

And today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a headline about the potential impacts in the city where CNN was born: “Warner–Paramount merger threatens more CNN and Turner jobs in Atlanta.” Savannah Sicurella captures some of the concerns here.

Remember when David Ellison, in a concession to Trump’s FCC chair Brendan Carr, appointed Kenneth Weinstein as an ombudsman for CBS News? The NYT’s Ben Mullin wondered: “What’s he doing?”

“In the nine months since he was hired, Mr. Weinstein has issued no public statements about CBS News’s coverage or its controversies,” nor has he issued any staffwide memos, Mullin wrote here.

But external pronouncements and internal memos are not his job, as defined by Paramount. The company told Mullin that Weinstein is there “to review concerns about CBS News’s reporting and coverage through a process that has been clear from the beginning. Since September, he’s independently assessed the issues brought to him and, when appropriate, discussed them with CBS News and Paramount Skydance leadership.”

>> This line in Mullin’s story really explains it all: Weinstein “has told some employees that he is scheduled to work only one day per month.”

New York Times reporters Katie Rosman and Ken Belson are out with a lengthy new story about the Dianna Russini–Mike Vrabel contretemps. The story looks in detail at how The New York Times Company made a big bet on Russini (paying her close to $800,000 a year to join The Athletic) and how it all fell apart this spring when the New York Post published photos showing Russini’s coziness with Vrabel, the head coach of the New England Patriots.

The story doesn’t confirm any romantic relationship between the two. But it does contain new info about the NYT’s investigation into Russini’s reporting and an example of what the Times calls “unacceptable conduct” — as recounted in the first paragraphs of the piece.

Rosman and Belson also say that when they reached out to Russini, she referred to herself as a “former journalist.” There’s a lot more here…

ABC’s on-air spots about the FCC worked. Before Disney started alerting viewers to the FCC’s proceedings on Monday, there were about 20 public comments on the docket about Brendan Carr’s highly unusual challenge to ABC’s eight station licenses. Now, there are more than 22,000 comments. The samples I checked are all critical of the FCC. “I believe in free speech.” “Stop the censorship.” “Leave our local station alone!”

The same dynamic is evident in the FCC docket about its investigation of “The View.” The number of public comments spiked on Monday, with “the majority in support of the Disney-owned network and daytime talk show,” TheWrap’s Lucas Manfredi reports…

Despite The Daily Wire’s recent subscriber losses and ad revenue declines, the conservative media company “is in talks to take on at least $100 million in investment, with an eye on an initial public offering in a few years’ time,” Semafor’s Max Tani and Rohan Goswami report. The pair writes that the company “has been in talks with Highmount Capital to lead a funding round that would value the company at $750 million.” They have details on the company’s profitability and growth aspirations here…

>> Daniel Dale’s latest: Trump “has created a murky mess of unproven claims and provably false claims about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.” (CNN)

>> Trump fumed that NewsNation is “not a very good group” after correspondent Hannah Brandt “asked about an additional $80 billion Iran War funding request amid financial struggles for most Americans.” (Mediaite)

>> Speaking on his friend Alex Jones’ “Can’t Be Censored” podcast, Tucker Carlson said that “I don’t want to run for president,” but “I do want to be involved in offering an option of some kind.”