Media and Political Power

On the latest episode of "The Town" podcast, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., warned that if Democrats regain control of Congress in the 2026 midterms, he will push for investigations into ABC News, CBS News, and their parent companies over multimillion‑dollar defamation settlements paid personally to President Donald Trump. Schiff accused the Trump administration of putting its "hand on the scale" for Paramount in its successful $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery and suggested the deals with Trump — including a $16 million payment from ABC approved by then‑Disney CEO Bob Iger and a similar $16 million upfront settlement from Paramount/CBS — could reflect "corrupt or illicit" or otherwise "improper" considerations. He said there will be an "accounting" of any "money changing hands to grease the skids" that altered content or favored Paramount’s position, explicitly tying potential future oversight to the merger’s implications for CNN, which Paramount CEO David Ellison insists will retain editorial independence. Media critics on the left have already attacked the settlements as capitulations to Trump, while Schiff’s threats raise fresh questions about how far a future Democratic Congress might go in scrutinizing private media‑company decisions that intersect with presidential power and major corporate transactions.