A major media company wants to expand while making a clearer commitment to free speech. You would think that would cheer any American who still believes in the First Amendment.

Instead, Democrats are furious.

That authoritarian impulse, not Ellison's support for Trump, is the real free-speech crisis in America.

In April, Paramount CEO David Ellison hosted a dinner celebrating the First Amendment. That was no coincidence. Paramount, and Ellison in particular, have long signaled support for free expression. Yet Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) responded by branding Ellison an “oligarch” and vowing to break up “anti-consumer” media companies “into pieces.”

Apparently, supporting free speech while maintaining ties across the political divide now qualifies as anti-consumer.

The real source of Democratic outrage is not some abstract concern for consumers. It is Paramount’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. That deal could create a stronger competitor to Netflix and other streaming giants while opening more space for content that does not conform to left-wing orthodoxy.

That possibility has set off alarms on the left.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), fresh off the permanent closure of Spirit Airlines after helping sink its proposed merger with JetBlue, posted on X last week that “we need to block this merger and break up monopolies everywhere.” Reps. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) both members of the House Financial Services Committee, tried to pressure Paramount out of the deal. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office would launch a “vigorous” investigation into Paramount and WBD.

None of this should surprise anyone. Democrats routinely use regulatory power to punish people and companies that support free speech.

The Biden administration pressured Facebook and what was then Twitter to suppress content that challenged Democratic talking points. Censored subjects included election integrity and the origins of COVID-19.

Elon Musk bought Twitter, renamed it X, and made it more open to speech the left dislikes. Democrats came after him too, including efforts to strip him of federal contracts. Meanwhile, criminals set Tesla vehicles on fire and torched dealerships in several states. This is the same Tesla that, as the Associated Press noted, “was once the darling of the left.”

The pattern extends well beyond social media and corporate regulation.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry complained that the First Amendment is “a major block” to stamping out so-called disinformation.

BigNazik/iStock/Getty Images

On college campuses, the divide is even clearer. A 2017 Cato Institute study found major differences between Democrats and Republicans on allowing controversial or offensive speakers to appear on campus. Even on issues where Republicans might be expected to take greater offense, Cato found that Democrats were still more likely to support canceling the speaker.

That result fits the broader Democratic instinct. Free speech is welcome only when it serves the approved narrative. Once it threatens left-wing control over public discourse, it becomes dangerous, irresponsible, or anti-consumer.

That is what this fight over Paramount and WBD is really about.

If the merger succeeds, Paramount Skydance could become a more serious rival to the dominant streaming platforms. That competition could improve content and lower prices. But none of that matters to Democrats if Ellison is politically aligned with Trump and if the merged company might distribute material that leans right.

The left does not fear monopoly in principle. It fears losing its monopoly on the narrative.

Democrats have been losing ground at the ballot box and in the arena of ideas for years. Rather than examine why, they blame “disinformation” and target companies that refuse to toe the line.

That authoritarian impulse, not Ellison's support for Trump, is the real free-speech crisis in America.

Radical killers turned campus heroes: How colleges idolize political violence

If you stumble onto any delusional radical left winger’s social media today, you’re likely to find them celebrating violence they view as revolutionary — and Jay Greene of the Heritage Foundation knows where it all begins.

“College courses routinely romanticize political violence by featuring violent revolutionaries, terrorists who are blood-drenched murderers, and featuring their works in course assignments and presenting their actions in favorable terms,” Greene tells BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere on “Stu Does America.”

“And so it’s not surprising that young people might get the idea that it’s justifiable for the advancement of justice, or some other worthy cause to engage in political violence, because in their college courses, they read works by people who did precisely that,” he continues.

Greene pointed out Angela Davis, Bill Ayers, and Assata Shakur, “each of whom were involved in revolutionary movements in the '60s and '70s” and “each of whom was accused of murder.”

Davis was a leader in the Black Panther movement who bought the guns used in the 1970 courtroom takeover in which the judge was killed, the DA was shot, and a member of the jury was seriously wounded.

“She managed to get off on the claim that she didn’t know what the guns were going to be used for,” Greene explains.

“She later became the vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party in the United States, and in Moscow, received the Lenin prize. That’s not the John Lennon prize, but the Vladimir Lenin prize, for her efforts to advance violent revolution in the United States,” he continues.

“Now, not only does she have books in over 2,000 syllabi in U.S. colleges, not only that, but she is regularly a distinguished speaker, gets paid between $30,000 and $50,000 per appearance at U.S. universities, and she herself is a professor out in the California public university system,” he adds.

Bill Ayers and Assata Shakur have similar stories, now “read in college and lauded in college despite their blood-drenched past.”

“It’s unbelievable how deep this goes,” Stu comments.

“If you think about it, if you go and shoot a health care CEO who’s a father in the back, as in, you know, in cold blood, you’re treated as a hero,” he continues while explaining there’s clear incentives for becoming a violent revolutionary on the left.

“We see lots of people celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder. The incentives seem to be lined up to a certain type of leftist, particularly a young leftist who’s going to see this as something that maybe they just get praised for, if they do, and at the very least, they will be seen in the history books as this hero,” he says.

“That’s entirely true,” Greene agrees. “You know, the people that we lionize as heroes to our children throughout their entire educational development and personal development, including in their college courses, they’re going to want to imitate.”

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