Washington Post

The Justice Department made a final pitch against AT&T's $85 billion deal to acquire Time Warner, demanding in federal court that the deal be blocked or that AT&T should be permitted only to buy a portion of the media and entertainment giant. Addressing a packed courtroom that included the chief executives of both companies, Justice attorney Craig Conrath cited economic analyses, industry witnesses and AT&T's own statements to support the government's case opposing the tie-up.

The boards of Sprint and T-Mobile US struck a $26 billion merger that, if allowed by antitrust enforcers, would leave the US wireless market dominated by three national players. Under the terms of the deal, T-Mobile will exchange 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share. T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom will own 42% of the combined company and Sprint parent SoftBank Group will own 27%. The remaining 31% will be held by the public. Deutsche Telekom would also control voting rights over 69% of the new company and appoint nine of its 14 directors.

In March, Quinnipiac University’s pollsters asked Americans if they thought certain news outlets — unnamed by Quinnipiac — were enemies of the American people? Nearly 4-in-10 said yes — including more than 8-in-10 Republicans. In a poll released April 26, Quinnipiac was more direct. Less than a quarter of the public says that the news media broadly is better described as “enemy of the people” than an “important part of democracy.” But among Republicans, more than half preferred the former term to the latter. Granted, there was a limited set of options from which to choose.

Users of Facebook, Google and other popular technology platforms are likely to benefit from stricter privacy regulations that will require new disclosures, new forms of consent and new power to limit how personal data is stored and utilized. The changes are being announced in emails, blog posts and new on-screen messages that many consumers are already beginning to see from Apple, Twitter, Airbnb, GoDaddy and others. Don’t bother thanking Washington.

A coalition of news organizations asked a federal court to unseal materials used by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to obtain search warrants in his investigation of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others indicted in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The news organizations are seeking to compel disclosure of affidavits, records of seizures and the warrants themselves that Mueller filed in bringing indictments against such figures as Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others.

The AT&T-Time Warner merger could end up costing consumers less money than what some earlier estimates suggest, the government's star witness admitted in federal court as he clashed repeatedly with company lawyers over key figures in his economic analysis of the deal. Instead of paying a minimum of 27 cents more per month on their bills as a result of the deal, TV subscribers could conceivably pay a smaller premium of at least 13 cents a month more — a downward revision in the projections of Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California–Berkeley.