The Oval Office is getting even more shiny and gold

Per the WSJ, a team of lawyers who’d scrutinized the merger were leaning toward recommending a lawsuit to block the deal, but hadn’t gotten to make their final recommendation, before they were told that it had been approved on Friday.

Antitrust investigators typically make a final recommendation to the agency in the review process — and that recommendation is often followed by the agency — but that step was reportedly skipped in this instance. Last month, Semafor reported that senior DOJ antitrust officials appeared likely to approve the Paramount-WBD combo.

The deal could still face antitrust challenges from a collection of states led by California, and EU regulators.

President Donald Trump told Fox News in a phone interview on Wednesday night that “the bombing will stop soon,” but if Iran doesn’t sign the agreement put forward by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, “we’ll bomb the shit out of them tomorrow night.”

When asked whether the ceasefire still stands, Trump described it as “the most violated ceasefire in the history of the world,” per Fox News.

According to Al Jazeerah, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that Iran’s joint military command specified that any oil tankers or other commercial vessels will be attacked if they attempt to cross the strait.

This is the second day in a row hostilities have resumed to a level not seen since the early April ceasefire was announced.

US CENTCOM announced the series of strikes beginning at 5:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth previewed in on-camera remarks, promising to “strike ’em hard tonight” before later saying he would not broadcast whether the military would take any action.

Shortly after the announcement on the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial vessel traffic, Iranian state media reported that two ships attempting to cross were attacked.

This story is developing.

Oil prices were little changed, with Brent crude futures down 0.48% as of 5:30 a.m. ET. At the same time, S&P 500 futures were down nearly 0.7% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had slipped 1.18%, as the escalations compounded a broader AI sell-off.

Travel stocks, like United Airlines and Royal Caribbean, which got a boost on Tuesday as oil prices fell, lost some of those gains in premarket trading. Meanwhile, oil giants such as Chevron and Exxon ticked higher and chipmakers such as Arm Holdings and Micron continued to slip.

The escalation ladder began ratcheting back up when Iran shot down an American helicopter with a drone while it was patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, a US official told NBC News. US forces then conducted strikes in Iran’s Qeshm Island, Sirik, Jask, and Bandar Abbas, according to Al Jazeera. In response, Iran attacked a US fleet in Bahrain, Al Jazeera also reported.

“The Iranians are trying to make clear that any attack on them would be responded to, regardless of the size and the scope,” Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in the US told Al Jazeera. “Now, of course, whether they are seeking to escalate the situation or de-escalate remains to be seen, and it will be very much measured by how they calibrated their response by attacking these US bases.”

The scope of the strikes and counterstrikes broadened out as of early Wednesday morning in Iran. Kuwait activated its air defense systems to intercept strikes, its army announced.

Mohamed Vall, a reporter for Al Jazeera reporting from inside Iran, described “a lot of activity in terms of air defence by the Iranians, and they talked about the downing of a helicopter, an American MQ-9 [drone] over Bushehr. So that gives you an idea about the scope of these attacks and counterattacks, or these retaliations across the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf region tonight.”

Iran’s IRGC also reported targeting a hangar for American F-35 jets in Jordan, Al Jazeera reported.

That’s far from certain, as Hochul has opposed state-level legislation over data centers. In May, Hochul said, “This is a local decision for municipalities, its land use, which is the purview of local governments. It’s not a statewide approach necessarily, but it’s something I’m looking at intensely.”

In April, Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a similar statewide moratorium on data centers.

Opposition to data centers is growing rapidly across the US. A federal data center moratorium bill was introduced in March, and at least 14 states have proposed pauses on data center construction, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.