It is notable, then, that Mr Bonta and the other attorneys-general have made little reference to one aspect of the deal that has worried Democrats: the shift in ownership of two of America’s best known news brands, CBS News and CNN, to the Ellisons. Mr Bonta has denied that a sale of CNN by the combined company could result in a settlement, though he suggested on “The Town” that some members of his party may welcome that idea. Californians have a particular interest in the deal. State politicians face pressure to help Hollywood, where the merger has turbocharged fears of job losses. Hollywood’s workforce is shrinking as production migrates to cheaper locations such as Canada and Britain. Last year the legislature responded by more than doubling the state’s film and television tax credits, to $750m. Now candidates for governor and mayor of Los Angeles are proposing further incentives. Opposing the Paramount deal is considered another way to help. Hollywood’s powerful labour unions lobbied for months for a legal challenge to the tie-up. The Writers Guild of America West was quick to celebrate the states’ lawsuit, calling the deal “one of the worst proposed mergers we’ve seen”. Paramount, for its part, has dismissed the lawsuit as “wrong on both the facts and the law”. Semafor, an online news outlet, reported that Mr Ellison’s advisers are nudging him to consider moving Paramount’s headquarters out of California. The rumour could be a bluff to force Mr Bonta to the negotiating table. But the Ellisons have done this before. Larry moved the offices of Oracle, his software giant, from Silicon Valley to Texas in 2020. The possibility of a Paramount move raises a broader question about how many regulations and costs California can impose before more companies choose to opt out. “We support businesses”, insists Mr Bonta. “We are pro- business.” If that were unquestionably true, perhaps he wouldn’t need to say it twice. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.
This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/07/16/democrats-challenge-a-big- hollywood-tie-up
Cities are rethinking what happens after dark Making it easier to party is becoming serious public policy July 16th 2026 THE JOB OF nightlife czar sounds almost hedonistic. Then Corean Reynolds explains what it entails. Officially Boston’s director of the nightlife economy, Ms Reynolds can sometimes be found standing outside a bar at 2am, watching how staff manage crowds spilling into the street. When residents complain about noise, she may be nearby with a decibel meter, with a plan not to kill the buzz but measure it. “I’m like, hey, actually it didn’t seem that loud,” she says she tells them. Her task is, essentially, to help more people have fun without making nearby residents miserable. She is the first person to hold the job in Boston and one of a rising number of officials across the country tasked with livening up life after dark.
For decades cities were interested mainly in enforcing strict rules, some dating to Prohibition, on pubs, music venues and dance halls. Now roughly a dozen American municipalities, from Iowa City to Philadelphia, have an official responsible for promoting the nightlife economy. This evolution in thinking can be seen in New York. A measure known as the Cabaret Law, which required venues to obtain special licences before allowing more than three people to dance, was introduced in 1926. In the 1990s Rudy Giuliani, then the city’s mayor, revived the law as part of his administration’s “Broken Windows” strategy, an approach to policing that sought to deter serious crime by cracking down on minor offences. The law was finally repealed in 2017, and the city’s first nightlife mayor, Ariel Palitz, was appointed to her post the year after. Her office set up mediation services to help residents and business owners resolve noise complaints (Ms Palitz cautions that the correct term is “sound—not noise”). The prior system was “purely punitive”, she says, with each complaint automatically dispatching police. Her office also assisted bars, clubs and restaurants navigate permits and city bureaucracy. But enacting change has been arduous. Until May applicants for liquor licences in New York City still had to notify state officials if they wanted to allow dancing. For officials like Ms Reynolds, the biggest limits to her agenda remain red tape surrounding liquor licences, zoning and permitting. Boston is one of many cities that caps the number of liquor licences well below market demand. But in 2024, after Ms Reynolds pushed for change, the city created 225 new licences. According to the local government, it was “the single largest addition to Boston’s liquor licence quota since the end of Prohibition”. Other cities are experimenting with new approaches that, if successful, could spread. San Francisco has created entertainment zones where patrons may consume alcohol on streets and sidewalks. Boston and some neighbouring municipalities have done the same as part of the World Cup. The tournament has become an opportunity to test looser rules, with several host cities temporarily extending bar hours. Meanwhile Austin, Texas, known for its live music, has adopted a policy that protects venues from noise complaints
by occupants of new residential buildings, putting the onus on developers to provide adequate soundproofing. Smaller cities are following suit. Syracuse, a college town of 145,000 in upstate New York, recently announced plans to hire a nightlife co-ordinator. A thriving after-dark scene, city officials hope, will keep young professionals from moving away. It may also create jobs not just in hospitality and entertainment, but in sanitation, transport and security, as well as generate more tax revenue. At a time when remote work has left downtown areas quieter, encouraging nightlife is one way to sustain commercial activity after office hours while giving people more reasons to gather in person. Nightlife czars have a different challenge now, too. Between 2003 and 2023 data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics’ American Time Use Survey shows that the average amount of time 18- to 30-year-olds spent socialising each day fell by 38%. Andreina Seijas, an international nightlife consultant, says her industry is now in a war against the couch. In Boston, Ms Reynolds’s mission to reclaim the night continues. Next on her to-do list is persuading the city’s public-transport operator to run later into the night. The job of a nightlife czar is not always fun, but hopefully the cities they oversee will be. ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//united-states/2026/07/14/cities-are-rethinking-what- happens-after-dark
America’s other elections problem No other rich democracy hands as many decisions directly to its voters July 16th 2026 IT IS OFTEN said that Americans love to work. Perhaps that is why they have made one of their fundamental obligations as citizens—voting—feel like work, too. A civically minded person in Houston, Texas, may already have voted six times this year. When voters in California cast their ballots in November, they will consider a wealth tax from three different angles. In Idaho, home to just 2m people, voters will elect 49 judges, a slew of county coroners and decide which of six firearms should become the state’s official gun. Much attention is paid to whether the rules of democracy are being broken. Donald Trump claims that American elections are marred by voter fraud, despite scant evidence. This month his administration dispatched more than
250 federal investigators to probe Fulton County’s handling of the 2020 election, which he lost. But there is a more prosaic question: does America’s voting system make sense? No other rich democracy hands as many decisions directly to its people. Americans are expected to vote for judges, sheriffs, coroners and school- board members. Through ballot initiatives they also weigh in on everything from whether actors in pornographic films must wear condoms to arcane details of prescription-drug pricing. The assumption is that more voting makes for a healthier democracy. But ballots of biblical length often do the opposite, making government less efficient and less accountable. America’s electoral sprawl happened in two stages. The first came under Andrew Jackson, the country’s seventh president, who handed more power to non-landowning white men by allowing them to elect more officials. The second stage came at the turn of the 20th century, when reformers gave citizens more direct influence through ballot initiatives and referendums. Both moments reflected concern that elites and political parties had amassed too much control over government, says David Schleicher of Yale University. The solution, he says, was to “diffuse power to the people as a check” on those groups. In total Americans choose some 500,000 officials, roughly five times as many per person as in Britain. Even with a population of 340m, America has struggled to find enough candidates to contest all of these races. Between 2018 and 2025 nearly two-thirds of candidates ran unopposed, according to analysis by Ballotpedia, an online resource.
About half of states also allow citizens who gather enough signatures to place initiatives on the ballot. These ask voters to decide questions that in most other democracies are left to legislatures. The Economist scraped data from Ballotpedia covering 1,728 ballot measures from the past three decades. They cover everything from taxation to contentious social issues (see chart). No voter can reasonably be expected to make an informed decision about every item on the ballot. The sheer number of elected officials makes it difficult to know who is responsible for what. Even an expert steeped in local governance might struggle to judge whether a county comptroller has succeeded or failed in office, says Mr Schleicher. Yet on many ballots, voters face that challenge dozens of times. When they reach the more obscure races, they are “flying blind”, says Todd Donovan of Western Washington University. Ballot initiatives can be even harder to understand. The Economist analysed the text of 130 initiatives in California since 2000. Using a metric that scores text based on sentence and word complexity, we found that most required college-level reading comprehension (see chart). One in four demanded the reading comprehension of someone with a graduate degree. Yet only a third of Americans have at least a bachelor’s degree.