Now, the debate over which company will end up owning Warner Bros. — Netflix Inc. or Paramount Skydance Corp. — is carving up the country along political lines.

In Republican circles, it’s become fashionable to root against Netflix. Paramount is run by David Ellison, who has close ties to the White House and whose bid for Warner Bros. is backed by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump. Some prominent Democrats, on the other hand, are voicing objections to the Paramount bid, crying foul over the $24 billion that’s coming from Middle East sources.

President Trump added drama on Wednesday when he said that any deal for Warner Bros. should include the sale of its CNN cable news network.

“It should be guaranteed that CNN is part of it or sold separately,” he said. The network is run by “a very dishonest group of people.”

Warner Bros. and Paramount declined to comment. Netflix didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Few mergers in recent memory have been as polarizing at the battle for Warner Bros., which combines the glamour of Hollywood, the influence of TV news, foreign intrigue tied to Middle Eastern funds and the specter of White House favoritism.

Trump’s comment triggered even more uncertainty. He had previously raised antitrust concerns about Netflix buying Warner Bros.

After a months-long auction, Warner Bros. agreed last week to sell its studios and streaming business, including HBO, to Netflix for $27.75 a share. Under the Netflix deal, Warner Bros. would move forward with its plan to spin off its cable networks, including CNN and TNT, into a separate company called Discovery Global.

Paramount, which kicked off the sale process by making several unsolicited offers for the company, responded on Dec. 8 by launching a $30-a-share hostile tender offer for all of Warner Bros., including the cable networks.

Paramount released a letter to shareholders on Wednesday reiterating that its offer is superior and more likely to win approval in Washington. 

Ellison has spoken publicly about having a good relationship with the Trump administration. His father Larry Ellison, the cofounder of Oracle Corp. and world’s second-richest person, is a Trump ally. 

Still, Trump hasn’t fully endorsed Paramount’s bid. He bashed the company on Monday over a 60 Minutes interview with Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has become a vocal critic of the president. He also said that neither Netflix nor Paramount “are particularly great friends of mine.” 

Other politicians have been much clearer about who they’re rooting against in the bidding war.

In November, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking whether a Netflix deal with Warner Bros. would give the streaming leader too much market power.

“Netflix is already the dominant streaming platform in the United States and permitting it to absorb a major competitor raises antitrust concerns that could result in a harm to consumers,” Issa wrote.

Democratic Representatives Sam Liccardo of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts sent a letter to Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav on Wednesday raising concerns about the participation of foreign investors in Paramount’s bid, which includes backing from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. 

“These investors, by virtue of their financial position or contractual rights, could obtain influence — direct or indirect — over business decisions that bear upon editorial independence, content moderation, distribution priorities, or the stewardship of Americans’ private data,” the lawmakers wrote. 

Like many in Hollywood, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would prefer no sale at all. She called Paramount’s offer a “five-alarm antitrust fire” on Monday after previously branding Netflix’s bid as an “anti-monopoly nightmare.”

Within the pro-Trump MAGA-verse, influencers and media commentators called on Trump to block a Netflix-Warner Bros. deal. Conservative commentator Laura Loomer zeroed in on Netflix’s ties to former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. They signed a deal with the company in 2018.

“If Netflix is allowed to buy Warner Bros. and Trump’s administration doesn’t kill off the merger, CNN will be transformed into the Obama News Network, featuring shows hosted by Michelle Obama @MichelleObama where she lectures Americans about how racist and sexist we are,” Loomer wrote on X. 

Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson said combining Netflix with Warner Bros.’ streaming and studios asset would be “the most dangerous media consolidation in American history” and deliver “a monopoly on children’s entertainment” to “the Democrat super-donors that run Netflix.”

Former US Representative Matt Gaetz, who was previously nominated for attorney general by Trump before withdrawing, wrote “TRUMP MUST STOP THIS!” in a post on X shortly after the Netflix deal was announced.

“The most massive content distributor lashing to a massive content producer / catalog will create a homogenized, woke nightmare for the media landscape,” he wrote.

For Hollywood, much of the focus has been on how each deal would impact an industry already facing job losses, production cuts and the threat of artificial intelligence. 

With Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos previously deeming the experience of going to a movie theater to be “outdated,” some in the industry are concerned his company’s takeover of Warner Bros.’s streaming business would spell disaster for theater chains and film production. 

Michael O’Leary, CEO of movie theater trade group Cinema United, said in a statement last week that the Netflix deal “poses an unprecedented threat to the global exhibition business.”

“Netflix’s stated business model does not support theatrical exhibition,” he wrote. “In fact, it is the opposite.”

The Producer’s Guild of America urged protection for producers’ livelihoods and theatrical distribution. 

“Our legacy studios are more than content libraries – within their vaults are the character and culture of our nation,” the guild said.

Actress Jane Fonda spoke out against the Netflix deal last week calling it “an alarming escalation of the consolidation that threatens the entire entertainment industry, the democratic public it serves and the First Amendment itself.”

Other creatives commented on how the consolidation might affect consumers. In a skit from Morning Brew’s YouTube Channel Good Work, a movie viewer starts to stream a film at home, only to be barraged by a series of studio logos that include Netflix, Warner Bros., Paramount, HBO, Pixar and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. The viewer quickly gets bored before grabbing the remote.

“Let’s turn this off,” he says. 

McLeod started Hinge in 2011 and spent more than a decade at the helm, including after Match Group acquired the company in 2019. The company’s president and chief marketing officer, Jackie Jantos, will take over as CEO. 

McLeod’s new dating app, Overtone, plans to use “AI and voice tools to help people connect in a more thoughtful and personal way,” according to a press release. Yet, few further details are known about the venture. 

“We’re not going to talk a lot about [Overtone] quite yet,” McLeod told Fast Company, “except to say that there’s an opportunity to completely reimagine the dating experience and how technology can help facilitate people finding their partner—that breaks the mold of the way current dating apps are designed.”

Overtone started as a project within Hinge, but is now spinning off to operate independently. Still, it will continue to have ties to Match Group, which will lead the company’s first funding round in 2026 and plans to hold a “substantial ownership position.” Match CEO Spencer Rascoff will also sit on the board of directors, while McLeod serves as chairman of the board.

Match Group did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

The new venture comes as dating apps have struggled to maintain users. A 2024 study from Forbes found more than three quarters of dating-app users experienced some sort of “swipe fatigue,” and many said the burnout they experienced was linked to not being able to make genuine connections. 

Some data from the biggest market player, Tinder, dovetails with these sentiments. The app is down more than 1.5 million paying users from its peak in 2022, according to Fast Company. Match Group, which apart from Hinge also owns Tinder, Match.com, and OkCupid, reported a 2% year-over-year revenue increase in its latest quarter, yet Tinder’s paying customers dropped by 7%, according to the Wall Street Journal. To be sure, a bright spot in the company’s third quarter was Hinge, whose paying users increased 17%.

Amid potentially stagnating interest in dating apps, Match Group companies, as well as competitors Bumble and even Facebook Dating, have increasingly turned to AI to try to rekindle users’ interest. Earlier this year, Hinge launched a feature called “prompt feedback” that uses AI to help improve users improve the responses they give to public-facing prompts such as “my happy place.” 

Bumble and Tinder have also both added tools that use AI to analyze users’ photos and present the most appealing. Yet, it’s unclear if users are actually looking for more AI in their dating lives. In a study of 1,000 dating app users by Bloomberg Intelligence, nearly 50% of respondents said they didn’t have problems making a dating profile on their own, without AI.

While McLeod’s new project, Overtone, started within Match Group, he said it made more sense for the new dating app to be an independent company so it could move at the fastest possible pace. During his tenure, Hinge grew from less than $1 million in revenue in 2017 to roughly $400 million by 2023. He told Fast Company he was eager for a fresh challenge and to take the reins once more.

“I’m a founder and CEO at heart,” he said. “There’s a piece of me that wants to be out there on my own, ultimately steering the ship again.”

That weakness looks likely to become something of a fixture in 2026, according to ADP’s chief economist, Dr Nela Richardson. ADP’s take on the economy has grown in prominence this year, partly due to the government shutdown which meant public payroll data wasn’t published. In the void came data from ADP, which shares private payroll data insights.

Unlike her economist peers on Wall Street, Richardson tells Fortune: “We’re tracking changes in real time, it’s as high frequency as payroll data [can] get and we have not seen this rosy picture for 2026 in the data. I think [when people] point to an improved labor market next year, they’re highlighting a couple of things in the macro economy, while we’re looking at this very granular data set of private employment.

“They’re highlighting maybe a couple of rate cuts, they’re highlighting some tax advantages on the fiscal side, and they’re probably highlighting some AI and investment paying off—and certainly they’re probably adding some clarity in terms of trade policy and resolving some of the macro [questions]. All fantastic attributes, but it takes longer for those to trickle to mom and pop.”

Richardson points to the latest jobs reporting from her company: U.S. private employment dropped by 32,000 roles in November, lead by weakness from smaller businesses. Companies with between one and 19 employees axed 46,000 roles, while those with 20 to 49 employees cut 74,000. Conversely, companies with 500-plus employees added 39,000 employees.

“Tiny firms are a big chunk of employment, but the tiny firms are making tiny moves, and they’re moving all in the same direction,” Richardson added. “It could be as small as not hiring two teenagers at the bakery or foregoing that delivery driver over a certain season, it doesn’t mean it’s a big, huge layoff, it’s not replacing a worker here or there, and those changes add up. 

“If you’re making those micro moves, micro decisions for mom and pop [businesses], these macro drivers are less likely to influence your patterns.”

A rapidly evolving picture

Once upon a time, a sound work ethic and perseverance were enough to get you a foot on the career ladder. In 2025, that’s no longer the case—just ask the business leaders at the top of some of America’s largest corporations.

And while it’s true Gen Z are facing an entirely different job market to their parents, the rules of engagement are evolving so rapidly that market entrants one year to the next are facing a different set of hoops to jump through—making the picture for 2026 all the more complex.

These shifts have not happened in a vacuum, says Richardson, but are more a culmination of trends over the past five years. The so-called “Great Resignation” and the advancement of hybrid work are chief among them. Hybrid work, for example, means the pool of competition has expanded rapidly with hiring managers no longer constrained to a certain geography.

Likewise, “the Great Resignation meant people were able to demand their own terms,” Richardson added. “That meant hybrid work, that meant higher salaries and bonuses, all kinds of promotions happened during that time. Why leave?”

These factors mean the goalposts are constantly changing for market entrants: “It’s not even generation to generation,” Richardson says. “It’s your older brother and sister who graduated three or four years ago, it’s not even their job market anymore.”