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When Rupert Murdoch dies, it could plunge the Fox and News Corp empire into civil war

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On July 28, President Donald Trump’s attorneys filed an urgent motion in federal court demanding the expedited deposition of Rupert Murdoch—a move justified, they argued, by both Murdoch’s central role in News Corp’s decision-making and his allegedly precarious health. 

Murdoch is 94. He could die at any moment, Trump’s lawyers argued.

The legal maneuver, connected to the president’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the mogul and the Wall Street Journal over a story about Trump’s alleged letter to Jeffrey Epstein, has thrown the king of modern media’s longevity and his empire’s future into question. 

Trump’s lawyers seem to believe the titan is in no condition to testify at trial, citing a litany of health issues including a severe back injury, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, a torn Achilles tendon, a serious case of COVID-19 in 2022, and an incident in February 2025 when Murdoch collapsed and fainted at breakfast with a journalist.

“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

For decades, Murdoch’s iron grip steered titanic assets—Fox Corporation and News Corp—across continents, through scandal, boardroom intrigue, and relentless media cycles. Yet the court’s focus on his fragility, and the legal assertion that his control has been contingent on his ability to act, accelerates what could become the defining story of the next era in global media: the fractious, uncertain, and high-stakes succession battle for one of the most powerful empires in news and entertainment.

Much of the Murdoch media dynasty’s fate hangs in the balance of the Murdoch Family Trust.  Established in 1999, after Rupert’s second divorce, the trust was created to control the family’s significant stake and voting power in both Fox Corporation and News Corp. Although the trust owns only about 14% of News Corp’s equity, it controls roughly 40-41% of the company’s voting shares, giving the Murdoch family effective control over these major media businesses through a dual-share structure.

Tom Stoddart—Getty Images

The trust was designed so that Rupert himself holds four votes during his lifetime, while his four eldest children—Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence—hold one vote each. Upon Rupert’s death, his four votes will be distributed equally to these four children, so each will then have two votes, ensuring shared control. At the moment, Lachlan is the sole chair of News Corp and the CEO of Fox Corporation, having taken over for his father after his retirement in 2023.

Ultimately, the trust enables the Murdoch family to control its media empire by concentrating voting power among the four eldest children following Rupert’s death. But its irrevocability and the principle of equal control have sparked ongoing legal and familial conflict that stand to jeopardize the media powerhouse Murdoch built. 

In late 2023, Murdoch attempted to alter the trust to grant sole posthumous control to his eldest son, Lachlan, allowing him to take over the family business entirely. This move was legally contested by the other three children, who argued it violated the original mandate of equal control. A Nevada probate court ruled in December 2024 against Rupert’s attempt, but the mogul’s legal team has since filed an appeal.

“Lachlan is having to pay his siblings a higher and higher value to get out of his way. … So he’s in a real bind.”Paddy Manning, Australian journalist and Lachlan biographer

The trust also contains a 2030 expiration date that has only contributed to the ongoing contentious family dynamics that impact the Murdochs’ businesses. The deadline could decide the fate of Fox Corporation and News Corp. Should the trust expire, its terms and centralized structure will dissolve, forcing the Murdoch heirs to determine among themselves the future structure of ownership and control over the family’s immense assets. 

Above all, the legal battle over the trust has caused an immense divide in the family. Lachlan and Rupert’s attempt to maintain control has galvanized Lachlan’s three other siblings. “They’ve unified them in a way that they weren’t unified before and so it has been in some ways a miscalculation,” Australian journalist and Lachlan biographer Paddy Manning told Fortune.

Given the long history of Murdoch sibling infighting, succession in a post-Rupert world stands to have significant impacts on the media empire. With control of the businesses passing equally to the four eldest children, boardroom gridlock—if the siblings are unable to reach consensus—could potentially paralyze key business decisions. And ongoing family divisions may shake shareholder confidence. 

Majority rules

Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff foresees Lachlan’s three vote-holding siblings ultimately aligning against him and relieving him of his command over News Corp and Fox, and eventually an implosion of the Murdoch media empire we know today. 

“The voice of the three would rule. And right now that appears to be that the three would relieve their brother of control and then make a determination about what happened to the remaining assets,” he told Fortune. (James, it’s worth noting, has denied there has even been a secret conspiracy between the siblings to unseat Lachlan in a rare interview with the Atlantic.)

The children, Wolff predicts, will then sell off some of the assets, namely those within News Corp which includes the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London, and James could take over and pivot the editorial slant of Fox News.

“This all comes down to four people, and whether they get along or they don’t get along.”Michael Wolff, Murdoch biographer

James, who is deeply involved in social-justice initiatives and left-leaning politics, has long been outspoken about his deep disagreements with the editorial direction of both News Corp and Fox News, having resigned from the News Corp board in 2020, explicitly citing “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.” In interviews, he’s criticized his family’s business for “legitimizing disinformation.”

James Murdoch declined a Fortune request for comment.

Even if James were to take over Fox, he would face an uphill battle with the Fox Corporation board that has aligned itself with Lachlan and Rupert’s vision. Since taking over, Lachlan has appointed two of his own directors, including former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. According to Manning: Abbott’s role on the board is largely to buttress Lachlan’s leadership. And shareholders, Manning told Fortune, would be pretty concerned about a strategy that tampered with the editorial line, or the programming, in a way that could dilute its earnings potential.

Fox Corporation declined a Fortune request for comment.

As for the remaining businesses in the Murdoch portfolio, finding a suitable buyer for the myriad lesser-known assets within News Corp would be a significant undertaking. The Wall Street Journal, Wolff said, would be somewhat of an exception. “You have vanity buyers to strategic buyers,” he added, throwing Michael Bloomberg’s name into the mix.

News Corp did not respond to a Fortune request for comment.

Billion-dollar buyout:

Acquiescing to his siblings isn’t Lachlan’s sole option. The eldest Murdoch son could buy out his siblings, but past attempts, in 2019 and 2023, were unsuccessful. Lachlan has never been willing to offer his siblings more than 60% of the market value of their shares. 

Manning sees Lachlan buying out his siblings as the most logical move, one made by Rupert himself in the 1990s. But, according to Manning, Lachlan’s successful leadership at Fox and News Corp would allow his siblings to ask a high price, into the several billions of dollars, for control of the companies. 

“Lachlan is having to pay his siblings a higher and higher value to get out of his way, and he’s having to pay them for effectively the fruits of his strategy, which they have criticized. So he’s in a real bind,” Manning told Fortune.

Under Lachlan’s leadership, Fox Corporation’s stock has performed well, even rising throughout the initial months of his appointment. Although the stock has seen some fluctuation due to ongoing legal battles, its price reached an all-time high of $58 in February 2025. In its third-quarter financial reporting, the company disclosed $4.37 billion in revenues, a 27% year-over-year increase.

As for News Corp’s performance, the company’s stock has soared, reflecting steady financial performance and strong growth. In 2024, the company’s earnings jumped nearly 79%.

Jackie Luna—REUTERS/Redux

Business as usual

Author and journalist Claire Atkinson, who has covered the Murdochs extensively and is writing a forthcoming book on the media dynasty, points to Lachlan’s business wins as a potential reason for Lachlan’s siblings to allow him to remain in control. She doesn’t view sweeping changes to the Murdoch businesses as inevitable following Rupert’s death.

“Lachlan has run it for more than five years. The stocks have done better than other media stocks,” she told Fortune. 

Aside from the stock’s performance, Lachlan has also helped propel Fox News’ success. Fox News remains the top-rated cable news channel, leading primetime and outpacing ABC, NBC, and CBS. And he has continued Fox’s expansion into streaming following the company’s 2020 acquisition of Tubi, which as of July 2025, has since surpassed 100 million monthly active users.

But beyond Lachlan’s success, Atkinson doesn’t see Elisabeth and James attempting to reclaim power at their family’s enterprise. “They’ve got these billion-dollar fortunes of their own to create whatever media companies they want,” she said, something Elisabeth has long been doing. The youngest Murdoch daughter started her global TV and film production and development company, Sister Pictures, in 2019. 

Elisabeth Murdoch did not immediately return a Fortune request for comment.

Regardless of the potential outcomes, both Atkinson and Manning expect Lachlan to fight tooth and nail to remain heir to the Murdoch empire. “I don’t see him stepping aside or stepping down or relinquishing that position anytime soon at all. I think he is absolutely committed to his role,” Atkinson said. 

Wolff, however, questions Lachlan’s willingness to go above and beyond for control over the businesses. “There’s always the sense that he would rather be doing something else, spear fishing,” he said, referring to Lachlan’s favorite hobby.

How hard Lachlan will have to fight to remain atop his father’s enterprise is ultimately dependent upon his siblings, with whom his relationships have been strained by the weight of the Murdoch legacy and divided ideals. 

“This all comes down to four people, and whether they get along or they don’t get along, and whatever accommodation they can come to with each other. Nothing else matters, nothing except what these four people will want at a given moment in time,” Wolff said.



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Senate Dems’ plan to fix Obamacare premiums adds nearly $300 billion to deficit, CRFB says

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December 5, 2025

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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is a nonpartisan watchdog that regularly estimates how much the U.S. Congress is adding to the $38 trillion national debt.

With enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies due to expire within days, some Senate Democrats are scrambling to protect millions of Americans from getting the unpleasant holiday gift of spiking health insurance premiums. The CRFB says there’s just one problem with the plan: It’s not funded.

“With the national debt as large as the economy and interest payments costing $1 trillion annually, it is absurd to suggest adding hundreds of billions more to the debt,” CRFB President Maya MacGuineas wrote in a statement on Friday afternoon.

The proposal, backed by members of the Senate Democratic caucus, would fully extend the enhanced ACA subsidies for three years, from 2026 through 2028, with no additional income limits on who can qualify. Those subsidies, originally boosted during the pandemic and later renewed, were designed to lower premiums and prevent coverage losses for middle‑ and lower‑income households purchasing insurance on the ACA exchanges.

CRFB estimated that even this three‑year extension alone would add roughly $300 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, largely because the federal government would continue to shoulder a larger share of premium costs while enrollment and subsidy amounts remain elevated. If Congress ultimately moves to make the enhanced subsidies permanent—as many advocates have urged—the total cost could swell to nearly $550 billion in additional borrowing over the next decade.

Reversing recent guardrails

MacGuineas called the Senate bill “far worse than even a debt-financed extension” as it would roll back several “program integrity” measures that were enacted as part of a 2025 reconciliation law and were intended to tighten oversight of ACA subsidies. On top of that, it would be funded by borrowing even more. “This is a bad idea made worse,” MacGuineas added.

The watchdog group’s central critique is that the new Senate plan does not attempt to offset its costs through spending cuts or new revenue and, in their view, goes beyond a simple extension by expanding the underlying subsidy structure.

The legislation would permanently repeal restrictions that eliminated subsidies for certain groups enrolling during special enrollment periods and would scrap rules requiring full repayment of excess advance subsidies and stricter verification of eligibility and tax reconciliation. The bill would also nullify portions of a 2025 federal regulation that loosened limits on the actuarial value of exchange plans and altered how subsidies are calculated, effectively reshaping how generous plans can be and how federal support is determined. CRFB warned these reversals would increase costs further while weakening safeguards designed to reduce misuse and error in the subsidy system.

MacGuineas said that any subsidy extension should be paired with broader reforms to curb health spending and reduce overall borrowing. In her view, lawmakers are missing a chance to redesign ACA support in a way that lowers premiums while also improving the long‑term budget outlook.

The debate over ACA subsidies recently contributed to a government funding standoff, and CRFB argued that the new Senate bill reflects a political compromise that prioritizes short‑term relief over long‑term fiscal responsibility.

“After a pointless government shutdown over this issue, it is beyond disappointing that this is the preferred solution to such an important issue,” MacGuineas wrote.

The off-year elections cast the government shutdown and cost-of-living arguments in a different light. Democrats made stunning gains and almost flipped a deep-red district in Tennessee as politicians from the far left and center coalesced around “affordability.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly smelling blood in the water and doubling down on the theme heading into the pivotal midterm elections of 2026. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Pennsylvania soon to discuss pocketbook anxieties. But he is repeating predecessor Joe Biden’s habit of dismissing inflation, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.

“We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything,” Trump said in a Tuesday cabinet meeting, in which he also dismissed affordability as a “hoax” pushed by Democrats.​

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle now face a politically fraught choice: allow premiums to jump sharply—including in swing states like Pennsylvania where ACA enrollees face double‑digit increases—or pass an expensive subsidy extension that would, as CRFB calculates, explode the deficit without addressing underlying health care costs.



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Netflix–Warner Bros. deal sets up $72 billion antitrust test

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December 5, 2025

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Netflix Inc. has won the heated takeover battle for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Now it must convince global antitrust regulators that the deal won’t give it an illegal advantage in the streaming market. 

The $72 billion tie-up joins the world’s dominant paid streaming service with one of Hollywood’s most iconic movie studios. It would reshape the market for online video content by combining the No. 1 streaming player with the No. 4 service HBO Max and its blockbuster hits such as Game Of Thrones, Friends, and the DC Universe comics characters franchise.  

That could raise red flags for global antitrust regulators over concerns that Netflix would have too much control over the streaming market. The company faces a lengthy Justice Department review and a possible US lawsuit seeking to block the deal if it doesn’t adopt some remedies to get it cleared, analysts said.

“Netflix will have an uphill climb unless it agrees to divest HBO Max as well as additional behavioral commitments — particularly on licensing content,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Rie. “The streaming overlap is significant,” she added, saying the argument that “the market should be viewed more broadly is a tough one to win.”

By choosing Netflix, Warner Bros. has jilted another bidder, Paramount Skydance Corp., a move that risks touching off a political battle in Washington. Paramount is backed by the world’s second-richest man, Larry Ellison, and his son, David Ellison, and the company has touted their longstanding close ties to President Donald Trump. Their acquisition of Paramount, which closed in August, has won public praise from Trump. 

Comcast Corp. also made a bid for Warner Bros., looking to merge it with its NBCUniversal division.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review the transaction in the US, could argue that the deal is illegal on its face because the combined market share would put Netflix well over a 30% threshold.

The White House, the Justice Department and Comcast didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

US lawmakers from both parties, including Republican Representative Darrell Issa and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren have already faulted the transaction — which would create a global streaming giant with 450 million users — as harmful to consumers.

“This deal looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare,” Warren said after the Netflix announcement. Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, said in a social media post earlier this week that a Warner Bros.-Netflix tie-up would raise more serious competition questions “than any transaction I’ve seen in about a decade.”

European Union regulators are also likely to subject the Netflix proposal to an intensive review amid pressure from legislators. In the UK, the deal has already drawn scrutiny before the announcement, with House of Lords member Baroness Luciana Berger pressing the government on how the transaction would impact competition and consumer prices.

The combined company could raise prices and broadly impact “culture, film, cinemas and theater releases,”said Andreas Schwab, a leading member of the European Parliament on competition issues, after the announcement.

Paramount has sought to frame the Netflix deal as a non-starter. “The simple truth is that a deal with Netflix as the buyer likely will never close, due to antitrust and regulatory challenges in the United States and in most jurisdictions abroad,” Paramount’s antitrust lawyers wrote to their counterparts at Warner Bros. on Dec. 1.

Appealing directly to Trump could help Netflix avoid intense antitrust scrutiny, New Street Research’s Blair Levin wrote in a note on Friday. Levin said it’s possible that Trump could come to see the benefit of switching from a pro-Paramount position to a pro-Netflix position. “And if he does so, we believe the DOJ will follow suit,” Levin wrote.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos had dinner with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last December, a move other CEOs made after the election in order to win over the administration. In a call with investors Friday morning, Sarandos said that he’s “highly confident in the regulatory process,” contending the deal favors consumers, workers and innovation. 

“Our plans here are to work really closely with all the appropriate governments and regulators, but really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need,” he said.

Netflix will likely argue to regulators that other video services such as Google’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok should be included in any analysis of the market, which would dramatically shrink the company’s perceived dominance.

The US Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the transfer of broadcast-TV licenses, isn’t expected to play a role in the deal, as neither hold such licenses. Warner Bros. plans to spin off its cable TV division, which includes channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT, before the sale.

Even if antitrust reviews just focus on streaming, Netflix believes it will ultimately prevail, pointing to Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime and Walt Disney Co. as other major competitors, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. 

Netflix is expected to argue that more than 75% of HBO Max subscribers already subscribe to Netflix, making them complementary offerings rather than competitors, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing confidential deliberations. The company is expected to make the case that reducing its content costs through owning Warner Bros., eliminating redundant back-end technology and bundling Netflix with Max will yield lower prices.



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The rise of AI reasoning models comes with a big energy tradeoff

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December 5, 2025

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Nearly all leading artificial intelligence developers are focused on building AI models that mimic the way humans reason, but new research shows these cutting-edge systems can be far more energy intensive, adding to concerns about AI’s strain on power grids.

AI reasoning models used 30 times more power on average to respond to 1,000 written prompts than alternatives without this reasoning capability or which had it disabled, according to a study released Thursday. The work was carried out by the AI Energy Score project, led by Hugging Face research scientist Sasha Luccioni and Salesforce Inc. head of AI sustainability Boris Gamazaychikov.

The researchers evaluated 40 open, freely available AI models, including software from OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. Some models were found to have a much wider disparity in energy consumption, including one from Chinese upstart DeepSeek. A slimmed-down version of DeepSeek’s R1 model used just 50 watt hours to respond to the prompts when reasoning was turned off, or about as much power as is needed to run a 50 watt lightbulb for an hour. With the reasoning feature enabled, the same model required 7,626 watt hours to complete the tasks.

The soaring energy needs of AI have increasingly come under scrutiny. As tech companies race to build more and bigger data centers to support AI, industry watchers have raised concerns about straining power grids and raising energy costs for consumers. A Bloomberg investigation in September found that wholesale electricity prices rose as much as 267% over the past five years in areas near data centers. There are also environmental drawbacks, as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com Inc. have previously acknowledged the data center buildout could complicate their long-term climate objectives. 

More than a year ago, OpenAI released its first reasoning model, called o1. Where its prior software replied almost instantly to queries, o1 spent more time computing an answer before responding. Many other AI companies have since released similar systems, with the goal of solving more complex multistep problems for fields like science, math and coding.

Though reasoning systems have quickly become the industry norm for carrying out more complicated tasks, there has been little research into their energy demands. Much of the increase in power consumption is due to reasoning models generating much more text when responding, the researchers said. 

The new report aims to better understand how AI energy needs are evolving, Luccioni said. She also hopes it helps people better understand that there are different types of AI models suited to different actions. Not every query requires tapping the most computationally intensive AI reasoning systems.

“We should be smarter about the way that we use AI,” Luccioni said. “Choosing the right model for the right task is important.”

To test the difference in power use, the researchers ran all the models on the same computer hardware. They used the same prompts for each, ranging from simple questions — such as asking which team won the Super Bowl in a particular year — to more complex math problems. They also used a software tool called CodeCarbon to track how much energy was being consumed in real time.

The results varied considerably. The researchers found one of Microsoft’s Phi 4 reasoning models used 9,462 watt hours with reasoning turned on, compared with about 18 watt hours with it off. OpenAI’s largest gpt-oss model, meanwhile, had a less stark difference. It used 8,504 watt hours with reasoning on the most computationally intensive “high” setting and 5,313 watt hours with the setting turned down to “low.” 

OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google released internal research in August that estimated the median text prompt for its Gemini AI service used 0.24 watt-hours of energy, roughly equal to watching TV for less than nine seconds. Google said that figure was “substantially lower than many public estimates.” 

Much of the discussion about AI power consumption has focused on large-scale facilities set up to train artificial intelligence systems. Increasingly, however, tech firms are shifting more resources to inference, or the process of running AI systems after they’ve been trained. The push toward reasoning models is a big piece of that as these systems are more reliant on inference.

Recently, some tech leaders have acknowledged that AI’s power draw needs to be reckoned with. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the industry must earn the “social permission to consume energy” for AI data centers in a November interview. To do that, he argued tech must use AI to do good and foster broad economic growth.



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