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How does a congressman who's been in the House of Representatives for 14 years, winning 4 primaries on average by a margin of 50.25 percentage points, with the other 3 going uncontested, suddenly lose his seat in a primary?
You're not the only one who has questions.
Thomas Massie, the Republican Representative for Kentucky's fourth district, lost to former Navy SEAL and political newcomer Ed Gallerin in the party's primary nomination for the upcoming midterms this fall, securing 54.9% to Massie's 45.1%.
From a purely statistical sense, this seems like a political impossibility. Based on the numbers from the last contested primary, Gallerin needed to flip 64 points to win in a race where Massie's margins have only grown over time.
Many point to Trump's endorsement of Gallerin as the pivotal factor, but this doesn't paint a full picture.
During the 2020 elections, Massie also faced public denunciation from the POTUS over disagreements regarding the COVID stimulus packages, with Trump calling for voters to remove him from office:
Massie went on to win that primary by 62 points.
What's different this time around is that this was the most expensive primary in US history. Somewhere in the ballpark of thirty-five million dollars was spent on the two campaigns.
There are, of course, overhead costs of running a campaign, such as wages, office rent, and legal fees.
However, these overheads don't add up to thirty-five million, especially in a Republican primary in Kentucky.
But it doesn't mean invoices for chartered jets or fancy galas with lobster dinners either.
This means that organizations with targeted agendas spent tens of millions of dollars to deliberately get Thomas Massie out of Congress.
On paper, with the historical results that Massie has recorded, it would seem almost impossible for him to suddenly lose like he did. It feels like these organizations bought the election in a sense.
But what's the deeper story behind this upset? Why did these organizations choose to spend millions, and perhaps more importantly, how does the system that enables them to do this work?
A Political Action Committee, simply known as a PAC, is an organization whose goal is to raise and distribute money to fund campaigns to get candidates elected, or, conversely, out of office.
Historically, these have been labour unions and trade associations. The first PAC in America was established by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO-PAC) in 1943, supporting the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt because of his support for organized labour and the working class.
Over the years, they have evolved to expand a wider array of interest groups due to constant reforms accelerating PAC growth. Corporate PACs started to appear in the 70s, helping fund candidates whose platforms they believed to be favourable for their company.
Defence, healthcare, and financial companies dominated direct candidate spending in 2024 based on public filings to the FEC.
There has also been a significant rise in ideological and single-issue PACs since CIO-PAC, centred around ideological causes rather than a sponsoring organization. The biggest today include:
Above, you may have noticed the term "bought election." However, it isn't that simple. PACs can't just donate whatever they feel like and keep pumping money until their favoured candidate wins.
For the 2025–2026 election cycle, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has set the limit on the amount an individual can donate to $3,500 per election per candidate, up from $3,300 last cycle.
Since primary and general elections are considered separate, this means an individual can donate the limit twice, adding up to $7,000 for the entire electoral process.
Individuals can also give up to $44,300 per year to each National Party Committee, such as the DNC or RNC, though these contributions are primarily for national elections.
However, for PACs, donations are strictly capped at $5,000 per federal candidate per election. This means a $5,000 contribution for the entire PAC — not $5,000 per member.
For example, one of the biggest PACs in America, the NRA, which has around 5 million members, only gave a total of $868,651 last cycle — not to one candidate, but singular donations of $5,000 or under across dozens of campaigns across the country and larger ones to several Republican committees.
So you must be thinking, how do these PACs make a real impact on elections if they can only give $5,000 to each candidate?
The truth is, direct contributions from PACs are largely irrelevant these days.
But then how is $35 million being spent on a Republican Primary for the House of Representatives in Kentucky's fourth district?
The real answer lies in two 2010 Supreme Court rulings:
In the first landmark ruling, the conservative non-profit took the FEC to court after it blocked the distribution of Hillary: The Movie, the organization's documentary before the 2008 Democratic Primary, citing that they violated the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
The act banned corporations and unions from funding broadcast ads that mention a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favour of Citizens United, saying the government couldn't restrict independent political expenditures — relying on the core argument that political spending is a form of free speech protected under the First Amendment.
Regarding the latter case, prior FEC rules required any group raising over $1,000 for political purposes to register as a PAC, which would subject them to additional regulations and the $5,000 donation limit.
SpeechNow.org took the FEC to the DC Circuit Court, arguing that if independent expenditures could no longer be limited, then neither could contributions to groups that made independent political expenditures.
The two rulings set a precedent that independent political expenditures qualified as free speech and could no longer be capped. Together, they allowed for the creation of the Super PAC — the real culprit behind all this new-age political spending, especially in the case of Mr. Massie.
So instead of direct contributions to campaigns, Super PACs focus on independent political expenditures, to which there is no limit. Although they don't directly spend or coordinate with candidates and campaigns, they spend funds on:
So in KY-04, Super PACs spent approximately $35 million on costs like these to convince Republicans to send their favoured candidate into the general election, an almost guaranteed seat in the House. KY-04 hasn’t elected a democratic candidate since 1966.
The biggest spenders in the race include:
Although these PACs have to disclose their spending to the FEC, there is a lot of gray area in disclosing where their funding came from.
The Super PACs have to disclose who donated to them, but if that organization is a 501(c)(4) "social welfare organization," the organization never has to disclose where it got its money from.
So if a wealthy donor wants to anonymously spend, for example, $10 million to get Gallerin elected, the path looks like this:
However, nobody knows that the 501(c)(4) was funded by one person or a small circle.
This creates a problematic environment of "shadow spending," where anonymous elites can pump millions into a campaign, influencing elections all across America with no real transparency and no direct connection to the local districts in which these elections occur.
So why did these groups spend tens of millions to unseat Massie? The narrative they want to push is that Massie is anti-Republican, pro-Democrat, and he needs to go in order to achieve the MAGA agenda more efficiently — but this doesn't paint the whole picture.
As stated above, Massie has been critical of the POTUS and voted against the Republicans a handful of times, but this has been going on for a while. When Trump publicly called on voters to remove him in 2020, no MAGA PACs were formed and there was nowhere near the same level of spending.
But you may have noticed a pattern in the PACs committed to unseating Massie — they all have declared support for the interests of Israel, with two of the three solely focused on Jewish and Israeli interests.
In a district with approximately 500 Jewish residents out of a total 768,780 people, the question of U.S.-Israel relations hardly seems relevant, especially in a state with far more pressing issues such as high poverty rates, healthcare, and economic development.
However, Massie has been highly critical of Israel, calling on an end to all foreign aid to the nation, openly labelling the situation in Gaza a genocide, and was the sole member of Congress to vote against a House resolution reaffirming Israel's right to exist.
This is why these groups have poured millions into this race. Not because they care about Kentucky or making Republican lawmaking more efficient, but because they perceive that their ideological interests and causes are threatened by Massie.
AIPAC is famously known for being bipartisan, supporting over 80% of House Representatives, so Republican lawmaking is largely irrelevant to them.
And as stated above, donors can pour however much they desire into these Super PACs through 501(c)(4)s while remaining completely anonymous.
Although we know in this race that pro-Israel billionaires such as Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson contributed significantly to MAGA KY because they donated directly, the real danger lies in what we don't know — or rather, who.
Allowing elites to hijack elections they have no meaningful connection to, over personal grievances, is hardly democratic. The Supreme Court may have ruled that political spending is protected as a form of free speech, but should it be protected as anonymous speech?
In a country where free and fair elections are a founding pillar, one would expect, at the very least, a higher degree of transparency around financial disclosures and donor information, even when the money flows through a 501(c)(4).
Campaigning is an art form, and every art form requires artists. It is only sensible to give the paintbrushes to the people with meaningful stakes in the election or, at minimum, to let them know who's painting the picture.
On May 30, after a long and tumultuous campaign, the Conservative Party of BC elected former MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay to head their party, replacing interim leader Trevor Halford, who took over following John Rustad's narrow defeat at the hands of the incumbent NDP.
A self-described "true blue" conservative, Findlay's shock victory defied the odds, rallying support against frontrunner and former MLA Caroline Elliot. In the final ballot, Findlay received 51% of eligible votes to Elliot's 49%, with votes transferred from less popular candidates Peter Milobar, Yuri Fulmer, and Iain Black. The outcome came as a surprise, as betting odds favoured Elliot as the campaign's winner, with pre-ballot odds giving her a 70% chance of victory compared to 20% for Findlay.
Regardless, the BC Conservatives' new leader gives hope to centre-right and right-wing voters, who witnessed the BC NDP re-elected to provincial government on a razor thin margin in 2024. Findlay, now known to conservatives as KLF, first entered government on the federal level, winning a seat as the MP for Delta-Richmond East. In her time under then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, she served as Associate Minister of National Defense and later Minister of National Revenue, among other roles. Under her leadership, Harper's conservative government managed the first federal budget surplus since the 2008 recession, giving Findlay strong credentials among fiscal conservatives for managing a government's balance sheet. No surprise, she's used her past performance as an example of how she would balance BC's finances, cut the deficit, and restore the province's credit rating to make borrowing more affordable.
Returning to Parliament in 2019 after losing her seat in 2015, Findlay later served as opposition leader Pierre Poilievre's Chief Whip, overseeing the party's dominant polling position in 2023 to 2025, before its collapse in the face of Mark Carney's resuscitated Liberal Party. Having lost her lower-mainland seat in last spring's federal election, Findlay finally turned to provincial politics, launching her 2026 campaign to lead BC's Conservatives under the slogan: "More Freedom, Less Government."
In a race defined by concerns over property rights and land title, Findlay made her case as an experienced, loyally blue defender of the Canadian centre-right — one who would repeal BC's controversial Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (known as DRIPA), repeal SOGI content from the provincial curriculum, and foster economic growth by fast-tracking the lucrative resource industries of BC. Reflecting on her victory, Findlay reminded Conservatives that they needed to remain united in their support of the party, otherwise they risk handing the advantage to the BC NDP on their left and OneBC on their right, who have the potential to split the right-wing vote.
Currently, the next BC provincial election isn't until 2028, though there remains the elusive possibility of an early election if Premier David Eby faces rebellious MLAs in his NDP caucus. Still, Findlay gives BC conservatives cause for cautious optimism, as public opinion seems to have shifted in their favour.
Polling by Research Co. last week showed Conservative support tied with the NDP at 42%, closing their 6% lead from October. Leader approval remains disadvantageous however, with a -3% net favourability for Findlay compared to +13% for Eby, mirroring a trend also seen in federal polling. More optimistically, a Léger poll also from June shows Conservatives leading with 45% to the NDP's 41%, with 27% of the sample listing Findlay as the preferred Premier, against 30% for David Eby.
With current figures looking workable for Conservatives, the next provincial election is certainly one to keep an eye on.
For now, Findlay will need to become an MLA by winning a local election, a position she has yet to hold. Only by entering Victoria's legislative chamber will she be able to present herself as the next potential Premier, able to challenge the NDP in debates and hold the government to account.
Until then, she leads a party that needs time to rebuild after a messy leadership contest — but one which could very well be the next government of British Columbia.
Three months ago, the boards of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery shook the world by shaking hands on what David Ellison called the future of "next-generation" entertainment: a merger between the two giants.
Since then, shareholders voted yes, lawyers have filed their papers with the SEC, yet when you walk into Warner Bros. headquarters in Burbank today, you'll find that the company still stands on its own, still waiting. Waiting for what?
As time goes on, the $110 billion unification is no longer a question of if or why, but when and how.
To understand why this deal has stalled, we go back to last December, when, before Paramount got a seat at negotiations, Netflix was looking to take over the iconic studio. The initial deal, announced December 4th of last year, involved the streaming giant (not Paramount) looking to acquire WBD for as much as $72 billion. This transaction would have handed Netflix control of Warner Bros.' film studios, HBO, and CNN.
However, Paramount Skydance, coming off its own $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, had its own plan to buy some time. Over the following two months, Paramount waged aggressive public campaigns against the Netflix deal, while it quietly built its own offer.
When Paramount made its pitch to WBD shareholders, they were a lot more blunt and straightforward than Netflix's complacent, sliding-scale structure that could pay as little as $21.23 a share. Paramount instead offered a clean $30 a share in cash, later raised to $31.
The studio also went to Washington, signalling a warning. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the company argued the Netflix deal would hand the streamer roughly 43% of the global subscription video-on-demand market, deeming it "clearly anticompetitive and not a close call."
Their efforts paid off. Hours after Paramount raised its offer to $31 a share, on February 27th, Netflix walked away from the deal. WBD's board, which had unanimously backed Netflix weeks earlier, completely flipped and signed with Paramount instead. This new deal valued WBD at a much higher $110 billion, or 7.5x its projected 2026 EBITDA value.
On April 23, WBD shareholders formally approved the Paramount merger. But the vote was messier than the headline suggests.
In a separate, non-binding vote held the same day, the shareholders rejected the proposed executive compensation package tied to the deal, a package that would give outgoing WBD CEO David Zaslav a "golden parachute" worth almost $887 million, according to proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services.
It's a small but telling detail: investors were willing to take Paramount's money, but were not happy about how WBD's leadership would be rewarded for the sale. This tension has only grown stronger since.
If you followed this deal outside of just the SEC filings, you'd see the other side of the story. By late spring, more than 5,000 actors, directors, and writers, including Kristen Stewart, Pedro Pascal, and Javier Bardem, had signed an open letter opposing the merger. Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo recorded videos urging the deal to be stopped. The objections aren't really about price, but rather what the deal means.
Critics argue that combining Paramount's CBS, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures with WBD's HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures, CNN, and cable portfolio creates a single company with outsized leverage over what gets made, who gets hired, and what audiences are allowed to see, essentially creating a monopoly.
There's also a political factor that many find hard to ignore. Paramount Skydance is led by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, a prominent ally of President Trump. Critics, including a number of Democrats, have asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta to scrutinize the deal closely. There are growing concerns about the Ellison family's political ties and reports of a "side deal."
Paramount's chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim, pushed back hard on the criticism in a recent interview, telling the Los Angeles Times that some opponents were motivated by "antisemitic views." This remark drew its own backlash and added yet another layer of controversy to an already contentious process.
Meanwhile, Ellison has tried his best to play peacemaker. At CinemaCon in April, he told theatre owners directly: "I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word: once we combine with Warner Bros., we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually, across both studios." According to Bloomberg, Paramount's broader plan is to keep both studios largely intact, folding HBO Max into Paramount+ while preserving separate creative teams, and sharing back-office resources between CNN and CBS News without necessarily merging them together.
Per-share offer to WBD shareholders
Netflix offer (Dec 2025)
$21.23 – $27.75
tap to expand
Cash + Discovery Global stub equity. Range depended on spinoff debt load. Per Paramount's SEC filings.
Paramount offer (Feb 2026)
$31.00
tap to expand
All cash. Fixed price. No financing conditions. WBD board accepted Feb 27, 2026.
Sources: WBD Form 8-K (Feb 27 2026), Paramount Skydance SEC filings, Congressional testimony (Jan 2026). Netflix range per Paramount's characterization; excludes residual stub equity value.
Paramount's offer has roughly $54 billion in committed financial backing from a consortium that includes companies like Citigroup and Apollo. That figure includes $15 billion to refinance WBD's existing bridge facility and $39 billion in new debt.
On top of that, existing Paramount shareholders are being offered a rights offering of up to $3.25 billion in Class B stock, priced at $16.02 per share, expected closer to closing. The rights offering involves Paramount's publicly traded Class B shares, which typically have fewer voting rights than the company's Class A shares.
Notably, Paramount has stated the deal carries no financing conditions, meaning the money is locked in regardless of market conditions between now and closing. That's a meaningful commitment in a higher-rate environment, and it's one of the stronger signals that Paramount intends to see this through.
The important detail everyone should understand from an M&A standpoint is that if the deal is not closed by September 30, 2026, WBD shareholders start receiving an extra $0.25 per share for every quarter it remains open, accruing daily. This ticking fee exists because regulatory delay is not free; it covers the cost taken on by WBD shareholders, who are stuck holding shares in a company that cannot make major strategic moves while the deal is pending.
The fact that Paramount agreed to the fee and has referenced both a September 30 and a December 31 trigger date across different filings tells you both sides expected this could run long, and wanted to make sure shareholders don't lose faith, and more importantly, are not penalized for it.
Paramount's HSR filing cleared its initial waiting period in February, just a procedural step, not approval. Germany's regulators signed off, but U.S. antitrust review, more EU clearances, and California's state inquiry are still pending. With the magnitude of broadcast, cable, streaming, and film market share combined, "cleared the waiting period" isn't "cleared." February acted as a reduction in uncertainty, not a green light.
Under HSR, big mergers get a 30-day review window before closing. If regulators don't request more info in that window, it "expires," removing one early roadblock, though they can still challenge the deal later on.
If the Paramount deal collapses, whether from a failed regulatory process, prolonged litigation, or some unforeseen complication, WBD can't simply go back to business as usual. The company has spent over a year in deal limbo, restricted from major strategic moves, with senior executives focused on closing rather than running the business.
There would be a regulatory break fee, reportedly around $1.1 billion (1.4% of the deal's equity value), paid to WBD. But this doesn't come close to compensating for the lost time, leadership focus, and reputational effect WBD went through.
What's happening with Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery right now isn't a failure of the deal. It's the normal, grinding machinery of a transaction this size working its way through antitrust review, political scrutiny, and a media industry that is not thrilled about the outcome.
But "normal" doesn't mean fast, and it doesn't mean guaranteed. With the September 30 deadline approaching, every week without a regulatory green light is a week closer to that ticking fee kicking in, and a week longer that two of the most storied names in entertainment remain in limbo, waiting to find out what they're about to become.