Paramount will acquire Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a>, Friedman said there are still a lot of moving parts that are being played out.<\/p>\n\u201cI will tell you, I am deeply concerned about consolidation within the industry,\u201d she told Spectrum News. \u201cAnytime there is consolidation, whether it\u2019s in the pharmaceutical industry, the hospital industry, the telecom industry \u2026 we know that leads to less competition and higher prices for consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, the consolidation of the two studios is worrisome for the congressional representative, for what the impact it could have on jobs in the Los Angeles area. She said the region cannot afford to lose thousands of jobs at a time when Southern California is still recovering from last year\u2019s deadly wildfires.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to know what\u2019s going to happen to jobs, what\u2019s going to happen to both existing studios\u2019 lots, and what this is going to mean for the consumers,\u201d Friedman said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling last month blocked the president\u2019s sweeping tariffs, but Friedman said those tariffs have had a similar impact as in other industries. In the past year, Friedman said tariffs have been raising the prices of groceries and building materials, and what she does not want to see is tariffs raising the price for film and television \u2014 especially for consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what wouldn\u2019t be helpful? If Donald Trump goes through with his idea of tariffs on films,\u201d she said. \u201cNot only do we not understand what that would mean, but it might lead to much higher prices for consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another concern for the congresswoman about the consolidation of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery is the impact it could have on journalism and local news.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that the Ellisons, Skydance and Paramount may not run celebrity.land the same way. It may not be seen as an unbiased news source,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have yet to see what\u2019s going to happen, but there is a concern about consolidation about media of people who are very loyal to Donald Trump and feel that they owe him in terms of their reporting of the presidency and the last thing the United States needs is biased news sources. We need news to follow wherever the story goes, whether they are critical of this president or any president.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friedman also mentioned that her constituents are concerned about the economics in Los Angeles, the stagnation in the job market and good-paying union jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course they are also concerned about the threats to democracy from Donald Trump and ICE causing havoc in our streets,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Saturday night\u2019s Art Director Guild Awards took place just hours after the United States and Israel, in a joint effort, launched an attack on Iran, which led to the death of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In response to the events, Friedman called on Congress to return to Washington immediately to vote on the War Powers Act. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ability to declare war is specifically reserved for Congress,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is an illegal action that the Trump administration has taken, and they should be consulting with Congress. Only Congress will decide whether or not this is a war that is worth risking American lives over. Right now, we don\u2019t know \u2014 in terms of Congress \u2014 why this action was taken, or what was the immediate threat to the United States. If so, we have not seen that evidence, which means this would be an illegal strike.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friedman, who represents California\u2019s 30th District, is running for reelection this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source spectrumlocalnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 At the 2026 Art Directors Guild Awards, California Rep. Laura Friedman was presented with the ADG President\u2019s Award for her advocacy of state and federal tax incentives that aim to support union jobs in the entertainment industry. What You Need To Know Rep. Friedman worked in the film industry for 20 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2310797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22793,22694,22800,437060,433281,22691,21741,22695,219423,22048,21737],"class_list":["post-2310796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-all-markets-rank-everywhere","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-app-for-your-consideration","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-around-the-us","tag-california","tag-entertainment","tag-los-angeles-app-region","tag-paco-ramos-moreno","tag-politics","tag-top-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rep-Friedman-speaks-on-state-of-the-entertainment-industry.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2310798,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310796\/revisions\/2310798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2310797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}