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A federal judge has denied a group of consumers a preliminary injunction to at least temporarily block Paramount‘s proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

The judge, Araceli Martínez-Olguín, said that she is taking Paramount’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit under advisement.

The lawsuit was filed in April, one of the early legal challenges to the merger.

This week, attorneys general from California and 11 other states filed their own antitrust lawsuit, and Martínez-Olguín will take up their motion for a temporary restraining order at hearing on Friday.

In her remarks, the judge said that the consumers had failed to meet the threshold to order an immediate halt to the $110 merger.

“A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy that may only be awarded upon a clear showing the plaintiff is entitled to such relief,” the judge said at the hearing. “Here, plaintiffs fail to meet that standard. Plaintiffs have not offered any evidence and this have not made a clear showing of a likelihood of success, nor to they make a clear showing of irreparable harm.”

In April, five pay-TV and streaming services subscribers filed a lawsuit challenging the merger, claiming, among other things, that the acquisition would increase prices and diminish the diversity of viewpoints. The lawsuit also seeks the divestiture of Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount Global last year.

In its filing seeking dismissal of the case, Paramount’s legal team argued that the plaintiffs — Pamela Faust, Len Marazzo, Lisa McCarthy, Deborah Rubinsohn and Gary Talewsky — do not have standing. They also argued that they failed to state a plausible claim of competitive harm from the merger.

Joseph Alioto, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, argued that all that they had to show was “a threat to injury.” He cited the price hike for Paramount+ subscriptions after Skydance acquired the studio last year.

He argued that with the debt load that Paramount will take on with the acquisition, “there is no way they can get that unless, among other things, they raise the price.”

Paramount’s lead attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, said that “price increase cannot be attributed to merger seeking to enjoin because that merger has not been completed yet.” He told the judge that there was “no injury identified for these plaintiffs” in the lawsuit.

The judge also rejected plaintiffs’ request for expedited discovery. Alioto said that private plaintiffs “don’t get special privileges,” or access to merger materials, unlike the state of California or other government entities.

UPDATED with CNN plans, 3:34 PM: ABC News and NBC News said Thursday afternoon that they will carry Donald Trump‘s primetime address tonight only on their respective streaming sites, ABC News Live and NBC News Now, and not their broadcast networks.

CBS News has yet to reveal its coverage plans. The address is expected to begin at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT.

Among cable networks, CNN said that it also will not carry the speech live but will run it on CNN.com and its All Access streaming platform.

NBC News said it will air a special report on the network after the speech. ABC News will monitor the speech and will break in for a special report depending on developments.

The broadcast networks do not always carry a presidential primetime speech upon White House request, as decisions were made to bypass Joe Biden and Barack Obama addresses as well.

A CNN spokesperson said that the network “will cover the president’s speech as a news event, and monitor it for news developments, providing analysis and commentary from CNN experts who cover elections, intelligence and the FBI.”

PREVIOUSLY, 10:06 AM: The broadcast networks have yet to announce whether they will preempt programming and carry President Donald Trump’s primetime address to the nation on Thursday evening, but it’s no surprise why the matter is still under discussion.

All week, there has been the expectation that Trump plans to focus on intelligence claims about the 2020 presidential election, and use it as a rationale for passage of the SAVE America Act. The topic puts the networks on the spot — devoting the primetime airwaves to potentially unsubstantiated and unfounded claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” even though courts rejected dozens of the Trump campaign election challenges that year before the race was certified.

Trump announced his plans for the address Monday, and typically the networks would have some announcement by now.

“Without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” Trump told reporters earlier this week when asked to preview his address.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that the speech will be about the integrity of elections, but she did not reveal the extent to which the president would delve into elections of the past.

“It will shock you if you have an honest eye listening to the president tonight, and everything he is saying will be backed by facts and evidence that will be provided this evening,” she said. Responding to a CBS News correspondent, she said, “I hope CBS will take this speech,” underscoring the extent to which plans have not been finalized.

The broadcast networks carried Trump’s primetime address April 1 about the war in Iran, but his July 4 speech on the National Mall, billed as a rally, did not get the same treatment.

A speech about election security — with reports that Trump will cite intelligence of foreign interference — puts the onus on networks to aggressively fact check if the president returns to unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Those claims led to the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and Fox News eventually settled a lawsuit brought by voting company Dominion after its hosts and guests amplified allegations that the company was involved in rigging.

Moreover, such a speech may very well get into the politics of the midterms. Democrats see Trump’s efforts to pass the SAVE America Act as a tactic to suppress voting; the act would require documents like a birth certificate or passport in order to register to vote. There also is the fear that he’ll use the failure to pass the legislation — a scenario that seems likely — to try to sow doubt about the integrity of the midterms.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Thursday, “Something is really wrong with this guy. I think he actually needs to be checked out. Why does he continue to focus on a conspiracy theory related to a 2020 presidential election that every rational person in the United States of America knows he lost?”

The three major cable networks — Fox News, CNN and MS NOW — also have not announced their plans, although it’s expected that they will have at least some coverage during the hour, as they will be in the midst of their typical primetime news programming.

Donald Trump lashed out at ABC and NBC, the two networks that chose not to carry his speech live on their broadcast platforms, as he delivered a 25-minute long speech full of claims that included China obtaining voter registration data and the “deep state” withholding that intelligence from him.

Without evidence, Trump claimed that ABC and NBC and others in the media “want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country, and that’s true. You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multi-billion dollar in value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting.”

The networks had announced earlier in the day that they would not carry the speech, but would feature it live on their streaming channels.

CBS News did air the speech — albeit not in its entirety. But anchor Tony Dokoupil preceded the address by telling viewers, “Honestly, much of what the president has said on this topic is false.” He then explained why they were doing a special report, noting, “This speech will be made. It will be news. And it is our job to cover the news.”

Then he went to Major Garrett, who offered some context on what viewers could expect to hear. After CBS News cut away from the speech, Garrett noted that trump’s claim of non-citizens and dead people on the voter rolls was “unsubstantiated.”

Garrett said, “Tony, you have to ask yourself, what does that rhetoric about? Is that rhetoric about setting the stage for federal intervention in the midterms? I mean, we’ve had primary elections all this year. We’re going to have more in August. Those primary elections have been conducted under this system that the president said is catastrophically vulnerable. Yet he and all Republicans and Democrats have accepted the election.”

One of the most newsworthy claims — that China acquired 220 million voter records — was also addressed on the network by David Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “It sounds bad when you hear about it, right? But the reality is, voter files in the United States are public.”

Trump’s threat of NBC and ABC is nothing new. he’s done that before. But ABC already has been ordered to put the licenses of its eight owned and operated stations up for an early renewal by the FCC and its chairman, Brendan Carr. Such a rare move opens up the stations to challenges to its licenses as the FCC determines whether they have served the “public interest.”

ABC is challenging the early license renewal, calling it an “extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion.” Carr has said that the early license renewal was tied to an investigation of the network’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices, but it was launched after Trump called on the network to fire Jimmy Kimmel.

The FCC also is investigating NBC-parent Comcast over DEI, but Carr has not said whether he would call for additional early license renewals.

Despite ABC and NBC not airing the speech, screen grabs were posted on social media showed that some Sinclair-owned stations did carry it as part of their National Desk. A spokesperson for the broadcast group did not immediately return a request for comment.

In the aftermath of the speech, networks devoted some time to fact checking, while some commentators referred to the newly released intelligence with some skepticism.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted on X, “It’s pretty laughable to watch Trump try and pretend accessing the voter file is the same thing as election interference. Any statewide candidate will tell you that information is publicly available to purchase — it’s not some huge breach.”

More to come.