Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Demper Mac. On today's show, Democrats prepare for a 100-year flood, and the trade war takes another big bite out of tech.

But first, a mega merger mess. So it's now been over a year since T-Mobile U.S. announced plans to buy Sprint for

$26.5 billion in a move that would reduce the country's number of major national mobile carriers

from four to three. Shortly after the announcement, CEOs for both companies sounded very, very

confident in a conference call, not only because they pledged not to raise prices for three years,

but also because they seem to have devised a PR strategy that mirrored Trump administration

rhetoric in terms of broadband for rural America and increased jobs and the importance of 5G networking.

And in keeping with this strategy, reports later emerged that T-Mobile executives were sure to stay

at Trump's D.C. hotel when visiting the city,

spending nearly $200,000. In short, this wasn't supposed to be a replay of AT&T buying Time Warner,

when the two companies had to spend lots of time and money fighting White House objections,

or even T-Mobile and Sprint's prior merger talks, which were scrapped after President Obama

signal disapproval.

These companies were going to get the big man on board, even if he had a history of pre-presidential

tweets that disparaged T-Mobile service.

And everything did seem to be moving in that direction.

On Monday morning, the FCC signaled it would approve the deal, following some small concessions

like the divestiture of Boost Mobile and a reiteration

of that temporary price freeze. But then, just hours later, Bloomberg reported that the Department

of Justice was leaning against approval, thus throwing everything back into limbo, and the

Bloomberg report came a month after the journal had reported something similar, but then T-Mobile

...