among them, poor people's campaign leader reverend liz theoharis. pl, we will look at the supreme court's major ruling upholding ohio's controversial voter-purge law. the religious leaders were arrested outside the supreme court. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. a federal judge has approved at&t's $85 billion merger with time warner after ruling the justice department failed to prove the merger violates anti-trust laws. the far-reaching deal is expected to reshape the media industry and will give at&t control over warner bros. film and television studios, along with cnn, tnt, hbo, and many other brands. only three days after president trump's inauguration, at&t paid $600,000 to president trump's persononal lawawyer and fixerr michael cohen's company for help advising the telecom giant on w tohoteerer the pedr through regulatory scrutiny. despite the money, the justice department sued to block the merger. tuesday's approval of the at&t-time warner merger is expected

thank you for having us on this morning and on behalf of my cochair liz theoharis and the activists inr 40 states around this country. there were actions last monday in over 40 states simultaneously at 2:00. the numbers have gone up to over 2000 persons have engaged in nonviolent marches. and thousands have committed an been witnesses in planning to come on june 23 to d.c. when we have those people arrested in washington, it happened -- it was happening across this country. we have done a study called the souls of poor folk, auditing people after the first poor people's campaign. the audit says there are 140 million poor and low wealth people in this country. 73% of them are women and children. that is 43.5% of all of the people in this country are poor. upwards of 250,000 people die every year from poverty. it is the longer true that if you work, you're coming out of poverty. in some places, you would have to work 99 hours at a minimum wage job just to get a basic apartment. we have an impoverished democracy. it did not just start with trump, but it is certainly being exacerbated by t