President Trump’s chilling campaign to politicize the Justice Department ran into a rebuke on Tuesday as a federal judge broadly rejected the government’s attempt to block AT&T’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Appearing to pander to the president’s hostility to much of the news media, the department’s antitrust division embraced a radical legal strategy that backfired, depriving every American of the oversight that such a far-reaching merger required.

Tuesday’s ruling will probably unleash a new wave of deal making on Wall Street, in Hollywood and in Silicon Valley. As the media, telecommunications and technology industries continue to reshape themselves and the lives of billions of people around the world, the consistent and fair application of American competition policy remains essential to foster innovation and the interests of consumers. One can only hope that in the wake of Tuesday’s defeat, federal authorities return to the principles that helped the United States become the world’s engine of creative invention.

President Trump’s antagonism toward the news media — particularly CNN, one of Time Warner’s crown jewels — is one of the defining aspects of his political identity. Hours before AT&T and Time Warner announced their deal in October 2016, then-candidate Trump vowed that his administration would block it.

And yet once the Justice Department actually sued AT&T last November to stop the merger, the administration insisted that the president had nothing to do with it. The official line was that the White House had no contact with the department’s antitrust division about the deal and did not influence its decision to sue.