From what I hear in STL, the merger is still on. It was never with Republic though.

Just go to the Expressjet forum and you will see who has a sell written in their TA that they are voting on right now. Expressjet is being sold off from skywest and and the buyer is partly UA. The majority will be TSA. They are going to use the pilots from one company to supply the pilots for the replacement 175's that UA bought.