Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting. First up today, Dylan Byers returns to the scene of the crime at The Washington Post, where a fresh wave of departures and defections risks obscuring the deeper, more complex reality of Jeff Bezos’s growing influence over the paper. Everyone from Marty Baron to Ruth Marcus seems to have an opinion on the Post’s center-right slide. But as Dylan argues, is Bezos’s decision to refashion the Opinion section actually a capitulation to Trump, or merely a realignment with a longstanding journalistic tradition? Plus, below the fold: Leigh Ann Caldwell gets inside the heads of Senate Democrats as Chuck Schumer struggles to articulate the party’s next budget moves. Bill Cohan heralds the age of media lawfare on Wall Street. Rachel Strugatz evaluates LVMH’s surprising bet on Pat McGrath. And exclusively for Inner Circle members, Marion Maneker makes sense of the nebulous results from London’s latest art auctions. Meanwhile, on the pods: Matt Belloni invites high-powered entertainment lawyer Bryan Freedman on The Town to vamp on the state of play in the ongoing Baldoni vs. Lively saga. And on The Powers That Be, Abby Livingston joins Peter Hamby to discuss whether Democrats will cross the aisle to support the G.O.P.’s budget resolution to stave off a government shutdown. P.S.: Puck subscribers are invited—nay, encouraged!—to join a private call tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. ET between our very own Baratunde Thurston and Orchestra C.E.O. Jonathan Rosen, in which they’ll break down the results of the latest Puck Private Conversation survey on the biggest themes occupying the brainspace of Puck subscribers at the start of the second Trump administration.

MEDIA

Among The Washington Post’s solemn veterans, Jeff Bezos’s changes to the storied Opinions page have been framed in the most histrionic light—that he is, unquestionably and singularly, destroying a sacred pillar of the Fourth Estate in order to capitulate to Trump. And yet the cacophony of outrage may have clouded a notable truth. While the protests of revered elder statesmen tend to garner a lot of press and shape the narrative, their antipathy toward Bezos is not at all fully representative of the actual sentiments inside the Post these days. As one Post insider confided, “There’s a cultural battle ongoing at the Post between the old people and the new people. Seems pretty clear the new people will win, you know, since they run the place and have the owner on their side.” Read Now

WASHINGTON

Democrats have vanishingly little power in Washington these days. However, one of their fleetingly few points of leverage is the upcoming Senate vote on the Republican bill to fund the government, which passed the House on Tuesday despite near-unified opposition from their party brethren. Now that its fate falls to Senate Democrats—at least eight of whom would need to provide the votes to overcome a filibuster—we’ve entered the kind of moment that party leaders are made for. Particularly someone like Chuck Schumer, who boasts of being in constant contact with his members, weighing their concerns and moods. But as Leigh Ann reports, Democrats are growing nervous that Schumer hasn’t offered them much of a strategy, or a viable off-ramp, to navigate what Republicans are already framing as a possible “Schumer shutdown.” Read Now

WALL STREET

Many factors have contributed to the recent, precipitous rise in legal actions against news outlets and journalists. Sure, in the always-on, endless scroll of the digital era, there is way more content than ever before, occasionally produced by poorly trained journalists; that said, there are plenty of ulterior motives on the plaintiff side. After all, you don’t need to have a legitimate case to file a lawsuit, and the uber-wealthy are often willing, even eager, to foot large legal bills to challenge the media for unfavorable reporting. For some, you could even say it’s become a sport. But the recent successes of one serial litigant in particular, Donald Trump, have only emboldened others to threaten journalists with legal action, too. In his new book, Murder the Truth, David Enrich forecasts a dangerous endgame. Read Now

FASHION

The biggest (and best) beauty news to come out of Paris Fashion Week was that British makeup artist Pat McGrath is getting the kind of gig her extraordinary talent deserves: cosmetics creative director of Louis Vuitton’s yet-to-be-released La Beauté Louis Vuitton. McGrath will be working alongside her longtime friend and collaborator, Louis Vuitton’s women’s artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière—a pairing that suggests La Beauté isn’t going for mass appeal… at least at first. Instead, expect super luxe ingredients and extravagant packaging, with limited distribution, à la Hermès beauty. Read Now

ART

The London market continued its four-year slide in sales this year, but the real story is a fair bit more complicated. Sure, secular forces have reduced the volume of sales, and the market power in Europe has shifted toward Paris. But London’s real problem is the loss of high-value lots. This year, the top lots were nowhere near as valuable as previous seasons, which explains some of the grim statistics that Marion digs into: Since the London sales’ recent peak of $718 million in 2022, ARTDAI data shows a contraction of 56 percent, to $313 million as of last week. However, the results might be complicated by the fact that the sales, as recently as 2023, were evenly split between Christie’s and Sotheby’s, with Phillips having a smaller market share. But in 2024-25, Sotheby’s lagged behind Christie’s substantially. So is this a market problem, or a Sotheby’s problem? Read Now

HOLLYWOOD

Matt is joined by entertainment lawyer and litigator Bryan Freedman to discuss the key legal issues surrounding actor Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, her P.R. team, and The New York Times, as well as Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni. Matt questions Bryan about the non-disparagement agreement between Baldoni and Lively, the issue of regulating behavior on set, and the growing influence social media has in the P.R. world. Listen Now

WASHINGTON

Abby Livingston reunites with Peter to dissect the forthcoming showdown over a government shutdown. With House Republicans managing to push a spending bill through this week, the ball is now in the Senate’s court, where Democrats face an unusual and uncomfortable dilemma: crossing the aisle to support the G.O.P.’s budget resolution, or stand their ground against Trump’s spending cuts and risk bringing the government to a halt. Listen Now

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