Happy Monday and welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, Dylan Byers gathers the latest chatter surrounding Bari Weiss’s crash landing at CBS News, where her unconventionally freewheeling approach to anchor headhunting has raised eyebrows (and legal concerns) from industry veterans. Is this merely an example of her inexperience and lack of managerial finesse—or actually what the network needs to climb out of third place?

Plus, below the fold: Leigh Ann Caldwell surveys the D.C. consultant class about the fate of the House and next year’s midterms. Bill Cohan examines how the Mag Seven’s roaring performance is distracting from a three-alarm fire within the S&P 500. Marion Maneker offers a guided tour of the newly rebuilt Princeton University Art Museum. Julie Davich investigates Cartier’s unorthodox auction strategy. And Sarah Shapiro spotlights the rising consumer fatigue surrounding fashion collaborations.

Meanwhile, on the pods: John Heilemann is joined by CNN’s David Axelrod on Impolitic for a sprawling Election Day preview. On The Town, Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw rank the best modern movie franchises. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Jon Kelly foreshadow the talent Bari Weiss might build her vision around at CBS News.

🚨 Special announcement!: This Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET in Washington, D.C., Leigh Ann Caldwell will interview Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim about their new nuclear armageddon thriller, A House of Dynamite—a conversation hosted by Puck and our partners at Netflix. R.S.V.P. here.

Bari Weiss walked into CBS News guns ablazin’, booking guests and shooting for the moon with on-air talent, most of whom are locked in multiyear contracts. Will her inexperience in TV be a real hindrance, or is it just what the sleepy Tiffany network needs?

Under the stormy skies of Trump 2.0, both parties are limbering up and probing for advantage in a midterm brawl to decide control of the House—a fight neither side can afford to lose. Naturally, strategists on both sides claim the wind is at their backs.

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The market is notching record highs for the so-called Magnificent Seven—or should that be Mag 10?—but a subterranean counternarrative is forming as once-secure food and consumer staples crater, and cracks emerge in the $3 trillion private-credit boom.

With its striking new David Adjaye–designed museum, Princeton is signaling that art and the humanities still matter—not just as a subject of study, but as a core part of campus life, community, and institutional identity. Plus, it should help in the escalating battle to attract new students and cultivate alumni gifts…

The Cartier collection, formed over the past five decades in part via headline-grabbing purchases at auction, is about marketing as much as heritage—as was the blockbuster V&A exhibition of some of its best-pedigreed jewels.

As a frothed-over Nike x Palace linkup arrives this week, it’s time to check in on fashion’s love-hate relationship with collabs. In a world where the novelty has largely worn off, are all these eye-rolling brand marriages still worth it? (When each side gets something out of it, yes.)

John welcomes his pal and Hacks on Tap co-host David Axelrod to preview November 4’s marquee contests. Axelrod explains why he’s confident Democrats will run the table in tomorrow’s off-year elections—with victories for Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayor’s race, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial campaigns, and Gavin Newsom’s redistricting initiative in California—but thinks his party should be cautious about drawing any grand conclusions from its impending clean sweep.

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Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to draft which movie franchises they would most want to start a movie studio with in 2025. They each select five franchises, as well as one TV franchise, and make the case for why they are best suited to succeed over the next 10-20 years.

Superfriends Jon Kelly and Peter Hamby reunite for a spirited conversation about Bari Weiss’s anchor envy at CBS News and which talent she might build her vision around. Then they segue to the latest autopsy of the ’24 election, and how the Democrats’ problems were deeper than passing on Rogan.

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