Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting. Here’s what you need to know, and stick around for the next phase of the Lively-Baldoni legal war.

Meanwhile, on the pods…

And now, the latest on Baldonigate…

HOLLYWOOD

Plenty of cases settle on the eve of trial, but Lively v. Baldoni has already metastasized into a second narrative war over the settlement itself. Lively’s legal team, led by Boies Schiller’s Sigrid McCawley, is hinging much of the remaining case on California’s relatively new #MeToo-era statute that grants those who report sexual misconduct and then face retaliatory defamation suits the right to recover attorneys’ fees, treble damages, and potentially punitive awards.

As Eriq explains, it’s a massive bet on a legal theory that has yet to be meaningfully tested—and one that would’ve been stronger had Lively actually gone through with the trial. But McCawley argues the gambit has teeth, pointing to anti-SLAPP proceedings, where prevailing parties routinely recover fees without a jury verdict. Lively’s team, for its part, has agreed not to appeal Judge Lewis Liman’s forthcoming ruling—which means his decision is final. Yet after two-plus years of insisting the case was about accountability and facts, Lively’s clearest path forward may run not through a courtroom, but the court of public opinion.

Click here to read Eriq’s full story.

SPORTS

The future of the N.I.L. gold rush may hinge on a looming federal court fight over whether the College Sports Commission can police what is increasingly becoming a leveraged media-rights marketplace.

WASHINGTON

An unusual set of primary interventions by the party’s congressional campaign arm has infuriated progressive candidates, who accuse out-of-touch leadership of putting their thumb on the scale. Democratic sources argue the committee just wants to win.

FASHION

At one point, A.P.C. was as important as Levi’s to a generation of urbanites who wanted to look cool without trying. Can LVMH-linked P.E. firm L Catterton figure out how to recapture the magic of the Touitou era?

WASHINGTON

John welcomes Council on Foreign Relations president Michael Froman to discuss the three central topics in American foreign policy today: the war in Iran, U.S.-China relations, and the war in Ukraine. Froman offers his interpretation of the Trump administration’s mixed messages, glib metaphors, and ever-shifting strategy in its military campaign against Tehran; previews this week’s summit in Beijing between President Trump and Xi Jinping; and tries to make sense of why Trump has effectively sided with Vladimir Putin over Volodymyr Zelensky at the very moment when Ukraine seems better-positioned than ever to prevail in combat over Russia.

FASHION

Lauren’s guest is Sophia Rivka Rossi, co-founder of Hello Giggles and author of the great Substack Between Friends. They discuss the upcoming resort show calendar, whether they will ever shop at A.P.C. again, Hailey Bieber’s Alaïa campaign, Pilates, Ozempic in France, a new grocery store in Los Angeles that is nicer than Erewhon, who shops at Kith, Emily Oberg, the return of the Valentino Rockstud, why frozen yogurt is a thing again, and plenty more.

SPORTS

John Ourand joins Peter from upfronts week in New York, where NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has been telling everyone in earshot that the league is the only programming that still moves ad budgets. John also discusses his scoop that Netflix has muscled YouTube out of a new NFL package before turning to the conspicuously quiet U.S. buildup to the 2026 World Cup.

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