Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon digest of Puck’s best new reporting. First up today, Dylan Byers digs into the prepublication warfare surrounding Original Sin, Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper’s highly anticipated chronicle of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline—and the behind-the-scenes whisper campaign about Hunter Biden’s long-simmering beef with Tapper. Plus, below the fold: Bill Cohan uncovers another signal that Saks Global could be circling bankruptcy. Rachel Strugatz considers whether Church & Dwight’s $880 million bet on Touchland signals a new playbook for beauty M&A. Julia Alexander reveals why Disney+ and other streamers are resetting their global ambitions. And exclusively for Inner Circle members, Marion Maneker compiles the most pressing sales this week at all the big auction houses. Meanwhile, on the pods: Matt Belloni is joined by YouTube C.E.O. Neal Mohan on The Town to discuss the company’s frosty relationship with Hollywood and its fresh NFL deal. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Abby Livingston unspool the leadership drama consuming the D.N.C. and the Republican rift over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, Bidenworld’s cover-up, and the dire consequences for the Democratic Party, as reported in Original Sin, have stirred up the Beltway blame game and dragged the former president out for a sad redemption tour, while raising the question of what exactly went down between Jake Tapper and Hunter Biden at Super Bowl LII. Read Now

Pretty much everything that could go wrong at Saks Global has gone wrong. Now, two firms best known for advising on restructurings have been engaged amid growing doubts about the company’s future. Read Now

CONGRESS: Protect Community Banks from Credit Card Mandates The Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Mandates will raise costs, limit credit access, and devastate local financial institutions. Credit unions and community banks in all 50 states strongly oppose this bill—and for good reason. It threatens to upend the payments system, harming smaller institutions card programs while corporate megastores like Walmart and Target cash in. Carve-outs don’t work—we’ve seen that before. Congress must reject false promises from retail giants and stand with the nearly 10,000 community-based institutions serving over 140 million Americans. Say NO to Durbin-Marshall.

Church & Dwight has made a fortune on the glitter-free side of the CVS aisle—baking soda, acne cream, condoms—but with its stake in Zoomer hand sanitizer brand Touchland, it’s revealing a glimpse of its novel acquisition strategy while showing there are signs of life in beauty M&A. Read Now

U.S.-based streamers, under pressure to grow revenue more than subs, are pivoting their international expansion strategies from “Everything everywhere all at once” to “Do these countries really matter?” Read Now

Bidders at the big houses drove works by Giacometti, Munch, Olga de Amaral, Basquiat, Cézanne, de Kooning, László Moholy-Nagy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Calder, and others above estimates. Plus, a Chagall boomlet. Read Now

Matt is joined in person by YouTube C.E.O. Neal Mohan from the annual TV upfronts in New York to discuss YouTube’s relationship with Hollywood, challenges from TikTok and Instagram, and why creators continue to seek out other platforms after gaining success on YouTube. They also talk about YouTube’s newest deal with the NFL, and how it plans to reinvent watching sports. Listen Now

CONGRESS: Protect Community Banks from Credit Card Mandates The Durbin-Marshall Credit Card Mandates will raise costs, limit credit access, and devastate local financial institutions. Credit unions and community banks in all 50 states strongly oppose this bill—and for good reason. It threatens to upend the payments system, harming smaller institutions card programs while corporate megastores like Walmart and Target cash in. Carve-outs don’t work—we’ve seen that before. Congress must reject false promises from retail giants and stand with the nearly 10,000 community-based institutions serving over 140 million Americans. Say NO to Durbin-Marshall.

Abby Livingston joins Peter to dig into the mounting buzz surrounding Original Sin, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book chronicling, in their words, Joe Biden’s decline inside the White House. Abby also unpacks the latest drama inside the D.N.C. as they move to oust Gen Z vice chairman David Hogg—and the persistent Republican rift over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Listen Now

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