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 more on David Ellison’s legal army.

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Meanwhile, on the pods…

And now, a little more on the Paramount trust-busting wars…

HOLLYWOOD

When Paramount Skydance arrives in court to defend its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, it won’t be light on firepower. Blue-chip litigator Jeffrey Kessler, fresh off his Live Nation victory, has signed on alongside Latham, Cravath, and other white-shoe firms in an extravagant display of corporate legal muscle. Across the aisle, the state attorneys general looking to challenge the deal are still scrambling to find senior antitrust litigators to lead the effort, with California A.G. Rob Bonta posting a LinkedIn job ad for seasoned recruits.

Meanwhile, Eriq reports, don’t sleep on the private antitrust action being led by old-school legal brawler Joseph M. Alioto, who is asking a federal judge to halt the transaction before it closes. Crucially, Alioto’s filing alleges that the Ellisons may have secured favorable regulatory treatment in exchange for favorable media coverage, dragging the merger fight straight into the bloodstream of Trump-era media paranoia. Kessler has already blasted the complaint as “baseless” and relying on “political scaremongering,” but from here the fight will be as much about politics as market power itself…

Click here to read Eriq’s full story.

FASHION

One week after the Shein shocker, Everlane co-founder Michael Preysman opens up about what the brand got right, what went wrong, and his radical plan to create an Everlane 2.0 without V.C. or private equity.

WASHINGTON

Among Democratic professionals in California, the prevailing sentiment about the governor’s race is a depressed shrug and a question: How did we end up with Becerra and Tom Steyer as Newsom’s most likely successors?

A.I.

The full-scale rollout of Google’s newish A.I.-assisted search feature raises more questions than answers—but it also underscores the tech giant’s extraordinary advantages at a time when other hyperscalers haven’t addressed consumer skepticism about chatbots.

SPORTS

Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino offers up his candid thoughts and surprising bull case for Paramount’s UFC deal and F1’s partnership with Apple—and why the mega-trend media universe keeps gravitating toward superstars.

ART

Patrick Bongoy weaves, stretches, and manipulates the discarded rubber that afflicts Africa, transmuting waste not only to evoke environmental exploitation or his homeland’s painful colonial past, but to express the power of creative rebirth.

FASHION

Lauren’s guest is Recho Omondi, host of The Cutting Room Floor. They discuss the mystery involving the Mango heir and his father’s death, the end of the Cannes red carpet extravaganza, how the internet reacted to Shein buying Everlane (and what Everlane’s founder plans to do next), the value of attending runway shows in person, Marc Jacobs, and plenty more.

MEDIA

Julia Alexander joins Peter to discuss Google’s pivot from traditional search to Gemini-powered agentic A.I.—and what happens to publishers when nearly 70 percent of queries no longer produce a single click. Then they discuss Byron Allen’s $20 million BuzzFeed bet and his (slightly muddled) plan to YouTube-ify the brand.

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