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 the latest New York Times kerfuffle.

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Meanwhile, on the pods…

And now, a little more on the Times’s latest controversy…

MEDIA

Even by New York Times standards, it was a heavy week: Nick Kristof’s radioactive Opinion piece—a lengthy exposé alleging abuse of Palestinians by Israeli prison guards—set off accusations of antisemitism, incredulous editorials from The Wall Street Journal and The Free Press, and, on Thursday, a libel threat from Bibi Netanyahu himself. The Times is standing by its star Opinion columnist, citing rigorous fact-checking and numerous on-the-record accounts. Inside the building on Eighth Avenue, however, the response has been considerably less unified.

As Dylan reports, some Times journalists remain suspicious of Kristof’s sourcing for the most incendiary allegations, skeptical that those sources would have cleared the newsroom’s standards rather than Opinion’s, and miffed that a Pulitzer-eager columnist brought outside scrutiny over a piece that should have been in their jurisdiction. “I am sick of being embarrassed by the Opinion section,” one insider told Dylan. Indeed, the episode amounts to the first real crisis of the otherwise (mostly) peaceful Joe Kahn era…

Click here to read Dylan’s full story.

WALL STREET

Trump’s S.E.C. is pushing to eradicate Wall Street’s quarterly reporting requirement—an idiotic proposal that his administration believes will “make I.P.O.s great again.” Let’s count all the ways this could backfire…

WASHINGTON

No one on the Hill is feeling the Democratic Party’s string of redistricting losses more than the Congressional Black Caucus, which stands to lose many of their members in the redrawn South. Naturally, they’re turning to their fellow Democrats for help, but will they show up?

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ART

The numbers from Sotheby’s last night were very strong—the Mnuchin sale totaled $166 million, and the various owners’ sale made nearly $267 million—but the market still hasn’t rebuilt the confidence necessary to see real momentum pick up again.

ART

News and notes on the revealing trends surrounding Sotheby’s latest round of day sales, in which 93 percent of the 350 lots found buyers. Is this another sign of a market boom?

FASHION

Under a cloud of economic anxiety, the latest shopping data shows that consumers plan to break out in fashion that feels comfortable, escapist, and faintly indulgent.

MEDIA

The besties Jon Kelly and Peter Hamby are reunited for a readout of Matt Belloni’s expert media C.E.O. comp analysis. Who has been the most overpaid top executive during the past two decades? Whose salary and options underwhelmed? The duo discuss. They also dig into Byron Allen’s seemingly harebrained plan for BuzzFeed.

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