Good morning, It was another fabulous week: Matt Belloni did some Hollywood accounting on Sinners; Eriq Gardner uncovered a wrinkle in the Below Deck scandal; Julia Alexander explained Fubo’s secret weapon in the streaming wars; Dylan Byers played out CNN’s future in Zaz’s inevitable SpinCo; John Ourand investigated the sports doc economy; Lauren Sherman perused a Chanel heir’s investment portfolio and awarded her Met Gala superlatives; Sarah Shapiro examined the Rothy’s playbook; Bill Cohan peered into the Saks prospectus and revealed a Wall Street proxy war; and Marion Maneker prepared for the May auction sales. Meanwhile, Leigh Ann Caldwell chatted with Sen. Jim Banks about the tariffs and met with Kamala Harris’s potential California rival; Peter Hamby got the scoop on Virginia’s salacious political saga; and Abby Livingston chronicled a major committee battle in Congress. Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

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Lauren Sherman offers her Met Gala assessments and hypothesizes about the Arnaults’ trip to the White House. and… Sarah Shapiro interviews the newish C.E.O. of Rothy’s.

Marion Maneker talks with Charlie Moffett about the state of the market as the May sales roll into town.

Matt Belloni calculates the long-term Sinners math and scrutinizes the Hollywood tariff scare. and… Eriq Gardner captures the clever lawyering around a Below Deck scandal and CBS News victory.

Dylan Byers foreshadows CNN’s potential life in a Zaz SpinCo. and… John Ourand wonders whether we’ve reached peak sport doc. meanwhile… Julia Alexander makes the bull case for Fubo TV.

Bill Cohan measures the depths of the Saks nightmare and chronicles the activist war of the season.

Leigh Ann Caldwell probes Sen. Jim Banks on the tariffs. and… Peter Hamby deciphers a swing state political scandal. plus! Abby Livingston offers a talmudic reading of a committee scandalette in the making.

The Journal’s Gerry Baker joins Dylan to discuss the paper’s semi-#resistance on The Grill Room. and… John and ESPN’s Jeff Passan preview an MLB labor dispute on The Varsity. and… Serial investor Andrew Rosen joins Lauren to discuss the U.S. trendscape on Fashion People. and… John Heilemann and The Mooch discuss Trump on Impolitic. and… Matt and Scott Mendelson offer their summer box office power rankings on The Town. and… Matt and Peter get into the Hollywood tariff threat on The Powers That Be.

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On Thursday morning, I had the pleasure of introducing my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell at Puck’s inaugural Power Breakfast series at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C. Fittingly, Leigh Ann had selected as her first conversation partner none other than Jim Banks, a veteran and former congressman who is now the freshman senator from Indiana. For residents of the district, however, Banks represents far more than those bona fides alone. In the simplest of terms, he’s a connected guy around the Beltway, a Trump whisperer, and a middle class advocate who might have been a Democrat a generation ago. In many ways, he typifies the remaking of our political order.

Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Puck

Leigh Ann is a fabulous interviewer and the timing could not have been more poignant. Earlier that morning, the president had announced an emerging tariff structure for trade with the United Kingdom, the first sign of deal flow during this pregnant 90-day pause. (Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had shown up to the Milken conference in L.A. empty-handed—a dispiriting sign that negotiations with our trading partners weren’t exactly rolling off the conveyor belt.) Onstage at the Waldorf, Leigh Ann pressed Banks on whether Trump could stomach a waiting game—and whether jittery House Republicans, facing midterm elections in a year, had taken enough beta blockers to ride it out, too. “I support what the president is doing. I think it’s going to be proven not just right in the short term, but in the long term,” Banks said unequivocally. “What President Trump is doing will be so good for America and diminish the role that China plays in the world, in a way that would be really good for our kids, our grandkids, and for our country.”

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One of the truest perks of my job—and, hopefully, one of the benefits of Puck membership—is the pattern recognition that arises across our various power corners. Indeed, I’d had a surprisingly similar conversation earlier in the week, when I joined my partner Lauren Sherman and some clients and friends from the luxury goods industry for an intimate conversation at the Lowell, the lovely Upper East Side hotel. And while our chat inevitably touched on some unavoidable topics—the debt crisis at Saks, for instance, and the latest swirl of creative director musical chairs—we ended up spending a fair amount of time processing the tariffs, as you might expect.

In some ways, the fashion industry is actually the most complex market that Puck covers—the supply chain, from ideation to manufacturing to marketing, buffeted by ungenerous margins and seasonal whims, makes it unusually vulnerable to economic gyrations, particularly when they come in the form of unprecedented global trade renegotiations. Our conversation was the latest reminder that, as you ascend the various worlds that Puck penetrates—Hollywood, the media, Washington, the art market, the business of sports, finance, technology, etcetera—you come to see how it’s all really one world, dominated by a reliably small group of well-capitalized players all discussing similar issues and anxieties. It’s an unsurprising, but oddly reassuring, observation. As further proof, I’d beseech you to spend some time this weekend poring over Leigh Ann’s full conversation at our breakfast. The Banks Job offers the clearest articulation of the aims an ambitions of the modern G.O.P. and its leadership. After you read it, you’ll have the useful context to dig into Lauren’s upcoming report on LVMH C.E.O. Bernard Arnault’s recent trip to the White House. The navigation of this economic moment is the story of our time and precisely what you should expect from Puck.

Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Puck

Have a great weekend, Jon P.S.: I like Sen. Banks, a longtime Puck subscriber. Though I suppose we didn’t quite need to twin at the breakfast.

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