Good morning, It was another incredible week: Leigh Ann Caldwell gathered all the latest Hegseth dish; Julia Ioffe scrutinized Rubio’s re-org; Peter Hamby investigated the Tao of A.O.C.; Eriq Gardner assessed Brendan Carr’s war on the M.S.M.; Matt Belloni ran the numbers on Hollywood’s movie star crisis; Dylan Byers dipped back into the Nuzzi-Lizza saga; John Ourand stress-tested Iger’s new ESPN vision; Lauren Sherman offered a green visor reading of Kering’s economic headwinds; Sarah Shapiro reexamined the ultimate American heritage brand; Rachel Strugatz surveyed the beauty industry’s tariff woes; Bill Cohan parsed Saks’ balance sheet; and Marion Maneker decoded two new Gagosian exhibits. 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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Leigh Ann Caldwell rounds up the Pete Hegseth discourse on the Hill. and… Peter Hamby analyzes A.O.C.’s 2028 unfavorables. and… Abby Livingston pores over the Q1 fundraising results. meanwhile… Julia Ioffe gets to the bottom of Marco Rubio’s faux overhaul at State.

Lauren Sherman deciphers François-Henri Pinault’s succession games. and… Rachel Strugatz captures the Liberation Day aftershocks on the beauty industry. meanwhile… Sarah Shapiro evaluates the Levi’s business model.

Marion Maneker chops it up with Phillips executive chairman Ed Dolman.

Matt Belloni dissects a Writers Guild war of attrition and reveals some stunning movie star data. and… Scott Mendelson interrogates the box office math on Sinners.

Dylan Byers wades into a Ryan Lizza–Politico scandalette and the 60 Minutes headache. and… John Ourand peers around the corners of ESPN’s Flagship.

Julia Alexander explains YouTube’s live sports ambitions.

Bill Cohan gets the full-blown Larry Summers experience.

Jen Psaki previews her new show with Dylan on The Grill Room. and… Mike Florio details an NFL legal headache to John on The Varsity. and… Lauren and Reed Krakoff revisit the accessible luxury movement on Fashion People. and… Heilemann swaps notes with George Conway and Stuart Stevens on Impolitic. and… Matt and Franklin Leonard debate Sinners’ global prospects on The Town. and… Julia Ioffe breaks down Trump’s crumbling Ukraine deal with Peter on The Powers that Be.

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On Friday afternoon, I decided to plug in my earbuds and take a couple of meetings remotely so that I could walk from the Riggs, my temporary home in Washington, to an event that my pal Tammy Haddad was throwing near Dupont Circle. I felt a bit like a truant, but I wanted to take advantage of the sunshine. And, I admit, I also wanted to sample the flavor of the town amid its seminal annual ritual. Yes, the media narrative surrounding this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend has been slightly foreboding—even funereal if you find yourself at the wrong table at Le Dip. The event was never Trump’s thing, and there was the foreseeable controversy around the cancellation of Amber Ruffin’s gig at the dinner—one micro-capitulation in a vast sea of genuflecting, if we’re being honest. Eugene Daniels, who runs the W.H.C.A., is a buddy, and I know that these have not been entirely stress-free days for him and his team.

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But I had a suspicion when I arrived in town that the tide was turning. Interestingly, but not all that surprisingly, the gestalt of fourth estate Washington isn’t as dire as it’s been portrayed. Shortly after I had landed in town on Thursday evening, I headed to a new restaurant in the wharf to toast the independent journalist and entrepreneur Oliver Darcy and hobnob with some local swells and partners. Standing by the bar with Dylan Byers, as the members of his cinematic universe flitted around him vying for attention, felt like a moveable feast. Indeed, the first hundred days of the Trump presidency have been bizarre and norm-testing—DOGE, Liberation Day, the El Salvador episode, Signalgate, etcetera—but they’ve also provoked a groundswell of incredible work, all of which was being justifiably toasted around us. The mirth was self-evident. The vibe shift was also apparent at Tammy’s party, an event in support of her artificial intelligence initiative, that featured founders, public affairs executives, tech honchos, and the town’s elite journalists—and B(ai)ley’s Irish coffee for those looking to perk up a Friday afternoon. It was a swell tune-up before her famous weekend brunch: Axios co-founder Mike Allen made the rounds, and I got to catch up with Ben Coffey Clark, a founding partner at Bully Pulpit International, and one of the smartest people at the intersection of tech, politics, and media. I kibitzed in the corner with my partners Leigh Ann Caldwell and Ali Hattamer, our ace D.C. sales leader. The clouds, it seemed, had lifted over Charlie Brown’s head. The following evening belonged to the talent agencies, who throw their own mildly self-congratulatory bashes on the night before the W.H.C.A. dinner. By all accounts, there was optimism at the WME fest at the Eaton on K Street, and at the UTA and CAA toga parties in Georgetown, too. Many of my observations about the culture are formed by my partners, unsurprisingly, and my gut read on the elevated mood in D.C. was no different. As I was enjoying the short flight to DCA on Thursday evening, I was top-editing another masterstroke from my partner Julia Ioffe. The story, Notes on the Rubio Re-Org Scandal, focused on the secretary of State’s less-than-meets-the-eye restructuring of the agency. Indeed, while Rubio recently announced a 15 percent staff reduction—a serious culling, to be sure—it was significantly below the rumored 30 percent figure that had been making the rounds as part of a far more radical 16-page draft executive order. (State eventually dubbed the document “fake news.”) On a more profound level, however, Julia’s piece helped crystallize one of the emerging leitmotifs of this second Trump administration: While the policies and rhetoric can be severe and unprecedented, the execution is often more modest. To wit: Elon Musk is retreating from his incomplete DOGE project to fix Tesla’s operations; after his Liberation Day speech, Trump was amenable to a 90-day pause, and the president has signaled a desire to renegotiate downward the extraordinary tariffs on Chinese goods; and, as Julia also noted in our The Best & The Brightest political email, Trump appears to be at the end of his rope with Putin, too. As one retired State honcho told her regarding Rubio’s bombast about the re-org, “It’s almost like the rhetoric was so aggressive as if to give cover for a reorganization that was not that radical.” This weekend, curl up on your sofa and read Notes on the Rubio Re-Org Scandal. It’s a reminder that the truth is always more nuanced and multifaceted, especially in these complex times. And it’s what you can always expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend, Jon

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