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Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your pocket guide to Puck’s best
new reporting.

Today, we lead with Peter Hamby’s essential chronicle of the political drama unfolding in Los Angeles as the city braces for yet another round of dangerous Santa Ana winds: Mayor Karen Bass’s “dereliction of duty,” Rick Caruso’s shameless opportunism, and Gavin Newsom’s calculated ubiquity. 

Plus,
below the fold: Lauren Sherman breaks the news about Loewe’s new designers and traces Jonathan Anderson’s ascentat Dior. John Ourand uncovers the latest beats in Comcast’s R.S.N. soap opera. On The Grill Room, Elon confidant Ashlee Vance joins Dylan Byers to discuss the launch of his “sci-tech” media startup. On Fashion People, Lauren and art world fixture
Sarah Hoover contemplate the harrowing experiences that inspired her new memoir. On The Town, Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw assess how Hollywood can leverage its awards shows to rebuild Los Angeles. And on The Powers That Be, Peter rings up Tara Palmeri to evaluate Trump’s options for halting the TikTok ban. 

Peter assesses the political landscape in Los Angeles, where residents are devastated, eagerly
helping each other out, and absolutely fed up with out-of-staters posturing on social media while the historically destructive wildfires continue to burn. Indeed, one politician is already in the crosshairs: Mayor Karen Bass, whose political future seemed to implode last week and is all but certain to lose her seat next election cycle. Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom has been acting like the de facto leader of Los Angeles in the absence of clear and consistent communication from the
mayor, and Bass’s former (and likely future) foe Rick Caruso has been driving the political conversation since the fires began. Through all the political fallout, L.A. has notably maintained its focus on fellowship and generosity—an encouraging feat for such a sprawling and diverse city that remains remarkably stratified by class and race.

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Last year, during Paris Fashion Week, as rumors swirled that Loewe wunderkind Jonathan Anderson
was headed to Dior, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez—the founders and designers of Proenza Schouler—landed in Paris to interview for the Loewe job. Now, Lauren is hearing from multiple sources that Hernandez and McCollough have signed a contract with LVMH and that their appointment will be announced by the end of the month. In the fashion community, the prospect of Hernandez and McCollough taking over at Loewe has yielded a mixed response, but the overall vibe seems to be: Good for
them. This news also seems to portend Jonathan Anderson’s ascent at Dior, which has unlocked an entirely different set of questions: Is Anderson replacing Maria Grazia Chiuri—or Maria Grazia Chiuri and Kim Jones? Will Delphine Arnault stay at Dior as C.E.O.? And if not, is she going to lead the Fashion Group? 

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The fight for survival among regional sports network businesses has become so desperate that,
like a civil war, it has now turned brother against brother, all in the name of preserving the viability of the cable bundle for a few more years. Last week, Greg Rigdon, Comcast’s president of content acquisition, turned his fire on his own stations: Comcast subscribers in the Boston and San Francisco areas have been notified that their NBC Sports networks are headed to more expensive digital tiers, leaving NBC Sports Philadelphia and SportsNet New York as the only Comcast-owned
R.S.N.s that are not moving to a digital tier in the next couple of days—a practice that could permanently imperil their business models, if Rigdon doesn’t back down…

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Ashlee Vance, the former Bloomberg tech reporter and Musk confidant, joins Dylan to discuss his
high-risk, high-reward leap into launching his new company, Core Memory, a sci-tech media startup. After a decade-plus entrenched in the world of legacy media, Ashlee offers a glimpse into how he’s approaching his new business venture and leveraging his unique access to cutting-edge technology. Then he and Dylan delve into the transformative potential of A.I. and the interplay between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump.

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Art world fixture Sarah Hoover joins Lauren to discuss her new book, The Motherload:
Episodes From the Brink of Motherhood. She shares some of her most harrowing experiences as a young mom and why she wanted to write about them. Special for the Fashion People audience, Sarah was also kind enough to break down some of the fundamental similarities and differences between the art and fashion worlds, and even offer opinions on the fashion news of the day, from the fate of TikTok to the fate of Loewe. Plus, Lauren checks in from Los Angeles, where there are still
fires.

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Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss the fallout from the devastating fires in
L.A., which are still ongoing. So much of Los Angeles is made up of the entertainment industry—from movie stars, directors, and agents to camera operators, Teamsters, caterers, and production assistants—thousands of whom have been seriously affected by the fires. Matt and Lucas take a look at how Hollywood can help rebuild the city of L.A., and how it can leverage events like the Oscars and Grammys to actually benefit those in need. They also look at the long-term impact of the fires on Los
Angeles as the entertainment capital of the world—whether they’ll exacerbate the ongoing struggle to keep movie and TV production in L.A., or if this could be the beginning of a triumphant rebuild.

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Tara Palmeri joins Peter to delve into the most recent developments surrounding the looming
TikTok ban, with the app slated to go black come Sunday. Tara walks through the Supreme Court’s skepticism toward TikTok’s arguments and explains how Trump could use his executive power to halt the ban. Tara also discusses the broader implications for U.S.-China relations.

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