Hoffman vs. No Labels, Julia on Putin, Lost in Transparency

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon dose of Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, Teddy Schleifer digs into the head-spinning risk-reward calculus that preordained Sam Bankman-Fried’s blockbuster criminal trial, which kicked off in Manhattan this week. Plus, news on Reid Hoffman’s private war against the third-party group No Labels.

Then, below the fold: Abby Livingston reads the congressional tea leaves following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. Julia Ioffe reveals Ukraine’s “Darth Vader,” and debuts her exquisite new podcast about how Putin’s brutish postwar childhood created the monster he is today. Julia Alexander spotlights the disconnect at the heart of Hollywood’s data transparency debate. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Eriq Gardner discuss the trial that could cost Trump his tower, while Ben Landy and Tina Nguyen chew over how, exactly, Kevin lost the gavel.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

There are two reasons why Sam let this get to trial, and why he thinks he has a chance at a miraculous outcome. Plus: Reid Hoffman’s war against No Labels, and a new hire at Y Combinator.

ABBY LIVINGSTON

McCarthy’s ouster was essentially preordained from the moment that he agreed to wear Matt Gaetz’s motion-to-vacate suicide vest. The only question now is whether he’s raptured right back.

JULIA IOFFE

On one level, it’s been a terrible week for Ukraine: the House passed a CR that doesn’t include aid and Slovakia, its neighbor, elected a pro-Russian madman. But actually, believe it or not, things aren’t quite as bad as they seem—at least not yet.

JULIA IOFFE

The Soviet Union suffers unthinkable horrors during World War II. Leningrad, the city into which Vladimir Putin is born, loses more than a million of its citizens to starvation, and Vladimir Putin’s parents barely make it out alive.