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

First up today, Leigh Ann Caldwell chronicles the abject chaos that enveloped Washington in the 48-hour window before Trump’s Office of Management and Budget rescinded its $3 trillion federal spending freeze—a saga that illustrates the new administration’s determination to test the limits of presidential power, and that foreshadows a looming congressional clash.

Plus, below the fold:
Bill Cohan takes the long view on the DeepSeek-inspired Nasdaq crash. Dylan Byers scrutinizes the new Brady Room seating chart and another big exit at Politico. Rachel Strugatz scoops Hailey Bieber’s new retail strategy. And in an Inner Circle-exclusive dispatch, Julie Davich and Arta founder Adam Fields discuss his zealous quest to digitize the “last frontier” of art sales.

Meanwhile,
on the pods: Tara Palmeri is joined by Oxford Strategies consultant Shanti Stanton on Somebody’s Gotta Win to consider the legal limits of Trump’s executive orders—and Elon’s role in the chaos. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby connects with John Ourand to dissect the NFL’s season-long ratings decline.

WASHINGTON

Less than 48 hours after Trump’s Office of Management and Budget ordered the freeze of some $3 trillion in federal
spending, the White House appeared to back down—rescinding the offending memo while claiming that the “federal funding freeze” still stood. As Leigh Ann notes, this is just the latest example of Trump testing the limits of his presidential powers more aggressively than at any point during his first term, all with the tacit (and often explicit) approval of congressional Republicans. All presidents try to expand their power, but Trump believes he has Congress and the Supreme Court behind him—and
he could be right. A little more than a week into the new administration, one thing’s already clear, as Stephen Griffin, who teaches constitutional law at Tulane, told Leigh Ann: “Constitutionally, we’re looking at a very volatile situation.”

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WALL STREET

Last week, a Chinese A.I. company called DeepSeek revealed that it had created a free, open-source rival to ChatGPT
for a mere fraction of the cost, causing investors to dump A.I.-adjacent tech stocks from Meta to Microsoft. After all, the entire premise of the recent A.I.-driven rally has been that training and running LLMs is expensive. But while DeepSeek’s low-cost A.I. alternative might represent a sea change in how Wall Street models the financial impact of artificial intelligence (markets like moats, after all…), Bill argues for taking the long view of history before losing one’s head.

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MEDIA

On Tuesday, the Brady Briefing Room brimmed with familiar stalwarts of the White House press corps for their first
televised tête-à-tête with Karoline Leavitt, President Trump’s new twentysomething press secretary. Among other things, Leavitt announced the creation of a “new media” seat located to the side of the podium, where White House staff usually sit, to be reserved for “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators” not affiliated with the legacy institutions already represented in the room. Dylan considers how the rules of engagement in Washington’s media sphere
seemingly changed overnight, before revealing a handful of concurrent H.R. updates at several newsrooms around the Beltway. 

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FASHION

Never before has a celebrity-owned D.T.C. beauty company cracked the marketing code quite like Hailey Bieber’s Rhode.
There are many reasons for Rhode’s success: clear messaging, top-tier talent, and Kardashian-esque marketing. But regardless of its strength as a D.T.C. business, the path to critical mass requires a major retailer to ride shotgun. For months, Rachel has been hearing that Rhode was going to partner with Sephora, and a person close to the retailer finally confirmed that the deal was official. While Sephora distribution will inevitably cannibalize Rhode’s e-commerce site, the opportunity to get in
front of the millions of people who only shop for beauty I.R.L. is invaluable.

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ART

When Artspace.com founding member Adam Fields launched Arta in 2012, hardly anyone could have predicted the company’s
remarkable transformation. Over the past decade or so, Arta has evolved from a shipping platform into a broader commerce-layer technology meant to ease the process of buying and selling art, collectibles, and luxury items online. For the past few centuries, once an artwork was purchased, it required high-touch handling and multiple vendors to get it from seller to buyer. Fields’s software, however, has streamlined and digitized this process, and is helping to fuel the massive growth
we’re seeing in the lower and middle markets—i.e., objects priced below $250,000. But can purchasing a painting at Art Basel ever be as easy as buying an Apple Watch? In this exclusive conversation with Julie, Fields explains why he thinks it should be.

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WASHINGTON

Tara starts the pod with an update on the fallout from Donald Trump’s federal funding freeze, and Robert Kennedy
Jr.’s confirmation hearings. She’s then joined by lobbyist and Oxford Strategies consultant Shanti Stanton to talk about the legalities of Trump’s executive orders, examine Elon Musk’s role in the chaos, and discuss what this means for the affected programs going forward.

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SPORTS

John Ourand joins Peter to dissect the NFL’s season-long ratings decline. While “Chiefs fatigue” has been a hot
topic, is the broader notion of “football fatigue” more accurate? Then they scrutinize Tom Brady’s rookie season as an analyst ahead of his Super Bowl debut, and debate whether he’s worth the $40 million salary Fox Sports is dishing out for him.

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Now

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