Sephora Beauty Wars, Kamala’s Money Bomb, Skydance Legal Headwinds

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

Today, we lead with Dylan Byers’ cogent chronicle of the media’s Biden bump—namely, how the recentering of politics in the national zeitgeist has injected fresh life into a beleaguered legacy news industry. But how can it capitalize on the enthusiasm?

Plus, below the fold: William D. Cohan appraises controversial hedge fund impresario Bill Ackman’s latest historic venture. Tara Palmeri and CNBC’s Brian Schwartz exchange inside observations on Kamala Harris’s unprecedented $100 million money bomb. Rachel Strugatz gets the skinny on Tom Ford’s struggles at Sephora. And on The Powers That Be, Eriq Gardner joins Peter Hamby to evaluate the web of legal challenges threatening Fanatics C.E.O. Michael Rubin’s sports merchandise empire, before discussing an under-the-radar trial surrounding the Skydance-Paramount merger.

DYLAN BYERS

Somewhat ironically, an election cycle that has been defined by age has benefitted a bunch of legacy media outfits, all of whom are presumably hoping to embrace the lesson of past presidential races: eyeballs are ephemeral, but business models and strategies last a lot longer.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Bill Ackman’s forthcoming publicly traded closed-end fund appears to offer retail investors the chance to ride along with the investment strategies of the guy who believes he is the heir to Warren Buffet. Is this a play for permanent capital or something more ephemeral?

TARA PALMERI

Campaign finance reporter Brian Schwartz joins Tara for an inside conversation about Harris’s $100 million money bomb, how the campaign reactivated the Hollywood donor spigot, and whether Silicon Valley could give the Democrats a second look.

RACHEL STRUGATZ

The worst-named beauty product in history has become a metaphor for the demise of Tom Ford Beauty.