Midterm Jitters, Caruso Agonistes, a Wall Street Meltdown

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon dose of the best work at Puck.

First up today, Tara Palmeri and Peter Hamby exchange notes on the year’s most perplexing midterm battle: Los Angeles, the nominally liberal company town that’s become the unlikely white-hot center of Democratic infighting over crime and disorder and a potential bellwether for the party ahead of a red wave shellacking.

Plus, below the fold, Eriq Gardner unearths a potential trillion-dollar landmine in the Apple-Epic lawsuit. Julia Ioffe joins Teddy Schleifer to discuss the appetite for supporting Ukraine in a future Republican-controlled House. Then Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw debate the stock market woes and streaming cost arms race in Hollywood.

TARA PALMERI & PETER HAMBY

With the Democrats about to lose the House, and maybe the Senate, why is the top of the party so infatuated with the L.A. mayoral race, a contest between two Democrats?

ERIQ GARDNER

A multi-billion dollar suit over Apple’s “internet tax” could affect everything from the survival of Elon Musk’s Twitter to the geopolitics behind TikTok.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER & JULIA IOFFE

Julia Ioffe joins Teddy Schleifer to discuss the appetite for supporting Ukraine in a future Republican-controlled House. Then Eriq Gardner and Ben Landy discuss Apple’s epic lawsuit.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss the price increases across multiple streaming platforms, the addition of ad-supported tiers, waning stock prices, and how layoffs and budget cuts in media might affect what you see on screen.