Paulson’s $16B Headache, Inner Beautycounter, Trump’s Game Theory

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

First up today, Dylan Byers and Politico and Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei ponder the major themes of his new business and self-help-ish book: the looming A.I. reckoning, CNN and WaPo Kremlinology, green shoots in the media landscape, and much more.

Plus, below the fold: Bill Cohan dissects John Paulson’s creative and controversial Bausch Health extraction plan. Rachel Strugatz chronicles Gregg Renfrew’s bid to wrestle Beautycounter back from the supple hands of private equity. Tina Nguyen digs into the House hardliners’ post-Ukraine aid pickle. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and pollster John McLaughlin evaluate how Trump’s ’24 campaign strategy differs from ’20. And on The Powers That Be, Eriq Gardner joins Peter Hamby to shrewdly game out Trump’s historic criminal trial and how this soap opera might resolve itself.

DYLAN BYERS

Life lessons, media observations, and industrial analysis with the co-founder of both Politico and Axios on the eve of the town’s annual prom.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

The former Valiant Pharmaceuticals is considering a controversial scheme to transform its best asset into a juicy dividend for its biggest shareholders, John Paulson and Brett Icahn. The company’s anxious creditors, who are owed $16 billion, have called on Wall Street’s toughest lawyers to intervene.

RACHEL STRUGATZ

How Gregg Renfrew wrestled her company back from the supple palms of private equity.

TINA NGUYEN

House hardliners are fuming, once again, after Mike Johnson jammed Ukraine funding through Congress, received CNN’s blessing, and called M.T.G.’s bluff. Do they have any cards left to play?