Merry Christmas Eve to all who celebrate, and welcome back to The Daily Courant. In the quieter stretch of the holiday week, we’re counting down 12 of our biggest, most consequential stories of the year—a sort of mini Advent calendar highlighting the best of Puck.

Today, we’re sharing part one: Eriq Gardner’s mesmerizing tale of the latest twists in the CAA–Range Media legal battle, after Bryan Lourd’s agency sued its own former agents; a take-no-prisoners Ian Krietzberg on the limits of OpenAI’s GPT-5; Julia Ioffe’s incredibly prescient profile of Pete Hegseth’s chief rival inside the Pentagon; Marion Maneker on the myth of the mega art advisory; John Ourand’s perfect explainer on how DraftKings’ content gamble went south; and Dylan Byers’s initial scoop on David Ellison’s nine-figure offer for Bari Weiss’s The Free Press. Enjoy!

HOLLYWOOD

While its legal battle with Range Media grinds on, the talent agency was quietly handed a major setback in a legal subplot over the equity it allegedly owes to its ex-agents. Meanwhile, CAA’s lawyers are reprising their decade-old strategy from a previous conflict with UTA. The only winner in both cases? Bryan Freedman…

A.I.

Silicon Valley is adjusting its expectations yet again, after OpenAI’s latest model turned out to be more of an upgrade than a great leap forward. “It’s not a disappointment in the sense that it won’t actually be better,” said one A.I. researcher. “But a disappointment relative to what people were expecting.”

WASHINGTON

J.D. Vance’s man in the Pentagon is a rare Trump appointee who commands bipartisan respect and affection. Naturally, this doesn’t sit well with his boss, Pete Hegseth, who doesn’t.

ART

The art advisor business, always a boutique concern, has not kept pace with the growth of mega-galleries and global auction houses. The obstacles speak volumes about the quirks of scaling a very white glove business.

SPORTS

It’s a familiar story, old as time: A platform company decides it wants to take a whirl in the media business, hires up, brings in a big executive… and then decides it doesn’t want to be in the media business after all.

MEDIA

With Paramount securely in his pocket, David Ellison is on the verge of acquiring Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and tossing her the keys to CBS News. The deal is on the 1-yard line, I’m told.

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