Putin’s Oil Slick, Oscar Shockers, The FTX Resurrection

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon serving of Puck’s freshest reporting.

Today, we lead with Teddy Schleifer’s latest exploration of the Bankman-Fried family psychodrama, detailing how S.B.F.’s mother built a stealthy and powerful Democratic political influence shop in the heart of Silicon Valley. How involved was her son?

Plus, below the fold: Julia Alexander charts the future of Netflix as Reed Hastings cedes control. Julia Ioffe chronicles how oil sanctions finally eroded Putin’s “superpower” mythology. Peter Hamby and Dylan Byers consider the I.P. bonanza awaiting Vince McMahon and Bill Cohan drops by to discuss restarting FTX. Then Matt Belloni talks through the just-released Oscar noms, zeroing in on Andrea Riseborough’s surprise nod for Best Actress.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

Barbara Fried was a beloved law professor whose midlife political awakening inspired Mind the Gap, a powerful network of 2,500 donors that helped the Democrats dominate the ’18 midterms. Now, she’s the latest victim of her son, Sam Bankman-Fried.

JULIA ALEXANDER

A timely investigation into what the leading streamer is doing right and what it should probably fix as Hastings cedes control to co-C.E.O.s Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos.

JULIA IOFFE

Putin destroyed in a year an energy business that took three generations to build. As it turns out, Russia needed Europe far more than Europe needed Russia.

PETER HAMBY, DYLAN BYERS, BEN LANDY, and BILL COHAN

Dylan Byers and Peter Hamby dig into the forthcoming sale of WWE, which some bulls suggest has the same I.P. upside as the cinematic universes of Marvel or DC. Then Ben Landy and Bill Cohan discuss FTX’s resurrection.