Bidenworld Musical Chairs, Khan’s Crusade, Twitter End Times

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon briefing of Puck’s latest reporting.

Today, we start things off with Teddy Schleifer’s fascinating dive into the childhood home and academic milieu that produced Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced FTX founder who was arrested yesterday evening in the Bahamas.

Then, below the fold, Tara Palmeri previews the next Bidenworld power shift and the potential fallout of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership lust. Eriq Gardner unravels the logic behind Lina Khan's latest bombshell antitrust case. And on The Powers That Be, Tara joins Peter Hamby to discuss the insanity of the “Unity Caucus” while Bill Cohan and Ben Landy gab about the caustic entropy of Elon’s Twitter.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

At the core of the S.B.F. dilemma is the brainy academic milieu in which he came of age: a place where effective altruism was discussed at the dinner table, shape-shifting was au naturel, and the pursuit of an ethical life undergirded it all.

TARA PALMERI

News and notes on the hottest topics in town: speculation about Biden’s musical chairs, and schadenfreude regarding how McCarthy’s lust for the speakership may set back his post-speakership financial opportunities.

ERIQ GARDNER

Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision deal may be defensible from an antitrust perspective. But Biden’s F.T.C. has an overwhelming advantage: time.

PETER HAMBY, TARA PALMERI, BEN LANDY, and BILL COHAN

Tara Palmeri joins Peter to discuss the insanity of the “Unity Caucus” while Bill Cohan and Ben discuss Elon’s cray endgame.