On July 30, the day after the “White Dudes for Harris” meeting convened Kamala Harris supporters on Zoom, Sasha Stone posted the phrase “White power!” from the X account of the entertainment news site she owns, Awards Daily. Stone, a pioneer in the field of Oscar punditry and regular attendee at prestigious film festivals like Telluride and Savannah, says she was making a joke about the left’s hypocritical adoption of identity politics. “I was just pointing out the silliness of segregating themselves by race,” she told me in a phone interview a few days later. But the post, which she has since deleted along with all of her tweets more than a few days old, attracted the attention of studio executives, film festival programmers and publicists.

“A quote from Sasha Stone is toxic now,” one executive told me, saying that their studio was pulling its ad dollars from Awards Daily. A representative for another studio said they would no longer invite her to screenings and events. “If she’s trying to be sarcastic,” said a high-profile Academy member, “It’s not funny.” Within two weeks, three of Awards Daily‘s most prolific contributors announced they were leaving Stone’s website to found a new one of their own.