New York Media’s The Cut is getting serious about video, rolling out its first original series “Face Race,” which debuted last week.

“Face Race” is part of a larger effort by New York to create more video series across its brands. Grub Street, the company’s food blog, just wrapped a limited-run series tied to its “Best of New York” pop-up blog, which highlights some of the best food in the city across different categories. Its entertainment vertical, Vulture, just debuted a series called “Broadway Charades,” which tests the music knowledge of two singers or actors. New York’s video department, which produces these series, is currently made up of 11 people.

The Cut had previously only dabbled in video, with no series or recurring formats. Instead, it would rely on one-off, social-friendly videos like “Men Try On Rompers for the First Time” and “Working Moms React to Ivanka Trump’s ‘Women Who Work,’” and the woke, like “What TV Is Getting Wrong (and Right) About Abortion.”

Hosted by the site’s senior beauty editor, Ashley Weatherford, the show pits two top makeup artists against each other in a competition to recreate iconic beauty looks — from Beyonce in “Mine” to Madonna in “Who’s That Girl” — in under seven minutes. Taking a page from campy reality shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “Ru Paul’s Drag Race,” Weatherford sits on a gilded throne as the artists go to work, and the winners inexplicably receive an inflatable pool swan. A new episode will roll out every Friday for the next nine weeks.

“We’re excited to launch this video as the first of what will hopefully be many exciting video projects on The Cut,” said Stella Bugbee, who was just promoted to the website’s president and editor-in-chief. “Video is a big part of our strategy for the future, and the ‘Face Race’ represents the humor and originality of our site.”

The Cut’s senior editor Ashley Weatherford stars in new series “Face Race”

The series is sponsored by TNT’s upcoming show “Claws,” a dark comedy that follows a group of manicurists working in a Florida nail salon, premiering on June 11. Other than an opening ad for the show, “Face Race” episodes do not mention it. It is part of a larger marketing campaign that includes branded content on the site, a “Claws”/The Cut manicure truck activation in New York City this Friday and a TNT sponsorship of New York Magazine’s annual summer party for readers and friends of the company.

“We’re always brainstorming ideas for video, and since Ashley is a star in the making (and a big reality TV fan), we wanted to have her try a beauty series,” said Bugbee. “Given that [its new] show is about a group of manicurists, it was the perfect alignment opportunity for both sides,” she said.

The launch comes on the heels of The Cut -receiving its own URL at www.thecut.com this month, and it hints at further efforts to build out the website’s popular brand beyond its roots in fashion and beauty to become more akin to Refinery29. (The top story on the site currently is, “Texas’s Governor Just Signed a Sweeping Anti-Abortion Law.”)

The first episode of “Face Race” features two relative unknowns in the artist category, though they boast past clients like YSL and Vogue. The team could not reveal who else would be featured in the future.

The Face Race is sponsored by TNT’s new series “Claws”

The decision by five Arab states to sever ties with Qatar marks another chapter in a multiyear saga of turbulent relations between Qatar and its neighbors. A split between Doha and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was brewing for years. At the heart of the problem lies an irreconcilable difference between the Persian Gulf countries about how to interpret the events of the 2011 Arab Spring and, more important, how to react to them.

In contrast to its GCC neighbors, Qatar actively promoted regime change across the Arab world. The Qataris mobilized finances and offered favorable media coverage to many Islamist actors, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza, the Ennahda party in Tunisia and myriad militias in Libya and Syria.

In response, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia worked forcefully to block Qatar’s interests in the region, helping to depose Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, funding rival opposition factions in Syria and supporting the government of Gen. Khalifa Hifter in Libya.

Although the Saudis and Emiratis began to resist Qatar’s regional activities, Qatar’s rulers were no pushover. The emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, and his cousin, Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, were seasoned operators on the international stage. For 20 years, they built “Brand Qatar” by forming a crosscutting swathe of alliances across the region, stretching from Mauritania to Afghanistan. And so the decision by Hamad to hand power to his son Tamim in August 2013 presented an opportunity for the Saudis and Emiratis to put pressure on the young monarch to force him into line.

In an environment increasingly hostile to Qatari foreign policy, Tamim lacked the experience of his father and uncle to handle the challenges. Al Jazeera was hemorrhaging viewers regionally, and Qatari foreign policy increasingly struggled in Libya, Syria and Egypt in the face of GCC pressure.

Sensing their opportunity, the Emiratis, Saudis and Bahrainis urged Tamim to scale back Qatar’s regional activities. Following six months of failed negotiations, the three countries pulled their ambassadors from Doha in protest in early 2014.

With the help of Kuwait’s emir, Qatar agreed to acquiesce to each of the three countries in a series of bilateral negotiations, leading to a repair in relations by the GCC summit in December 2014. But it was not until December 2016, when Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul Aziz came to Doha, that the rift was publicly mended.

But for all the goodwill that was shown, the core problem that underlay the split had never healed. While the Qataris had toned down Al Jazeera and evicted a few Muslim Brotherhood members from Doha, their ambition to be a regional actor remained, as did their myriad of friendships with a host of political Islamists across the region — friendships that the UAE in particular found hard to accept.

In recent months, Qatar has once again drifted outside the GCC consensus. Particularly galling for the UAE and Saudi Arabia has been Qatar’s interaction with Islamist groups linked closely to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. Worse still to them are its business dealings with Iranian regional affiliates. In April, Qatar was involved in communications with the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al Sham organization to guarantee population transfers in the country. Qatar appeared to have brokered the deal by communicating with Iran, which in return managed to secure the release of 26 Qataris royals kidnapped in Iraq in return for a princely sum to be paid to Iranian client militia Kataib Hezbollah.

Qatar also helped Hamas publicly rebrand itself— and the group launched its new policy objectives at a Doha hotel in May. Islamist rebranding has been a favored tactic Qatar uses with Syrian opposition groups, particularly the Islamist Ahrar al Sham, and, unsuccessfully, with the leader of the now defunct al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. This attempt to legitimize Islamist groups is an issue the Emiratis in particular find difficult to accept.

The United States has served as a key actor from which the Saudis can take their lead. As Riyadh has moved closer to the United States in recent days, helped with a promise of purchasing more American arms during President Trump’s visit in May, there is little doubt the Saudis felt emboldened to ratchet up the pressure against the Qataris.

The Emiratis also have found themselves in favor with the new Washington administration, whose strong dislike for both Iran and Sunni Islamists fits well with UAE policy priorities. Accordingly, there is a newfound confidence in Saudi Arabia and the UAE that strong measures to force the Qataris back into their box will find support in Washington.

Qatar’s support for Hamas seems to have been a card the gulf states have played effectively to curry favor with U.S. decision-makers amid the warming relations between the gulf and the Israelis. The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear to be preempting U.S. policy by sounding notes that will find favor with pro-Israel, anti-Iran, and anti-Islamist legislators in Congress, albeit for reasons much more applicable to intra-GCC politics than the regional strategic goals of the United States.

Given that diplomatic attempts to isolate Qatar in 2014 seem to have had no long-term effect on Doha’s behavior, it is not surprising that the Saudis have decided to dramatically up the stakes this time around by closing off Qatar’s only land border and— along with the UAE and Egypt— blocking all air travel to the emirate, with Egypt denying Qatar Airways the use of its airspace.

The closure of land borders and the disruption to air traffic will have serious consequences for the Qatari economy and its society that will quickly prove prohibitively expensive, even for a rich state like Qatar. And so, serious concessions will have to be made if relations in the GCC are to normalize to the usual levels of mutually suspicious friendship.

Michael Stephens is a research fellow in the Middle East Department and head of the Qatar operations of the British-based Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies.

As top intelligence and law enforcement officials testify in front of Congress this week, one big question looms: Did President Trump attempt to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation?

It’s a question with all kinds of legal ins and outs and is very unlikely to be resolved in the next two days. But from a political and appearance perspective, Trump just suffered another major setback.

The Post’s Adam Entous reported late Tuesday night that Trump in March asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to intervene in the Russia investigation by asking then-FBI Director James Comey to back off the agency’s focus on Michael Flynn. Coats reportedly told associates about Trump’s request shortly afterward.

This, of course, is not the first time Trump has been reported to have made apparently unsavory requests of Coats and other top officials (up to and including, most notably, Comey). The Post had previously reported Trump approached Coats and National Security Agency head Michael Rogers in a failed effort to get them to say publicly that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. It has also been reported that Trump approached Comey in February about ending the Flynn investigation, according to contemporaneous notes kept by Comey.

But here’s why the latest news is particularly bad for Trump: It erases any idea that the Comey request was just a one-off. We have now learned that Comey isn’t the only top official whom Trump approached in an effort to free Flynn from his investigation.

One approach could perhaps be understood as Trump going over his skis while standing up for a close political ally and top former adviser; two show that he made a concerted effort to try to release Flynn from scrutiny. And the Coats request reportedly came weeks after the Comey one, suggesting this idea was on Trump’s mind for some time.

The question from there becomes why — why did Trump feel so strongly about getting Flynn off the hook? And there are basically two good answers to that question:

1. Trump is excessively loyal to Michael Flynn, to a fault
2. Trump fears what could come of the Flynn investigation

Before we go any further, it’s important to clarify that there is still no publicly available smoking gun when it comes to possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And that’s really only part of the reason Flynn has become the focus of investigators — the other big one being his work on behalf of the government of Turkey and his failure to disclose it.

As for Possibility No. 1, it’s worth noting that Trump is a notoriously fickle political operator with few true friends and bulletproof advisers. He dispatched two of his chief campaign aides — Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort — when it suited him. And as president he has made pretty clear his unhappiness with top adviser Stephen K. Bannon and even, according to reports this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was way out front of almost every other congressional Republican in supporting Trump’s candidacy. He’s also distanced himself from longtime political confidant Roger Stone.

Put plainly: The president known for his « You’re fired » catchphrase as a reality TV star hasn’t exactly shown that excessive loyalty is among his chief faults. Could he perhaps be uniquely loyal to Flynn for some reason? It’s possible. But against this backdrop it would seem odd that Flynn would be the one Trump aide whom the president seems to be unwilling to toss under the bus when it made sense to, politically speaking. (The White House has been quick to distance itself from almost every other aide facing scrutiny in the Russia probe.)

Possibility No. 2 is the much worse option for the White House. If Trump isn’t burdened by some strangely large amount of loyalty to Flynn, that suggests he worries about what could come of an investigation into Flynn.

A little refresher: Flynn provided an early landmark in the Russia investigation when it was revealed that he spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after the election and was later revealed to have misled Vice President Pence by telling Pence that he and Kislyak hadn’t discussed sanctions. There are also questions about his decision to appear alongside Vladimir Putin back in December 2015 at a 10th anniversary celebration for the Russian state-backed TV station Russia Today. (Philip Bump has your full timeline here.)

Precisely how the Flynn investigation might be so troubling for Trump is sure to be the subject of plenty of speculation, given Entous’s report on Tuesday night. One tempting conclusion is that Trump worried Flynn would seek immunity, which Flynn eventually offered his testimony in exchange for in late March, and spill whatever beans he might have. But if that’s the case, what are those beans?

Whatever the case, we now know that Trump sought on two separate occasions with powerful top officials to put it all to an end. And apparently when Trump didn’t get anywhere with Comey, he went to the then-recently confirmed Coats to try to get him to put his thumb on the scale.

The most charitable reading of all of this is that an amateur politician-president driven by personal loyalty and ignorance went too far in trying to get intelligence officials to vouch for him and help out a friend. But Tuesday night’s report is the latest brushstroke in what, through Trump’s own doing, looks more and more like a cover-up.