We hear a lot of fears these days about civil war or major political unrest in the United States. It’s less clear precisely how something like this would happen. There’s no lack of polarization and anger. But how precisely does it come about? Despite the blue and red maps we show on TV screens, U.S. politics is highly polarized by region even within most states. Something happened in Texas yesterday that struck me as a possible leading edge of some form of it.

Under the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Texas has made recent moves to try to take over certain aspects of patrol and enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border. This is of course primarily a political move. It’s for show. But the actions assert new rights or powers which are fraught with the potential for abuse and possible used for a sort of slow-motion insurrection. This weekend things went to a new level.

I want to flag this post from Barak Ravid, writing in Axios. Much of it is important detail on a general story you know if you’ve been following things: The Biden White House is out of patience with Benjamin Netanyahu. While Biden’s steadfast support for Israel has been transformative within the broader Israeli body politic, Netanyahu himself is still the same man: taking everything offered with pro forma gratitude and stiffing most things, if not everything, asked in return.

This is anything but surprising. We’d be wrong to imagine the White House is terribly surprised either. Joe Biden knows this man. What is always important to remember is that almost everyone working these questions in the Biden White House was working them, usually one or two rungs down, in the bad old Obama days when Netanyahu notoriously plotted with the president’s domestic political enemies but added the deeper indignity of doing it publicly, not even doing him the courtesy of concealment. They all know this guy.

One thing we learn is that Netanyahu and Biden haven’t spoken in almost three weeks, the last time being on December 23rd when Biden cut off the conversation and hung up on him.

I hope you get a chance to read this piece by Josh Green that we published yesterday. It’s an excerpt from his new book The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics. But we’ve packaged it here in a way that you can definitely read in its own right. The book is about the revival of an electoral American left in the years since the Great Financial Crisis — Warren, Sanders, AOC, etc. But this piece is about the deep back story of these events and how critical parts of our current world got their start during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. It’s not unknown history certainly. But it’s little known in our current political conversations. Definitely give it a read.

I don’t generally have much time for scene-setter pieces — not a criticism exactly, just not a form that I have much use for. But this piece from Iowa by Lisa Lerer does manage to capture a sense of foreboding that is very much part of this election cycle. And it fits particularly for Iowa Republicans, the particular flavor of darkness and pessimism. Iowa is a very old state and obviously a very rural one. But what’s interesting in this piece is that there are very few voices that are just straight up for Trump, despite the fact that Trump is completely dominating the race. That’s key.

This hot mic story-lette with Chris Christie perfectly captures the current GOP: anguished maneuvering and contretemps all amounting to more or less nothing, Trump eagerly feasting on his rivals’ clumsy mistakes, all of it hilarious and yet leading to a very dark place.

If you didn’t see this yet, just before announcing the end of his campaign — kinda/sorta to clear the way for Nikki Haley — this happened …

Mr. Christie caused a stir before his remarks when he was caught on a hot microphone candidly discussing two rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, before making the announcement.

“She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it,” Mr. Christie could be heard saying of Ms. Haley. “She’s not up to this.” He added of Mr. DeSantis: “DeSantis called me, petrified.”

This is all 110% true.

There’s no shortage of stories these days about conflicts, suspensions or resignations of journalists or editors over the Israel-Hamas war. But this one has a twist that made it interesting to me. The topline story is that Kevin Merida, executive editor of the LA Times, is stepping down from his post after only three years. His departure is reportedly based on a dispute with the family of Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong over his decision to restrict the coverage of several reporters who signed an open letter condemning Israel’s response to the October 7th massacres and calling on publications to use terms like “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” to describe it.

A friend in Michigan sends me this opinion column that ran last week in a Michigan paper. In it, Mark Plawecki, a long-serving judge in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, claims that the Jews torpedoed his efforts to get the Democratic nomination for the state Supreme Court back in 2016. And yes, I use the phrase advisedly. The point man for the alleged effort, he claims, was Mark J. Bernstein, who Plawecki identifies as “a significant Benjamin Netanyahu waterboy vis-a-vis the Michigan Democratic Party.”

“The last thing the right-wing Israeli government wants,” writes Plawecki, “is a statewide elected official (in any state) who has a not only more than cursory understanding (sic) of its terrorist origins, but is willing to state publicly the truth about Israel’s more than 75 years of political and economic chicanery.”

Axios sent out an email yesterday headlined “Biden’s Stubborn Loyalty.” I went back to it this afternoon and realized I’d remembered it having a more negative spin than it really did. That headline above is followed by “1 Big Thing: Biden’s Teflon Cabinet.” The gist is that Biden sticks by his people. Got a criticism of one of his people? Who cares? Biden doesn’t want to hear it. What spurred this write-up is the controversy about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Will Biden fire Austin? Will he resign? No, says the White House. Indeed, Biden won’t let him resign. Done and done.

Axios writes this: “Politico reports Biden would not accept a resignation from Austin even if he offered, and chatter from the pundit class is likely to reflexively harden the president’s view.”

I like this attitude.