To my slight surprise, the Ginni Thomas story — the texts about her involvement in the January 6th conspiracy — appears to be escalating rapidly. Politico’s Playbook is in such a case a good barometer. A couple days ago I felt I was pushing the envelope by saying Justice Thomas should recuse himself from any Jan. 6th or Trump election (past or future elections) related cases. Over the last 36 hours, though, calls for this are not only coming from standby legal ethics experts but from a number of conservative legal types who have in the past been either indifferent to or protective of Ginni Thomas’s fairly open involvement in GOP partisan politics. (Justice Thomas was already the sole dissent in a case that could quite likely have involved — though in the event it apparently did not — communications from his wife to other participants in the Jan. 6th conspiracy.) Now the Jan. 6th committee seems prepped to ask her to testify and, if she doesn’t agree, subpoena her, though here there appears to be a division centering around Liz Cheney.

From what I can tell, the more serious-minded military analysts and Ukraine experts are this afternoon trying to make sense of just what this afternoon’s Russian military briefing means. Is this just chatter along the lines of claims of a soon to be announced ceasefire or is this really the signal that the Russian leadership is looking for an offramp from this strategic catastrophe entirely of its own making? I don’t think anyone quite knows what to make of it yet. The claims of ‘this is what we meant to do all along’ are absurd on their face. And yet, they’re the most plausible and possibly even the most predictable path to a face-saving exit. In fact, we shouldn’t have to wait long to find out. If this signals a true pivot in Russian policy and war aims we should see movements on the ground in fairly short order.

But one really has to question whether this pivot is even possible. And by possible I mean is it in any way a plausible path to the end of the conflict on any terms?