This is just out tonight from the insider sheet Puck …

With the Manhattan district attorney threatening to put Trump on trial, and DeSantis declining to stand in his way, G.O.P. operatives are coalescing around the notion that it’s now the ex-president’s race to lose.

I think this is right and I think it’s been clear for a while. This doesn’t mean Trump will definitely be the nominee. We can’t know that. But people are starting to see what, again, should have been clear for a while. With Trump’s remaining support — which is diminished but still robust — and the likelihood of multiple indictments, there’s just not room for a challenger to confront and unseat him.

Last week we sat down with Michael Kofman, the head of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, to discuss the Ukraine War. The CNA is an independent but government-funded think tank which is tasked with generating scholarship and analysis to serve the Department of the Navy (the Navy and the Marine Corps) and the larger U.S. national security community. You may not have heard his name before but Kofman is one of the country’s most knowledgable people on the ins and outs of the Russian military, its strengths, doctrines, culture and challenges. Among the many subjects we discussed was why a direct military assault may not be the best or most feasible way for Ukraine to reclaim Crimea, if that’s in the cards at all; and the downsides of having so many different countries donating so many different weapons systems for the Ukrainian war effort. If you’re a member, join me for our TPM Inside Briefing with Michael Kofman after the jump.

The DeSantis administration is moving to expand the “Don’t Say Gay” law to all grades. The initial law applied to kindergarten through 3rd grade. It will now expand to grades 4 through 12.

Ron DeSantis is now slowly, kinda starting to announce his presidential candidacy and criticize Donald Trump. He says, for instance, that the “underlying conduct” in the Stormy Daniels case is “just outside my wheelhouse.” And if that seems a bit underwhelming, yeah, that was kind of my impression too. He also says that a political leader should try to be “like our founding fathers” and have “character.” He notes at one point in an interview with Piers Morgan that George Washington “always put the Republic over his own personal interest.” As I think about it, in a pre-Trump world these might be fighting words. Sorta. But not in the Trump era. Not if you’re trying to take down Donald Trump.

It now seems clear that a New York City indictment of Donald Trump won’t happen today and may not even happen tomorrow, based on some tenuous reporting over the last 24 hours. But there’s a good chance that almost all the current commentary will end up mattering much, much less than the simple fact that almost five months after the 2022 midterm the GOP remains thoroughly chained to Donald Trump.

As we consider the 20-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I wanted to acquaint you with or remind you of some of the intellectual and emotional climate of the moment. This is separate from the reminders of the sheer deception that made the war possible. But it’s quite important. I’m linking two pieces I wrote at outside publications around that time — one for The New Yorker and another for The Washington Monthly. I covered much of the same ground at TPM, in these virtual pages. But because of the nature of this venue, the ideas and observations are more spread over various posts, often keyed to the immediate developments of the day, many short and momentary.

A Fox News Producer, Abby Grossberg, is suing Fox News, essentially arguing that the network plotted to make her and Maria Bartiromo the fall guys for the Dominion lawsuit.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, under pressure from Trump allies, is taking his first stab at addressing the Trump indictment situation. It shows both his inevitable strategy and the inherent difficulty of the situation. He pleads little knowledge of how it works when you pay “hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just, I can’t speak to that.” But he also insists that Alvin Bragg is a “Soros-funded prosecutor and so he like other Soros funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.” The approach isn’t surprising: Deep State/Soros yada and also did you hear he paid hush money to a porn star he had sex with?

I’ve only gotten a couple negative replies to the post below about Alvin Bragg’s expected indictments of ex-President Trump. But those replies have had a wild intensity that started me thinking about what the possible disconnect was between me and these readers. What I said was that it’s not great. But it’s happening entirely outside any framework that any of us can do anything about. And, mostly, I don’t think it will matter much one way or another if, as I expect, it is followed by indictments for graver crimes. In fact, even if this is the only Trump indictment ever, I still don’t think it matters much.

People just see things differently of course. And intense disagreement is nothing new to me. But I think there’s something more going on here — or two things rather. And, because I think these few TPM Readers represent a lot more people who think the same way, here’s what I think those things are.

I have been assuming that Trump’s unhinged reference to his being “arrested” on Tuesday is based on what Alvin Bragg’s office has told his lawyers (for arranging Trump’s turning himself in to be booked in Manhattan). In other words, the “leak” is from Trump and the information is accurate. But CNN is reporting that Robert Costello, a one time legal advisor to Michael Cohen, has been designated by Trump’s lawyers to testify to the Manhattan grand jury about Cohen’s credibility on Monday. You could still have last-ditch testimony on Monday and an indictment on Tuesday. But that makes me significantly less confident that Tuesday is the day.