This is mainly just a goof on Ron DeSantis’s ridiculous presidential campaign. But it’s weird and funny enough that I thought I’d share it with you. Clearly Ron DeSantis’s campaign is flatlining about to go down in the history books as one of the most ignominious and vertiginous collapses in presidential primary campaign history. But TPM Reader RS just let me know that despite filing in a lot of other state’s he’ll never get to, DeSantis’s campaign somehow forgot to file paperwork to be a candidate in the New York State Republican primary.

It’s been clear for some weeks that there is growing division in the Israeli war cabinet. Now it appears to be breaking into the open, with indications that a new election could come sooner than later.

First a bit of stage-setting and context to explain the moving pieces and what this all might or might not mean.

On October 7th, the day of the Hamas massacres in southern Israel, Israel was led by a narrow and very right-wing coalition government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had been embroiled for most of the previous year in a highly polarized fight over the government’s effort to dramatically curtail the power of the country’s Supreme Court. The massacres shattered the public’s confidence in Netanyahu, which had kept him in power since 2009 with only one intermission in 2021 and 2022. Soon after the outbreak of the current war, Netanyahu was able to bring one of the two main opposition parties, National Union, into his government.

A Georgia state judge has scheduled a hearing on allegations that Fulton County DA Fani Willis had an affair with one of the lawyers she appointed to work as a lead prosecutor in her prosecution of Donald Trump and others.

The Post write-up says that the hearing is is about whether Willis “engaged in an improper relationship and mishandled public money.” When I read this I thought it wasn’t clear if the relationship was actually improper aside from the allegations of misuse of public money. But my momentary double take captures the uncanny dualism of this story.

Over eight years Donald Trump has made it clear that if you cross him your career in Republican politics will be over. With Ron DeSantis’s campaign flatlining, Donald Trump seems to be moving ahead with settling the family’s outstanding business. What jumped out at me here was that his target is not a Mitt Romney (one of the only exceptions to the rule) or Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney. Next up appears to be one of the diehardest members of the rump of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh analyze the Iowa caucuses and what the results tell us about the rest of the primary season and beyond.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

I wanted to flag to your attention some new developments in Israel-Palestine. From the beginning of the war there’s been discussion of the “day after,” what comes after the fighting and whether that “day after” plan provides any opening to move beyond the cycle of recurrent war and death. The U.S. has been increasingly insistent on this with its Israeli counterparts. The Biden White House wants a “day after” plan first because it thinks concrete steps toward a Palestinian state is the only viable solution to the conflict but also because in an international diplomatic context it needs something tangible to show for its steadfast support for Israel’s increasingly unpopular war.

Now, however, we’re seeing the first signs that the Netanyahu government’s unwillingness to address “day after” issues is beginning to have concrete operational effects in Gaza. Israel’s Channel 13 reports that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has told the prime minister, Defense Minister Gallant and others that “we are facing the erosion of gains made thus far in the war because no strategy has been put together for the day after.” The IDF “may need to go back and operate in areas where we have already concluded fighting.”