NYT in Wartime, MAGA Mike, a Two State Delusion

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon dispatch of Puck’s latest reporting.

First up today, Bill Cohan hears firsthand about the insanity inside Silicon Valley Bank from a shell-shocked former executive, seven months out from the third largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Plus, below the fold: Julia Ioffe and Ambassador Dennis Ross recall what doomed Clinton’s Israel-Palestine peace talks, and consider the historic antecedents of the Oct. 7 tragedy. Dylan Byers reveals the state of play in Bezos’s Washington Post C.E.O. search. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and Tina Nguyen exchange notes on “MAGA Mike,” the House’s enigmatic new speaker. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Dylan Byers review the C.V.s of the two WaPo finalists, before turning to how the war in Gaza is dividing the Times newsroom.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

It was always a mystery how Silicon Valley Bank’s leadership could have made such basic, preventable mistakes. To get answers, I spoke with a former executive at SVB, who witnessed the insanity firsthand.

JULIA IOFFE

A conversation with Dennis Ross, the chief U.S. negotiator in the 2000 peace talks, about why they fell apart, how Israelis came to believe that the Palestinian problem could be managed, and how Oct. 7 exploded that fiction.

DYLAN BYERS

I’m told that Bezos is expected to make his WaPo C.E.O. selection in a matter of days. Barring any unforeseen crisis or change of heart, he will formally announce the new leader no later than next month.

TARA PALMERI

House Republicans finally electeded a speaker on Wednesday… and it's someone you'd never expect. Tara sits down with Tina Nguyen to dissect how, exactly, Mike Johnson wound up with the speaker position, and what it means for the MAGA movement.