On the judge stuff from this morning- I don't really see this as a win or loss for anyone, more of a routine procedural thing that happened within the guidelines of an ongoing case. There were no hearings or arguments, it was just paperwork within the framework of the law. I don't see it as a Nick win as far as the coming trial or any events related to it are concerned either. The guns/drug stuff is pretty cut and dry, and I'm doubtful there will be much there for the judge to rule on. There may be some room for personal bias/animus to come into play with the kid stuff, but it's too early to say at the juncture, we simply don't have any documentary evidence on those counts yet. And just in general, I tend to feel judges can be impartial and rule fairly in these kinds of small town, low stakes cases, even if they have history with the defendant, as exists with Nick here. This isn't a complex case or one with major stakes, and it's likely going to be routine.
In fact, I think it's possible this could be construed as an L for Nick, if you twist your thinking enough. If he goes to trail, fails, then goes to appeals, he's lost probably his strongest appeal argument by dismissing the judge before she could do anything in his actual case.
On them both going pro se again, I wouldn't draw anything from that. It's something Nick could handle on his own no issue, it's basically paperwork as far as I can tell. No reason to rush into a lawyer just for this. I'd hope they're both spending time shopping for the right representation and will have that in place in the next few weeks to give them enough time to get up to speed before hearings proper begin.
The only thing I personally read into this is Kayla is probably still with Nick, or at least hasn't made a clean break yet. If they'd have gone their separate ways I'd expect she'd have found her own lawyer by now.