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This is Super Important

Today’s the day we kick off our big ask for the year, the TPM Journalism Fund annual drive. I just called it our “big ask”. But I want to be clear that if you’re a member, you shouldn’t feel any obligation. You’ve done your part to support our work. More than 35,000 of you make TPM possible. But the TPM Journalism Fund plays a critical role in keeping TPM vital, prepared for the unexpected and able to expand our capacity to meet the public crisis of the moment. We truly need your support. What we’re doing today at TPM, responding as we are to public crisis of the second Trump Presidency would not be possible without it. If you’ve heard enough and are able to contribute in any amount, please click right here.

Again, this year we have a very, very ambitious goal: raising $500,000 for the TPM Journalism Fund. (We’re already off to a strong start this morning but the first hours and days are the easiest part so you need to really build up a head of steam.) What does that accomplish? It’s what allows us as a very small organization — a mere seven reporters and three editors, not including me — to lean into investigative reporting, which never really pays for itself. It’s what allowed us to add two new positions this spring: a new editor position (Allegra Kirkland) and a new reporter position (Layla A. Jones).

There are other things that are more complicated to quantify. I’ve mentioned many times TPM’s complicated, sometimes scary but ultimately successful transition from a primarily ad-based to a primarily subscription-based business model. To make that work, Joe Ragazzo (currently on parental leave) and I put in place all sorts of what I guess you’d call crisis financing to make things work. Nothing too crazy and certainly not legally iffy, mind you. But stuff you do because you absolutely have to. Because of the Journalism Fund we’ve been able to spend the last few years unwinding most of those little plans.

TPM has always been run as a very, very small-c conservative operation. We don’t like to take chances, certainly not with our colleagues. We do a lot of planning. It’s no accident that we’ve never laid anyone off in 25 years. Still, when you’re managing something as big as changing an organization’s core business model on the fly, you bind a lot of things together with tape and string and just push things through and figure out new plans as you go. So when I say unwinding that mostly means things like building up cash reserves, paying for things in advance so that the organization as a whole is building up resilience rather than simply surviving. Simply surviving in this journalism era is a big deal. But building in capacity and resilience does more than simply allow Joe and I to sleep easier. It suffuses the life of the whole organization.

So those are all the things the TPM Journalism Fund makes possible: investigative reporting, expansion, stability. If you’re game, we would be so appreciative. You can click right here, and any amount goes a long way.

Thank you from all of us.

Ok, Welp … Epstein/Wolff Edition

Ok, Welp … Epstein/Wolff Edition

So I mentioned in today’s BackChannel that it kind of beggared belief we were only hearing about these Wolff/Epstein interview tapes and their contents now. But then I heard from TPM Reader MH who said he remembered hearing some of the tapes. What? Readers get so confused. But then MH comes up with a link and it turns out the Daily Beast actually had a lot of this from Wolff and actually snippets of the audio tapes themselves. That came out just a few days before the 2024 election. Then I heard from TPM Reader JW about a podcast Wolff was doing at the time that went into the same stuff. (Okay, so part of my theory or reason for caution is out, I guess.) From what I can tell, all of this was sort of lost in the mad rush of the final days before the election and sort of became moot after it. In the standard way, the campaign said it was fake news and “election interference” and that was kind of it.

All this said, the Epstein wildfire engulfing MAGA just continues apace.

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Josh Has an Epstein Conversion? (No, But …)

 Member Newsletter
Josh Has an Epstein Conversion? (No, But …)

Three thoughts on the delicious and deserved Jeff Epstein wildfire currently engulfing MAGA world.

First, a follow up on my post from last week. I stand by what I said about general skepticism about the whole Epstein meta story — the belief that some significant number of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men slept with teenaged girls procured by Jeff Epstein and have used their power to keep the truth of their crimes secret. But some of you said I was either letting Epstein, his purported co-rapists or the MAGA movement off the hook. Not at all. I expressed something very specific which is that there are a lot of things that seem widely accepted about Epstein and his world for which there seems to be pretty thin actual evidence. But that’s totally consistent with wanting to turn over every stone to find out what’s real and what’s not. It is even more consistent with putting MAGA to its task. They created this. They ran on this. They used it to tarnish countless of their enemies based on little or no evidence. So there’s zero way anyone should let them just take a mulligan on the whole thing now. “Hey, so we took a look at all the secret information and it turns out it’s all fine. So we’re moving on.” No way.

Lord’s Vengeance

The Department of Homeland Security posted an explicitly Christian nationalist and violent video on Facebook Reels captioned “Here I am, send me” about how Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are delivering the Lord’s justice. Special thanks to TPM Reader DC for bringing this to our attention.

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Reality Check: Trump Immigration Policy Is Super Unpopular

 Member Newsletter
Reality Check: Trump Immigration Policy Is Super Unpopular

We went into this administration with a seemingly durable baseline assumption that, whatever his unpopularity in other areas, President Trump had durable if not overwhelming support for his hardline immigration policies. But something started to show up in polls in the late spring or early summer.

While his numbers on “immigration” were still reasonably robust, we saw a dramatically different picture when pollster’s asked about “deportation” or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Not surprisingly, “immigration” is a very big word and covers a vast range of policy territory. Looked at from a different vantage point, Trump retained a bare majority of public support on “border security” but his “deportation” policy had the support of barely one-third of the population.

‘Patriot’ Investors and Their Dollars Are Soon Parted

Earlier today, I read this piece by TPM fave Will Sommer which explained that Hugh Hewitt, one-time Josh antagonist, has been pitching his listeners on giving their money to what might be generously described as a fake bank which promised a totally credible 13% annual return when Hugh’s listeners purchased “First Liberty Notes” for a minimum purchase of $25,000. It was all a way to get out from under the “woke” banking system and build a “patriot economy” and do a lot of other cool stuff. It was all the work of a right-wing darling by the name of Brant Frost IV. Apparently the fake bank, First Liberty Building & Loan (no FDIC insurance), was a key part of the Georgia GOP ecosystem.

In any case, as Will explained, things had taken an unexpected turn — at least for the purchasers of “Liberty Notes” — when the company’s website suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a notice which announced that the owners were cooperating with federal authorities to close the business down. (Doesn’t sound promising!) Now, just a few moments ago, I got an alert about this article in The Atlanta Journal Constitution which reports that the SEC has charged First Liberty with running a $140 million Ponzi scheme.

From the AJC …

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