Can we do it? We need 75 more membership sign ups by the end of the weekend to keep on track to meet our goal in this year’s Annual TPM Membership Drive. We’ll need at least 25 more tonight to manage that. If you’re not currently a member, now’s the time. I know it’s easier to delay, figure you’ll do it later. But can you do me this favor? Just take a moment right now, ninety seconds tops and sign up. Just click right here. We need your help to get this done.

There’s a lot going on in the world of news. In a live conversation this afternoon, Josh and I touched on some of those things including: “State Media”, Barry Weiss and CBS, changing business models, Buzzfeed, AI, the eternal importance of naval power and more.

If you missed it live, check out the recording below.

A week ago I asked whether global energy markets have “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I was being a bit arch because I didn’t mean in the sense that MAGA world means, which is being somehow obsessively, compulsively anti-Trump. I meant the opposite. Are the markets wedded to a kind of Trump magical thinking? That somehow he’ll always find a way to thread the needle or slip out of his self-made crises? I’ve tried to be very aware of the fact that I’m totally green on the question of global energy markets. And since oil futures are at least flirting with twice the price that they were at when this war started, it’s hardly like markets aren’t reacting to it. A friend who follows energy markets very closely walked me through some of the reasons why the markets response has been more tempered than one might expect: existing slack in the oil markets on the eve of the war, continued impact of the recent release of 400 million barrels of oil, and uncertainty about whether the U.S. can or will reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But I get more and more indications, some in just reading the news closely, some in small bits of information I pick up from sources, that there really is something going on here.

At 1:30 p.m. ET, TPM founder and editor-in-chief Josh Marshall and TPM publisher Joe Ragazzo will be chatting on Substack Live about the state of the news business today.

Join them here.

They’ll talk about how TPM came to be what it is and how we continue to function as a tiny, unique news site that punches above its weight — but also much more, including the scramble among oligarchs to sweep up major media outlets and bend them to Trump’s will.

We’re finishing up the second week of our Annual TPM Membership Drive and want to get to 40% of our goal before the end of the week. We’re currently at just over 30%, so we need about 100 more sign ups. If you’re not currently a member, please join us. This is what keeps TPM thriving: memberships and the subscription fees that come with them. That’s more than 90% of our revenue. Can you help us today? Just click right here.

Kate and Josh discuss the DHS secretary confirmation hearings, a big defection on Iran and the Illinois primaries.

Semafor reported last night that Joe Kent, momentary half-resistance hero and full-time white nationalist weirdo, is being investigated by the FBI for leaking classified information. According to Semafor, at least, the investigation predates his high-profile, news-driving resignation. We don’t know many details of this investigation. It’s at least possible that, rather than being retaliation for the resignation, it was actually the cause of it. In other words, maybe Kent saw the investigation was building, that the moment was right, and made his push to clothe the investigation and any possible future charges as retaliation. But let’s set that possibility aside for the moment. Because there’s another possibility I want to explore, one that goes to the heart of how Trump II works.

Michelle Goldberg has a column up in the Times about Joe Kent’s resignation letter which I addressed yesterday below. There’s a lot I agree with. But the part I don’t is contained in the headline itself: “Joe Kent’s Resignation Letter Is Dangerous Because It’s Half True.” The phrasing of something being “half true” is always a complicated one and one that ends up almost always being misleading. Something that is “half true” is of course better termed “untrue.” That’s how true and untrue work. Few things are categorically 100% untrue. And that is the case here. Michelle I think gets closer to the mark in this line down into the piece …

I hosted a discussion on Substack Live this afternoon with TPM’s voting rights reporter Khaya Himmelman, who has covered election administration and voter suppression issues for TPM for at least two significant election cycles now.

There must certainly be a word-stacking German term for the uncanny feeling of watching as a patently unqualified, far-right, election-denier white nationalist freak becomes the only administration figure to resign over the increasingly disastrous Iran War with an at least vaguely antisemitic gripe. It is an interesting moment. Let’s remember that Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, isn’t just some administration official. He’s a white nationalist extremist who had no business holding any position of trust in the U.S. government. He’s been friends to numerous antisemites long before today’s news broke.

Some people are inclined to be sympathetic to the ideas contained in Kent’s claim that “[i]t is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” If that’s you, think a bit more seriously about just how Israel would be in a position to exert this “pressure” and don’t let your animus toward Trump make you a fellow traveler with someone as odious as Kent.