Donald Trump now appears to have latched onto “communist” and the threat of “communism” as his new turnkey solution to the building anti-Trump wave set to crash in November. I would submit that the proper response to this is, “liar! crooked fool!” and go back to the offensive messaging. End of recommendation.

I wanted to take a moment to give you an update about the future of TPM. A phrase like that might sometimes sound ominous from another publication. This is not ominous. But it’s important. So I’d be greatly in your debt if you will give it a read. First — and this is relevant to what comes after — our annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive kicks off next week. If you are able I hope you’ll take a moment and join us by contributing.

One of the reasons TPM has survived and thrived as long as it has is because we’re nimble. We’ve been able to get the jump on major changes in digital journalism business models as well editorial models. Getting a big jump on the move to subscriptions and away from advertising is why TPM is still here when so many other smallish and not so smallish publications aren’t. Most of them tried to make the transition starting in the late teens when we were already in the middle of the storm. We started in 2012 and began growing that business in earnest in 2014. Those half dozen years or so made all the difference in the world.

We’re at another one of those inflection points as an organization. The Journalism Fund plays a critical role in helping us to fund those changes and make these transitions. In this post I want to share what some of those changes we’re now making are and why they’re important.

Happy Fourth, TPM Readers. If you’re interested in hearing what I and three other TPMers love about this country check out this week’s edition of the podcast. This week Kate and I (The TPM Show with Josh and Kate) got together with Joe Ragazzo and Josh Kovensky (The TPM Social Club) for a combined episode where we discussed the news of the week, our July 4th hot takes and what we love about this country. If you’re a regular listener it’ll be on your phone or other device or you can watch or listen here.

Yesterday in my wrap up of the primary results out of Colorado I said that incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper had defeated challenger Julie Gonzales pretty handily, though 43% for a challenger is still very, very high against someone so entrenched in the state’s politics. The last time I’d looked it was roughly 57% to 43%, still a big showing for a challenger but a fairly comfortable margin.

It didn’t stay there. We’re now at just over 97% of the vote counted and the margin is 53% to 47%. Horseshoes and hand grenades and all that. And yes, I looked at the numbers and even if it gets closer I believe it is mathematically impossible for Gonzales to catch up. But that’s a much closer margin. And Hickenlooper massively outspent Gonzales, though that’s usually the nature of these races. He could have easily gone down to defeat.