We’re on our fourth day of this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive and we have half a chance to getting to 50% of the way toward our goal today. We’re at $231,827. So just $18,000 short of the $250,000 mark. Needless to say, the second 50% always takes longer than the first. But this is a great start. And we really appreciate it. If you’ve been planning on making a contribution but haven’t gotten around to it, why not make today the day? Help us close out the week strong? Just click right here.

I try to keep these updates light. But don’t let the lightness fool you. These drives are critical to the livelihood of the whole organization. We’re able to keep it light because TPM readers have always been there for us. And for that we’re endlessly appreciative.

Covering MAGA and Trump is a bit like an old-time, hard-boiled detective novel. Everyone’s bad. Or at least shady. The challenge is distinguishing between the merely shady sorta bad and bad bad. And apart from the bad and those who were merely drawn that way, sometimes you have two really bad people and one of them is victimizing the other, making the latter person a victim while also being bad. Which brings us to this quote from an article in the Washington Post about Eric Schnabel, the Chief Operating Officer of the National Institute of Health (NIH) who, as I noted earlier this week, was fired and marched off the premises Monday, allegedly for directing a contract to a company which employed his wife. This is a text he sent to a WaPo reporter after the Post tried numerous times to contact him and his wife.

“I need your help. I didn’t do what they said I did,” he texted. “This was a political hit job. Please call me.” Schnabel didn’t reply to numerous further attempts to contact him. (The quote was added after I originally linked to the piece.)

Some time early this morning we made it past the $200,000 threshold in this TPM Journalism Fund drive. And that’s just slightly more than two days in — or I guess slightly less if we time from the first post. That’s fantastic. Obviously, the pace slows. That’s natural. But it positions us well to eventually meet our goal. So thank you for being there for us. The drive is our big organizational trust fall each year. And TPM Readers have never let us down. If you wanna power us forward, just click here.

We have an outside shot at getting to $200,000 raised tonight, the second day of the drive. We’re currently at $186,200. That would be 40% of the way there. If you’re considering contributing please consider doing it this evening. I know drives are kind of a necessary evil from a reader’s point of view. We get it. So we want to hit our goal of $500,000, which is really important, as soon as possible and get back to reporting the news 100% of the time. If you’re game, click right here.

I must admit to being a bit perplexed at what Donald Trump is doing with the Epstein story. He went on Truth Social, the family’s vanity social network and corruption vehicle, today and again went off about how his own supporters are fools for not moving on from the Epstein story and how they should just — goshdarnit! — forget about it and move the F on! Trump seems to be demanding, for any of us who thought there was no there there in the Epstein material, that we realize there must be — that we believe there must be. He’s not asking my consent or yours. He’s just doing it. And this is what I mean: When Donald Trump is guilty as sin on something he insists that whatever is out there that you might have thought was incriminating is actually the work of Obama, Hillary and James Comey. And that is literally what he is doing. Here’s today update from Truth Social.

Thanks so much for getting us off to a very solid start with these year’s annual TPM Journalism Fund drive. If you haven’t had a chance to yet, please take a moment to join us this year. As I said yesterday, this is a critical part of our system to keep TPM thriving, resilient and expanding. Any amount is deeply appreciated. We have an outside chance of getting to 40% of the way to our goal on the second day of the drive. That’s $200,000 and we’re currently at $174,737. Thank you so much and as I said, if you haven’t already, please join us in this year’s drive. Just click right here.

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.

A bit of professional disappointment since we were also tipped about this and were hoping to get on it tomorrow. (D’oh!) But the Washington Post beat us to it. The gist is what’s important. Eric Schnabel, the chief operating office of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — ground-zero of the Trump war on science research -— was fired and literally escorted off the premises yesterday apparently directing a hefty sole-source contract to a company which employs his wife. It seems Trish Duffy Schnabel often goes by her maiden name and he may have thought that was strong enough OpSec to get away with it.

Schnabel, a 25 year Army vet, had always raised concern and harrumphs within the non-toady echelon at NIH because he apparently had no scientific or biomedical background, despite science and biomedicine playing a rather large role in the NIH brief.

Is it a harmonic convergence? Is the Rep. Corey Mills (R-FL) alleged assault case finally coming into focus? Let me try to explain the moving parts here. Remember back in February, D.C. police went to home of Mills responding to reports that he had assaulted a woman who D.C. publications delicately noted was not his wife. Prosecuting something like this in D.C. is in the hands of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., who, at the time, was Jan. 6 attorney Ed Martin. Through some mix of Martin doing Mills a solid and the D.C. police spoiling the case because of who Mills was, charges were never brought. So, big win for Mills, as D.C. goes. You can’t be charged with a crime in Washington, D.C. if you’re a Republican these days. I don’t make the rules.

Last night, Daily Beast reporter Roger Sollenberger posted on Twitter that Mills is being evicted from his D.C. apartment on which he owes $85,000. The rent is $20,833 a month.

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.