From TPM Reader TS …

I have been a member of TPM for 10 years and a reader for more than 20 years.  I gave this year and I try to give every year because your work brings me joy.  Yes, it informs me and educates me, but it also gives me great joy.  And not just as a reader who craves smart and thoughtful news and commentary, but as a fellow business owner.  I have had my law firm for over 22 years (we are now 7 lawyers and 3 staff), and I have learned that culture, openness, and transparency are the keys to success.  I treat my team and my clients like grown-ups, and it fosters an environment of respect and general fulfillment (is it a job after all!).  I see the same thing with TPM, and it shows in everything you do.  I get my news from many sources that I respect, but TPM is one of the few that I support financially because I feel like I am part of something positive with good people on your team and among your readers.  Thank you and keep up the good work.

From TPM Reader JB …

I contribute to the Journalism Fund for the same reason I am an Inside Member. Over the last quarter century, having read TPM since 2000, I have found it to be an invaluable lens for bringing the cacophony of national events into understandable order.

First, thank you to everyone who has contributed since we kicked off this year’s Annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive this morning. We’re now past $100,000 toward our goal of $500,000 for the drive. We truly appreciate it. To keep this going please click here to contribute. (See this post below for a bit more on the drive and here for why it’s so important this year.) One additional thing to add to the community part of this drive and the TPM community itself: if you contribute, drop us a line to let us know why. (Send it to talk at talkingpointsmemo dot com with the subject line: “TPM J Fund”) What made you want to contribute? What is important to you about TPM? What role does it play in your news and politics world? Different ways to answer it but basically, “why?” We’ll publish them here. Again, thank you and keep those contributions coming.

It’s time to kick off this year’s Annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive. This fund is a critical part of what keeps TPM vital and strong. If you’ve contributed in the past — and especially if you haven’t — I hope you will take a moment this morning and join us in contributing. Just click right here. If you’re thinking you might get to it at some point, please take literally about a minute and a half and do it this morning. That helps us get to our goal all the quicker, and get back to focusing on the news 100% of the time.

This year we need to get to $500,000, and if we can get over that that will be great and a real assist. I explained here over the weekend why this year’s drive is particularly critical. TPM is a collaborative enterprise. It’s that way within our operation and from the literal beginning it’s been a collaboration with our readers, who gives us angles and tips and perspective on stories and who have our operation’s back with your financial support. It is a collaboration with you and today our team needs your support. We literally can’t produce what we are producing, play our — I believe critical — role in the news ecosystem without your contributions.

In the coming days I’m going to be sharing more about what we have planned over the next year and why the drive is so important. But for now, we need your help. Any amount gets us closer to our goal and helps us get there as fast as possible. It would mean so much to us if you could join with us today. It just takes stopping in your routine and giving us no more than two minutes today. Just click right here. We thank you.

Kate and I recorded an emergency insta-pod episode of the podcast to discuss the sexual assault allegation against Graham Platner which Politico published this afternoon. That pod will be on your devices shortly. It’s looked, since we recorded around 5 pm ET, that this was it for his campaign. Comments like “assessing the best path forward” are campaign speak for we’re pulling the plug. More news since then only confirms that apparent read.

I’ve been beating the drums for years about reforming the Supreme Court to bring its corruption and anti-democracy to heal. In general I’ve avoided getting very detailed about what reform would look like for two reasons. First, there are technical details I lack knowledge about and which others are more able to address. Second, my focus is on building support for the premise, the necessity of reform. Getting too bound up or identified with really specific reforms can get in the way of that.

However, I get asked this a lot. So I wanted to explain the outline of the reform path that makes the most sense to me. I put this forward as a concept, with the understanding that some points might need fine tuning either for technical or constitutional reasons.

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.