I’m totally out of my depth when it comes to internal Russian politics. But I know enough about which people are in their depth to know that something pretty serious is up. Yevgeny Prigozhin runs the Wagner group, something between a big Russian military contractor and a state-adjacent paramilitary. They played a big and fairly gruesome role in Syria and various other global hotspots where Russia is involved. Prigozhin, sometimes known as “Putin’s chef,” also happens to be the guy who ran a lot of the troll farms that sowed havoc in the 2016 election. Wagner has played a significant role in Ukraine and there’s been a feud of some sort between Prigozhin/Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defense for months. But just today things appear to have taken a dramatic new turn with Prigozhin releasing videos saying he’s “declaring war” on the Ministry of Defense and making a number of public claims that throw the entire rationale for the invasion of Ukraine itself into doubt. In other words, they are the kind of moves you don’t come back from.

When we kicked off this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive we were sobered by the sheer scale of the hill we had to climb. But just over two weeks in we’re now just over 70% of the way to our goal. It seems increasingly possible, though we still have a ton of the way to go. If you’ve been considering contributing, you can do that by clicking right here.

[We’re entering the final stretch in this month’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. Click here to contribute.]

I saw someone last night making the fairly ludicrous claim that ProPublica’s muckraking exposés on Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito and the groundswell of revulsion they’ve touched off are no different from Donald Trump’s efforts to impugn the U.S. electoral system for his own political benefit. This is of course a risible and dishonest point for all the obvious reasons. It seems that for years or decades into the future we’ll be living with conservatives trying to get out from under the shame of Trumpism by saying this ordinary argument or that investigative journalism is comparable or no better than Donald Trump’s wars by conspiracy theory.

But the comment did get me thinking about the context of these exposés. It’s at least true that they do not arrive in a vacuum.

We might actually get to $350,000 in the TPM Journalism Fund drive tonight. We’re currently at $341,893. Wanna help us hit this key milestone? Just click right here.

Some of you are probably asking, does Josh really like doing all of these posts about the TPM Journalism Fund? Well, not particularly. But I’m happy to do it because these contributions directly impact the quality and depth of the journalism we will be able to bring you for the rest of this year and into the next. And that’s important enough to me that I’m happy to harp on this maybe more than I otherwise would.

One recurring feature of our organization and readers’ perception of it is that people think we are a much larger organization than we are. So a single additional hire or a relatively small amount of additional budget can have a big impact. It can also allow us to make investments that won’t show fruit until many months later. Remember, we’re not a subsidiary of some bigger company let alone a mega-corporation. So our business practices have to be very small-c conservative. There’s no net or larger entity in the background bankrolling us or injecting additional money if things don’t go according to plan.

That can make running this operation a bit anxiety provoking. But the plus side of that is that there’s no big diversified corporation making the big decisions for reasons unconnected with journalism. There’s no boss uninvolved in our daily work telling us what to do. Every decision that affects TPM gets made by someone whose byline you see every day or someone on the publishing team you can see right down there on the masthead.

Here’s the link.

From TPM Reader SH …

Those who can’t seem to get around to contributing should know that once they finally do, the next time it will take longer to sneeze than to donate. You guys have a very efficient system.

Keep up the great work! You guys have been keeping me sane for 15+ years.

It’s really that easy. Just click right here.

Late Update: I just checked the numbers. We might actually get to $350,000 today. We’re currently at $334,196.

As you’ve seen, House Republicans are now falling out amongst themselves not over whether to impeach President Biden but over which of the two reality-show-style contestant reps (see Boebert-Greene cage match) gets credit and pride of place to be the first to impeach him, or rather the first to introduce the motion to do so. And really, who copied who?

This comes after months of threats that House Republicans will impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and perhaps various other secretaries, deputy secretaries or other appointees. It appears that the first vote to impeach President Biden may come not for his various other imagined crimes but because the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Delaware (left in place for more than two years) did not come up with more charges against the President’s son, Hunter.

We all of course know that impeachment is not removal from office. Indeed, the symbolic sanction has been significantly devalued in recent decades. Still many of us still feel that it crosses a psychic line, an unmerited but woeful hammer a rogue majority can bring down on a President who has not only not acted in a way that merits impeachment but not even in a way that merits criticism.

In a word, it hurts.

The first week of these drives is always the biggest. We’re now coming to the end of week two. To keep on track we really, really, really want to get to $350,000 by the end of two weeks. Right now we’re at $320,665. I’ve emailed with a number of you who’ve told me you haven’t had a convenient moment yet but plan to contribute. If that’s you, can you take literally less than two minutes right now and make a contribution of any amount? It truly just takes a moment. If you’re a member you don’t even have to take out your credit card. It’s that simple. Just take a moment literally right now. You can just click here.

Okay, we’re creeping up on 2/3rds of the way toward our very ambitious and very necessary goal in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We’re currently at $318,669. That’s very solid. But we need to keep moving it forward. If you’ve been considering contributing, please take a moment to do so today. It’s quick and easy, especially if you’re a current member. Literally takes about one minute. Just click right here. And thank you in advance.

You’ve likely seen that TPM Alum Justin Elliott and the team at ProPublica is back with another big exclusive about the Supreme Court. This time, for once, Clarence Thomas is in the clear. Now we’re talking about the intemperate and peevish Sam Alito who took an all expenses paid fishing trip to Alaska back in 2008, courtesy of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. In a characteristic move, Alito refused to respond to the reporters’ questions and then published his answers as an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in a kind of prebuttal and attack. Because yes, he’s that guy.

The bulk of the story is a detailed run-down of what Alito did, what a justice needs to disclose and what kind of high-powered gifts should dictate a recusal in cases where Singer had some direct stake — there’ve been a number. But the gem in Alito’s prebuttle op-ed is the explanation of the private jet flight.