We’re seeing an ongoing — and to me, pretty comical — garbage fire at NBC News over the hiring of Ronna McDaniel (or who I guess we might call Ronna X, since her last name may be subject to ongoing contract negotiation) as a paid contributor. I’ll assume you’ve seen at least some reports on the controversy. I want to add three things. First a personal aside, second a guess about what happened and third something about the structural roots of “bothsidesist” news coverage.

So we have another on-set rewrite on the Saving Private Trump movie.

Today was the day Trump’s 30-day grace period ran out and the State of New York, in the person of NY AG Tish James, could start collecting on the $464 million judgment. But now a New York appeals court judge has stepped in and given Trump a significant reprieve. He now has ten days to come up with a significantly reduced bond of $175 million. Remember that the judgment was actually $355 plus almost $100 million in interest. So the logic of the number seems to be cutting the main judgment roughly in half (that’s my speculation) and making that the amount of the bond. The judgment itself stands. This is just about the bond.

Needless to say, this is a big, big win for Trump, at least for now.

But he’s not necessarily out of the woods.

This is a quick update on our very important membership drive. Tuesday will mark the end of the first week of the drive. Our goal is to sign up 1,000 new members during the drive. As of this moment we’re at 422. That’s getting close to half way there. So that’s great. Thank you! We’d really like to get half way to our goal by tomorrow evening. So if you’re a TPM Reader but not currently a TPM Member please make this the moment by clicking right here. We’re even running a special 40% discount. So it’s a great time to join.

To my great surprise and seemingly to the surprise of almost everyone else, New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy announced today that she is ending her campaign for Senate. That almost certainly clears the path for Rep. Andy Kim to become the Democratic nominee for the seat currently held by Sen. Bob Menendez. New Jersey isn’t quite in California sure-thing territory. But this makes it very likely that Kim will be elected to the Senate in November.

You’ve helped us get off to a great start to our Annual TPM Membership Drive. We’ve currently signed up 320 new TPM Members toward our goal of 1,000. It would be really, really great to end today with 350 new members. It’s a great time to do it. Our team is doing amazing work worthy of your support. The benefits of being a member are great. And we’re currently running a 40% discount offer during the drive. If you’ve been considering joining, can you take the plunge this afternoon? You can just take out your wallet this moment and it’s like a minute or two tops to sign up. Just click here. We truly appreciate it.