Talking Points Memo

If you've been reading TPM for awhile, you may already know that our organization can shift on a dime. We typically have around five reporters. (A few of our editors also write.) That means, unlike larger news organizations, we don't have people with particular beats. We don't have people who author a particular kind of story — no one who just writes breaking news or just writes features or just does a newsletter or a podcast. Everyone, at any moment, can pitch in with anything on any topic. 

Though it wasn't always the result of a conscious decision on the part of the editors, TPM has made use of this flexibility during this unprecedented time. We've reinvented our approach to the news repeatedly since August 2024, when our last Journalism Fund drive concluded, with our reporters working in different modes and in different styles across a wide range of topics to contend with a historic moment in American history.

As we reflect on the many ways TPM is unique during the journalism fund drive, I thought readers might enjoy a glimpse of how we see the journey we've traveled over the last year — in terms of what we understood ourselves to be providing to readers, and what we understood readers to need from us

Ahead of the election, we felt it was important to make clear the stakes. That meant less horserace-style journalism and more about what the Trump administration was making clear it intended to do. We warned about the coming attempt at denaturalizations, of military crackdowns against protesters, and of a Republican effort to lay the groundwork for claiming undocumented immigrants stole the election — a conspiracy theory the GOP didn't end up needing to make use of, given their comfortable margins in each swing state. We didn't totally eschew breaking news either — we, for instance, did exclusive reporting on the Trump campaign's anti-Haitian attacks on residents of Springfield, Ohio and chronicled such daily occurrences as QAnon memes posted by Trump — but our focus was on making clear the ways in which we could already see Trump II would not simply be a repeat of Trump I. 

With Trump's November 2024 win, our understanding of what readers needed changed entirely. No one needed to know what could happen. It was happening. And it was happening extraordinarily quickly. We shifted to be an organization focused less on analysis, more on breaking news. We broke stories on the extremists and ideologues streaming into government; DOGE's attacks on the IRS, independent agencies and the courts; and Trump's flouting of Supreme Court precedent with waves of illegal firings. We chronicled individual developments as Congress and the Supreme Court acquiesced to Trump's efforts to elevate the executive branch over the others; Republicans' telegraphed (and ultimately realized) plan to cut health care after promising not to; and the administration shipped immigrants without due process to countries with which they had no connection. 

Now, another shift in how we approach our coverage is underway. Around May, we started to get the sense readers might be overwhelmed with the rapid-fire drumbeat of headlines. We can't blame them. DOGE, Trump's firings, the Supreme Court's carveouts for the administration on the shadow docket, the abuse of the immigration system, Congress' giveaway of its own power, the scandals du jour — there was a lot going on each day, and it was nearly impossible to keep track of it all. We haven't stopped trying to, but we've also made room, again, for pieces that step back and contextualize this moment — not warnings of the type we were publishing in late 2024, per se, but stories taking note that many of those things we warned about are now coming to pass — helping readers not to miss the forest for the trees. Many of our most-read stories capture moments that, in a way, are the tip of the iceberg. They describe something small that is indicative of something big, like JD Vance's speech to a right-wing think tank outlining his thoughts on who has "claim over America," or the ways in which the administration might spend Congress' dump truck of money for Trump's immigration policies, or the DeSantis administration's use of disaster preparedness resources for its new, performatively cruel immigrant detention camp. Each is a narrow story that speaks to a broader theme. 

When you support TPM, you are supporting a news organization that is small, but nimble. We can't cover everything. (Increasingly, nobody can.) But each day, we remain committed to providing readers with stories that can help them understand what's happening in a way that, we hope, meets their current need for information, satisfies their curiosity, and helps ground them in our member community. Over time, what readers need might change. But we pride ourselves on our ability to intuit, and adapt to, those changes.

- John Light (Executive Editor)

Last week we took a chance and tried something we had never done before. As a result, this week there are hundreds of fewer people reading this email.

They aren't reading this because they are now members and are probably reading member exclusives like Josh Marshall's evolving thoughts on the Epstein wildfire currently engulfing MAGA world or about how Trump's immigration policy is super unpopular.

In fact, so many people became members last week that our publisher broke his self-mandated no-work-contact-during-parental-leave rule to find out what was going on.

So what was going on? 

It might have been that we offered our biggest discount ever on a TPM Prime Membership. It also might have something to do with the launch of our annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive, which regular readers know is a critical way for us to raise money to support our journalism and to support free memberships for those experiencing financial hardship (if this applies to you, click here). 

Whatever the reason so many previous readers of this email decided to join, it really lit a fire in our newsroom. Seeing that readers value and want to support your work is like being injected with a steroid in the journalism business — especially when your organization is more than 90% reader-funded. It gave our small team an even greater sense of focus and purpose by letting us know what we do is truly needed.

In other words, it meant a lot to us.

So as we continue on with the TPM Journalism Fund Drive and the celebration of our 25th anniversary, we're going to continue with the discount and see if we can catch lightning twice. This deal is strictly for a limited time during this critical part of the year. We encourage anyone who has thought about joining TPM in the past to take advantage of this offer and become a member today. 

If you've opened at least one of these emails, you know that we send them hoping we can persuade you to become a TPM member. If you read these emails regularly, you also know that we rarely cut to the chase and ask you to join. 

The reason for this is that if you take the time to open one of our emails, we feel we owe you more than just a transactional request. If we can inform or delight you in some small way in exchange for your continued readership, that seems like a fair trade. Sure, we want you to become a member, but we understand that it might take some time. And in most cases we're happy to wait, to build a rapport; after all, we don't plan on going anywhere. 

But this month, to mark the start of our annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive and in celebration of TPM's 25th anniversary, we're coming to you directly with the biggest discount we have ever offered and asking that if you've ever considered joining TPM, you make now the time to do it. 

The TPM Journalism Fund drive is a critical part of the year for TPM where we raise money to support our journalism and to support free memberships for those experiencing financial hardship (if this applies to you, click here). But each year during the drive, we tell readers who are not yet members that rather than make a contribution to the fund, the best way to support us is through a membership. However, we realize that not everyone is able or willing to pay the full price of a membership; some of these readers may still want to support our work in some way. While we are grateful for any amount of support, we also want to give as many of our supporters as possible something in return. 

So for a limited time we are offering one year of TPM Prime for only $25. If you've thought about joining in the past or were thinking about making a contribution to the Journalism Fund, we encourage you to take advantage of this offer and become a member today. 

Otherwise, we'll try you again next week.

Every year around this time I watch two movies: Jaws and Independence Day. Both feel relevant in different ways today. In Jaws, you have a scientist who arrives at a small town and, while trying to warn about a threat, is stymied by a politician who has his own agenda. Independence Day is about an alien invasion and features one of the all time great movie speeches delivered by President Thomas J. Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman), which, despite my best efforts, still gets me every time. Especially the ending.
 

"We will not go quietly into the night!

We will not vanish without a fight!

We're going to live on!

We're going to survive!"
 

Is it corny? Yeah, of course it is. It's 10/10 corny. But it still gets me fired up, especially when Pullman says, "We will not go quietly into the night." It's a simple but surprisingly apt rallying cry for a newsroom. On some level, it's the whole purpose of our existence, to ensure that when those in power do bad things, the general public and you, our readers, know about them. It's quite literally our job, our raison d'être, to not go quietly into the night. We're gonna be loud as hell.

As the Trump administration pushes forward with increasingly undemocratic, authoritarian, and frankly, anti-American efforts to suppress speech, redefine citizenship and undo foundational institutions, we have to collectively push back by whatever means are at our disposal. For a news outlet like TPM, that means documenting and contextualizing as much as we possibly can. It's the essence of public service journalism.

Being ashamed of what the regime is currently doing does not preclude one from working tirelessly to change the course we're on. At its absolute finest, journalism doesn't just stand on the sidelines and note things for future generations — it assists those who are fighting for change today. The second sentence of our about page says: We are particularly focused on reporting on abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust. That was the case 25 years ago when Josh was blogging by himself and it's the case now with a team of four editors, six reporters and a Josh Marshall. Journalism is not mere stenography, it's aggressive and often intrinsically confrontational. Because we will not go quietly into the night. And we hope you come with us and support us. We can always get a bigger boat.