January 11, 2017

Here Are the 3 Actual Pieces of News From Trump’s Press Conference

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So what was the actual news from Trump’s press conference? Here it is:

  • He will introduce legislation (or a plan or something) to both repeal and replace Obamacare within a few weeks.
  • He now believes Russia was probably behind the election hacking.
  • He has chosen a nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin.

The rest was mostly general whining about the press and various and sundry other Trump bugaboos.

The nomination of David Shulkin as Secretary of Veterans Affairs was certainly unexpected. After months of (mostly false) blather about how the VA was a failing organization and the current management was incompetent, Trump nominates…a member of the current management. In fact, he’s the member of management who runs the Veterans Health Administration, the very organization that Trump has been so scathing about. This is very strange indeed.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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