Here I present to you one of the biggest mysteries in American politics: Donald Trump’s steadily rising job approval rating since December 12, 2017:

In the first half of 2018, Trump’s job approval has increased from about 37 percent to 43 percent. But why? My theory has long been that the tax cut is responsible. Sure, it might not be all that popular, but at least it ended a year of chaos with a concrete accomplishment that shows Trump can act presidential when he needs to. But if that’s the case, the warm glow of accomplishment should have faded away as public views of the tax cut have gotten more negative. So what are some other possibilities?

  • The Singapore summit, the Helsinki summit, and the meeting with the queen all seem very presidential.
  • People are increasingly turned off by the Democratic “witch hunt.”
  • The soft bigotry of low expectations: No nuclear wars have started, so that counts in Trump’s favor.
  • People like trade wars with Canada and Europe.
  • A lot of people have been waiting for someone to give NATO a stern talking-to.
  • Separating children at the border is more popular than we think.
  • It’s all meaningless: as the economy improves, so does presidential approval, no matter who the president is.

What else? Those of us who inhabit a liberal cocoon tend to think of the Trump presidency as simply one disaster following another. But obviously the rest of the country doesn’t quite see things that way. So what are they seeing that we don’t?

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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.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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