Yet More Revenge From the Trump Administration

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This is also from yesterday, so I missed it, but honest to God, the balls on these guys:

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who has investigated President Trump’s closest associates, was refusing to leave his position on Saturday after Attorney General William P. Barr tried to fire him, setting up an extraordinary standoff over the independence of law enforcement and the president’s purge of officials he views as disloyal.

Mr. Barr abruptly announced the resignation late Friday night of the prosecutor, Geoffrey S. Berman, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York….But Mr. Berman then quickly issued a statement denying that he was leaving. “I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he had learned that he was “stepping down” from a Justice Department news release.

There’s a bunch of crap that goes along with this, mostly excuses about how this isn’t really retaliation for doing too good a job of investigating Rudy Giuliani, but none of it matters. This is, obviously, retaliation for doing too good a job of investigating Rudy Giuliani.

Needless to say, even Trump and Barr wouldn’t have the nerve to do something so obvious if they thought there was the slightest chance of their fellow Republicans refusing to go along. But Republicans have gone along with every other instance of Trump’s retaliation against anyone who doesn’t toe the line, so there’s no reason to think they’ll suddenly revolt over this one.

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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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