As I’ve told you a number of times over the last three weeks, we launched this year’s Annual TPM Membership Drive with an ambitious goal of signing up 1,000 new members. Today, a bit before noon, we hit our goal. It was even ahead of schedule. We truly appreciate it. We appreciate our members and especially those thousand new members. It’s a very important milestone for the company’s finances. But it is also a big shot in the arm for our whole team. Because this doesn’t happen by accident. We’re a small operation. And this is the product of every member of our team from editors and reporters to techs and designers and producers and publishing staff operating at their peak and operating as a very integrated and collaborative team. I really could not be prouder of every one of them.

Before I share a few other thoughts, two points: First, the drive was scheduled to run through the 15th. Since we’ve hit our goal I’m not going to be pushing you to sign up anymore in the Editors’ Blog. But the 40% discount we’ve been offering will continue to apply through the 15th.

We’ve signed up 996 new members so far in the drive. Just four more to go. Can we get there before the eclipse?

If you haven’t seen it yet, Donald Trump put out a video this morning in which he says a lot of gobbledegook, takes credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, and then says the abortion bans should be left up to individual states. We can draw the obvious intent: Republicans are terrified about the politics of abortion rights. He wants to take credit for overturning Roe and then say, essentially, my role is done now so leave me out of it. We will now see a lot of press tut-tutting toward anyone who points out the obvious point that Trump didn’t discuss the kind of blue-state abortion ban he has privately said he’ll support and sign if he’s reelected President. He avoids discussing plans to ban abortion drugs, which are now the primary way women get abortions in the country, or prevent them from being mailed to women in states with abortion bans.

We’re at 915 new TPM Members, folks. Just 85 more to go till we meet our goal of 1,000 new TPM Members. Let me pack in some extra encouragement. Please make today the day you sign up to join us, either as a new member or returning one. Just click here. And thank you. It makes a huge, huge difference for our whole operation.

Late Update: 930!

The killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has over the last two days triggered a wholesale shift across the U.S. political spectrum. But most particularly and significantly it’s triggered a shift from the White House. Today President Biden called for an “immediate ceasefire” along with comments from other administration officials that elaborate on a broader policy shift. In response now there are cries of betrayal from Netanyahu dead-enders as well as misgivings even from some of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics that the upshot of these events is that Hamas will live to fight another day with its brigades still holding out in Rafah.

But coming to this crossroads, which to me is a very positive development, is really all on the current government in Israel and the man who orchestrates every one of its strategies, Benjamin Netanyahu. Joe Biden has gone to every possible length to support Israel in its quest to destroy Hamas’s military capability after the terrorist paramilitary group invaded Israel with multiple death squads on October 7th. He has done that even through vast destruction to the basic physical infrastructure of Gaza and vast loss of innocent human life. He has maintained this in the face of tremendous geopolitical fallout. He has continued to do this even in the face of real damage to his political standing at home and chances for reelection in November.

We need your help for the final stretch of our Annual TPM Membership Drive. We’ve now signed up 858 new members out of our goal of 1,000. One of the benefits of these round numbers is that even I can easily compute the percentage in my head. We’re about 85% of the way there and we are going to pull out all the stops to hit our goal by the end of this week. If you have been thinking of joining during our drive, now is quite literally the time. Remember that in addition to all the direct benefits and supporting our work, we are running a 40% discount for the duration of the drive. So it’s also a good time for that. If you’ve never joined or perhaps let your membership lapse, please take a moment right now to click this link and join us. We all appreciate it.

Late Update: Now 893! We can definitely get past 900 this evening.

Thanks to so many of you for writing in in response to yesterday’s post about SCTV. It hadn’t occurred to me that lots of the sketches and maybe whole shows are on YouTube. But of course that makes perfect sense. One of the interesting things about those notes is that many of you mentioned something that I didn’t say explicitly in my post but was likely implicit, which is that being a fan of SCTV was a bit like joining a secret club. About half way through it’s run it got picked up by NBC and then it ran I think after Saturday Night Live. That’s a helluva time slot. But still, that’s network TV. Before that, though, you had to be a bit of a freak to even have found it. It would only be available as a syndicated show on one of the non-affiliate channels picked up from whatever rando station produced it in Toronto. (And yes, for you youngs, this was back when there were like 5 to 7 channels total, the three affiliate channels, PBS and then two or three low budget local channels that probably ran mostly repeats of like I Love Lucy and Brady Bunch.) So it really was a bit like being in a secret club. The few, the elect, the viewers of a show that was legit funnier than SNL.

Here’s a recollection from TPM Reader PK … (and God is he right about John Candy)