Six States Vote Today, Welcome To The Post-USAID World, Non-Voters And Indies Turn On The Rs

Let's go Jen Jordan and Miracle Rankin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morning all. Going to be a busy week (as they all are). Six states have primaries tonight - Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. We will be tracking them all but particularly Rep. Massie’s re-election in Kentucky, our Supreme Court races in Georgia, and the Dem House primaries in Pennsylvania.

To talk about this consequential political week I’ll be hosting/participating in four live events in the next few days: (all times ET):

• Today, Noon - I’ll be joining writer and commentator Matt Lewis.

• Wed, 915am - Coffee with the Contrarians. Will be a comprehensive review tonight’s primary results.

• Wed, 7pm - Hopium paid subscriber weekly get together. Register here.

• Fri, 3pm ET - ASDC President Jane Kleeb joins us live to talk Nebraska in 2026 and to review the progress the DNC/ASDC is making in rebuilding the state party infrastructure across the country and our collective efforts to “expand the map.”

With new nominees emerging from primaries tomorrow we will be expanding our Winning The House campaign to includes some new, exciting candidates. The first two - Bobby Pulido in TX-15 and Denise Powell in NE-02. Look for more tomorrow and a big thanks to our Hopium community. We’ve now hit $1m raised for our battleground House candidates this cycle, and more than $3m for all of our candidates and party committees! Still have much more to do!

Denise Powell and Bobby Pulido

The MAGA Eugenicists At The White House/HHS/CDC Are About To Get Tested - The sudden, unexpected withdrawal of the US from the fragile global public health and aid ecosystem was always inhumane, reckless, and dangerous. Estimates are that 14m of the poorest people in the world will now die due to Trump/Musk and the white supremacists/eugenicists in the regime. The disruption of global fertilizer supplies, higher energy supplies, a more virulent summer El Niño, and the degraded post-USAID humanitarian aid ecosystem may result in dire food shortages later this year across the developing world (and much higher prices here). And now we have a deadly rare form of Ebola spreading in Africa, one which cannot be treated or even caught through existing available tests, that we now know spread unchecked in the weakened post-USAID global health system:

Simply this story is a must read (gift link). An excerpt:

As soon as Ebola was identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda late last week, the severity of the outbreak was clear. There were already hundreds of suspected cases and dozens of suspected deaths.

Shortly after the outbreak was announced, the World Health Organization declared it a global health emergency.

But by then, the virus had already been circulating for weeks.

Congo has surveillance systems meant to identify outbreaks early so that they can be effectively contained. The country has added several laboratories in recent years and has extensive experience with previous, devastating Ebola outbreaks.

And yet, precious time was lost when officials in Ituri, the province at the heart of the current outbreak, did not raise the alarm when patients began to show symptoms. Samples may not have been sent quickly enough to Kinshasa, the capital, for testing.

“The alert was out very late,” said Dr. Marie-Roseline Belizaire, a doctor and epidemiologist who is leading the World Health Organization’s response to the outbreak. Typically, high numbers of cases are picked up much earlier by health officials or in news reports. This time, it was weeks before health officials knew for certain that they were dealing with an Ebola outbreak.

The consequences of such a long delay could prove catastrophic. There are no vaccines or treatments for Ebola Bundibugyo, the rare species of the virus that is responsible for the current outbreak, and tests that can be used in the field are hard to come by. And in Ituri, contact tracing is likely to be very difficult.

Here’s the Washington Post this morning - Why this Ebola outbreak will be so difficult to contain (gift link):

Public health authorities and experts warn the world is confronting a dangerous convergence of factors that could make the latest Ebola outbreak extraordinarily difficult to contain: a fast-moving epidemic in a conflict-ridden region, involving a strain with no approved vaccine, at a moment when the global health infrastructure built after past Ebola crises has been weakened by funding cuts and political upheaval.

The concern comes as the United States on Monday tightened entry rules for some travelers and disclosed that an American infected with the deadly disease was flown to Germany for treatment.

This outbreak comes just two weeks before the world starts arriving in the US for the World Cup which kicks off on June 11th. The Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Ebola outbreak began, is one of the teams traveling here in the next few weeks.

Trump is already facing three “Vietnams,” three crises where he can no longer win but where he cannot withdraw due to being perceived as weak - the war, the tariffs, and ICE/mass deportations. It is possible that in the coming days a fourth Vietnam develops for the regime - the MAGA/eugenicist cuts to public health, health care, and humanitarian aid here in the US and around the world.

Meanwhile here is new Politico reporting on Trump’s next imperialist adventure. The easy success of the taking of Venezuela continues to drive Trump’s extraordinary recklessness:

The Trump administration has been dancing around the question of whether it will carry out military strikes against Cuba. I am told it is increasingly willing to take such a step.

That’s a significant escalation from a few months ago, when officials were primarily focused on using economic and diplomatic pressure to squeeze the communist regime in Havana.

A U.S. official and a person familiar with the administration’s discussions on Cuba told me that President Donald Trump and his aides have grown frustrated that the U.S. pressure campaign, which includes starving the island of fuel, has not led Cuba’s leaders to agree to significant economic and political reforms. So they’re taking the military option more seriously than previously.

“The mood has definitely changed,” said the person familiar with discussions, whom, like others, I granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. “The initial idea on Cuba was that the leadership was weak and that the combination of stepped-up sanctions enforcement, really an oil blockade, and clear U.S. military wins in Venezuela and Iran would scare the Cubans into making a deal. Now Iran has gone sideways, and the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought. So now military action is on the table in a way that it wasn’t before.”

We’ve also seen renewed efforts by the Trump regime this week to take Greenland:

Going to be a wild World Cup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And of course there is this too…….

Indies and Non-Voters Breaking Hard Towards The Dems - G. Elliot Morris has a terrific new analysis of that new NYT poll we discussed yesterday, Independents and 2024 non-voters have swung back left:

The Democrats also posted an 11-point margin among registered voters in the NYT poll’s “generic ballot” question, which measures support for U.S. House candidates across the country. That matches our January–February Strength In Numbers/Verasight polls. Our May poll comes out next week.

But the result that should really cause you to update your beliefs about this year’s midterms is not in the topline or the Times’ official reporting, but hidden deep in the poll’s crosstabs.

A big story of the 2024 election was that Donald Trump made inroads with non-voters who traditionally leaned Democratic, and even got some of them to turn out for him. But now It’s looking like he has squandered those gains and put his party on the path to midterm defeat in the House — and possibly the Senate.

………….

According to the Times‘ poll, political independents now favor the Democrats in their congressional races by 18 percentage points. And Americans who did not vote in the 2024 election give the Democratic Party a 31-point margin:

The Times numbers are not outliers.

In our Strength In Numbers/Verasight polling, the Democratic margin on the generic congressional ballot now stands at +17 points among political independents and +20 points among 2024 non-voters, as of our April 2026 wave. Those margins have widened across eleven months of monthly polling, from May 2025 through April 2026 — with some month-to-month wobble, but a clear and durable trend in one direction.

Two takeaways from this analysis: 1) this is a year of extraordinary opportunity for us 2) the partisan voter registration test the DNC has begun in Arizona should be rolled out nationwide as soon as possible.

Which is why it is time…..

To Get To Work Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ve begun a campaign to pass HR 2913 - The Ukraine Support Act - through the House and then work to get something similar through the Senate. Learn more here, and please call your House Rep every day until it passes. This one really matters people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map

Rallying For Jen Jordan and Miracle Rankin For Georgia Supreme Court - This is our next big opportunity to make good trouble all. The election is tonight, the early vote has been very encouraging, and we have 2 great candidates, Jen Jordan and Miracle Rankin, who have a serious shot at flipping two GOP-held Supreme Court seats. Watch our new interview with Jordan and Rankin and volunteer no matter where you are!

While we have stopped fundraising for these two terrific candidates excited to report that we raised $52,800, suprpassing our $50,000 goal for the campaign! Fingers crossed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $696,600 raised, $1,000,000 goal (new ambitious, audacious even, q2 goal) - Donate to all twelve of our endorsed House challengers with a single contribution split twelve ways | Get to know Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Chaz Molder (TN-05), Jonathan Nez (AZ-02), Janelle Stelson (PA-10), Shannon Taylor (VA-01), and Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03) by watching our recently recorded Hopium interviews.

Friends if these twelve win, the House will flip, no matter redistricting madness the Rs execute in the coming days. So eyes on the prize her

Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $93,700 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my uplifting conversation with Mary Peltola as she fights to turn Alaska blue

James Talarico For Texas - $71,300 raised, $250,000 - Donate | Learn more from my inspiring interview with Rep. Talarico as he fights to turn Texas blue

Winning Ohio - $146,700 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party | Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue | Watch my new discussions with US Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, our candidate for Governor Dr. Amy Acton, Lt. Gov candidate David Pepper, and Ohio Dem Chair Kathleen Clyde

This total includes $21,000 sent by a Hopium community member directly to each of our three Buckeye State partners!

Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $567,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our campaign that has helped expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas, all now central battlegrounds in the 2026 election | Catch interviews with the five intrepid state chairs leading their troops into battle this year - will get you fired up! | Contribute to all five state parties with one contribution split evenly among these five new battlegrounds

Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $20,000 to each of our five state parties over the past two years

Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $113,400 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my new discussion with Gov. Cooper as he fights to turn North Carolina blue

Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $176,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learm more through my uplifting conversation with Senator Ossoff

Keep working hard everyone. We have a country to save, and elections to win, together! - Simon