Missed this discussion, looking forward to listening.
Final prep for Saturday's No Kings, will be amazing - we finally have fall weather here at the Jersey Shore, and it is supposed to be a beautiful day! We have over a thousand signups!
Postcards to VA went in the mail yesterday, making calls for Mikie Sherrill this weekend with Moms.
It is no accident that the venn diagram of Trump diehards is almost a complete overlap with religious fundamentalists. Despite the fact that most have every evidence that prayer doesn't work and they know it on some level because when there is a mass shooting they call the cops and when they have a heart attack they call an ambulance not a pastor) they are unable/unwilling to face reality, just as they are unwilling to face that Trump is a selfish psychopath who doesn't care about them except as tools and marks.
Heading to the NC mountains to celebrate our wedding anniversary so have to miss our home city's No Kings, No Billionaires event. So happy to see that there are four(!) protests within an easy drive. Y'all, the mountains are not a D heavy part of the state and seeing we have multiple options to protest (the best way to celebrate an anniversary, right?) brings happy tears to my eyes. Packing our protest signs along with our champagne. Keep up the pressure, people!
Happy anniversary! I will also be out of town at my college's homecoming, but my friends and I will be attending a rally in our college town. Delighted to hear that the NC mountains are having rallies. I bet they'll be well attended.
If you are just coming to the recognition that Dump has chosen autocracy over democracy, you must have been asleep since 2017. For Vought and his fellow authors of Project 2025, Dump 1.0 was a test run to probe the weaknesses of our form of government. They identified most, if not all, of them, crafted a plan to exploit them, and stole the 2024 election through voter suppression in order to implement the plan. Dump is just a useful idiot!
I think the point is that more Americans are waking up to that fact, and its becoming even more obvious because Trump is escalating as his popularity craters. This is happening despite the lack of coverage in mainstream media. It's because of efforts like Hopium and others who have been pushing hard since the spring and we simply have to keep doing more of it to drive the narrative even wider and deeper.
Yes, especially in the Red-majority areas where they have seen FAFO results from Trump and the GOP. The mountains of NC now have seen--post-Helene--that a functioning government is required when things like natural disasters strike. And the Blue minority folks in those areas are less alone and being bolstered by hearing changed viewpoints towards our ideals from friends and family who thought "Trump was just being Trump." So yes, I revel in the fact that more protests are happening in places you'd never expect to see them.
Love how Simon summarized PRIORITY # 1 Win elections. Thank you. It's like the ABCs in healthcare. And don't forget to please bring postcards (NO RFK Jr-we do NOT support YOU!) for signatures to the NO KINGS protests. For more info. visit https://www.defendpublichealth.org/campaign/help-prove-rfk-jr-wrong
Hi Simon, I'm giving it another try. I'm not a "nervous Nellie." I've been knocking doors for Mikie since the primary. By this time I've knocked hundreds of doors, and I'm trying to share with the Hopium community what I'm hearing from voters. In urban districts where there are a lot of Dem votes, there is still confusion or lack of focus. Mikie is a fine candidate who is facing a tough race because of the high cost of taxes and living in New Jersey and a deficit of Dem mobilization dating back to 2024. Clearly we can win if Democrats turn out. Anything you can do to fire up the Hopium family in these final weeks would be smart and most welcome for the door-knockers in New Jersey. (Let's chat about immigration -- a mutual first love -- sometime next year.) Thank you for considering! Julia
Julia please remember that this an off year election and that turnout and overall intensity will be a fraction of what it was in 2024. I am not dismissing what you are saying, and yes as a suburbanite and relatively unknown candidate Sherrill may have to work harder to gain urban votes. But watch what Harry Enten had to say about the race today - https://x.com/alexthomp/status/1978826462359683185?s=46&t=_uKwMhsgt6Ebkxgn31md2g
great discussion; tom kean narrowly won his first race but by 85 was a popular guy at a time when reagan was popular too in nj; the mask had not come off the r's yet; also, tom kean sr was a decent guy; he cared deeply about education and held teachers in high regard, even if he believed in alternate route certification; he was a scholar and studied teaching at columbia in grad school; upon retiring he took a post as dean at drew university, at the time a private methodist school that was moving up the ranks, the school offered heady intellectual doctorates in things like modern european intellectual history.
i didn't agree with all his education ideas, but i owe my career to him as one of the first alternate route teachers. this is not the modern republican landscape; they are openly hostile to public education, want to tell schools what books they can have, want to cut special education, defund pensions, and on and on. while his son has been a back bencher who has traded on his dad's good name, today's republicans are a long way from the days of tom kean sr, jacob javitz and nelson rockefeller, or even christie todd whitman, or hell, even chris christie. ciatarelli has made some inroads in the suburbs, but he has some bad ideas about abortion and that ain't gonna fly here either. feeling better, but think it will be closer than 6 because less turnout in the urban areas and more trumpers in the suburbs these days. my definition of a trumper is, you voted for him....
Thank you for your hard work Julia! I knocked doors in Blooomfield and what was clear the one time I did it was many supporters didn’t know about early voting.
I know Joey D. is rallying the troops in Essex and Leroy Jones is out there. If they and Ras fire up their machines I am HOPING Essex County comes in strong!!! It saved Murphy in 2021.
Also NPR reported this morning that Democratic vote by mail ballots thus far are leading the GOP and running 20k votes ahead of where they were in 2021, FWIW.
Hubby and I are churning out postcards to NJ voters. Action America is targeting CD-7 voters. 🤷♀️
I'll be knocking doors in Hoboken, Jersey City and Bayonne, looking to pick up lists with Latino voters because I'm a Spanish speaker. Every vote in those communities will count.
For those who aren't aware of this news, late last night the Portland City Council passed two resolutions. The first is titled "Denounce any attempts to deploy the United States Armed Forces, the National Guard, or militarized Federal Immigration Enforcement in Portland and establish the Protect Portland Initiative." It is a sweeping resolution that establishes the "Protect Portland Initiative" and seeks to protect Portlanders' constitutional rights, among much else.
The second resolution codifies Portland as a Sanctuary City.
We have been looking for jurisdictions to pass resolutions of condemnation. In Portland, they passed one that has teeth. Here is coverage in The Oregonian:
"'Now is the time to model being brave rather than staying silent and hoping things will be OK,' said Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane, a co-sponsor of both measures, during a five-hour meeting in which dozens of people testified in support."
Yes, indeed, now is the time to model being brave.
Simon, thank you for last night's very useful discussion.
I wanted to share this short discussion between Congressman Jamie Raskin and Terry Moran. Raskin is very hopeful: "Don't fall for the gloom and doom. . . . . Fascism will not be the end of democracy. Democracy will be the end of fascism, right here in America. And we're going to make it happen."
Thank you, Simon, for addressing my question about whether we can find a meeting point for Hopium folks to gather on Saturday. The event is billed at taking place at 3rd Street and Penn. Ave. from 12 to 2. I'll be taking Metro from VA, as I'm sure many others will.
I think we just need to find and agree on a good meeting place where we can gather and participate together as a family.
I'll be wearing my FDR's 4 Freedoms T shirt, my mini American flags, and my signs. Not sure what all this yellow stuff is about, but I'll adorn a cheapish, yellow scarf!
It can be very exhilarating attending these events. Looking forward to it. Now back to finishing up my postcards for Abigail.
I’d be persuaded by the pro-Mills argument if she wasn’t nearly as old as Donald Trump. Also, perceived outsiders are trendy with voters these days it seems. Happy to let the Maine primary voters decide of course.
tim miller has a great discussion up with heather cox richardson who lives in maine and is married to a lobsterman. the key is who can win district 2....mills has shown she can, while platner has not won anything; he was a harbor master. at this point collins is not that unpopular in maine because she has actually been able to secure things for the state that trump had threatened, and voters may feel it's worthwhile to keep her around even if they don't like her much.
mills has shown she can win the state's liberals in the eastern part of the state and make inroads in the rural areas; at this time we are concerned with winning the senate where we can; our map is tough and we have no idea if an untried candidate with no wins under his belt could win against collins. he might, and heather did not make an endorsement, but rather explained why mills might be the better option for us right now, despite her age; someone else can run in 6 years. the voters will decide; rep golden thinks lepaige would win district 2, where he has ties and was mayor of waterville and manager of the marden's dept store, a place i love to shop at and its part of my maine vacation every year, and without district 2 a candidate maybe can't win. maine is also the oldest state, hell everyone i meet there is 80....and still hunting and fishing and launching their pontoon boats....
This New York Times article on the upcoming Supreme Court ruling over the Voting Rights Act paints a profoundly disturbing picture. It appears likely to upend years of progress — and could seriously undermine our efforts to take back Congress and win key state and local races.
I’d welcome clear-minded perspectives on this — and thoughts on what lies ahead.
My heart breaks for those folks. I spoke with residents in Selma about this when I visited several years back. It looks like it did in 1965, and not in a good way. Rep. Sewell is their lifeline and their bulwark, this will just be devastating. They do not have rural broadband in much of the state. UGH.
"His weakness, his failures, his unpopularity and rejection by the public, his fear of losing power, and our refusal to bend the knee, has led Trump and his team to choose the most un-American and traitorous path of all - autocracy."
Thank you Simon for keeping us informed of where we are. It is the heart of the battle.
Speaking of ridicule... the late night comedy folks have truly upped their game since the Kimmel debacle, Particularly Kimmel and Colbert. Courage is couragious... and contagious.
I have my No Kings placard ready to go... "25th Amendment: Unfit to serve. Trump is way way cray-cray" Once again, his cabinet will never invoke it. That's not the point. The point is to make it ubiquitious, so Maga denies it as ridiculous, and turn it to the national conversation... Strong Man or Crazy Person?
Calling my Reps. 1) DO NOT CAPITULATE! 2) Get LOUD on Adelita Grijalva and vote on the Epstein Files 3) Call out and Get Loud for the 25th Amendment.
Thurs. congresspersons call script that anyone can riff off of (adjust as appropriate if yours are team red):
- Keep holding the line on the shutdown! You’re doing great. Don’t capitulate.
- Assuming budget negotiations ever happen: restrict funding for unauthorized military operations under the Anti-Deficiency Act (31 USC 1341) to prevent the use of the military against Americans and also the illegal murders of Venezuelans.
- The Guardian is reporting that the administration is considering selling student loan debt to private investors. That means that we can anticipate even more abusive collections practices especially since there’s no functioning CFPB anymore. Us student loan debtors are smart enough to notice that our own taxpayer dollars (and student loan payments) are being given to Argentina in free handouts and to farmers in free handouts. So I never want to hear anything from Democrats again about how we don’t want “free handouts” to help us with our student loan debt. Yes, we do, and we deserve it just as much as the farmers and certainly more than Milei. When Democrats are back in power, I want to see bold student loan relief.
- Trump publicly said that there’s going to be a “surge” of his masked secret police to more blue cities. They are tackling and kidnapping regular Americans and it is starting to look like they are particularly going after women and girls. I expected this, because it was obvious that ICE was going to recruit incels as well as racists. Use the budget process to roll back the astronomical increase of funding for ICE in the big ugly bill, because it’s just our own taxpayer dollars being used to terrorize and wage war on us.
Wish I could post my sign for No Kings that I finished today. I don't usually invest the time and effort to make fancy signs but this time I went all out. I am so pleased with how it turned out.
I’ll be at No Kings in New York. Called my senators and congressman today, with a message of stay strong. I also called my state assemblymember and senator and said I wanted them to speak loudly and forcefully and I hope to see them at No Kings. Also mailed postcards to support candidates in Virginia.
Missed this discussion, looking forward to listening.
Final prep for Saturday's No Kings, will be amazing - we finally have fall weather here at the Jersey Shore, and it is supposed to be a beautiful day! We have over a thousand signups!
Postcards to VA went in the mail yesterday, making calls for Mikie Sherrill this weekend with Moms.
Keep going!
I want to share this excellent article that is an extension of what you say.
https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/history-says-most-trump-supporters
It is no accident that the venn diagram of Trump diehards is almost a complete overlap with religious fundamentalists. Despite the fact that most have every evidence that prayer doesn't work and they know it on some level because when there is a mass shooting they call the cops and when they have a heart attack they call an ambulance not a pastor) they are unable/unwilling to face reality, just as they are unwilling to face that Trump is a selfish psychopath who doesn't care about them except as tools and marks.
Heading to the NC mountains to celebrate our wedding anniversary so have to miss our home city's No Kings, No Billionaires event. So happy to see that there are four(!) protests within an easy drive. Y'all, the mountains are not a D heavy part of the state and seeing we have multiple options to protest (the best way to celebrate an anniversary, right?) brings happy tears to my eyes. Packing our protest signs along with our champagne. Keep up the pressure, people!
Happy anniversary! I will also be out of town at my college's homecoming, but my friends and I will be attending a rally in our college town. Delighted to hear that the NC mountains are having rallies. I bet they'll be well attended.
If you are just coming to the recognition that Dump has chosen autocracy over democracy, you must have been asleep since 2017. For Vought and his fellow authors of Project 2025, Dump 1.0 was a test run to probe the weaknesses of our form of government. They identified most, if not all, of them, crafted a plan to exploit them, and stole the 2024 election through voter suppression in order to implement the plan. Dump is just a useful idiot!
I think the point is that more Americans are waking up to that fact, and its becoming even more obvious because Trump is escalating as his popularity craters. This is happening despite the lack of coverage in mainstream media. It's because of efforts like Hopium and others who have been pushing hard since the spring and we simply have to keep doing more of it to drive the narrative even wider and deeper.
Yes, especially in the Red-majority areas where they have seen FAFO results from Trump and the GOP. The mountains of NC now have seen--post-Helene--that a functioning government is required when things like natural disasters strike. And the Blue minority folks in those areas are less alone and being bolstered by hearing changed viewpoints towards our ideals from friends and family who thought "Trump was just being Trump." So yes, I revel in the fact that more protests are happening in places you'd never expect to see them.
Love how Simon summarized PRIORITY # 1 Win elections. Thank you. It's like the ABCs in healthcare. And don't forget to please bring postcards (NO RFK Jr-we do NOT support YOU!) for signatures to the NO KINGS protests. For more info. visit https://www.defendpublichealth.org/campaign/help-prove-rfk-jr-wrong
Hi Simon, I'm giving it another try. I'm not a "nervous Nellie." I've been knocking doors for Mikie since the primary. By this time I've knocked hundreds of doors, and I'm trying to share with the Hopium community what I'm hearing from voters. In urban districts where there are a lot of Dem votes, there is still confusion or lack of focus. Mikie is a fine candidate who is facing a tough race because of the high cost of taxes and living in New Jersey and a deficit of Dem mobilization dating back to 2024. Clearly we can win if Democrats turn out. Anything you can do to fire up the Hopium family in these final weeks would be smart and most welcome for the door-knockers in New Jersey. (Let's chat about immigration -- a mutual first love -- sometime next year.) Thank you for considering! Julia
Julia please remember that this an off year election and that turnout and overall intensity will be a fraction of what it was in 2024. I am not dismissing what you are saying, and yes as a suburbanite and relatively unknown candidate Sherrill may have to work harder to gain urban votes. But watch what Harry Enten had to say about the race today - https://x.com/alexthomp/status/1978826462359683185?s=46&t=_uKwMhsgt6Ebkxgn31md2g
The ground operation Sherrill has is bigger and has more volunteers than any Dem gubernatorial campaign in recent history.
Including me!
And me!!!
And me!
great discussion; tom kean narrowly won his first race but by 85 was a popular guy at a time when reagan was popular too in nj; the mask had not come off the r's yet; also, tom kean sr was a decent guy; he cared deeply about education and held teachers in high regard, even if he believed in alternate route certification; he was a scholar and studied teaching at columbia in grad school; upon retiring he took a post as dean at drew university, at the time a private methodist school that was moving up the ranks, the school offered heady intellectual doctorates in things like modern european intellectual history.
i didn't agree with all his education ideas, but i owe my career to him as one of the first alternate route teachers. this is not the modern republican landscape; they are openly hostile to public education, want to tell schools what books they can have, want to cut special education, defund pensions, and on and on. while his son has been a back bencher who has traded on his dad's good name, today's republicans are a long way from the days of tom kean sr, jacob javitz and nelson rockefeller, or even christie todd whitman, or hell, even chris christie. ciatarelli has made some inroads in the suburbs, but he has some bad ideas about abortion and that ain't gonna fly here either. feeling better, but think it will be closer than 6 because less turnout in the urban areas and more trumpers in the suburbs these days. my definition of a trumper is, you voted for him....
Thank you for your hard work Julia! I knocked doors in Blooomfield and what was clear the one time I did it was many supporters didn’t know about early voting.
I know Joey D. is rallying the troops in Essex and Leroy Jones is out there. If they and Ras fire up their machines I am HOPING Essex County comes in strong!!! It saved Murphy in 2021.
Also NPR reported this morning that Democratic vote by mail ballots thus far are leading the GOP and running 20k votes ahead of where they were in 2021, FWIW.
Hubby and I are churning out postcards to NJ voters. Action America is targeting CD-7 voters. 🤷♀️
my task tonight; get my 23 year old daughter and my wife to complete their mail in ballots. hey. it's something....
I heard same NPR reporting, VBM is doing well. I will be making calls till elex day and knocking doors every weekend. thx for the postcards!
I'll be knocking doors in Hoboken, Jersey City and Bayonne, looking to pick up lists with Latino voters because I'm a Spanish speaker. Every vote in those communities will count.
For those who aren't aware of this news, late last night the Portland City Council passed two resolutions. The first is titled "Denounce any attempts to deploy the United States Armed Forces, the National Guard, or militarized Federal Immigration Enforcement in Portland and establish the Protect Portland Initiative." It is a sweeping resolution that establishes the "Protect Portland Initiative" and seeks to protect Portlanders' constitutional rights, among much else.
https://www.portland.gov/council/documents/resolution/protect-portland-initiative
The second resolution codifies Portland as a Sanctuary City.
We have been looking for jurisdictions to pass resolutions of condemnation. In Portland, they passed one that has teeth. Here is coverage in The Oregonian:
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/10/portland-leaders-aim-to-combat-aggressive-federal-overreach-bolster-citys-sanctuary-status.html
"'Now is the time to model being brave rather than staying silent and hoping things will be OK,' said Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane, a co-sponsor of both measures, during a five-hour meeting in which dozens of people testified in support."
Yes, indeed, now is the time to model being brave.
Praise them with great praise!!!!!
Simon, thank you for last night's very useful discussion.
I wanted to share this short discussion between Congressman Jamie Raskin and Terry Moran. Raskin is very hopeful: "Don't fall for the gloom and doom. . . . . Fascism will not be the end of democracy. Democracy will be the end of fascism, right here in America. And we're going to make it happen."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr5CFMPKTAQ
Thanks for this, Catherine. Always good to hear Jamie speak. We consider him our adopted Congressman from across the Potomac.
After years of being represented by the odious Ben Cline, I have to say I find Jamie Raskin a wonderful breath of fresh air.
Thank you, Simon, for addressing my question about whether we can find a meeting point for Hopium folks to gather on Saturday. The event is billed at taking place at 3rd Street and Penn. Ave. from 12 to 2. I'll be taking Metro from VA, as I'm sure many others will.
I think we just need to find and agree on a good meeting place where we can gather and participate together as a family.
I'll be wearing my FDR's 4 Freedoms T shirt, my mini American flags, and my signs. Not sure what all this yellow stuff is about, but I'll adorn a cheapish, yellow scarf!
It can be very exhilarating attending these events. Looking forward to it. Now back to finishing up my postcards for Abigail.
I’d be persuaded by the pro-Mills argument if she wasn’t nearly as old as Donald Trump. Also, perceived outsiders are trendy with voters these days it seems. Happy to let the Maine primary voters decide of course.
tim miller has a great discussion up with heather cox richardson who lives in maine and is married to a lobsterman. the key is who can win district 2....mills has shown she can, while platner has not won anything; he was a harbor master. at this point collins is not that unpopular in maine because she has actually been able to secure things for the state that trump had threatened, and voters may feel it's worthwhile to keep her around even if they don't like her much.
mills has shown she can win the state's liberals in the eastern part of the state and make inroads in the rural areas; at this time we are concerned with winning the senate where we can; our map is tough and we have no idea if an untried candidate with no wins under his belt could win against collins. he might, and heather did not make an endorsement, but rather explained why mills might be the better option for us right now, despite her age; someone else can run in 6 years. the voters will decide; rep golden thinks lepaige would win district 2, where he has ties and was mayor of waterville and manager of the marden's dept store, a place i love to shop at and its part of my maine vacation every year, and without district 2 a candidate maybe can't win. maine is also the oldest state, hell everyone i meet there is 80....and still hunting and fishing and launching their pontoon boats....
Thanks for sharing this insight from HCR--whose judgment, especially on Maine, is the gold standard.
This New York Times article on the upcoming Supreme Court ruling over the Voting Rights Act paints a profoundly disturbing picture. It appears likely to upend years of progress — and could seriously undermine our efforts to take back Congress and win key state and local races.
I’d welcome clear-minded perspectives on this — and thoughts on what lies ahead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/upshot/supreme-court-voting-rights-gerrymander.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t08.sno2.wjFrVlQ56xmn&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Hopefully SCOTUS will not drive this final stake through the heart of the Voting Rights Act.
They will. Need to prepare for Plan B.
My heart breaks for those folks. I spoke with residents in Selma about this when I visited several years back. It looks like it did in 1965, and not in a good way. Rep. Sewell is their lifeline and their bulwark, this will just be devastating. They do not have rural broadband in much of the state. UGH.
"His weakness, his failures, his unpopularity and rejection by the public, his fear of losing power, and our refusal to bend the knee, has led Trump and his team to choose the most un-American and traitorous path of all - autocracy."
Thank you Simon for keeping us informed of where we are. It is the heart of the battle.
Speaking of ridicule... the late night comedy folks have truly upped their game since the Kimmel debacle, Particularly Kimmel and Colbert. Courage is couragious... and contagious.
I have my No Kings placard ready to go... "25th Amendment: Unfit to serve. Trump is way way cray-cray" Once again, his cabinet will never invoke it. That's not the point. The point is to make it ubiquitious, so Maga denies it as ridiculous, and turn it to the national conversation... Strong Man or Crazy Person?
Calling my Reps. 1) DO NOT CAPITULATE! 2) Get LOUD on Adelita Grijalva and vote on the Epstein Files 3) Call out and Get Loud for the 25th Amendment.
Great sign!
I love the "way way cray cray."
Thurs. congresspersons call script that anyone can riff off of (adjust as appropriate if yours are team red):
- Keep holding the line on the shutdown! You’re doing great. Don’t capitulate.
- Assuming budget negotiations ever happen: restrict funding for unauthorized military operations under the Anti-Deficiency Act (31 USC 1341) to prevent the use of the military against Americans and also the illegal murders of Venezuelans.
- The Guardian is reporting that the administration is considering selling student loan debt to private investors. That means that we can anticipate even more abusive collections practices especially since there’s no functioning CFPB anymore. Us student loan debtors are smart enough to notice that our own taxpayer dollars (and student loan payments) are being given to Argentina in free handouts and to farmers in free handouts. So I never want to hear anything from Democrats again about how we don’t want “free handouts” to help us with our student loan debt. Yes, we do, and we deserve it just as much as the farmers and certainly more than Milei. When Democrats are back in power, I want to see bold student loan relief.
- Trump publicly said that there’s going to be a “surge” of his masked secret police to more blue cities. They are tackling and kidnapping regular Americans and it is starting to look like they are particularly going after women and girls. I expected this, because it was obvious that ICE was going to recruit incels as well as racists. Use the budget process to roll back the astronomical increase of funding for ICE in the big ugly bill, because it’s just our own taxpayer dollars being used to terrorize and wage war on us.
- Join us for No Kings!
Stellar communication in CNN town hall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXZIOYgB-y4
Wish I could post my sign for No Kings that I finished today. I don't usually invest the time and effort to make fancy signs but this time I went all out. I am so pleased with how it turned out.
I’ll be at No Kings in New York. Called my senators and congressman today, with a message of stay strong. I also called my state assemblymember and senator and said I wanted them to speak loudly and forcefully and I hope to see them at No Kings. Also mailed postcards to support candidates in Virginia.