Besides The Bluster, The Blather And Fascistic Bloodlust, There Is Also Failure, Incompetence, Weakness, A Worsening Economy And A Public Rapidly Losing Faith

Last Days of Hopium's March Anniversary Sale - 10% off An Annual Paid Subscription Through Monday

Morning all. A few top line thoughts about the week:

1 - Trump is stumbling, making mistakes, and his “strong man” image has taken a hit. He is now atop what could be one of the most consequential fuck ups and scandals in American history; the economy is slowing; his tariffs are wildly unpopular and are raising prices; he keeps losing in court, badly, every day; Musk has become a huge political liability; his polling decline is real, as is the collapse in consumer confidence; and the withdrawal of the Stefanik nomination shows the Rs are not confident or happy with where they are now, particularly after unexpectedly losing a PA state Senate seat they’ve held since the 19th century.

Yes, we must remember that we beat/outperformed MAGA in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and in many downballot races in 2024. We’ve been winning a lot of elections against MAGA in recent years, and Republicans have in essence acknowledged in recent days that we may be stronger and they weaker than conventional wisdom holds right now.

A reminder of what Trump has wrought - an extraordinary decline in economic growth in a very short period of time, almost 7 points now (new data from this am). We are experiencing one of the greatest policy errors in American history, in real time:

And this morning the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the PCE Index, came in hot and ugly:

2 - Trump is now, clearly, a mad, early stage tyrant, and is doing extraordinary harm to the American people and our country every day. With students disappearing from our streets, legal residents ending up in foreign prisons, universities and law firms being terrorized, alliances being torched and our government being systemically, illegally and unconstitutionally dismantled, there is great urgency now for the pro-democracy forces in the country to rise up and find more effective ways to challenge him and stop his rancid efforts to turn the US into Russia and to turn us from a free people to cowering subjects gratefully kneeling before a Mad King.

3 - I feel like this week Democrats in Washington found a higher gear, rose up far more effectively. In DC I think things shifted a bit this weak. Trump is weaker now, and his opponents have become bolder, more aggressive. While we are not where we want to be there was progress this week, and with their engagement on Signalgate Democrats began to open up that Second Front we’ve been talking about here for weeks.

We saw two meaningful signs of Republican Senators more aggressively challenging Trump in recent days. First, Senator Roger Wicker, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter with his Democratic counterpart, Jack Reed, asking for the Pentagon to answer a series of questions about the enormous Signalgate security breach. Next, last night, Senator Susan Collins along with her Democratic counterpart Patty Murray wrote what I think is a pretty serious letter to the White House indicating that they believe that in seizing certain Congressional funds - as he has been doing for months - the Administration was acting outside the law, “Illegally” the NYT calls it. Here is the language Collins and Murray used:

Regardless of our views on the Fiscal Responsibility Act and accompanying implementation agreement, it is incumbent on all of us to follow the law as written—not as we would like it to be.

As Hopium readers know I’ve been arguing that Democrats needed to pen A Letter to America detailing the “injuries,” “abuses” and “usurpations” of Trump’s attack on our Constitutional order, and begin to provide air and legal cover for those challenging the Administration in Court by “letting Facts be submitted to a candid world.” The courageous, individuals, institutions, lawyers and judges challenging Trump need to know that half of Congress has their back; and it is just time now for Democrats to not just talk about the economy and the coming plutocratic Republican budget but to more forcefully and publicly challenge Trump’s illegal dismantling of our government, his abandonment of the Constitutional order and his selling out of America to Putin. I feel like the Collins-Murray letter got us one step closer to something like this happening in the days ahead.

In the past few days I’ve shared conversations we hosted about the unprecedented corruption of the Trump regime; how his foreign policy was leaving America a far weaker and less safe nation; the malevolent strategy behind disappearing students and others here legally in the country; and how the new leadership team at the DNC was approaching all these challenges now. If you haven’t watched these conversations they are there waiting whenever you have the time.

Expect more Hopium events on Substack live. I’ve enjoyed these afternoon talks and am planning on making them a regular part of our community’s work, together. We will work to help you better understand how to join them as I know we had some hiccups this week as we learn how to use this new, powerful tool from the good people at Substack.

Yesterday, I shared with you a new video and post testing out what I hope is a a better and more powerful way of describing what Trump is doing to the country and why he must be stopped. If you haven’t yet checked out my new “Saying No To Trump” pitch please do this weekend. Reaction from the Hopium community has been very positive so far, and I encourage our paid subscribers to offer feedback to help take it to the next stage of development.

Finally, Monday is March 31st, the end of the quarter. The financial health of our campaigns and party committees are evaluated every quarter so please chip in whatever you can to our Hopium-backed efforts in the coming days. Tuesday is also the all-important election in Wisconsin, and we still have some ways to go to hit our super stretch goal there. Monday is also the last day of Hopium’s March Anniversary sale which gets you 10% off an annual paid subscription.

So as we head into this important weekend there are many ways to help keep moving the ball forward for our great country. To get us all fired up I am sending along the video Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler made for the Hopium community a few days back:

Now, let’s get to work everyone. Yes things are hard right now but little cracks can become big cracks, little wins can become big ones, and we just need to keep working hard for our freedoms, our families and our future….

Recommended Hopium Actions and Campaigns - While we have made many recommendations to Democrats in recent months for how to raise our game and fight harder and smarter, let’s focus on our current four recommended sets of actions for how we can best channel our love of country and our frustrations into concrete action today:

1 - Fight The Trump-Musk Attack On Our Government, Our Privacy And Our Constitutional Order - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in a joint Senate-House Letter to America; to hold their own hearings; to file criminal referrals for Musk and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI and amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own (House Dems began doing this several weeks ago). Encourage them to hold a daily morning press conference to more aggressively challenge Musk’s ransacking of the USG that is making America less prosperous, less healthy, less safe and far less respected in the world.

2 - Loudly Protest Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of NATO and Europe - Let your electeds know you are outraged by traitorous Trump’s selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin; and that we cannot accept this level of appeasement of someone who is a clear enemy of America and the West, and certainly not an ally. Demand that Trump not let his Saudi meeting w/Putin become our Munich; demand that he not become our Neville Chamberlain; demand that we rejoin our European and NATO allies in support of Zelenskyy and democracy here and everywhere. The country is not with Trump’s embrace of Putin and we must be very loud, very, very loud now. See my new essay on the need to support our allies and not surrender to Putin, and my new interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most important foreign policy voices in our party.

Part II - do all this and demand that Hegseth and Gabbard resign. Hegseth is obvious. He sent war plans on an insecure chat and simply can no longer be trusted. Gabbard for she is in charge of intelligence for the US, and must take responsibility for participating in and not stopping one of the most significant security breaches in US history.

3 - Our Work In The States, The Spring Offensive - I am going to rework this section in the next few days as so much has happened since we called on our community members to organize in the 17 most vulnerable Republican House seats. Rallies and protests have exploded across the country. The DNC/House Dems/State Parties have kicked off People’s Town Halls in all 50 states. I have come to believe that we should be leaning on our state and local electeds to pursue these organized “condemnations” of the Trump regime and their betrayal of America. Let’s start talking now about what we are going to do on July 4th, a day with all of a sudden much more importance.

Paid subscribers should self-report their actions today in our daily chat. So inspired by how hard so many of you are working. I want to make a special plea to all Hopium readers in states with Republican Senators - please make your calls, every day. Even 50 to 100 people calling every day in every red state can make a difference. We have hundreds of Hopium subscribers in every state in the country and it’s critical that we all do our part now.

Next, for those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind in addition to our new House Hopium 7:

Help Susan Crawford and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin - As a way of honoring our good friend Ben Wikler and supporting this critical April Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, I’m asking our community to donate to the Wisconsin Democratic Party today. The money raised here will make sure Ben has the resources he needs to keep his team in place so they can support this critical statewide race. I know many of you are already deeply involved here - thank you all.

Watch our new discussion with Susan and Ben. Thanks to a huge surge of support in recent days we have already raised $211,000 from over 2,500 of you, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000, $125,000 and $150,000. We are now upping this to a new superduper-stretch goal of $225,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!

Support The Hopium House 7 - We’ve begun our work to help flip the House next year by supporting and shoring up the 7 newly-elected battleground House Dems we helped elect last year. You can give to all 7 through a single donation to our new ActBlue page and learn more about this important effort here. We’ve already raised over $33,000 towards our $50,000 March 31st goal - thank you all!

Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Virginia will be one of the big battlegrounds of the November, 2025 elections and we have a great candidate for Governor, Abigail Spanberger. Watch my interview with Abigail, donate, volunteer, and learn more here. Given how many federal employees live in Virginia, this race is also now on the front lines of the Trump/Musk assault on the federal government. We’ve raised more than $69,000 so far towards our March 31st goal of $100,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!

Get Anderson Clayton And The NC Dems Fight The GOP’s Attempt To Steal A Supreme Court Seat - Last week we began a campaign to raise $50,000 for Anderson Clayton and the NC Dems. These funds will help the NC Dems get off to a great start in 2025 and help cover the costs of their fight to prevent the Republicans from stealing a Supreme Court seat we won together in 2024. Watch my new interview with Chair Clayton from last week to get an update on the fight over the Supreme Court seat and her plans to win elections and counter Trump this year. We’ve raised $28,000 so far - thank you all!

Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. Two weeks ago we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly, over 1,400 of you have donated over $102,000 so far. Watch my interview with Ken about what he wants to do with the DNC, and chip in whatever you can to help Ken and the new exciting team at the DNC get off to a strong start!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon