Fighting Trump's Unacceptable 4, Ben Wikler Jumps In, NC Dem Briefing Tonight

Hopium Paid Subscribers Gather Wed at 7pm ET/Let's keep working for it for Abigail Spanberger in VA!

Happy Sunday all. Hope you had a restful and joyous Thanksgiving holiday. We did here at our house, and I am ready to get back at it. Got a few things for you today:

Trump’s Unacceptable Cabinet Picks - We are back to 4 truly unacceptable picks who we must fight with everything we got my friends - Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy. Things you can do to fight this week:

• Call your Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with the rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy; and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations whether they have a vote on them or not.

• Contact the White House and ask President Biden to order the FBI to begin background checks into Trump’s nominees immediately and before Trump installs Patel to disable the process.

Thanks to those of who have self-reported that you have taken these and other steps. We “do more and worry less” here at Hopium and given Trump’s early, dangerous actions we all need a whole of lot of doing right now. Updates, further reading on these terrible 4, with gift links where needed:

• David Frum, The Atlantic, A Constitutional Crisis Greater Than Watergate (on Kash Patel, the firing of FBI Director Chris Wray)

• Hegseth - Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son Of Mistreating Women For Years (NYT - this is a shocking story)

• Kennedy - Trump’s former FDA commissioner warns RFK Jr. could ‘cost lives’ if confirmed (WaPo), How Kennedy has worked abroad to weaken global health policy (NYT)

From the WaPo article on Kennedy (this is not a drill people):

Scott Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration during the Trump administration, on Friday warned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could “cost lives” if confirmed as the next secretary of Health and Human Services.

“You’re going to see measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates go down,” Gottlieb said on CNBC, referencing Kennedy’s longtime criticism of federal recommendations for childhood immunizations, and noting a recent decline in childhood vaccination rates. The nation is approaching a “tipping point,” Gottlieb said, where a continued decline in childhood vaccines could soon lead to measles outbreaks and deaths of children.

“We’re going to start seeing epidemics of diseases that have long been vanquished, and, God forbid, we see polio reemerge in this country,” he said.

Gottlieb said he had been warning senators against confirming Kennedy to run the federal health department, although he did not identify with whom he had spoken. He added that Kennedy, who founded one of the country’s most prominent antivaccine groups, had “smart people” around him who could take immediate steps to affect Americans’ access to vaccines, such as changing federal vaccine recommendations.

The American people didn’t vote for all this ridiculous bullshit, and we need to keep fighting.

Ben Wikler Jumps Into The DNC Chair’s Race - Our friend Ben Wikler has jumped into the DNC Chair’s race. Here’s his launch video:

I have requests out for Ben and another leading DNC Chair candidate, Ken Martin, the very able chair of the MN Democratic Party, to do interviews in the coming weeks. Hope to get those recorded and to you soon. Check out this interview with Ben from the NYT this morning, and here’s a link to Ken Martin’s launch video.

Politico has a good overview of where the race stands this morning. While Ken Martin may be not as well known as Ben Wikler, he is off to a very strong start.

NC Dem Party Briefing Tonight on NCGOP Trying To Steal Votes, Undo Our Important Wins - Our friend Anderson Clayton asked me let folks in our community know about a briefing she is holding tonight at 530pm ET. You can sign up here, and here is some background:

North Carolina voters made their choices clear, but the NCGOP doesn’t care.

With the recount nearly done, it is crystal clear that Justice Allison Riggs WON her race for NC Supreme Court. That means Democrats won SIX statewide seats fair and square. Democrats WON the most competitive congressional race in the state, even in a GOP gerrymandered district. AND we broke the supermajority in the state legislature, restoring the power of the veto to Governor-elect Josh Stein.

Democrats showed our power at the ballot box, so now the NCGOP is trying to cheat to keep it all for themselves.

They want to disqualify the legal votes of over 60,000 North Carolinians to change the results of Justice Allison Riggs’s Supreme Court victory and hold onto their ill-gotten supermajority.

And they passed a bill stripping powers away from offices that Democrats won and handing them to Republicans - all wrapped in the guise of a hurricane disaster relief bill!

Our North Carolina Democratic Party has been working overtime, both on the legal and organizing fronts, to fight back for all North Carolinians. Find out how you can join the movement to defend our votes and stop the NCGOP's outrageous power grabs.

What Happened, What Comes Next - Our approach to the big post-election conversation has been to go slow, listen and learn, and right now I still have far more questions than answers. Here are some resources for you to dive into the big post-election conversation over the long Holiday weekend:

• Notes on 2024 And What Comes Next (11/20/24) - In a new detailed post and comprehensive video released I offer my latest thinking about what happened in 2024 - the ugly and the encouraging.

• In this post and video I offer my heartfelt thanks to the members of this community who left it all out there on the playing field this cycle.

• I’ve written a series of related post-election posts on the need for us to get louder here, here, here and most recently this one on how we need to get far smarter in how we strategically contest the right’s information superiority in our campaigns. Both the Trippi and the McGowan/Pfeiffer conversations below also speak to this urgent need, and exciting opportunity.

• In a new post I discuss the need for us to develop a broad agenda for renewal and reform, a topic we’ve been discussing here for many months and one central to my February New Republic essay, Biden Must Reinvent What A Presidential Campaign Is.

Adam Gray still leads in CA-13, and there are still ballot curing opportunities for him with our friends at Grassroots Dems HQ:

To help us learn from others throughout the family, I’ve launched a new What Happened, What Comes Next discussion series. Here are the first four of those talks, along with 2 relevant segments from my fall Closing Strong series with Tara McGowan and COURIER Newsroom:

• Anderson Clayton - On Our Impressive Downballot Wins in North Carolina

• John Della Volpe - On Trump’s Gains With Young People

• Joe Trippi - On The Power Of Networks And The Need To Build Our Own

• Rep. Abigail Spanberger - On Winning The Virginia Governors Race in 2025. Learn more about Abigail | Volunteer | Donate To Her Campaign | We have already raised more than $10,000 towards our $100,000 goal!

From Closing Strong:

• On The Need For Pro-Democracy Media - With Tara McGowan and Dan Pfeiffer.

• Beyond MAGA Creators - Russia’s influence on the Republican Party runs deep with Stewart Stevens and Jiore Craig.

I’ve also set up a thread for paid subscribers to offer their thoughts on what this wonderful and plucky community should do next. I’m grateful for the many comments we’ve received so far. Weigh in if you can in the coming days, and note that an annual Hopium paid subscription is now 10% off through the end of the year for those who may want to sign up or give a bit of Hopium as a holiday gift. Paid subscribers should sign up for our next get together on Wednesday, Dec 4th at 7pm ET. Lots and lots to talk about!

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