The Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, is doing a stellar job! At the moment, I would argue she is perhaps the most consequential non-Trumpian person in Washington DC. I sincerely hope she keeps her job throughout and well beyond the current budget process.
I agree, although she broke our hearts a couple of times too when we were trying to get the most we could out of reconciliation. If I remember correctly, on gun provisions and voter protection.
First of all, let me thank you for allowing me to leave a message. Few on substack will not do this unless you are a paid subscriber. The Dems are going to have to do a lot of changing before I have faith in them again. I admire people like David Hogg, Mamdani and Kshama Sawant. Oligarchs must be beaten. Money must be removed from politics!!!!
It was great meeting you in Santa Fe on Monday at the coffee shop. I am truly inspired by your work, and will continue my local efforts for a better world.
As I watched our discussion last night, I was struck by how much this community has contributed to my mental health and sense of hope and purpose over the last couple years. I admire Simon's analytical skills and trust his judgment, and I really appreciate the assistance in who I should support financially in their races. Hopium has made me a better citizen and literally given me hope in this challenging time. I haven't had to stick my head in the sand in order to survive. I'm involved and aware and still hopeful and resolved. Thanks to you, Simon, and all of my fellow Hopium patriots! We will do this. Kent
I absolutely agree, and this is how I pitch Hopium to people. Sometimes it is the only way I allow myself to get news. I feel like it's rewired my brain.
Hi Simon. Great video, especially your commentary on "the family." This has helped me immensely. Yes, I've been disappointed in the DNC, especially with the David Hogg situation, but your framing of it helped me. I am pulling for the DNC to be successful. I loved how you framed everything going on within the party as an evolution. This is so helpful. Thank you. It's so true there IS NO one path. We NEED debate, and be committed to having a process for debate, and be innovative. I think the key, though, is for more established Party people to keep an open mind to the ideas of young people. The party needs to be a clearinghouse for finding the best, not the most senior, and finding and refining the best arguments for defeating Trump and getting our good candidates elected.
I can't fault for a second the DNC having "one foot in the past." (My quote) Things are really in flux at a pace I have never experienced. There is not just one path ... but one foot has to be planted somewhere -- while the other one tests out new ground.
I don't know about debate one way or the other, but there has to be some kind of vision. (Otherwise, where are we going to plant that foot?)
Thanks for the informative and spirit-lifting discussion last night. I have called MOCs, donated to a couple of Hopium candidates and am writing voter reg postcards for NJ. I have encouraged others to contact their reps through social media.
Our state senate district in Minnesota just bought a 6 month radio ad champaign on our local radio. Are planning two more on two more stations. Local organizing is wear it’s at.
It was filed yesterday and should have been voted through at that meeting, but one Councilor who as far as I can tell did not know what the Resolution was about, blocked it from being on the agenda, possibly because he was miffed about something else entirely. For Boston folks, that was Ed Flynn. Ugh!!!
So next steps: 1) Our sponsoring Councilors have resubmitted it in a way that cannot be blocked for the next meeting, albeit a few days after July 4. 2) Meanwhile, we're writing a letter to the blocking Councilor and the Council as a whole about the urgency of this moment, which will have lots of signatures on it. 3) I hope the example is useful to others.
We cut about half the text we had -- so many attacks on blue cities!, and there are so many ways to write these things for municipalities, veterans groups, lawyers groups, faith communities...
Who in the Front Range (I'm in Boulder County myself) is working on or interested in working on local government resolutions? I'd like to be in touch with others interested in this!
If not for the failure of our democracy, Trump would not have been possible. To shorthand it - wealth disparity with most of the population living the constant stress of hand to mouth existence. This is supposed to be rule by the people, but we have gotten rule by the corporate sector -- even in the Democratic Party, they always seem to have a veto.
Why should we not have free bus service? Why don't we have free healthcare and higher ed like countries in Europe do? The reason the "envy of the world" economy was not being noticed by voters is that the whole economy is geared toward the corporate bottom line, not our lives.
The reason Bernie and AOC gather enthusiastic crowds is because people are just sick of it. They've been saying the same thing forever because the same problem has persisted and worsened for decades. Average people feel more and more like serfs.
As my friend said to me the other night (a woman in her 70s) "Every time I have to deal with a corporation, I feel like I'm being cheated."
So do I. So do millions.
Some years ago there was a study, I think out of Yale, that showed that public policy outcomes were 90% in line with the interests of wealthy corporate donors, with hardly any relationship to what the general public favors.
When I open my browser there is a screen of suggested articles, which I almost never read. Yesterday there was one to the effect that Gen Z is the "toolbelt" generation and why that's hurting their career prospects. I didn't read it, but I assume they mean people who have broadbased knowledge/interests rather than focused specialization.
What I heard is "the private equity owners drinking martinis with diamonds at the bottom want a certain type of "human resources" because that makes them the most money. You are not complying, Gen Z. Get with the program."
Yeah, well, fuck that. The toolbelt life is an interesting life, a creative life, a life of discovery. You go Gen Z - you are not "human resources.."
Your right is to demand a world/country organized around the kind of values that make life good. You fight for it. This old woman is right behind you.
Great comment, Lyn Gerry! Maybe the description of Gen Z as the “toolbelt generation” refers to more of them going into the trades. Yay for that! No corporation can outsource your car repair, plumbing, electrical work, or home building overseas.
Completely agree - making this country work for most of the people instead of just billionaires and corporations is key, no matter what label is thrown at it. Populism, socialism, whatever.
corporations must be brought to heel (and heal), They have an oversized influence in our collective commonwealth especially once Citizens United (2010) was forced down our throats. Money is not speech and corporations are not people. That genie needs to go back in the bottle and will once we throw out the fascists, regain the majority, and forcibly legislate the right-sizing of the corporate wing.
"If not for the failure of our democracy, Trump would not have been possible."
And to this I say ... "Whoa." Trump is not a product of our democracy or of its failings. Trump is a product of our society and culture -- which I foolishly assumed had gotten over much of its white supremacy. This is our failure as a society. Not just Trump, but the millions that bow to that insane moral degenerate. It's really scary.
It is really scary and yes the racism persists because it is cultivated in certain quarters, joined at the hop with certain religious factions.
However, the failure of democracy is what can give a monster support beyond the racist minority. I offer this situation as evidence: it has now become a truism the President’s party loses seats in Congress in the mid-terms. Any President…and that’s a red flag to me. We have 2 parties. Unlike we folk here, most people are disconnected from the political process, and have a dim understanding of the differences between them.
They vote for one party. By the mid-term they see nobody seems to be doing anything about their problem, so they vote in the other party. They just go back and forth never having satisfaction. Because what they need is free bus fare, or to be able to receive medical treatment without declaring bankruptcy.
Every civilized country provides healthcare. Here it’s “radical” however for some reason it’s not considered “radical” to force a woman to give birth against her will, and also have to pay the medical bills for a pregnancy she doesn’t want, or if she happens to be legally dead, to be kept on life support against her family’s wishes.
Because the health of the people is treated as less important than the profits of the shareholder of insurance companies, which are the same thing as the “Wall St” financial sector.
I called Congressman Raskin to remind him of my opposition to the Trump budget bill. I called Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen and, based on suggestions here yesterday, asked them to slow the process down by proposing amendments and making quorum calls. As Sarah Longwell reported yesterday, the longer this bill is out there, the less Americans like it and Democratic messaging on the bill is getting out there.
I'm writing postcards to North Carolina voters today.
I have one suggestion about the wonderful work Dr. Potter and other Hopium members are doing with local resolutions. Prior to the hearings, please contact the local press so they'll know to be there to cover it. Local papers, radio stations, and independent media are eager for content but they have to know about it. Follow up with a simple press release. Is there local independent media (the guy who runs a YouTube based on county news, etc.) that would interview you after the resolution passes? Would the sponsoring county commissioner go on the show? Can you write a "thank you commissioner" letter to the local paper explaining the resolution and thanking its sponsors? Republicans are really good about turning everything they do into publicity. We can do the same.
First comment here from this MA subscriber. I’m so grateful this community exists and is such a big player in what I would call the New Enlightened America movement! Thank you, Simon!
Self-report: Just mailed the last of 100 voter postcards to VA women 40-70 who rarely vote. Msg summary: “Trump/Musk want to gut YOUR Social Security, Medicaid, and Schools. Hope you’ll vote in the next election!” The campaign is sending a series of 10 postcards to these voters to wake them up on the importance of voting. Will be writing another hundred in next couple weeks—my tiny part. Also, with about 300 people including many members of my UU church, attended the No Kings protest in Maynard, MA. Very uplifting and energizing speakers, in particular the local organizer of a weekly protest in front of an ICE detention center with inhumane conditions, hiding in an anonymous looking building in a suburban Boston office park. Will be joining the next one.
Hi Elizabeth. Great about the postcards! FYI, people on both sides of you are working on resolutions -- Stow's was filed and is in process, people in Lexington are starting to write one.
Hi Susan! The specific campaign was “Wake Up Virginia, Part 2” sponsored by We Of Virginia (https://wofava.org/whats-up-wofa-week-of-05-04-2025/ ) Several years ago a friend connected me with a woman in Littleton who serves as a postcard host and makes these campaigns super easy. She chooses high impact postcard campaigns from a range of leftie organizations, gets the postcards and stamps, reprints the instructions, makes them into packets of 20 or 25, and offers them to her large email list of postcard writers, for just the cost of the stamps.
Katie phang did a report on a swamp detention center…..tent is being erected by July to hold 1,000 souls in the middle of the swamp. INCREDIBLY INHUMANE!!!!!!! Descant is is a pig. Of course it will be privately run I believe,
there wont be an protestors because it is way out there in the middle of the everglades. so secretive prison, anything goes, hotter than hell, with an airstrip to take people in the middle of the night to foreign hell holes.
The Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, is doing a stellar job! At the moment, I would argue she is perhaps the most consequential non-Trumpian person in Washington DC. I sincerely hope she keeps her job throughout and well beyond the current budget process.
I agree, although she broke our hearts a couple of times too when we were trying to get the most we could out of reconciliation. If I remember correctly, on gun provisions and voter protection.
First of all, let me thank you for allowing me to leave a message. Few on substack will not do this unless you are a paid subscriber. The Dems are going to have to do a lot of changing before I have faith in them again. I admire people like David Hogg, Mamdani and Kshama Sawant. Oligarchs must be beaten. Money must be removed from politics!!!!
Sheila, you might be interested in reading this piece by David Rothkopf -- Why we all should be celebrating Mamdani's win. https://davidrothkopf.substack.com/p/why-we-all-should-be-celebrating
Hey Simon,
It was great meeting you in Santa Fe on Monday at the coffee shop. I am truly inspired by your work, and will continue my local efforts for a better world.
Thank you!
Joe Hoback
Please post the resolutions so we can replicate in our communities.
Dear Karen, please see here: https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/update-from-new-mexico-on-passing
Sorry to be this jerk, Simon, but it's "hurtling," not "hurdling."
Could be hurdling over obstacles ... both work!
Not a jerk, and you are right! Changed it on line. Wrote fast this morning. Thank you.
As I watched our discussion last night, I was struck by how much this community has contributed to my mental health and sense of hope and purpose over the last couple years. I admire Simon's analytical skills and trust his judgment, and I really appreciate the assistance in who I should support financially in their races. Hopium has made me a better citizen and literally given me hope in this challenging time. I haven't had to stick my head in the sand in order to survive. I'm involved and aware and still hopeful and resolved. Thanks to you, Simon, and all of my fellow Hopium patriots! We will do this. Kent
AMEN!!
I absolutely agree, and this is how I pitch Hopium to people. Sometimes it is the only way I allow myself to get news. I feel like it's rewired my brain.
Hi Simon. Great video, especially your commentary on "the family." This has helped me immensely. Yes, I've been disappointed in the DNC, especially with the David Hogg situation, but your framing of it helped me. I am pulling for the DNC to be successful. I loved how you framed everything going on within the party as an evolution. This is so helpful. Thank you. It's so true there IS NO one path. We NEED debate, and be committed to having a process for debate, and be innovative. I think the key, though, is for more established Party people to keep an open mind to the ideas of young people. The party needs to be a clearinghouse for finding the best, not the most senior, and finding and refining the best arguments for defeating Trump and getting our good candidates elected.
I can't fault for a second the DNC having "one foot in the past." (My quote) Things are really in flux at a pace I have never experienced. There is not just one path ... but one foot has to be planted somewhere -- while the other one tests out new ground.
I don't know about debate one way or the other, but there has to be some kind of vision. (Otherwise, where are we going to plant that foot?)
Thomas, you might be interested to read this piece by David Rothkopf. https://davidrothkopf.substack.com/p/why-we-all-should-be-celebrating
Thanks for the informative and spirit-lifting discussion last night. I have called MOCs, donated to a couple of Hopium candidates and am writing voter reg postcards for NJ. I have encouraged others to contact their reps through social media.
Could you show us more of what the DNC and state and local Dem parties are doing to update themselves? Thank you.
I suggest following The Blue Print on substack:
https://blueprint.democrats.org
Agree with Annie. Also, if you haven't watched Simon's video with Jane Kleeb, highly recommend that one.
Our state senate district in Minnesota just bought a 6 month radio ad champaign on our local radio. Are planning two more on two more stations. Local organizing is wear it’s at.
which one?
DFL SD 22 on KCHK New Prague Starting June 30th.
Here is Boston's Resolution:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16mB5LdyfL7eH-i001WJlsxyYjhB1Fgie/view?usp=sharing
It was filed yesterday and should have been voted through at that meeting, but one Councilor who as far as I can tell did not know what the Resolution was about, blocked it from being on the agenda, possibly because he was miffed about something else entirely. For Boston folks, that was Ed Flynn. Ugh!!!
So next steps: 1) Our sponsoring Councilors have resubmitted it in a way that cannot be blocked for the next meeting, albeit a few days after July 4. 2) Meanwhile, we're writing a letter to the blocking Councilor and the Council as a whole about the urgency of this moment, which will have lots of signatures on it. 3) I hope the example is useful to others.
We cut about half the text we had -- so many attacks on blue cities!, and there are so many ways to write these things for municipalities, veterans groups, lawyers groups, faith communities...
Gotta say, it felt good to help write ours.
Outstanding!
Beautiful work! Thank you! And your No Kings but Yaaass Queens event was phenomenal!
This is wonderful. I'll will forward this on to my peeps.
Love and respect!!!!!!
Congratulations on this amazing progress!!
Who in the Front Range (I'm in Boulder County myself) is working on or interested in working on local government resolutions? I'd like to be in touch with others interested in this!
If not for the failure of our democracy, Trump would not have been possible. To shorthand it - wealth disparity with most of the population living the constant stress of hand to mouth existence. This is supposed to be rule by the people, but we have gotten rule by the corporate sector -- even in the Democratic Party, they always seem to have a veto.
Why should we not have free bus service? Why don't we have free healthcare and higher ed like countries in Europe do? The reason the "envy of the world" economy was not being noticed by voters is that the whole economy is geared toward the corporate bottom line, not our lives.
The reason Bernie and AOC gather enthusiastic crowds is because people are just sick of it. They've been saying the same thing forever because the same problem has persisted and worsened for decades. Average people feel more and more like serfs.
As my friend said to me the other night (a woman in her 70s) "Every time I have to deal with a corporation, I feel like I'm being cheated."
So do I. So do millions.
Some years ago there was a study, I think out of Yale, that showed that public policy outcomes were 90% in line with the interests of wealthy corporate donors, with hardly any relationship to what the general public favors.
When I open my browser there is a screen of suggested articles, which I almost never read. Yesterday there was one to the effect that Gen Z is the "toolbelt" generation and why that's hurting their career prospects. I didn't read it, but I assume they mean people who have broadbased knowledge/interests rather than focused specialization.
What I heard is "the private equity owners drinking martinis with diamonds at the bottom want a certain type of "human resources" because that makes them the most money. You are not complying, Gen Z. Get with the program."
Yeah, well, fuck that. The toolbelt life is an interesting life, a creative life, a life of discovery. You go Gen Z - you are not "human resources.."
Your right is to demand a world/country organized around the kind of values that make life good. You fight for it. This old woman is right behind you.
Go Mamdani!!!!!
Great comment, Lyn Gerry! Maybe the description of Gen Z as the “toolbelt generation” refers to more of them going into the trades. Yay for that! No corporation can outsource your car repair, plumbing, electrical work, or home building overseas.
PS. Morality made me an atheist, too.
Completely agree - making this country work for most of the people instead of just billionaires and corporations is key, no matter what label is thrown at it. Populism, socialism, whatever.
Thank You Lyn Gerry for airing it out!
corporations must be brought to heel (and heal), They have an oversized influence in our collective commonwealth especially once Citizens United (2010) was forced down our throats. Money is not speech and corporations are not people. That genie needs to go back in the bottle and will once we throw out the fascists, regain the majority, and forcibly legislate the right-sizing of the corporate wing.
In it for the long haul... Mamdani is a step.
"If not for the failure of our democracy, Trump would not have been possible."
And to this I say ... "Whoa." Trump is not a product of our democracy or of its failings. Trump is a product of our society and culture -- which I foolishly assumed had gotten over much of its white supremacy. This is our failure as a society. Not just Trump, but the millions that bow to that insane moral degenerate. It's really scary.
It is really scary and yes the racism persists because it is cultivated in certain quarters, joined at the hop with certain religious factions.
However, the failure of democracy is what can give a monster support beyond the racist minority. I offer this situation as evidence: it has now become a truism the President’s party loses seats in Congress in the mid-terms. Any President…and that’s a red flag to me. We have 2 parties. Unlike we folk here, most people are disconnected from the political process, and have a dim understanding of the differences between them.
They vote for one party. By the mid-term they see nobody seems to be doing anything about their problem, so they vote in the other party. They just go back and forth never having satisfaction. Because what they need is free bus fare, or to be able to receive medical treatment without declaring bankruptcy.
Every civilized country provides healthcare. Here it’s “radical” however for some reason it’s not considered “radical” to force a woman to give birth against her will, and also have to pay the medical bills for a pregnancy she doesn’t want, or if she happens to be legally dead, to be kept on life support against her family’s wishes.
Because the health of the people is treated as less important than the profits of the shareholder of insurance companies, which are the same thing as the “Wall St” financial sector.
Lyn, you might be interested to read this essay by David Rothkopf -- Why we all should be celebrating Mamdani's win. https://davidrothkopf.substack.com/p/why-we-all-should-be-celebrating
Simon, great discussion last night!
I called Congressman Raskin to remind him of my opposition to the Trump budget bill. I called Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen and, based on suggestions here yesterday, asked them to slow the process down by proposing amendments and making quorum calls. As Sarah Longwell reported yesterday, the longer this bill is out there, the less Americans like it and Democratic messaging on the bill is getting out there.
I'm writing postcards to North Carolina voters today.
I have one suggestion about the wonderful work Dr. Potter and other Hopium members are doing with local resolutions. Prior to the hearings, please contact the local press so they'll know to be there to cover it. Local papers, radio stations, and independent media are eager for content but they have to know about it. Follow up with a simple press release. Is there local independent media (the guy who runs a YouTube based on county news, etc.) that would interview you after the resolution passes? Would the sponsoring county commissioner go on the show? Can you write a "thank you commissioner" letter to the local paper explaining the resolution and thanking its sponsors? Republicans are really good about turning everything they do into publicity. We can do the same.
First comment here from this MA subscriber. I’m so grateful this community exists and is such a big player in what I would call the New Enlightened America movement! Thank you, Simon!
Self-report: Just mailed the last of 100 voter postcards to VA women 40-70 who rarely vote. Msg summary: “Trump/Musk want to gut YOUR Social Security, Medicaid, and Schools. Hope you’ll vote in the next election!” The campaign is sending a series of 10 postcards to these voters to wake them up on the importance of voting. Will be writing another hundred in next couple weeks—my tiny part. Also, with about 300 people including many members of my UU church, attended the No Kings protest in Maynard, MA. Very uplifting and energizing speakers, in particular the local organizer of a weekly protest in front of an ICE detention center with inhumane conditions, hiding in an anonymous looking building in a suburban Boston office park. Will be joining the next one.
Hi Elizabeth. Great about the postcards! FYI, people on both sides of you are working on resolutions -- Stow's was filed and is in process, people in Lexington are starting to write one.
Awesome! I live in Stow. I probably know the folks who filed our resolution. Thanks, Neighbor!
Is that with Postcards to Swing States? I was just encouraging a friend to write with them, and it sounds like their campaign.
Bravo about the ICE protest!!!
Hi Susan! The specific campaign was “Wake Up Virginia, Part 2” sponsored by We Of Virginia (https://wofava.org/whats-up-wofa-week-of-05-04-2025/ ) Several years ago a friend connected me with a woman in Littleton who serves as a postcard host and makes these campaigns super easy. She chooses high impact postcard campaigns from a range of leftie organizations, gets the postcards and stamps, reprints the instructions, makes them into packets of 20 or 25, and offers them to her large email list of postcard writers, for just the cost of the stamps.
Thanks! This is good to know
Katie phang did a report on a swamp detention center…..tent is being erected by July to hold 1,000 souls in the middle of the swamp. INCREDIBLY INHUMANE!!!!!!! Descant is is a pig. Of course it will be privately run I believe,
Of course. Slavery is our original "free enterprise" Disgusting. Immoral.
there wont be an protestors because it is way out there in the middle of the everglades. so secretive prison, anything goes, hotter than hell, with an airstrip to take people in the middle of the night to foreign hell holes.
Could you provide a link to Katie Phang's report?