Gratitude, Determination, And Courage

Let us close the book on this terrible year, and look forward to making 2026 a far better one

Morning all. It’s here. The end of 2025. This terrible year is finally coming to an end. I woke up this morning weirdly excited about it’s end, and the chance tomorrow to begin anew, and to work with all of you to build something better.

We ended the year with another strong electoral overperformance last night, this one in Iowa. Renee Hardman won a seat to fill a vacancy due to the passing of her predecessor this fall. She won 71%-28%, performing 26 points better than Kamala Harris did in this district last year. Hardman, the CEO of nonprofit Lutheran Services of Iowa and a member of the West Des Moines City Council, becomes the first Black woman ever elected to the 50-member Iowa state Senate.

Renee Hardman at her victory party last night (Lily Smith/Des Moines Register)

In six state legislative special elections in Iowa this year we overperformed our 2024 results by an average of 24 points. A remarkable achievement, and one that mirrors our strong electoral performances all across the country this year. Thanks to all of you who’ve contributed to our Audacious Expansion Fund this year. Your support helped fuel our encouraging win in Iowa last night.

And that’s 2025, isn’t it? A year where Trump did so much damage to the country, extraordinary, unyielding, shocking levels of damage….

but also a year of intense rejection and repudiation of him and his rancid regime; and a year of strong and encouraging electoral performances by Democrats in races of all kinds all across the country.

2025 was all those things - discouraging, hard, infuriating, encouraging, hopeful.

2025 was all those things……

In my latest video talk and in this Christmas Eve post I offer up a comprehensive look back at 2025 and look ahead to 2026. So if you haven’t caught them yet check it ‘em out in the coming days. It is how I see things as we head into 2026, a year I’ve called a year of opportunity for us and the pro-democracy movement.

I close out 2025 thinking again about this passage from FDR’s Four Freedoms speech in 1941 for it speaks powerfully to the insatiable greed, titanic, world-altering idiocy, and traitorous willingness to betray the great American project that is driving Trump and his regime right now……

In times like these it is immature--and incidentally, untrue--for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.

No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion - or even good business.

Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement.

We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.

I also find myself closing our the year sitting with three words and sentiments….

Gratitude - I feel enormous and bottomless gratitude to all of you for being part of this scrappy community of proud, plucky patriots. Of the community we’ve built, together; of the good we’ve done, together; of that spirit of heads-down, get-shit-done, ignore the noise/stay focused on the mission that we bring to our work here, every day.

I end the year grateful beyond words to be in this community with all of you. Working each day with all of you has given me great purpose in this time of national challenge, and has been one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received. So I end the year with a huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone here in Hopium land.

Postcard writing for Donna Deegan, 2023

Determination - I end the year buoyed by his many manifest failures, of his clear decline, of his extraordinary and ongoing rejection by the American people, of his struggle to contain the debilitating Epstein scandal, of our ongoing political and electoral victories. It leaves me resolute, determined, confident that we can make 2026 a year of opportunity for our great country and I am ready to fight.

Courage - In 2026 we need more courage. From everyone. For defeating Trumpism, really defeating it, is going to be very hard, very hard, and take years, many, many years. In 2025 we’ve learned that when we fight Trump we can win. We just need more people, more leaders, more institutions, to join us in that fight. We need to get bigger, stronger, and open up many more fronts against him. To do that we need more courage. From everyone.

We need more of what these six brave Democrats did in this powerful video message to our military. This took all sorts of courage:

And courage like we saw from Rep. Delia Ramirez a few weeks ago…..

We also need more Hopium. For my friends Hopium is hope with a plan. We just don’t hope tomorrow will be better than yesterday. We do the work to make it so….and we need much more of it in the battles ahead and months to come……

A reminder that today is the last day to save 10% on an annual Hopium paid subscription. Grab one why you can!

Happy New Year all. Here’s to making 2026 a much, much better year than 2025, together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Simon

Now, Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m excited to announce that in the last few days we hit our most important remaining 2025 goals - $50,000 for our four intrepid House candidates, and $250,000 for the Audacious Expansion Fund - amazing work everyone!

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $61k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversations with Gov. Cooper and NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $107k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $51,100 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)

Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $257,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas | Enjoy my conversations with Alaska Chair Eric Croft, Florida Chair Nikki Fried, Iowa Chair Rita Hart and Texas Chair Kendall Scudder | Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties and to all of you - we have hit our audacious 2025 goal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last Tuesday’s post recapped our our very productive year together. In three new essays (here, here, here) I look forward to next year and discuss how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up, be loud, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land.

The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got.

Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our Democracy - We have three recommended actions today:

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:

1. Stand with Ukraine and our European allies, and far more forcefully challenge Trump’s traitorous efforts to sell out the US and the West to Russia; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender

2. Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean and the Pacific - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law

3. Roll back Trump’s terrible, illegal tariffs that are re-igniting inflation, driving up prices, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people, hurting small businesses and farmers, reviving tyrannical “taxation without representation,” and alienating governments and people throughout the world. To put America on a sounder fiscal course due to the enormous deficits brought by Trump’s 2025 tax cuts we should reverse these cuts to the wealthy and corporations

4. Defend our democracy, rule of law, and our liberties by blocking the expansion of ICE; restoring due process for immigrants across the country; vigorously defending the 1st Amendment; warring against his outrageous targeting of his domestic political opponents; ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress, end the rancid cover up, and release all of the Epstein files

5. Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and our clean energy investments; support and co-sponsor Rep. Haley Stevens’ effort to Impeach and remove Robert Kennedy

2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - Next year, on July 4th, America celebrates it’s 250th birthday. We need to make this holiday, a celebration of our Declaration Of Independence from a mad king, our day, and not allow it to become his.

One way we can do this is by bringing our Resolutions Project to your community or state. Imagine if by July 4th of next year a large number of towns, counties and states had passed formal resolutions, in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, defending our Constitution and condemning the “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations” of our mad king. For as our Founders wrote in the Declaration:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

So far Hopium members have introduced or passed resolutions in 85 communities in 23 states. In the coming days we will be convening to discuss how to bring this campaign to more places and start planning to Own The Fourth next year.

3 - Make Hopium Stronger - There are several ways you can help make our community stronger:

• Take advantage of the 10% discount through 12/31, become a paid Hopium subscriber for the all important 2026 election year

• Invite your friends, bring in new subscribers, earn rewards

• Buy holiday gift or group subscriptions for colleagues, friends, and family

• Hit “like” on our posts and videos. This will encourage the algorithm to push our work to more people on the Substack app

Finally, please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder!