Now The Real Battle Over Trump's Budget Begins

Our next paid subscriber gathering - March 5th/Founding Members - March 7th

Morning all. While we did not win the budget vote last night our work is making a difference. Republicans are now telling reporters that the President really doesn’t want to cut Medicaid. For real. From Politico Playbook this morning:

The Trump angle: Though he leaned in to try to move at least two GOP holdouts to the “yes” column yesterday, President Trump has also indicated to other GOP lawmakers that he has reservations about parts of the House budget and, I’m told, would like to see changes.

What changes? This week, POTUS expressed reservations to some lawmakers about potential cuts to Medicaid, which while not specified in the budget, are expected given that the document calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify more than $800 billion in reductions. While Speaker Mike Johnson has argued that those cuts would come from program “fraud,” many are skeptical the party can reach those kinds of savings without impacting constituents.

View from one Trump ally: “He absolutely is depending on [the resolution] to change in the Senate,” one GOP lawmaker told me last night of Trump. “He does not want to cut Medicaid.”

But wait, there’s more: Administration officials also haven’t been particularly jazzed about the House budget’s $4-4.5 trillion tax instruction, which they feel is too low even at the high end. They knew weeks ago that such a sum wouldn’t be enough to permanently extend Trump’s tax cuts — let alone POTUS’ pricey pledge not to tax tips, Social Security or overtime, which tacks on $1 trillion-plus.

Yes, what this seems to suggest is Trump is not going to be happy with any spending cuts that cause pain while wanting even bigger tax cuts - creating an even bigger deficit, which likely cause many hard line House GOP deficit hawks to bolt. Republicans now have to hammer our a real budget from the outlines they’ve passed in the House and Senate, and the rubber is going to start hitting the road. Here is a good explainer from the NYT on why if there are going to be big cuts to help offset the enormous cost of the tax cuts, they have to come from Medicaid, something our big blubbery babyman President is all of a sudden getting all worried about (and yes it is a sign that he pays close attention to polling and his standing).

So while we were not successful last night in defeating this initial budget resolution in the House, I think the work many did in recent weeks was important in building capacity and community, and has helped prepare us for the next and more consequential stage of the battle. Here is Hopium community member Karen P in our daily paid subscriber chat (where there is so much organizing going on!) talking about our program to organize around the 17 most vulnerable House Republicans;

Results: I emailed my Colorado state Democratic Party about scheduling a rally outside Gabe Evans’ office to urge him to vote against the disastrous House budget. Evans is one of the 17 vulnerable House reps.

They listened, and the rally was held yesterday at noon!

https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/colorado-democrats-evans-budget-plan-medicaid/

Here’s Bryn T:

Continuing to send recruitment letters to get writers for the WI Supreme Court race and seeing good results. Working my network of friends to spread the word about making calls and telling them about 5calls.org and how easy it is to use. I’m finding it easier to ignore the noise and stay positive-it’s like building up muscle strength and needs daily practice! I’m so encouraged by the town hall videos and other push back by the American people. I admit to being deeply saddened by our country’s self inflicted loss of stature and deeply angry at the GOP for becoming our Vichy government.

Here’s Marcia:

The Davenport, Iowa office of representative Marionette Miller-Meeks received a visit today from approximately 100 fired up residents of District 1, organized by the Iowa Democratic Party. Two of the congresswoman’s aides listened to an hour’s worth of comments which covered the gamut of issues (cuts to healthcare for the neediest, Elon’s illegal activities, tax cuts for billionaires, hungry kids in Iowa, and the spinelessness of Miller-Meeks in standing up against t***p being some of the most commonly voiced concerns).

The two aides silently recorded comments but had no information to offer on possible future town halls or any specific policy info.

The crowd was Iowa nice, thanking the aides for facing us calmly, even though frustration was expressed that the aides had nothing to offer us beyond promising to send their notes of the protest to M M-M. The local CBS affiliate allegedly will air a report from the protest.

After the meeting a few of us moved down the hall to Senator Grassley’s office, where a lone staff member dutifully recorded our comments about the Senator’s abdication of his duty to our Democracy. Moving on to the 8th floor, Senator Joni Ernst’s office was locked up and appeared dark, although some of us speculated that staffers may have been huddled behind closed doors.

I was proud to be part of the crowd and urge everyone to be on the lookout for Democratic Party protests in their own state. I only happened to learn about the protest yesterday when a friend saw it on Facebook.

As Bryn says we are all building up muscle strength now, or as I say we are through this work together building the Opposition movement we all know is necessary now.

The WaPo has a prominent story today about the growing awakening we are seeing across the US (gift link):

Rowdy crowds are showing up at lawmakers’ town hall meetings to protest President Donald Trump’s actions. Some people are launching into chants like “No king!” or shouting down Republican House members. Sen. Bernie Sanders is drawing overflow crowds of his own as he seeks to mobilize voters against Trump’s budget cuts.

At the same time, a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general is methodically filing lawsuits against Trump’s orders, and in six out of seven cases, it has been successful in persuading judges to halt them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association and liberal groups are seeing a surge in fundraising. And Democratic members of Congress are seizing on a budget clash as an opportunity to coalesce against the president’s plans.

Little by little, after an initial phase of stunned confusion, the broader resistance to Trump is beginning to wake up.

It is likely Trump’s fears about cutting Medicaid is coming from the polling his own pollster did that showed Trump eroding in battleground House districts and enormous risks in the Rs pursuing their current anti-everyday people/pro-oligarch budget and political course. In my recent post, The Mad King Had A Bad Week, I reviewed both the bad new polling and dropping consumer sentiment we’ve been seeing over the past two weeks. Yesterday, a second gauge of consumer confidence also found significant erosion of the public’s faith in the economy and Trump’s economic stewardship:

In the 2017-2018 cycle, the first after Trump’s unexpected 2016 win, I was the lead outside political strategist for the DCCC and our successful effort to flip the House. In that cycle the extended months long battle over Trump’s attempt to roll back the ACA in the summer and fall of 2017 is what did the Republicans in in 2018. During that fight they lost the mantle of being the champion of working people and saw their poll numbers plummet. They never recovered and we won with the national House vote that cycle by 8.6 points, a huge mid-term win.

The coming fight over the budget is going to give us another extended opportunity to degrade the Rs and weaken Trump as once again they are looking to make deeply destructive cuts to the health care of the American people. Trump has already lost 8 points in his job approval rating (via 538). Consumer confidence is plummeting. The economy is slowing, inflation rising, the markets are getting spooked, Trump keeps getting beaten badly in court, Tesla is crashing, opposition is growing across the country and cracks are appearing in Trump’s Congressional coalition over these Medicaid cuts; his rancid embrace of Putin; Musk’s attack on our government and ongoing humiliation of millions of American workers. From The Washington Post today:

Little cracks can become big cracks, and little wins can become big wins - as we saw in the 2017-2018 cycle.

Two additional points to keep in mind as we go forward:

• That Trump and Musk are trying to responsibly save America money is an extraordinary lie. Their budget, as we saw above, is promoting one the largest increases in our deficit in peacetime in American history. Trump’s first term produced the largest peacetime deficit in America since WWII. The last three Republican Presidents all dramatically increased the deficit (the last 3 Dems cut it). We’ve been the party of fiscal responsibility, they party of fiscal profligacy and all this talk about finding savings, efficiencies and cutting the deficit is a lie.

• You cannot “Make America Healthy Again” by making the biggest cuts to health care in our history and gutting the medical research establishment in the US. This too is another outrageous Trumpian lie.

But I also agree with many of you that our leaders must become far more aggressive about challenging Trump and Musk and their savage, ongoing attack on our government and the American of the Four Freedoms. That is why, below, you will see my collection of our essays and presentations about how we can more aggressively organize against them; and our four recommended actions encouraging our electeds to become more than legislators and executives and see themselves as communicators, influencers, info warriors and leaders of a new and ferocious opposition. Each day in your work you are not bitching on social media or in our chat you are taking steps to help accelerate the development of the national opposition movement we so desperately need.

And that leaves me today saying thank you. Thank you for that you are doing every day for our great country and its very good people. We are stronger today than we were a few weeks ago, and Trump weaker. And we just have to keep our heads down and keep working.

Notes On The Path Forward, Building An Effective and Ferocious Opposition - See my new essays (here, here) on this process of building the opposition and our critical role in leading the way; watch my new video that goes into greater detail, reminding us that

We are Americans. Fighting for freedom and democracy is what we do. Who we are.

Learn why I think it’s time for Congressional Dems to “let Facts be submitted to a candid world;” read my post that pulls together all my big recommendations for the pro-democracy family; and watch my recent interviews with Rep. Eric Swalwell and journalist Leon Krauze for in-depth discussions on how we must fight harder, smarter and get much much louder now!

OK, Let’s Get To Work!!!! - Here are my current working recommendations for calls/contacts this week. Four today, and thanks to all of you who are busting your ass right now:

Fight The Musk Attack On Our Government And Our Privacy, End His Historic Crime Spree - . Encourage your Senators and Reps to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world and criminal referrals filed for him and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI; insist Senators and Reps file amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own; 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.

Organize Against The 17 Most Vulnerable Republican House Members - For those of you who live in AZ, CA, CO, IA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WI please start talking to your local orgs - state and local Democratic parties, grassroots groups, traditional Dem allies - about mounting a campaign targeting the most vulnerable 17 Republican House Members to urge them to vote against the emerging - and disastrous - House budget plan. We launched this new effort last Monday, and while we should be urging all our Senators and Reps to vote against these emerging plans, those of you can work these 17 House Rs have a special role to play in the coming battle over the budget. As we saw on Thursday House Rs are wavering on this terrible House budget bill and their polling is telling them to vote it down. Need to keep working!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep Calling Attorneys General In The States - Ask them to protect you and your data, tax returns and privacy, and to keep federally mandated monies flowing to your states and communities. For those in the 19 states that brought the successful Treasury suit thank them and encourage them to keep going. I still believe these 19 states should make criminal referrals of Musk/his posse to DOJ/FBI and raise the stakes.

Protest, Loudly, Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of 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.

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.

A note - while physical protests and rallies are a vital part of how we build our new opposition movement, make sure you only attend or promote events by organizations you know and trust. Please do not support any action - boycott, protest, rally, etc - unless you know and trust the organizers. Given the import of our work now I don’t think it wise or advisable to lend our support to newly formed, opaque organizations without a proven track record of working with Democratic groups and leaders.

For those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind right now:

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 and thanks to a huge surge of support in recent days we have already raised $89,000, blowing past our $50,000 goal. We are now upping this to a stretch goal of $100,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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 1,000 of you have donated over $90,000 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. We now have a new stretch goal of $150,000 by March 31st after our very strong start for this effort (note that we did have some money clawed back due to an error in the amount someone gave!)

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 $49,000 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 Off To A Great Start - Yesterday webegan 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’ve raised $6,000 so far - thank you all!

More Things To Do - Dive into my recent interviews with folks who are making a difference. Check out our upcoming events. Register for my March 5th event with Heather Cox Richardson!

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