Inflation Is Rising And Trump's Agenda Is Failing

DNC Chair Ken Martin Joins Us Live Thursday at 215pm ET

Morning all. We have one big event this week - DNC Chair Ken Martin joins us live this Thursday at 215pm ET. Click on this link at 215pm to join us, and feel free to invite friends and colleagues too.

Excited for this one, and remember you can find all of our interviews/podcasts on the Hopium site under Podcast and on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify too. Upcoming events and pods can always be found on our Events page.

A few notes on things I’m seeing today….

I Remain Deeply Skeptical That Trump Has Changed His Tune on Russia - Trump is selling weapons to NATO not giving them to Ukraine; is giving Putin 50 more days before additional sanctions, and did not impose them immediately; got Senate Majority Leader Thune to delay his Russian sanctions bill that would have would have made these tough sanctions law, taking away Trump’s authority to determine the path forward here. No doubt Trump’s more positive tone about NATO, Europe and Ukraine is welcome. But given Trump’s years of bending the knee to Putin we need to go slow here, particularly as Trump continues to do things that help Putin and weaken America - the ally alienating tariffs, elimination of USAID and other democracy promotion programs, gutting of global scientific leadership, downsizing of State/elimination of US Institute of Peace (again), roll back of US cyber security programs, weakening of US vaccine regime (long a goal of Putin’s), slowing down of the energy transition, etc.

Trump has been offering up deeply significant gifts to Putin almost every day of his second term, and we should be very, very slow to view these new announcements as some big change in Trump’s approach to Putin, particularly as the delay (again) of the Senate sanctions bill is a big win for Russia and allows Trump to postpone a fight he might lose at a time when he is already struggling.

For more on this see my recent interview with author and historian Anne Applebaum. Note as the Senate sanctions bill is on pause I am, for now, no longer recommending that we make it something we contact Senate/House offices about.

Coming To Terms With Miller’s “Mass Deportation” Strategy And What It Is Going To Do To The Country - What is the end game here? Why does ICE need all this money? Why are the National Guard and the Marines still on the streets of Los Angeles?

In the coming weeks I think we need to come to terms with what Trump and Miller really doing here, and what is means for the country. Simply, they intend to force at least 15 million people - almost all with jobs and families - out of the country. They are doing it in the most inhumane and economically destructive way possible to accelerate the process, encourage “self-deportation,” and in their minds save money.

We also got a better understanding this week of why they believe they need all these detention centers - they are intending to put intended removal targets in detention centers for years, preventing them from working and taking care of their families at a cost to us of many, many tens of billions of dollars. Here’s the Washington Post today, ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings (gift link):

The Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told officers that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years. Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under the Biden administration.

The vision and ambition of what Trump is attempting to do here is breathtaking. 15 million people is 4% to 6% of our population and workforce. At one million people removed per year - 3,000 a day - it will take 15 years of this level of enforcement to remove all these people. It means the kind of raids we are seeing now, military on our streets, for 15 years. Rather than working, paying taxes, taking care of their families and contributing to the US many will end up in our new American gulag for years as they await trial. US citizens will lose their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters to uncertain fates back home or in places like South Sudan. Businesses will keep losing their employees. Crops will keep dying on the vine, farmers will keep going bankrupt, the health care, food service, tourism, and hospitality industries will continue to be severely damaged. Costs will rise for food and health care, and all this carnage will come at a time when we are purposely kicking tens of millions of people from access to affordable quality health care.

The stories the Administration is telling about the economic and human toll of its war on immigrants are all rancid lies. They are just discounting the reality of what they are doing to the country, our people, our economy and particularly to small business and farmers across the US in their manic racial madness. There are no “able-bodied” non-working Medicaid recipients who will come in and take the jobs immigrants do now - this is a fantasy. Together with other parts of Trump’s economic agenda the regime is actually creating a huge incentive now for American business not to reshore jobs or grow here but to move operations and facilities out of the country.

As I am writing this we got the June inflation numbers and they are not good - inflation rose last month at 0.3%, or between 3.5% and 4% on annualized basis, much higher than the Fed target of 2%.

Again, reality is not bending the knee to Trump. His economic plan is failing. Prices are rising, the economy is slowing and Jerome Powell was clearly right to not to cut interest rates. No one is cutting trade deals with him. Putin and Musk have humiliated him. All these immigrants are refusing to self-deport. Whatever crazy shit is in his head the enhanced tariffs Trump announced last week (doubling and tripling most tariffs!!!!) will make all this worse. The mass deportation strategy will make all this worse as it gets implemented. The Republican fiscal year 2026 budget which will institutionalize both the big ugly and Trump’s extraordinary gutting of our government, vital programs and our world-leading research community will make all this worse. And voters are already unhappy about it all - from tariffs to immigration - even before the most damaging parts of this agenda of sabotage, plunder and betrayal start to kick in.

For Trump is weak, not strong. He is failing, not succeeding. He is losing, not winning. He is a villain, not a hero.

The parts of the Republican Party who still have one foot in the real world are sending up warning flares about where all this is headed. Here’s Politico this morning with a story about a new “leaked” memo from a Trump aligned pollster:

Right now: Republicans are trailing on the generic ballot in a survey of 28 battleground House seats, including 15 where Republicans won in 2024 by 5 points or less and 13 won by both a Democratic House candidate and Trump. “While the 2024 outcome for these districts was even, the generic Republican is down 3 points among all registered voters,” Fabrizio and Bob Ward write in their study for Plymouth Union Public Advocacy. “Among those most motivated to vote, an early indication of vote likelihood in the midterms, the Republican is down 7 points.”

What could change that: Health care. Or, more precisely, “extending the health care premium tax credits for those who purchase health insurance for themselves,” per the memo. “Without congressional action, the tax credit expires this year” — which makes it quite different from the megabill’s changes to Medicaid, which do not go into effect until after the midterms.

If Republicans extend that tax credit, they lead Democrats on the generic ballot by 6 points overall. But if they let it expire, the generic ballot becomes far worse for Republicans, with the generic Democrat rocketing ahead to a 15-point lead in the battlegrounds.

Don’t focus on the numbers here (the claim of these GOP gains are ridiculous). Focus on this message from a top GOP pollster - we are in trouble and allowing the ACA subsidies that we’ve been talking about here to expire this year will make things much worse. Thus, we should not allow them to expire in the upcoming fiscal 2026 budget bill; and yes we are advocating that Republicans walk away from one of the major provisions of the big ugly bill we just passed.

Walk away from the big ugly you say? What else can we get them to walk away from that they perceive to be unpopular? ICE escalation? The tariffs? Appeasement of Russia? The gutting of the clean energy subsidies? Unlike the reconciliation bill Republicans have to get to 60 votes to pass their budget bill later this year. As I’ve been saying in recent days, we need to start gearing up for a fight to roll back the worst of Trump’s failing agenda this fall and replace it with things far, far better. The conversation about bailing on aspects of Trump’s unpopular and failing agenda has begun on the right, something we should welcome. For remember Trump Always Chickens Out and we need to keep fighting.

If we soften the edges of their extremist agenda, as Senate Dems did by winning all those battles with the Senate Parliamentarian, will it make it more likely Rs win the midterms next year? Regardless of what this Fabrizio memo says I don’t think so. They have told us who they are; the public has rejected it; their agenda will make things worse, and them even more unpopular; and now it is up to us to keep mitigating the damage they are doing, offer a better path and win elections so we return to power and give America a better day.

As I’ve been arguing I think we need to see these next few months as a time to go on offense, as a time of enormous opportunity to tell our story to a country growing tired of them. While we have to keep reminding the country of their failures and extremism, we also must use our opposition to start to lay out our agenda. Here is my first cut on that, summer edition, 2025:

Create A Growing Economy That Works For All, Fight Trump’s Tax and Price Increases - Roll back the terrible tariffs, lift this onerous tax on working people, stop this illegal and unconstitutional abuse of power that is doing so much economic and geopolitical damage to America; fight his raising prices on food, health care and energy and just about everything else

2- Rein In ICE, Protect Our Liberties, Fight For Democracy And Due Process - Put guardrails on ICE, no more masks or plainclothes agents, mandatory use of warrants and due process, no third country extraditions and a roll back on the additional and unnecessary funding provided in the reconciliation bill

3 - Keep America Safe - Fully fund FEMA, NOAA, FAA, DHS Intel, our cyber defenses etc - keep Americans safe, do not let our guard down against threats foreign and domestic. The unnecessary and tragic death of dozens of young girls should inspire us to action

4 - Protect The Nation’s Health - fire Kennedy, restore our vaccine regime, stand up for science and our world leading universities, fully fund NIH and all ongoing medical research, rescind the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to properly fund Medicaid and our public health

5 - Stand With Ukraine and Europe, Not Russia - Implement the Russia sanctions, ensure the world understands that America stands with Ukraine and Europe not Putin and global autocracy

Now, my friends……

Let’s Get To Work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Support Hopium’s Priority Candidates - Our revised fundraising goals are for Labor Day, remarkably, only two months away, with the November elections now only four months away. Early voting in Virginia starts September 19th. We can do this people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Mikie Sherrill NJ Gov (2025) - $200,000 goal, $36k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch Our Interview

• Abigail Spanberger VA Gov (2025) - $250,000 goal, $152k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch Our Interview

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $200,000 goal, $35k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer

• Hopium House 7 (2026) - $250,000 goal, $161k raised - Donate | Learn More, Volunteer, Watch Our Interviews

We also have ongoing campaigns to support the new DNC, Anderson Clayton and the North Carolina Democratic Party and to thank Senator Cory Booker for his spirited leadership in a time of enormous challenge. Lots of choices - do something to support these great candidates and parties today!

As I mentioned I’m in the process of reworking our collective activities, and today have a new number 1….

1 - Call your Senators and Reps To Demand They Revoke Trump’s Terrible Tariffs - I will be fleshing this out in coming days but Congress simply must take back its tariff authority that Trump has illegally and unconstitutional seized and dangerously abused; and at the very least they must stop what will be Trump’s ruinous new tariff increases slated to start on August 1st. Trump’s economic plan has failed, and we need to find a better way forward.

2 - Get The Military Off Our Streets, Fight Trump’s Inhumane Immigration Escalation - Contact your Rep and Senators to demand they fight Trump’s illegal use of the National Guard and Marines in California. Encourage Democrats at all levels of government to a stand with Governor Newsom and the California - for Trump is not just attacking California, he is attacking the rights and freedoms of all of us. See my recent interviews with David Leopold Joe Garcia, Leon Krauze and Senator Chris Van Hollen for more.

In the coming days I want to work with all of you to do something more explicit about demanding the end of masked, plain clothes “police” snatching people here in America without warrants.

3 - Join Our Resolutions Project - Inspired by the tactics of our Founders, learn about how Hopium members are advancing “resolutions of condemnation” in their communities across the country and consider bringing this initiative to your state, country or city/town. Our resolutions passed in two New Mexico counties two weeks ago, and we now have 46 resolutions moving in 15 states. Amazing stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4 -Volunteer To Help Your State and/or Local Democratic Parties Stand Up Voter Registration Efforts And Support “Organizing Summer” - In the presentation he made to our community recently Tom Bonier made a persuasive case that Democrats must once again make partisan voter registration a national priority. State and local Democratic Parties are in the planning stages to take this on. Members of our community should consider contacting their state and local parties and offer to help stand up these vital efforts in the coming months.

For more on the need to make partisan voter registration great again see my recent interview with Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party Chair, DNC Vice Chair and President of the Association of Democratic State Committees.

Last Monday the DNC, the DSCC, the DCCC, the DGA and the ASDC announced a major new “Organizing Summer” project. Learn more about it here. I hope to have someone join us in the coming days to help us understand how we can support this exciting new initiative. Organizing to win these 29 Republican held House districts will be one of most important collective priorities for the next 16 months:

5 - Stand Up For Science - Sign on to the critically important Bethesda Declaration and watch my interview with Stand Up For Science’s Executive Director Colette Delawalla. Signing on to the Declaration is one concrete way you can take action today.

Another is to back over 700 employees of the EPA who have taken a courageous stand challenging EPA Administration Lee Zeldin. You can learn more and sign your name in support of this remarkable effort here. Note that over 140 of the signatories of this letter have now been put on Administrative leave.

6 - Grow Hopium - We’ve set a goal of trying to grow the Hopium community from the 152,000 we are now to 175,000 by Labor Day. Do what you can to encourage your friends, family and colleagues to become a summer subscriber to Hopium, free or paid. If each current paid subscriber brings in just one new subscriber this summer we will hit our goal.

To encourage the growth of our community annual paid subscriptions are 10% off through Labor Day. Use that link to buy gift or group subscriptions, and join our new referral rewards program too.

Please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder! Been impressive to see how many of you remain involved in local, in person protests of all kinds in your communities. Keep it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you, and a fight it surely is - Simon