Making Diseases And Parasites Great Again, Pratt Crashes Out In LA, Talarico Leads By 3 In New Texas Poll
I'll be joining Stuart Stevens live at Noon ET today over at Lincoln Square - lots to talk about!
Morning all. I’ll be going live with Stuart Stevens today at Noon ET to talk politics, today’s primaries, Ukraine and much more. Click here to join us live. A recording of our discussion will be sent along later today for those who can’t make it at Noon.
Paid subscribers will gather tomorrow night at our usual time, 7pm ET, to review the primary results from Maine and South Carolina, Nevada, and North Dakota. I will also be going over the primary results live with The Contrarians Thursday at 915am ET. Today’s primary vote in Maine will be an important test for Graham Platner. Polls close at 8pm, though with ranked choice voting we may not know the final results until tomorrow or later.
Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman are headed to a November run off in the Los Angeles Mayor’s race (Yes MAGA golden boy Spencer Pratt crashed out):
While we don’t yet have a Dem in CA-22 note that so far our two candidates have gotten 58% of the vote, incumbent Republican David Valadao just 42%. It’s an encouraging sign in this important pick up opportunity.
While there is still a lot of vote out in the Governor’s race the likely outcome remains is Becerra and Hilton, though Steyer has made gains in recent days.
Yesterday I wrote about how the ridiculous election “rigging” charges by Trump and MAGAs in these California elections are a preview of what is to come this November:
A new independent poll in Texas has Talarico leading Paxton 47%-44%. This data is in line with other recent polling in the race, and is very encouraging.
The Economist/YouGov weekly tracking poll was just released and it continues to show Trump in terrible shape. A few key bits of data:
18-29 year olds 26%-71% (-45)
Hispanics 31%-62% (-31)
Indies 23%-67% (-44)
Moderates 24%-73% (-49)
On the economy - not inflation - the economy, which historically was his area of greatest strength, Trump comes in at 29%-63% (-34). Inflation is even worse - 24%-69% (-45). This is as ugly as it gets my friends….
A big thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber in recent days. We’ve signed up 71 new people, well on our way to our goal of 500 by July 4th. Take 10% off a paid annual Hopium subscription today and help make our Independence Day membership sale and drive a success!
Eugenics. Whenever I talk to Dr. Colette Delawalla from Stand Up For Science, as I did yesterday, we always end up settling on the word eugenics to describe the Trump regime’s approach to public health. Here’s the definition of eugenics from Merriam-Webster:
the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition
They’ve passed enormous cuts to our health care system which will make care more expensive, harder to get, and thus the public’s health will decline and more Americans will die (as they did under Trump’s historic mismanagement of COVID). They vaporized USAID which estimates say will kill 10-15m of the poorest people of the world, including millions of children, and dramatically undermine the public health of all the people of the world. They’ve attacked science and vaccines, causing a return of the one of the deadliest diseases, measles, with more to follow if vaccine hesitancy rates continue to rise. Cuts to both foreign and domestic screwworm monitoring and prevention programs has allowed this deadly parasite to return to the US for the first time since 1960s. And then there’s Ebola. Here’s former senior USAID executive Jeremy Konyndyk in the NYT Times today in a must read piece (gift link):
The current situation in eastern Congo and Uganda combines some of the most dangerous aspects of the 2014 and 2018 outbreaks — the worst Ebola outbreaks in history. The virus was already spreading for several months before it was detected in May, and there are no approved vaccines or treatments for this particular form.
As bad as this situation is, we have a playbook for addressing such crises. But it requires a huge team effort — and this time, the United States has undermined its ability to help by shuttering U.S.A.I.D., cutting staff at C.D.C. and withdrawing from the W.H.O. Thousands of people could pay the ultimate price for that recklessness.
To contain the virus, the international community will need to pool hundreds of millions of dollars to set up specialized clinics, buy lab diagnostics, carry out large-scale contact tracing, manage safe burials, send personal protective equipment to health workers and build trust with skeptical community members.
………
Amid these challenges, the resources and people to help keep the virus in check have been painfully slow to materialize. This is not surprising, given that aid organizations were forced to dramatically cut back operations in eastern Congo last year after U.S.A.I.D.’s departure. In 2024, after years of steadily increasing its support for Congo, U.S.A.I.D. sent the country $545 million. This year, funding has plummeted to $84 million.
They are literally unleashing horrors out into the world and killing tens of millions people in order to give tax cuts to Trump and other wealthy Americans. The idiocy, greed, barbarism, fanaticism, inhumanity of all this overwhelms me whenever I return to these issues. Overwhelms me, and shakes me to my very core.
It also makes me think of this incredibly profound passage of Jefferson’s:
And it reminds us of why we need to keep our heads down, and keep working hard all. Here are things you can call your Senators and House Rep about today:
Finish the job on the Ukraine Support Act, get it passed through the Senate to the President’s desk
Finish the job on the Iran war powers resolutions that have passed both the Senate and House in recent weeks, and get them to the President’s desk
No to the big ICE/CPB funding bill that gives DHS years of funding with no reform of the out of control agency that will be coming to the House this week
No to the ballroom, the Arch, the gilded statues, the slush fund, the corruption, self-enrichment……
Hell no to Bill Pulte for ODNI, and hell hell no to Todd Blanche becoming Attorney General
Hell hell hell no to the new OMB regs that will destroy government-funded science in America. Joins the new Stand Up For Science campaign to Stop Vought. Save Science today.
It also should encourage us to……
Go Out And Win Some Elections Everyone!
Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map
Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign - $765,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal (new ambitious, audacious even, q2 goal) - Donate to all twelve of our endorsed House challengers with a single contribution split twelve ways | Get to know Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Chaz Molder (TN-05), Jonathan Nez (AZ-02), Janelle Stelson (PA-10), Shannon Taylor (VA-01), and Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03) by watching our recently recorded Hopium interviews.
Friends if these twelve win, the House will flip, no matter redistricting madness the Rs execute in the coming days. So eyes on the prize here everyone!
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Keep working hard everyone. We have a country to save, and elections all across this great country to win, together! - Simon
For the action at our local Tesla dealership in Colorado (56 Saturdays so far) I made a new sign:
SCREW
WORM YOU,
ELON!
A few weeks ago the new sign was:
GOTTA
LOVE
"EBOLA ELON"!
Lots of cheering, honking and waves. Joyous solidarity.
Looking forward to the conversation with Stuart Stevens.
I know it might not be light fare summer reading, but I've been reading about tuberculosis, past and present, and wondering about what USAID cuts will do to deaths from that. It impacts primarily the same group of people as are impacted by ebola now (poor nutrition, limited healthcare). Already, before USAID cuts, more than 1 million people die every year from TB. There are drug resistant strains that are expensive to diagnose. But my thoughts are that these other diseases, not just Ebola, but TB, AIDS, etc, are also going to become bigger factors with the USAID cuts. Bush was a shitty, shitty president, but the one thing he did right was funding AIDS prevention and treatment in Africa. Trump, I guess, has unwound most of that, and worse. African nations should figure more importantly in the future in a way that is not like the exploitive, extractive past.