Merry Christmas All......

Rest up everyone and let's hit the ground running in January!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morning everyone. It’s been quite a year. I am grateful to have this community full of proud, plucky patriots to work with, every day. All of you have kept me going and been my inspiration. While Trump has been bad - really bad - this community has been good - really good. You’ve done your part in time of national challenge - written your postcards, knocked on doors, called and texted, info warred, donated to candidates, marched and protested, introduced and passed “resolutions of condemnation,” kept people’s spirits up, and critically - put your head down and done the work to win elections all across the country.

While it would be impossible to quantify the volunteer hours our community has put in this year - it would enormous - we do know that we’ve raised $1.7 million for our targeted candidates and party committees through our donation links. Here’s a recap of our biggest campaigns:

• $255,000 - For our Audacious Expansion Fund ($51,000 each to the state parties of AK, FL, IA, ME, TX)

• $252,000 - The Hopium House 7 - our fund to help the 7 candidates we helped win in 2024 win their re-election bids this cycle

• $232,000 - Wisconsin Democratic Party to help elect Susan Crawford

• $224,000 - For Abigail Spanberger’s successful run for VA Governor

• $138,000 - To help Ken Martin get off to a strong start at the DNC

• $132,000 - For Mikie Sherrill’s successful run for NJ Governor

• $105,000 - For Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff

• $62,000 - For The North Carolina Democratic Party’s successful fight to ensure Allison Riggs became a state Supreme Court Justice

• $60,000 - For Roy Cooper in his bid to flip a US Senate seat in NC

• $54,000 - For Aftyn Behn in NC-7

• $47,000 - For our new Winning The House campaign that is helping four of our top House challengers get off to a strong start

Thank you all for what you’ve done. For while Trump has done enormous harm to the country this year, together, we’ve fought back, successfully. He is weakened, in clear phyiscal and cognitive decline, wildly unpopular, struggling to keep his Congressional coalition together, and has been losing elections all across the country, some by enormous margins. Whatever your version is of how we get to the other side of Trumpism what happened this year - a profound national rejection of him and his regime - was a necessary first step, and it happened.

Here is where Trump ends the year on FiftyPlusOne:

Here’s my regular breakout of the weekly Economist/YouGov tracking poll. It has been a year of across the board erosion, repudiation, and rejection for Trump, and this week may end being his worst week of polls this year:

The unemployment rate just keeps rising:

As does Measles cases across the country:

His weakening, and our growing strength, is why I think we should view 2026 as a year of opportunity for the pro-democracy movement. 2025 has been a good year for us electorally and politically. Our commitment, together, should be to make 2026 even better. For a deeper dive into my recap of 2025 and how I am seeing 2026 watch or listen to my last big picture talk which you can find here.

If events warrant I may post over the Holidays but we will be at a slower speed until Monday, January 5. If you are looking for some meaty discussions to chew on over the break I’ve put together a new playlist of our most memorable conversations this year on our YouTube channel. Looking back at the year I am really proud of the quality of the conversations we’ve had, the wide range of voices, the timeliness too. Another thing you can do over the break is listen to the Hopium backed candidates and party leaders and get to know them. Catching a few of these will give you a great orientation heading into 2026. You can find links below.

If you are in the Holiday spirit I have two top asks today:

• Donate to our Winning The House campaign today as we are just $3,000 shy of hitting our $50,000 year end goal

• Become a paid subscriber to Hopium before our 10% discount of an annual paid subscription ends on December 31, or give the gift of Hopium to a friend, colleague or family member. All of the money that makes Hopium go comes from our community so every paid subscription matters.

While we should be proud of what we’ve done this year, together, we cannot be satisfied with where the country, or our movement, is today. We must keep striving to do more; to be more effective; to keep finding those higher gears; to be more ambitious, and keep racking up wins. He is weaker today and we are stronger, and we must head into 2026 (once we rest up) confident that when we fight Trump we can win - and thus we must fight him more aggressively and on more fronts, every day.

For remember my friends, we are Americans. Fighting for freedom and democracy is who we are, what we do.

Let’s end today with the passage from FDR’s Four Freedoms speech that I’ve been sharing in recent weeks. It just keeps speaking to me……

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.

And now……

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

On Monday we hit our 2025 goal for the Audacious Expansion Fund - amazing work everyone! Can we now hit it for our Winning The House campaign? We have $3,000 to raise before December 31st……

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $60k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $105k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $47,000 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 - $255,000 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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In three new essays (here, here, here) I talk about 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

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 and Medicaid; 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!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays all. I am incredibly grateful for this community and excited to work together to make 2026 the year our great nation needs it to be. Rest up and be ready to hit the ground running in January! - Simon