Newsom Fights The Info War, Rs Exploring Middle Class Tax INCREASES, Biden's Last Interview, Doing More and Worrying Less

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Good afternoon and morning all. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we are going to do here at Hopium over the next two years. Many of you have weighed in with thoughtful recommendations. The bottom line is that there aren’t that many elections in 2025, and as we have focused on non-incumbent races we will not have a full slate of 2026 candidates until late 2025 or early 2026. So if we follow our 2023-2024 strategy there will not a lot for us to do together this year.

So far this year we’ve done a deep dive on the DNC Chair’s race, endorsed Abigail Spanberger in VA and made calls and lobbied against Trump’s Unacceptable 4 - Gabbard, Hegseth, Kennedy and Patel. We will keep having events, keep hearing from emerging leaders and other smart people, and keep learning, together. We will play hard in NJ and VA in the fall, perhaps start supporting incumbent Senate and House candidates and maybe get behind some of the big 2026 gubernatorial and Senate candidates early.

As I look ahead I want to report that I’ve been really intrigued by the positive response to our modest campaign against the Unacceptable 4. People have enjoyed making the calls, having their voice heard. It is possible that like our work for candidates this past cycle, we could formalize this process a bit, scale it up and start making these kind of targeted issue/nomination campaigns a core part of what we do. We are 175,000 in our community now, and if we can get 50,000 to 100,000 people regularly taking action like this - and encouraging their friends and family to join them - it will matter.

We could, for example, decide to wage a campaign around a single Trump issue like opposition to the reconciliation/budget bill. I could bring experts on. Share written materials. We could all get smarter and then go to work, info warring and just working with everything we got against the passage of what is going to be some of the worst legislation in American history.

Of we could be warriors fighting to ensure that Los Angeles recovers and rebuilds successfully. As I wrote yesterday this is going to be titanic debate and project, involving climate change, urban design and infrastructure, immigration, the future of California and liberalism more broadly, disaster response, the 2028 Olympics, broligarchy. It is big and meaty, really interesting and really important.

We could dive into the daily news flow as I do today in a smart new Politico article, “Newsom widens information war with Trump and Musk - The California governor is writing a new playbook for Democrats overwhelmed by partisan hits and misinformation in the midst of a natural disaster:”

“There’s misinformation and disinformation and then there’s this — depravity on some other level. What they are doing is making it harder for the state to manage the disaster and putting peoples’ lives at risk,” said Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist who has written extensively about messaging.

We could study Governor Newsom’s new fact-check website and get smarter; follow him on Bluesky and help amplify his messages; watch and share interviews like this one with Brian Tyler Cohen:

and start more sophisticated info warring and lobbying efforts when appropriate. It would be a multi-year long campaign to help ensure an outcome - helping Los Angeles rebuild and recover - that just becomes part of who we are, what we do. For remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope good things happen. We do the work to make them so. This is a do place not just a place of learning.

Like with our 2023-2024 candidate and state party investment strategy we could pick a few important and achievable things and just stick with them through the next two years. Projects like Rebuilding LA, fighting Trump’s efforts to raise prices and taxes on working people, encouraging and supporting partisan voter registration drives in all the states we live in, informing our electeds about Hopium, the new media ecosystem that it’s developing and help them get louder and go 24/7/365. I’m not sure we are going to be able to worry less in the coming months so we may just have to focus on doing more.

Paid subscribers should use the chat below in the coming days to let me know what you think of all this. As I keep saying we are going to have to learn how to become an effective and ferocious opposition, together. We have to innovate, re-imagine and re-invent now. For me that is what makes what’s going to be a hard time also potentially an exciting time. For if together rather than disengaging and being perpetually disappointed we build new things, test out new ideas and strategies, advance new and compelling leaders and get some wins along the way on stuff that matters this could end being a very important time of modernization and rebuilding for the great American center-left.

Some other things I’m tracking this morning……

“Biden is an optimist” - watch President Biden’s final interview with the great Lawrence O’Donnell. Read the new comprehensive report the White House has put out on the accomplishments of the Biden Presidency. Enjoy this wonderful passage from the President’s Farewell Address:

My eternal thanks to you, the American people. After 50 years of public service, I give you my word, I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands — a nation where the strength of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must endure. Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it, too.

MAGA’s betrayal of the working class continues. Yesterday we discussed how Trump’s batshit crazy agenda is already rising prices here in the US. Today we learn from Senator Ron Wyden that the House Budget Committee is considering both incredible program cuts that will impact middle class Americans and onerous middle class tax increases to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Learn more on his new Bluesky thread.

The ouster of House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner is an ominous development, and will further weaken Speaker Johnson’s tenuous grip on the House.

Taylor Lorenz has a thoughtful look at what may or may not happen with TikTok and what it means for content creators and our pro-democracy media ecosystem.

The NYT discovered that Robert Kennedy lobbied to revoke the FDA’s approval of COVID vaccines SIX MONTHS after they had been rolled out. This would have caused the death of millions and crippled our economy. Kennedy is a deeply dangerous man and we have to keep fighting his unacceptable nomination.

Strongly recommend this new Atlantic article The Army Of God, about the growing power of a far more political - and radical - form of Christianity. Read this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A recording of the DNC’s live candidate forum from Thursday is now available on its YouTube channel. Watch my interviews with 3 of the leading DNC Chair candidates here, and feel free to check out the sites of Ben Wikler, Ken Martin and Martin O’Malley to learn more about their candidacies.

A few more things:

• We’ve endorsed Abigail Spanberger for Governor of Virginia. Watch my recent interview with her, learn more, volunteer and consider donating to her campaign. Our goal is to raise $100,000 for her by March 31st. We’ve already raised $15,000 - thank you all.

• Be sure to review my current working 7 takeways and recommendations about the path forward (video and post).

• I’m speaking to a major political gathering in person at the University of Southern California on Thursday, January 30th. My panel starts at 215pm PT. Hope to be able to see some members of the Hopium community there!

• Keep making your calls everyone. Need to keep fighting the Unacceptable 4 - Gabbard, Hegseth, Kennedy, Patel. Read my new essay on MAGA as a secessionist movement.

• For those coming up for renewal for your paid Hopium subscription please make sure your payment info is current. Paid subscribers keep this place going and the Hopium flowing!

• Our first live Hopium paid subscriber get together of the new Trump era will be Wednesday, January 22nd at 7pm ET.

• Follow me on Bluesky.

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