Notes On The Path Forward, Hopium Backs 7 Newly-Elected House Members, Trump Is Far Weaker Today

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Morning all. As we say here there will be good days, and bad days. Our leaders will disappoint, and stumble. We will make mistakes. But the key is to learn from them and get stronger, more capable, better; while staying as focused as possible on the main tasks at hand - forging an effective and ferocious opposition, stopping the damage Trump and Musk are doing, and winning as many elections as we can.

In my Thursday video and in my comprehensive Old Dogs and New Tricks post yesterday I offer my current advice on what needs to happen now that the CR has passed: 1) Congressional Dems need to radically overhaul their operations, raise their game and work with the DNC to build something new, far better and more effective; 2) As a party we must open up a sustained Second Front against Trump and Musk and begin that process by writing A Letter to America that “let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

As I’ve been writing to you I think the House Democrats are much further along in raising their game and appropriately responding to the gravity of the moment than the Senate Dems. They’ve built a task force led by Rep. Joe Neguse to challenge Trump more forcefully; they filed an amicus brief and held their first shadow hearing; they held a national “town hall” with the DNC that involved more than 100,000 people; they are working closely now with our new pro-democracy media outlets to further amplify their efforts; they’ve launched ad campaigns in 23 GOP-held battleground House districts; yesterday they announced a partnership with the DNC and State parties to do “People’s Town Halls in all 50 states starting with red districts first; last night Leader Jeffries announced a new national day of action on Tuesday to talk about the GOP’s plutocratic, health care undermining, deficit exploding budget framework:

The partisan Republican spending bill is an attack on veterans, families, seniors and everyday Americans. Our struggle continues.

The ongoing Republican assault on the economy, healthcare, the social safety net and veterans benefits requires all of us working together in the weeks and months to come. Donald Trump’s disingenuous and nakedly superficial effort to divide us will not succeed.

On Tuesday, March 18, House Democrats will hold a Day of Action throughout America to aggressively push back against the diabolical Republican scheme to enact the largest Medicaid cut in our nation’s history. We will partner with our colleagues at every level of government to protect the American people.

Democratic Members of the House, the Senate, governors, local elected officials, unions, civil rights organizations, democracy reform groups and concerned citizens all have an important role to play. Our party is not a cult, we are a coalition. On occasion, we may strongly disagree about a particular course of action. At all times, Democrats throughout the nation remain determined to make life better for everyday Americans and stop the damage being done by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and House Republicans.

Sign up to be part of a “People’s Town Hall” here, and I will send more info on Tuesday’s day of action when it becomes available. By this writing Governor Walz will have already done two of these Town Halls!

To honor the fight of the House Dems these last few weeks this morning Hopium is endorsing the 7 battleground House freshman we helped elected in 2024 for re-election. We raised almost $2.5m for House challenges last cycle, an enormous sum in these highly competitive races. We won 7 of the 17 races we targeted. And now, as a first step to making Leader Jeffries Speaker Jeffries next year we are endorsing and working for these Hopium 7. Like last cycle I’ve set up a single ActBlue page where your donation is split 7 ways among them. For those who want to say “thank you” to the House Dems for their fight please consider making a donation to our intrepid 7 today and in the coming days. Our goal is raise $50,000 for them by March 31st, perhaps more.

The new Hopium House 7 in 2025 are:

• Rep. Adam Gray CA-13

• Rep. George Whitesides CA-27

• Rep. Derek Tran CA-45

• Rep. Tom Suozzi NY-3

• Rep. Laura Gillen NY-4

• Rep. Josh Riley NY-19

• Rep. Janelle Bynum OR-5

We are in touch with their offices and will be doing a Hopium-style interview with each of them in the coming weeks so everyone can hear directly from them. We’ve got interviews with Reps Bynum and Tran already scheduled and hope to get the rest done in April. For those who would rather give to one of these candidates directly and not give to all seven I will have that option built and ready to go in the next few days.

As we move forward what also remains true this morning is that Trump is fucking up, and the public is losing faith in him. He has already unraveled the strong economy he inherited. As I wrote to you yesterday polling this week makes clear that the public does not support his reckless economic policies, his attack on the US government, his madman approach to the world. Global markets have come to understand how bananas he is. Consumer confidence has plummeted, rapidly, significantly. Trump keeps losing in court, badly, even in his Supreme Court. His rancid partner Musk has seen Tesla’s stock price tank, his rockets explode, Twitter go off line, and his standing go deep into the toilet here and everywhere.

While we assess what happened to us this week we cannot for one moment lose sight that the wheels have begun to come off the Trump-Musk bus from hell; Trump is far weaker today than he was a month ago; and the public is waking up to what a danger he is to our freedom, our democracy, our families and our future. It is why this week we need get back at making our case against them, fellow patriots. For far more Americans are open to hearing it now, and we need to keep doing everything we can to bring it to them.

Let’s Now Do More, And Perhaps, Maybe, Worry A Little Less - While we have made many recommendations to Democrats in recent months for how to raise our game and fight harder and smarter, let’s focus on our current four recommended sets of actions for how we can best channel our love of country and our frustrations into concrete action today:

1 - Fight The Trump-Musk Attack On Our Government, Our Privacy And Our Constitutional Order - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in a joint Senate-House Letter to America; to hold their own hearings; to file criminal referrals for Musk and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI and amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own (House Dems began doing this two weeks ago). 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.

2 - Loudly Protest Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of NATO and 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; demand that we rejoin our European and NATO allies in support of Zelenskyy and democracy here and everywhere. The country is not with Trump’s embrace of Putin and we must be very loud, very, very loud now. See my new essay on the need to support our allies and not surrender to Putin, and my new interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most important foreign policy voices in our party.

3 - 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 whatever joint House-Senate reconciliation bill emerges in the coming weeks. We launched this new effort a few weeks ago 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 this next phase of the battle over the budget. As we’ve discussed there is a lot of concern in the Republican House about the size of the Medicaid cuts required in the House outline passed last month and we need to keep working it people! (will be updated this in coming days now that the DNC, the House Dems and the start parties have become active in all these districts - as we hoped!!!!!)

4 - 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.

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.

Next, for those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind in addition to our new House Hopium 7:

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. Thanks to a huge surge of support in recent days we have already raised $147,000, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000 and $125,000. We are now upping this to a new super-stretch goal of $150,000 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 $98,000 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 $63,000 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 Fight The GOP’s Attempt To Steal A Supreme Court Seat - Last week we began 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 won together in 2024. Watch my new interview with Chair Clayton from last week to get an update on the fight over the Supreme Court seat and her plans to win elections and counter Trump this year. We’ve raised $23,000 so far - thank you all!

Help Hopium Celebrate Our 2nd Anniversary - In a post from this weekend I reflected back on our work together over these past two years, and made two asks:

1) Commit to bring in one new Hopium subscriber at the your current subscriber level this month. Help us grow this community, and bring our plucky, upbeat, hardworking spirit to more people across the US.

2) Upgrade your subscription to paid or paid to Founding (10% off annual paid subscriptions through March). The resources you provide allows me to work full time at Hopium and keeps our community vibrant, growing and making all sorts of good trouble every day.

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you, particularly on the hard days - Simon