Putting The Trump Regime's Corruption, Lawlessness, And Betrayal Front And Center In Our Politics

Let's make December a very good month for our democracy

Happy Sunday all. Hope you’ve had a restful holiday for we have a lot of work ahead us over the next few weeks. First, we have two elections to win:

• Rep. Aftyn Behn For Congress (Dec 2nd special election) - $51,000 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate | Learn More and Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Aftyn Behn | Amazing work all!!!!!!

• Eileen Higgins For Mayor Of Miami (Dec 9th run off) - $9,000 raised, $25,000 goal | Donate | Learn More and Volunteer | Enjoy my our conversation with Eileen Higgins

Next, our elected leaders in Washington need to hear our loud roar of disapproval of Trump’s malevolent regime and his enablers in Congress. As the regime fails and grows more unpopular, and the lawlessness and corruption impossible to ignore, little cracks are becoming bigger cracks - and we need to keep the pressure on. This weekend the Republican Chairs of The Senate and House Armed Services Committees announced probes into what sure appears to be illegal actions, and even possible war crimes, by Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior members of the Pentagon. Gift link from The Washington Post:

Republican-led committees in the Senate and the House say they will amplify their scrutiny of the Pentagon after a Washington Post report revealing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members aboard a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea several weeks ago.

A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat after the initial missile attack Sept. 2, The Post reported Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the committee’s top Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.” The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Alabama) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), followed suit late Saturday. In a brief joint statement, the pair said they are “taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.” The committee, they noted, is “committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”

Hear from House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith about all this in our recent deeply informative discussion. I will be going live with Lincoln Square’s Stuart Stevens tomorrow at 2pm ET for more (look for a link in tomorrow morning’s post). Be sure also to catch my new conversations with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Both Sane and Insane, and with Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, on what happens next with the Trump regime’s ongoing cover up of the Epstein crimes. Yesterday’s post is full of the latest disastrous polling data for Trump and his allies in Congress, and the nine things that are now working together to erode the legitimacy of the Trump regime.

As we go forward these next few weeks I think Democrats will need to start making the crimes, corruption, betrayal, and malevolence of Trump’s top advisors - Hegseth, Noem, Witkoff, Bondi, Kennedy, Vought, Sacks - a major topic in our discourse, and a way of further weakening the legitimacy of the regime. Here at Hopium we’ve long advocated for Democrats to start issuing criminal referrals to DOJ for crimes being committed by the regime (with the expectation nothing will happen) so there is a greater public understanding that laws are being repeatedly broken by our country’s leaders. It also important that people who work for Trump be fearful that accountability - reputational or legal - may some day occur.

Here’s Senator Mark Kelly on CNN this morning talking openly about Hegseth, war crimes, and accountability:

Yesterday JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon broached the issue of future accountability and Trumpian corruption - "pay for favors” - in this now widely viewed CNN segment:

The lead story in the Washington Post today was about Republicans launching war crimes investigations. The NYT lead with this extraordinary story detailing just mindboggling levels of self-dealing and corruption in the White House:

From the NYT story…….

Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government, influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor. Among his actions as the White House’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar:

• Mr. Sacks has offered astonishing White House access to his tech industry compatriots and pushed to eliminate government obstacles facing A.I. companies. That has set up giants like Nvidia to reap an estimate of as much as $200 billion in new sales.

• Mr. Sacks has recommended A.I. policies that have sometimes run counter to national security recommendations, alarming some of his White House colleagues and raising questions about his priorities.

• Mr. Sacks has positioned himself to personally benefit. He has 708 tech investments, including at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to artificial intelligence that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis of his financial disclosures.

• His public filings designate 438 of his tech investments as software or hardware companies, even though the firms promote themselves as A.I. enterprises, offer A.I. services or have A.I. in their names, The Times found.

• Mr. Sacks has raised the profile of his weekly podcast, “All-In,” through his government role, and expanded its business.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal led with this epic deep dive into one of the most extraordinary and dangerous corruption scandals in modern history - the Trump-Witkoff-Kushner selling out of Ukraine, Europe and democracies everywhere to Putin for coin.

These basket of issues - corruption and self-dealing, law breaking, abandonment of our Constitutional order, desecration of symbols of our democracy, gilded ballrooms - all can be woven together into a deeply damaging indictment of them that reinforces our core narrative - that they are for the oligarchs who are stripping our great country for parts, and that we are for the people, for democracy, and for the United States of America. As they grow weaker we must become stronger, more creative, and more ambitious - and make December a very, very good one for our democracy and democracies throughout the world.

Current models of Trump’s ballroom have it dwarfing the original White House structure - via the NYT

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

Winning December With Behn and Higgins

• Rep. Aftyn Behn For Congress (Dec 2 special election) - $48,000 raised, $50,000 goal (new stretch goal!!!!) - Donate | Learn More and Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Aftyn Behn | Amazing work all!!!!!!

• Eileen Higgins For Mayor Of Miami (Dec 9 run off) - $7,000 raised, $25,000 goal | Donate | Learn More and Volunteer | Enjoy my our conversation with Eileen Higgins

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $54k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $98k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $25,000 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) and Jo Mendoza (AZ-06) | Interviews with Paige Cognetti (PA-08) and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) coming soon

• Hopium House 7 - Our Top House Incumbents Running For Re-election (2026) - $246k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More, Volunteer | Watch My Interviews With Our Intrepid Incumbents | Keeping these newly elected Members in Congress is the first step in winning the House in 2026

Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $214,000 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 | Donate to all five state parties in a single contribution | Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties!

In a new essay 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 now, be loud now, 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.

Defending America, Winning The Big Arguments With Trump - We have two recommended actions today:

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Four-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our four 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 28 point “plan”

2. 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

3. 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, and ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities

4. 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.

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!

People are pissed, and we need to keep fighting - Simon