Standing With Ukraine Not Putin, Hopium Backs Rep. Aftyn Behn, Rs Coming To Realize Trump Is A Malevolent Fu-k Up

Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins us live at 130pm ET to talk about it all.....

Morning all. While we’ve been hesitant to back Aftyn Behn this morning I’m encouraging people to dive in and see if we can steal a +22 Trump district in Tennessee. Rep. Behn has worked incredibly hard, excited a lot of people and given us a shot - a long shot - to win this thing. Given that everything that is happening in DC right now we just have to go for it. For people are pissed, and we need to keep fighting.

Donate to Aftyn Behn at this new Hopium ActBlue page. Our goal - $25,000 by Friday! The special election is next Tuesday, December 2.

Volunteer and learn more about Aftyn here. For those running dedicated phone banks please share the links and dates and I will publish them here. Let’s go for it everyone and help this dynamic young leader close strong! Fearless leadership that puts people first!

Call Your Senators and House Members And Demand They Stand With Ukraine, Not Putin - From news reports this morning it’s hard to understand where this disastrous, disgraceful Vance-Witkoff-Kushner betrayal of Ukraine lies now, but it is critical that Congress hears from us today; hears our outrage; hears our demands that they work to block the selling out of Ukraine, Europe, and the America of the Four Freedoms to Putin and global autocracy. Ask to see statements, and if they haven’t made one demand they put one out condemning Trump and his corrupt band of traitors immediately. What we have to hope for is that the negotiations slow down; Trump’s absurd deadline of this Thursday gets extended; and Witkoff and Kushner get tossed from the US negotiating team after their historic betrayal of Ukraine and the West.

While Trump has done many damaging and dangerous things since he’s returned to the White House what he did last week - in part we have to believe to change the subject from his epic Epstein repudiation and humiliation - this rancid embrace of Putin and shiving of Ukraine and Europe is in my mind the most destructive and dangerous thing he’s done. It is why we must make our calls today. Trump has been rebuked in recent weeks in Congress on his tariffs and his own ongoing rancid Epstein cover up; the American people rebuked him in the November elections; now we must rebuke him on his outrageous appeasement of Putin and the selling out of Ukraine, Europe and America itself.

For more background on this tragic moment in American history see my Saturday post that has many links to essays and analyses; Timothy’s Snyder’s 4 minute video and his new essay, Russian Unreality and American Weakness; my new interview with the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith.

Loud and proud everyone!

Ruth Ben-Ghiat Joins Us Today At 130pm ET Live - Historian, author, and fellow Substacker Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins us live today at 130pm EST. You can join us by clicking on this link right before start time.

I asked Dr. Ben-Ghiat to come talk to us after reading her recent essay, “Both Sane and Insane”: Autocratic Visions Of Governance, Chaos As A Strategy. It helped me better understand what we are seeing everyday and how to think about Trump and his regime. I think you will find it and our conversation today helpful, particularly after Trump’s rancid attempts in recent days to surrender Ukraine to Putin. I’m looking forward to this discussion today. Join us live if you can!

Republicans Are Coming To Realize That Trump Is A Sundowning Lame Duck And A Titanic Fuck Up - I’m angry today, really, really angry. This Ukraine thing was beyond the pale even for Trump. For time and space reasons I will not able to get all this down today but I think we are at the point now where a real, legit, ongoing bipartisan pro-democracy, pro-American opposition could emerge. It’s just clear now he doesn’t give a shit about the country - only himself, his money, his perception of his own power - and will keep doing extraordinary harm to all of us if he is not more aggressively challenged.

The wreckage of this year of sabotage, plunder, idiocy, and betrayal is now strewn all across the Capital. It has become impossible even for Republicans to ignore. Consider:

1 - DC insidery media is full of stories today about Trump’s ebbing powers, disarray, growing recognition of the incredible hole they are now in. Just read this passage from Punchbowl this morning:

MTG’s four-page note was stinging for House Republicans. Why? Because the message rang true to so many in the House GOP.

In fact, a few other GOP members messaged us over the weekend saying that they, too, are considering retiring in the middle of the term.

Here’s one particularly exercised senior House Republican:

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms.

“More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

Of course, Johnson’s team points out they have impossibly small margins and believe they are doing what they can with the hand they were dealt.

But the idea that Republicans could lose their majority this Congress is no longer far-fetched. If Johnson were to lose another House Republican in the middle of this term to retirement, death or illness, there’s a decent chance that the GOP can end up in the minority at some point in 2026.

2 - Trump’s job approval in Fox News polling, the most widely seen of all their polls, has gone from 52%-46% in January to 41%-58% last week. This is a 23 point drop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at what has happened to Trump’s job approval in the right-wing propaganda cite Real Clear Politics. In late October Trump’s job approval was -6 (while it was -13 on FiftyPlusOne). Everything was fine in MAGA world. Now look where it is, -13. Everything is all of a sudden very not fine, and the illusion of his strength has vanished.

3 - The 2025 election was a blow out, and the longer everyone has had to look the worse it has become for Republicans. They are now having to spend money to defend a +22 Trump district in Tennessee, something that portends disaster for them in the mid-terms. Democrats have leads in recent state wide polls in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio, and have been competitive in both Florida and Texas. The Republican hold on the Senate is all of a sudden not a given.

In the first serious national poll looking at 2028 taken since the election Newsom leads Vance by 8 points, 54%-46%, yet another confirmation that the landscape has shifted between 8 and 12 points towards the Democrats since last year. Republicans are right to be alarmed by what they are seeing, and how hard it is going to be to make things better for them.

4 - A new now-MAGA-friendly CBS News poll released on Sunday has all sorts of deeply ominous stuff for Trump and the Rs. First, he is 40%-60% in job approval, down 8 points since September, and 26 points!!!!!! since February.

Two thirds of the country is unhappy with his stewardship of the economy and he continues to be underwater on his signature issue, immigration:

Independents are deeply unsatisfied with his ongoing Epstein cover up:

But perhaps most ominously for Trump, support for military action in Venezuela is even more unpopular than this management of the economy, suggesting that if he does start wagging the dog this week - and trample all over our Thanksgivings - he and Republicans are going to pay a heavy price and end up even further away for an electorate that is in the process of giving up on them.

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

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.

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2025/2026 Candidates

• Rep. Aftyn Behn For Congress (Dec 2, 2025 Special Election) - $25,000 Goal - Donate | Learn More and Volunteer

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $53k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch my interview with Gov. Cooper

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $96k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch my inspiring interview with Senator Ossoff

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $15,000 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Watch our new interviews with Christina Bohannan (IA-01) and Jo Mendoza (AZ-06)

• Hopium House 7 - Our Top House Incumbents Running For Re-election (2026) - $243k 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 - $202,000 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!

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!

Keep working hard all, and remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope tomorrow will be better than today.

We do the work to make it so.

- Simon