Sunday Hopium - Our Opposition Movement Took A Big Step Forward This Week. So Proud Of All Of You!!!!!!!!

Members of this wonderful community are leaving out there on the playing field for our freedoms, our families and our future! Need to keep working hard all....

Happy Sunday everyone. Sundays at Hopium are rest and recharge days, be with family days, watch baseball days, days to slow down a bit and get ready for a big week ahead. I’m heading to the Farmer’s Market and the gym in a bit and then looking forward to watching some NCAA basketball this afternoon……

If you are looking for some Hopium work to connect with today, here’s a few things to consider:

New Essays - America Is Not Winning Under Trump (with video), Coming To Terms With Trump’s Madness, Old Dogs and New Tricks and my new analysis that shows how far and how rapidly Trump has fallen in public polling.

Timely Discussions - Conversations with Reps. Adam Smith, Eric Swalwell and Derek Tran; Talks about the future of the Democratic Party and the new DNC with Jane Kleeb, Anderson Clayton and David Hogg; Hear from our great candidates Susan Crawford in Wisconsin and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia; learn from Casey Michel about “governments of thieves,” Dr. Michael Mann on the Right’s War on Science/Public Health, Dr. Rob Shapiro on the dangers of tariffs and Leon Krauze on lessons to be learned from Mexico’s battle against a Trump-like leader. You can find all of our interviews under the Podcast tab on the main Hopium’s site navigation bar.

Join me for our first Substack live event tomorrow at 4pm ET. I will be interviewing leading immigration attorney David Leopold to review Trump’s wild escalation against immigrants, our freedoms and the courts this past week. Look for more details for how to join us in tomorrow’s Hopium post.

As I wrote yesterday while Trump escalated this week, I think it is very clear our Opposition movement got a lot stronger. That as the weather warms we are moving from the calls and contacts to our reps (which cannot slow down!!!!) to more in person action of all kinds - Bernie/AOC rallies, Tesla Takedowns, People’s Town Halls and empty chair events, and all sorts of other things people are coming together behind in local communities and making happen. A thousand flowers are blooming now…..

Paid subscribers here have had an important window into the evolution of our collective actions together through our daily chat where people from all over the county self-report each day on their activities. In reviewing the posts from this week it’s clear there has been a dramatic escalation in the numbers of events happening across the country; the size of the crowds participating; and perhaps most importantly the greater ownership local leaders - and all of you - are taking in putting all these events together. For this movement will be far more powerful and sustainable if it rises from the bottom up, not imposed on us from the top down. We are a democracy after all. It has been We The People for almost 250 years. True power in America is in all of us.

When Trump came back here at Hopium we immediately began focusing on what we could do outside of our more traditional campaign work. I had hoped that members of this community would lead in building whatever came next for us. It is now very clear that members of this community are out there fighting, doing, leading and leaving it all out there on the playing field for America.

And I am so incredibly proud to be in this fight with all of you, and grateful for your courage, commitment and patriotism in this time of extraordinary national challenge.

Here are a few messages from our daily discussion yesterday. Way to go everyone!

Lisa I:

Y’all, what a fantastic day here in the Garden State! Sen. Andy Kim has done a series of three town halls and then added a fourth right near me that I helped set up. They are open to everyone in the state, and all of them have been overflow. He has been absolutely fantastic and the first event this morning was carried live on C-SPAN. You can check it out right now. I am so proud that I knocked doors for him at a time when barely anyone knew who he was and he is now nationally known.

Friends, if your senators are not doing this type of thing, you should call up their offices and ask them why. If you do not know, Sen. Kim’s story, he is the child of Korean immigrants. His parents came to New Jersey to offer him a better life. He is the first Korean American in the United States Senate, and prior to that was elected to Congress in the big wave election in 2018, when he was opposing the healthcare cuts. He stepped up when he didn’t have to. He is what we should all aspire to. I am so proud to have been a very small part of getting him where he is today.

In a couple weeks, I will be traveling to Minnesota for a national academic librarians conference. I don’t think I need to tell you the threats that we are under as librarians and academics. Please go out and get a library card or renew your library card and support your local library. Supporting local institutions is essential to our fight. I have heard Dr. Ben-Ghiat and others say this over and over. Local action is one of the best ways to take action.

And as always, thank you, Simon, for giving us this wonderful community and platform to share ideas and grow our power.

Keep going!

Irene:

Self reporting: worked with Santa Cruz (Calif) friend today to plan for April 5th March with Indivisible group. LOTS of creative sign ideas with this artist group! Will report back on attendance. My 96 year old good friend determined to go too; bless her! She’s still a great walker.

Donated to our House group Simon selected; that felt great as these are such wonderful hardworking representatives. Also donated to Wis/Dems/Crawford, Spanberger and Anderson Clayton/NC Hoping our HC groups’ early funding will be most helpful to all.

A mentor suggested a donation to Let America Vote would be especially useful at this time as a 3X match in place. I’m researching them; if anyone here familiar with them open to input.

Celebrating new podcasting out: Lincoln Square ( great job Simon!) as well as Celebrating Meidas Touch “hits” surging above Fox and Rogans numbers. So much so they have become a huge MAGA target. So glad the left Media is expanding to counter the right echo chambers. Referring lots of articles and reports forward to newly interested peeps! The interest and concerns surging.Glad to share any/all info I can as a Hopium Information Warrior!💃🏻

A worrisome time but I’ll never stop fighting. So glad to be here with all of you Hopium community members fighting back too🙏🏻🇺🇸🇺🇸

Rachel P:

Self-reporting:

Participated in the Tesla rally in Dedham MA (just outside Boston borders). We're publicizing it and helping it grow each week. You can view it here:

Made a page & brought it to the rally of two groups' contact info and QR codes to get onto our newsletters for the groups people can join on either side of that rally location (Progressive West Roxbury/Roslindale and Neponset Valley Progressives). Leaders of both of our groups chatted with protesters. People were grateful to feel part of the crowd at the rally and grateful to join a group that's on top of actions & info.

Made an impromptu decision at the protest since several leaders were there to hold a rally in support of Social Security and SSA workers this coming Friday in Roslindale, opposite the SSA office, along busy Washington St. Made that decision in time to share it with the Tesla protesters. We're inviting City Councilors and State Reps to join us.

Took a DemCast workshop a couple nights ago; will experiment with their social media tools this weekend. It's great to know there are orgs creating video snippets, memes, messaging, etc, to support stronger pro-democracy amplification.

Here is an idea for local, bottom up action from my A Letter To America essays I want to float again for your consideration and discussion as a possible new area of advocacy:

One thing I think we should be encouraging our local Democratically controlled legislatures, city and county boards/councils to do is to pass condemnations of Trump. Go the record on whatever is of greatest concern - embrace of Putin, destruction of the US government, elimination of vital health research, mistreatment of workers. Whatever it is. As we discussed the other day these kind of bottom up public expressions of condemnation, of going on the record very clearly about why what Trump is doing is wrong, dangerous, a betrayal is very much in the spirit of how we last fought a mad king almost 250 years ago. We must become more comfortable going on the record with our fellow Americans laying out the case against him, spelling out what our Founders called in the Declaration of Independence “abuses and usurpations.”

Let’s Keep Working It All!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - 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 updating this in coming days now that the DNC, the House Dems and the state parties have become active in all these districts - as we hoped!!!!! Sign up to attend a new “People’s Town Hall” today)

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 $173,000 from over 2,000 of you, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000, $125,000 and $150,000. We are now upping this to a new superduper-stretch goal of $175,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!

Support The Hopium House 7 - We’ve begun our work to help flip the House next year by supporting and shoring up the 7 newly-elected battleground House Dems we helped elect last year. You can give to all 7 through a single donation to our new ActBlue page and learn more about this important effort here. We’ve already raised over $28,000 towards our $50,000 March 31st goal - thank you all!

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 $67,000 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 $26,000 so far - thank you all!

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 1,400 of you have donated over $102,000 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!

Help Hopium Celebrate Our 2nd Anniversary! - In a recent post from 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. Gift and group subscriptions are also a great way to grow our community!

Keep working hard all. Let’s make sure they hear the roar of our voice this week all across the country - Simon