"Coming Together" - Some Sunday Thoughts On Meeting The Moment

Friends, we surpassed our $50,000 goal for the DFL - thank you all!

Morning all. On Friday I was interviewed by the BBC about what is happening in America. It was a long interview. The basic question was - “why aren’t you doing more to fight Trump? We in the UK and Europe are worried.” It was a hard interview, one of the hardest I’ve ever done. For the answer, of course, is that we are not doing enough, and he keeps doing extraordinary harm to the country and the world.

As we discussed the other day Trump has started 2026 with dramatic and unhinged escalations - the attack on Minnesota, the seizing of Maduro, the crowning of himself Emperor of the Americas, what is now something close to war with Europe and the end of the global security architecture that has keep us safe and prosperous for 80 years, the claiming of Gaza for himself and his friends, a doubling down on his illegal, reckless tariffs.

We are here now, deep into dangerous Mad King/Bond Villain territory. 2026 is no longer about affordability or restoring the ACA subsidies. It is about pro-democracy movement somehow coming together and forming a unified and far more powerful front against his dangerous Imperial and dictatorial designs.

In an ideal world, what we would see next week is a public statement signed by all Dem Governors, AGs, Senate and House Democrats that states clearly that

• Rule of law must be re-established in America, ICE must be reined in, and Trump’s outrageous plunder and corruption must end

• That he must back off his illegal and destructive territorial ambitions, end all these ridiculous tariffs, and re-commit to the Trans-Atlantic Alliance

Stake in ground. Unified voice. Muscular defense of liberty, democracy, and the American creed. Yes, it is time now for something akin to our Letter to America, and for our leaders to make clear, before it is too late, that we are willing to come together and fight for America, freedom, and democracy; and for us to start listing, clearly, his modern day “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations.” That we elected an American President and not a dictator, and it is way past fucking time he start acting like one.

In my BBC discussion I tried to explain that more was happening here than was evident from abroad. No Kings has brought millions to the streets. We have had blow out elections of all kinds all across the country and just reclaimed Virginia for example. That he is spectacularly unpopular, as is his agenda. That his hold on Congress was clearly fraying and his domestic agenda failing. That his declining health meant we were not looking at twenty years of this or even two for that matter. That we were just witnessing the very first high profile trip of leading Members of Congress - bipartisan, bicameral - to Europe to re-assure that their were still those old fashioned American patriots back here fighting.

“Is it enough?” the interviewed asked. No, of course it is not enough I told him. Trump has escalated these last few weeks and so must we. I don’t exactly know what our escalation, our higher gear needs to look like, but we are now, and we must meet the moment, together.

One thing we discussed was however our pro-democracy movement was to take shape here, it might not look like what Europeans and Britons would expect. Our country is so large and dispersed. We don’t have a national central square a few hours drive for everyone to get to easily. Our protests have been massive but distributed, not centralized. We also discussed how our system of government with a President not a Prime Minister leading a Parliamentary majority, was turning out to be ill suited to challenge an autocrat like Trump once the guardrails started to fall and Republicans in Congress became complicit. For our system does not force our party to pick a single leader or form a shadow government until the Presidential nominating process. Our power, our movement, right now is diffuse, not centralized. And Trump is exploiting our system of government to divide and conquer. He goes after one state at a time. He isolates and divides. It is why we must learn, somehow, to come together and form some kind of rough coordinating council of state and Congressional leaders to form a more coherent and stronger opposition. The current way we are doing things - everyone kind of doing their thing across the country - isn’t working to stop him. We must do more.

We also must establish a loose foreign ministry for the opposition movement, one that stays in touch with our allies and free nations around the world. This Coons delegation trip to Europe this week could be the beginning of forming a pro-democracy foreign ministry and a new “liberal internationale” to counter the rising “illiberal internationale” that is threatening democracies all around the world, including our own.

Finally, I also talked to the BBC about the idea that in conflicts like this it can be true that the winning side gets off to a slow start before getting their act together and prevailing. It happened in our Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and in WWII. It happened in the UK under Churchill. In the early days of these conflicts our side was not winning. But we learned, got stronger, and were able to eventually prevail. I think we are in such a moment. We got off to a slow start. We are coming to understand that our system of government makes forging a centralized opposition challenging. But there can be no denying the nature of the conflict we are now in, or that our opposition movement simply isn’t organized properly right now for us regain the advantage or stop the incredible damage he is doing. As we discussed this week (here, here) it is time for us to starting imagining, together, a plan to make this unsettled and challenging time that in that in ten years brings about a “new birth of freedom” here and around the world, and does accept that the next era will be one of autocratic and oligarchical consolidation.

Admittedly we’ve seen some early promising signs of this “coming together” that is necessary now. The Dem AGs have become an organized and formidable fighting force. The Governors of the free states are working together on climate change, reproductive freedom, health care, and preservation of our democracy. But I think the next step is for these nascent networks in the free states to more formally connect with our leaders in Congress to form something bigger, more powerful, more effective, more ambitious. We can’t wait till we have a nominee in the summer of 2028 for our party to come together. We must build an interim “coordinating council” that brings us together, and overcomes our natural divisions. For, my friends, as it has been said, we are going to hang together or we going to hang separately. And I for one am much more interested in hanging together and fighting as hard as we can, as proud patriots, for freedom and democracy, here and everywhere. For that is what we do here in America, and we need to get on with it.

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

Thank you all for making our fundraising campaign for the Minnesota DFL a rousing success. We are now at $63,000 raised, surpassing our $50,000 by Feb 15th goal in less than 24 hours. Once again, when called, the Hopium community has answered, powerfully!

Some of you may have noted that there has been a bit of controversy on the ground in Minnesota about our campaign. I don’t want to dwell on it for it just isn’t a great use of our time at this point, but I will just say that things are hard in Minnesota right now and I think a few people misunderstood what were doing and jumped the gun a bit. It’s understandable. Things are hard and scary there right now. Trump is threatening now to bring in paratroopers. Our goal here is help the people of Minnesota and not argue with them so I am moving on.

I am proud of the support we are giving to the DFL. It is smart and strategic. The party is grateful, and using these resources to build out their plan for how to best respond to the terror campaign now underway. No state party has experience with something like this and in our conversations we’ve been exploring ways they could do more, reach higher, or as DFL Chair Richard Carlbom described it the other day - “our job is to do what we can to safeguard democracy.” That is a new mission for a party organization, which has traditionally had a narrow focus of winning elections. So what we are doing with the DFL, and we are doing all this in conjunction with the national state party organization led by Jane Kleeb, is to re-imagine the role of a state party in this time of national challenge, and create new models that meet the moment. That is what we are doing with the MN DFL, and that is what your support is enabling. Thank you all for stepping up and helping us “meet the moment.”

I posted a thread on Bluesky this morning that attempted to clear up some of the confusion about our project for those who are interested. I am moving on and encourage everyone else here to join me. We have far more important work ahead of us - let’s get to it, and let’s once again close by thanking the good people of Minnesota for their courage and bravery. They have become an incredible inspiration to us all.

Winning The Midterms - Support Our Candidates

• Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $76,300 raised, $250,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)

• Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $17,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer and learn more. Amazing start everyone!

• Winning Ohio - $14,500 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue! | Watch my conversation with David Pepper, who does a great overview of the opportunities we have in Ohio this year

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $67k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper and a new, terrific one with NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $113k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $277,000 raised, $500,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas. Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties

This recent post recapped our our very productive year together in 2025. In three new essays (here, here, here) I discuss 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, be loud, 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 Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our Democracy - We have two recommended actions today:

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five 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 current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender

2. Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean and the Pacific - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law, and the US must withdraw from Venezuela and cease other threats to violate the UN Charter and the sovereignty of other nations

3. 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. To put America on a sounder fiscal course due to the enormous deficits brought by Trump’s 2025 tax cuts we should reverse these cuts to the wealthy and corporations

4. 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; ending the use of the military on our streets and the dangerous occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented regime corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress end the rancid cover up of the Epstein crimes.

5. Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and our clean energy investments; support and co-sponsor the Stand Up For Science/Rep. Haley Stevens effort to remove Robert Kennedy from HHS.

2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - This 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 everyone, and I remain so incredibly proud to be in this righteous fight with all of you - Simon