Sunday Hopium - We Had Some Important Wins This Past Week. Let's Keep Fighting And Get Some More

Join me in Bethesda, Maryland on Tuesday, February 18/Welcome new subscribers!

Good morning all. Sundays are going to be light days here at Hopium, a time to reflect on the week that just passed, rest up a bit, get ready to hit the ground running on Monday.

A few key recent reads/video in case you missed them: A Disappointing Jobs Report, Trump’s job approval and consumer confidence are dropping, my new Fighting Hard, Fighting Smart - Notes On Building An Effective and Ferocious Opposition video and post, time for criminal referrals for Elon and his malicious posse, State AGs Block Musk’s Illegal Assault On Treasury and an incredible read on the multi-generational far-right extremism of Musk’s family who moved to South Africa from Canada to support the apartheid regime.

If you are looking for meaty interviews with key leaders of this moment head to our Podcast gallery. Check out our new Events and 2025 Campaigns/Actions pages which will now be updated daily. Email invites for this week’s Wednesday 7pm ET live paid subscriber and a Friday 1pm ET Founding Members gatherings will be going out later this afternoon. Paid subscribers should check to make sure their subscription is current. Substack’s renewal process has a bit of a light touch and sometimes people fall through cracks and lose access to our paid subscriber gatherings.

Dr. King……

I wake this morning convinced our most important work in the next few weeks is to stop/slow Musk and his malicious posse. You could feel our nascent opposition movement waking up this week, and we had important wins in court cases; but we must keep prosecuting the political case against Musk, making him more a criminal and traitor than a reformer. It’s why I’ve recommended that Congress and the states make criminal referrals of him and his team to DOJ/FBI and even state law enforcement officials. They may not be acted upon, but we must create a record and understanding of the extraordinary crime spree Musk is on right now in the nation’s capital.

The illegal accessing of Treasury’s payment systems must remain a central focus for it is arguable that it is the most consequential cyber-security breach in our history, a dramatic Muskian overreach. Here’s the NYT today, gift link:

A federal judge’s order that Elon Musk’s team temporarily cease boring into the Treasury Department’s payment systems raises a far larger question: whether what Elon Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency is creating a major cyber and national security vulnerability.

The activities of Mr. Musk’s government cost-cutting effort, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in his order on Saturday, risk “the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information” and render the Treasury’s systems “more vulnerable than before to hacking.”

It is a risk that cybersecurity experts have been sounding alarms over in the past 10 days, as Mr. Musk’s band of young coders demanded access to the Treasury’s innermost systems. That access was ultimately granted by Scott Bessent, the newly confirmed Treasury secretary.

But other than vague assurances that the new arrivals at the Treasury’s door had proper clearances, there was no description of how their work would be secured — and plenty of reason to believe that it would make it easier for Chinese and Russian intelligence services to target the Treasury’s systems.

And…..

The concern about the targeting of the department is hardly hypothetical: In December, the agency said in a letter to Congress that a Chinese intelligence group had broken into its systems and stolen unclassified material. A full assessment of that damage has not been made public. But it was a reminder that the Treasury Department — as much at the Pentagon and its contractors, the C.I.A. and the White House — is high on Beijing’s target list. And any new access to the agency’s systems potentially creates a new way in for intruders.

In the days before the order, concerns over the potential security vulnerabilities created by Mr. Musk’s project were rampant. The Washington Post reported that a subcontractor to Booz Allen Hamilton, the firm that runs much of the Treasury’s threat detection center, had issued a written warning; it was retracted after its contents were leaked.

Outside experts have described, in detail, what could happen when an outsider gains sudden access to a locked-down system: Personal data could leak, payments could be diverted and information about political rivals could be collected.

Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard and the author of a series of books on security vulnerabilities, including “Click Here to Kill Everybody,” called the entry of Mr. Musk’s force “the most consequential security breach” in American history.

Mr. Schneier noted that the intrusion came “not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role.”

On Friday I wrote about how important the states will be in our fight, not just with lawsuits and political opposition, but also with investigatory subpoena power at both the AG and state legislative level:

I am not a lawyer, but I hope State Attorney Generals and Governors/state legislators are exploring all options to try to stop the Trump/Musk crime spree in Washington. What is remarkable is that DOJ and the acting US Attorney are just ignoring that Trump and Musk and hundreds of their employees are just openly breaking all sorts of laws everyday. But can the states now step in? What can they do to protect the privacy of their constituents? The integrity of America’s financial system (state pension funds)? The illegal firing of residents of their states? How can our Congressional leaders help them?

I wonder whether State AGs and state legislatures who have subpoena power can launch investigations and subpoena Musk, members of his malicious posse, other Trump officials. If they don’t show can they then be prosecuted? There is a clear consumer protection angle here. State governments must protect their residents from harm, and creating inquiries, using subpoena power in dozens of states all at once could begin to create a possible avenue of accountability for the extraordinary crime spree we are experiencing right now; a crime spree enabled by the corrupt Presidential immunity granted to Trump by SCOTUS, his abuse of his pardon power for his quislings and whose escalating legal liabilities, of course, is shouldered not by them but by us. Yes, we the people, are paying both sides of all the litigation Trump and Musk have ushered in. It is why we must keep striving to find a break on all this corruption and lawlessness;

We must also keep the vaporization of USAID front of mind in the coming days for 1) it’s a test case for how rapidly Musk could disappear an entire agency of the government of the United States. If this works more will follow, rapidly 2) it’s turning Trump, Musk, Rubio and the American people into mass murderers, something no one voted for in November 3) it’s critical to understanding Trum/Musk’s war on what I’ve been calling the “America of the Four Freedoms” - a rules-based global order based on the Four Freedoms and a prosperous, successful democratic America here at home:

I end this week incredibly pleased at how much our community has been doing. Folks are hitting the phones, hard. You are attending town hall meetings and participating in protests (carefully). You are working your networks, stirring others to action. You are ensuring your voices are being heard, that you are letting your electeds know what is expected of them now. But you are also doing the traditional political/electoral work so necessary for our success. Together 1,000 of you donated more than $100,000 this week to the DNC to help our new Chair Ken Martin get off to a strong start. I also will keep fighting hard, here, and in my private conversations, for this strategy of Schumer, Jeffries and the DNC creating a new, far more muscular comms/political superstructure to make us louder and more effective in the battles ahead.

Things To Do, Fighting Hard, Fighting Smart - Calling our reps, helping them understand what is expected of them now, has become one our most powerful tools in these early, ugly days of Trump. I want to make a 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 is critical that we all do our part now.

My three current working recommendations for calls/contact this week:

• Keep calling to stop Musk’s crime spree and assault on the US government. Encourage your Senators and Reps to file a criminal referral for him and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI. Feel free to add that you would like funding for USAID restored so our government does not kill millions and millions of people this year in our name.

• Keep calling Attorneys General in the states. Ask them to protect you and your data/privacy, and to keep federally mandates monies flowing to the states. For those in the 19 states that brought this Treasury suit thank them and encourage them to keep going. I still believe these 19 should make a criminal referral to DOJ/FBI this week, and ask them to arrest and stop Musk.

• Demand full NIH funding for biomedical research be restored. For more on this emerging story read this new article from Liberal Currents by Samantha Hancox-Li and Adam Gurri. The repeated cutting of Congressional mandated programs in the middle of a fiscal year is an extraordinary abuse of power by Trump, and it needs to be challenged on every front.

Our Daily Reminder:

Trump 2.0 is a profound, ongoing betrayal of America, and everything that has made this remarkable nation the most powerful and prosperous in the world. It is why we must fight. As dark as all this is, we cannot for one moment forget that what Trump is doing is wrong; he and his project remain deeply unstable and his coalition fractious; he is doing deeply unpopular things, going far beyond his narrow “mandate;” he is old, impulsive, reckless and clearly in decline; and extremists and ideologues are often far better at bread and circuses than governing.

For those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work, we have three Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind right now:

Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. On Saturday night we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly 1,000 of you have donated over $100,000 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.

Note that two other good friends of Hopium - David Hogg and Jane Kleeb - were elected Vice Chairs of the DNC this weekend (Jane was elected head of the ASDC which also makes her a DNC Vice Chair). You can watch my inspiring interviews with David here, and with Jane here and learn more about where they want to take the party in the days ahead.

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 $27,000 so far towards our March 31st goal - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!

Help Susan Crawford and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin - As a way of honoring our good friend Ben Wikler and supporting this critical Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, I am 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. More on this critical election in the coming days. Our goal is to raise $50,000 by April 1st. We’ve raised $18,000 so far - thank you all!

Finally, I will be doing an in-person event in Bethesda, Maryland on Tuesday, February 18th. Learn more and register here. Look forward to seeing folks!

Keep working hard all. We had important wins this week. Let’s build on them and get some more this week!

Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon