Afternoon all. I end the week convinced that indeed the political landscape did change over the late summer and the fall is now one of opportunity for us. I lay out my case in my new weekly video and post, in a new Deep State Radio discussion with David Rothkopf and Tara McGowan and in this lively conversation with Stuart Stevens of Lincoln Square.
(It’s come to our attention that not everyone received this post today. So I am re-sending, and apologize to those who have received it twice. It is a good one so am excited to share it again!)
To sum - Trump was knocked off course by Elon’s emasculating attacks on him in early June and despite three months of desperate and manic efforts to right the ship and restore his POWER, STRENGTH and MANHOOD, he and his agenda remain remarkably unpopular and the intensity of the opposition to him has grown. Look at this poll tracker from G. Elliot Morris - Trump was recovering in late May then started declining in early June and has just stayed down, despite the LA and DC occupations, the bombing of Iran, the insane tariffs, the impulsive firing of leaders of the BLS/DIA/the Fed, the passage of the big ugly. Nothing has worked to get it (him) up.
Trump’s political team sees all this data. They see our overperformances in the special and local elections that are currently outpacing their last midterm blowout in 2017-2018. They see their retirements and our top tier recruits. Trump’s team sees the terrible economic data; know the ACA subsidy cuts are going to cause intense pain for tens of millions of people in a few months; have reconciled themselves that the Trump-Epstein affair will continue to damage him despite all their efforts; and are aware that Trump has not delivered on his any of his foreign policy promises and that Putin continues to toss their boss around like a chew toy.
Eight months in this Trump thing simply isn’t working, and it is clear that there are voices inside agitating for a course correction. We saw it with their rebranding of the big ugly bill this week, and Thune’s new openness to delaying the ACA subsidy cuts. We saw it with Trump’s pollster going to the weekly lunch of the Senate Rs this week and telling them Kennedy was leading them astray on vaccines. We saw it in the brutal treatment Kennedy got from Republican Senators on Thursday, and we saw it late yesterday afternoon when Trump, shockingly, defending vaccines and seemed to throw Kennedy (and DeSantis too) under the bus. Watch this:
As we say here little cracks can become big cracks, little wins can become big wins, and courage can become contagious. This thing just isn’t working as they planned; they know it and struggling to find a new path; and we need to be very, very aggressive now for in their flailing is opportunity.
Central to their struggle is the challenging they are having in the packaging of Trump as a strongman “Commander-In-Chief.” He has failed to impose his will on the Ukraine and Gaza wars. His “90 trade deals in 90 days” was an extraordinary failure, and his destructive tariffs have dramatically weakened both him and the US across the world. In this remarkable post yesterday our leader acknowledged what a catastrophe his foreign policy has been.
The public rejected his LA occupation and are deeply unhappy with his mass deportation strategy. The DC occupation was branded as “fighting crime” but that too has been rejected by the American people. So where we seem to be heading this week is to directing our military to the only place where Trump still has support from the public - border security and “protecting the homeland” - despite the historic increases in funding the part of our government ALREADY RESPONSIBLE for this - DHS - will be receiving in the coming years.
A new story in Politico, Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat, helps explain what is going on:
Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China.
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.
“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”
The report usually comes out at the start of each administration, and Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring. The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.
A U.S. military strike this week allegedly killed 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in international waters, a major step in using the military to kill noncombatants.
The Pentagon also has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians, a job normally reserved for law enforcement.
In a new must-read article in the Atlantic Anne Applebaum aptly uses the word “surrender” to describes this new strategy of pulling back from challenging Russia and China and defending democracy - and American interests - throughout the world.
Just so we connect with the strategic confusion, desperation and idiocy here at the very time the Trump regime is attempting to pull back our military from the global stage to “protect the homeland” Trump is changing the Pentagon’s name from the Department of Defense (protecting the homeland) to the Department of War (against whom? 11 unarmed guys in a boat?).
Look at this new Twitter post from DHS. Now ICE is fighting the drug war? Try to make sense of all this. It’s a dangerous and unacceptable level of buffoonery.
I tried to make sense of all this yesterday and stumbled on this article in the right-leaning magazine The Spectator, Inside Trump’s war on the cartels, that generated this fascistic ICE image, above. As background it is worth a read, but these two paragraphs were my favorite as they turn our ongoing efforts to surrender to Russia and China into a “strategic doctrine” -
Ryan P. Williams, president of the California-based Claremont Institute, echoes this view. “This is about reflexive Jacksonian values. Our hemisphere has been the central focus of American foreign policy going back to a more responsible era when our statesmen were better educated by eighth grade than our leaders today,” he says, comparing the moment to John Quincy Adams’s defense of Andrew Jackson’s conquest of Florida. “If you have sovereign control over territory and you lose it, and violence comes from that which hurts our citizens, it’s our right to fix a situation if you can’t or won’t, including with force.”
This is the one war MAGA believes is worth starting. “The bureaucratic institutional culture in Washington at places like the State Department thinks of problems as something to be managed and under no condition ever disrupted,” Williams says. “But a big course correction when it comes to Mexico has been long overdue, and the threat of a quasi-failed state run by cartels, with regular incursions over our southern border by drones and other forces, with drugs flowing into our streets fueled by Chinese materials – we should not put up with this any longer.”
Ah yes, that glorious 19th century Trump so often wistfully talks about, an era with no income taxes but lots of tariffs, no vaccines, when men were men, blacks enslaved, those Mexicans were in Mexico, and women knew their place. This stuff, which apparently is really driving the emerging foreign policy of the United States of America, is as delusional, fanatical and dangerous as Kennedy’s attempt to unravel our nation’s vaccine regime; and we, my friends, will have to fight it as just as hard as we the terrible tariffs, Kennedy, and their war on science, higher education and public health.
For what America is getting from Trump is not war but surrender.
Leader Schumer Commits To Challenge Trump’s Terrible Tariffs This Fall - From The Hill:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed Friday that Democrats “will force votes” on President Trump’s tariffs after a subpar jobs report showed fewer jobs were added during August than expected.
Schumer said in a statement that Friday’s jobs report, which showed that only 22,000 jobs were added and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, was “worse than the already low expectations.” He also labeled it a “blaring red light warning to the entire country that Donald Trump is squeezing the life out of our economy.”
“Donald Trump’s chaotic tariffs, failed policies, and fake trade deals have slowed job growth and continually raised prices on American families. The pressure is pushing working families closer to the breaking point,” Schumer said.
“Hiring is down, prices are up, and families are paying thousands more a year because of Donald Trump’s tariffs,” Schumer continued. “The pain America is experiencing will only worsen as Republicans ignore the warning and continue cowering to Donald Trump. The first step is to admit the truth that Donald Trump’s economic experiment has failed and reverse course.”
“In the coming weeks, Senate Democrats will force votes to reverse Donald Trump’s damaging tariffs and we will see whose side Republicans are on,” he added. “I hope Republicans will choose wisely.”
Can we all say Amen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
More on this encouraging development soon.
My New Interview With Rep. Dan Goldman - I sat down yesterday with one of our most compelling emerging Congressional leaders, Rep. Dan Goldman of New York. A recording and transcript is above. It is a wide ranging discussion, touching on Trump’s global retreat, the slowing economy and House Dem optimism about the mid-terms. We also spend time diving into a law suit Rep. Goldman and other House Dems have brought against DHS for denying them access to ICE detention facilities across the country.
Get to this one when you have time. It is a great window into our current moment from a thoughtful Member on the front lines of so many battles right now. Watching Rep. Goldman in TV these last few years I’ve become a fan, and I think you will too.
Now, Let’s Go Win The Fall Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Support Our November, 2025 Candidates
Mikie Sherrill NJ Gov (2025) - $250,000 goal, $64k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch my interview with Rep. Sherrill
Abigail Spanberger VA Gov (2025) - $250,000 goal, $181k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch my interview with Abigail Spanberger
Support Our 2026 Candidates
Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $250,000 goal, $31,000 raised- Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch my interviews with Gov. Cooper and NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton
Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $250,000 goal, $57k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer
Hopium House 7 (2026) - $250,000 goal, $193k raised - Donate | Learn More, Volunteer | Watch My Interviews With Our Intrepid Incumbents
Our updated fundraising goals are now for the end of the year, December 31st, except for the 2025 races, which are now for Election Day, 2025.
For more on Hopium’s approach to elections check out 1) the many important wins we had together last cycle 2) my big recommendations to the family coming out of the 2024 elections about what we need to do now 3) my latest thinking on where we are and the path forward for the Hopium community.
Take Action, Express Your Love Of Country Through Good Works - We are prioritizing two actions today. You can get our full list of recommended actions here. Let’s get to it:
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 our emerging four part agenda. Demand that your reps work to
Roll back Trump’s terrible and 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, and alienating governments and people throughout the world
Block the expansion of ICE and the use of the military on our streets including DC
End Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; stop the cuts to the ACA and Medicaid; demand the removal of extremist Robert Kennedy from HHS - yes we need to FIRE HIM
Stand with Ukraine and block Trump’s ongoing efforts to sell out the US
2 - Bring “Resolutions Of Condemnation” To Your Community - Inspired by the tactics of our Founders learn about how Hopium members are advancing “Resolutions of Condemnation” in their communities across the country and consider bringing this initiative to your state, country or city/town. Be sure to check out our new discussion with Deborah Potter and Rachel Poliner who have passed resolutions in New Mexico and Boston, and offer advice on how to get a resolution passed in your own community.
Remarkably, members of this community are now advancing 75 (!!!!) resolutions projects in 23 states +DC. Can we get to all 50 states by the fall election?
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! Been impressive to see how many of you remain involved in local, in person protests of all kinds in your communities. Keep it up!!!
As we get ready for what is going to be a very intense fall of politics let’s take inspiration from those famous words from Robert Frost that “the best way out is always through.”
Means we just have to put our heads down and do the work everyone! - Simon
