Morning all. I shared our new, impressive fundraising numbers for Susan Crawford and the Wisconsin Democratic Party (over $200,000 now!!!!) with our friend Ben Wikler and he asked if he could send along a note of thanks. It is below and do take the time to watch. Will be a wonderful way to start your day!
Big Win in PA State Senate Last Night - Here’s how our friends at The Downballot played our encouraging win:
Democrats pulled off an astonishing upset in a special election for the Pennsylvania Senate on Tuesday night, as East Petersburg Mayor James Andrew Malone defeated Republican Josh Parsons by a 50-49 margin to flip a district Donald Trump carried by 15 points last year.
Those toplines, however, don't tell the complete story of just how ancestrally Republican Pennsylvania's 36th District is. Since taking its present form in Lancaster County 40 years ago, the district has always been held by the GOP, and the county as a whole has gone for a Democrat at the presidential level just once since 1856 (Lyndon Johnson just barely won it in 1964).
Local Democrats, however, were undeterred, taking heart—and advice—from their counterparts in Iowa, who flipped a comparably conservative legislative seat in January. That district, though, had gone blue as recently as 2018; the 36th never had
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Malone focused his message heavily on education and cuts to the federal government that he's had to deal with as mayor of a small town, specifically calling out Musk for slashing “benefits for veterans, retirees, and students."
He also did not shy away from popular positions on reproductive rights and touted an endorsement from Planned Parenthood. And he specifically urged voters to back him as "an extra Democratic voice" who would bring greater balance to the GOP-controlled Senate…..
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Including both of Tuesday's contests, Democratic candidates in 14 special elections across the country are outperforming their district's presidential margins by an average of 10 points. You can keep tabs on all of these races by bookmarking our continually updated tracker.
While had a disappointing election in 2024, we cannot forget that we beat/outperformed MAGA in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and in many critical states downballot in 2024. There is deep muscle memory of voting against MAGA extremists across the country; and as Trump’s job approval falls and his 2024 coalition unravels we must do everything we can now to get out of our defensive crouch and go on offense against these dangerous assholes.
For those in the Hopium community who worked on this important win - a huge, huge thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paid Subscriber Event Tonight at 8pm ET - Paid subscribers can register for our event here. If our regular subscribers want to join in consider taking advantage of the last days of our March Anniversary sale - 10% off of an annual Hopium paid subscription through March 31st. Subscribe now and you be able to join us tonight. So much to talk about tonight!
Breaking SignalGate News - They All Lied - This morning, predictably, The Atlantic released the battle plans our idiotic Defense Secretary shared over an insecure signal chat on Sunday, ones that he and the other members of the Trump Team said - in some cases under oath - were never sent nor secret. New, from Politico:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s texts to a Signal group chat about military operations against the Houthis almost certainly contained classified information, according to former Pentagon officials.
The Atlantic on Wednesday released excerpts of a conversation among top national security leaders, to which a journalist had accidentally been invited. Hegseth and the White House have denied sharing classified information or war plans.
“This information was clearly taken from the real time order of battle sequence of an ongoing operation,” said Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant Defense secretary under the first Trump administration. “It is highly classified and protected.”
Yesterday, I sat down with author and foreign policy expert David Rothkopf for an extended Substack Live conversation about SignalGate and Trump’s abandonment of what we call here the America of the Four Freedoms. It’s an informative and sobering conversation about the damage Trump is doing to our country, Trump’s embrace of Putinism and how all of it is leaving America weaker and less safe than we’ve been in generations. It can be found above. Get to it when you can. It’s a compelling necessary conversation.
As I discuss below, I think we should be calling for both Hegseth and Gabbard to step down. Hegseth is obvious. He sent highly classified war plans on an insecure chat and simply can no longer be trusted. Gabbard for she is in charge of intelligence for the US, and must take responsibility for participating in and not stopping one of the most significant security breaches in US history.
New Data Confirms We Should Going On Offense and Getting Very Loud Now - As Hopium readers now I’ve been arguing for weeks now that Dems need to open up a Second Front against Trump, one that puts his dismantling of our government, his attack on our Constitutional order and abandonment of the West directly in front of the American people. As I showed in my recent Old Dogs and New Tricks post, polling shows that we have a great deal of running room with the public to make our case as voters have grave concerns about what Trump is doing. Four new polls and surveys confirm that there is real political opportunity in challenging Trump more forcefully:
1 - A new Gallup poll finds support for doing more in Ukraine now at record levels (hard to imagine a more meaningful repudiation of Trump than this):
2- New Navigator polling finds that “threats to democracy” is now the #1 issue with Democratic voters, and tied as #1 with independents (yes there is reward in opening up that Second Front beyond the economy/budget/taxes):
3 - The FT reports that global leaders who have challenged Trump has seen their approvals rise:
4 - Another influential consumer confidence survey released yesterday shows how much Trump’s economic policies have weakened him with the public:
An old Rosenberg rule of politics is that if you are not on offense, you are losing. As the public loses faith in Trump, his numbers keep coming down and his buffoonery and recklessness become impossible to ignore, now is the time for Dems and all of us to really pounce and tell our story with everything we got.
Let’s get to work people! Loud and Proud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Recommended Hopium Actions and Campaigns - 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 several 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.
Part II - do all this and demand that Hegseth and Gabbard resign. Hegseth is obvious. He sent war plans on an insecure chat and simply can no longer be trusted. Gabbard for she is in charge of intelligence for the US, and must take responsibility for participating in and not stopping one of the most significant security breaches in US history.
3 - Our Work In The States, The Spring Offensive - I am going to rework this section in the next few days as so much has happened since we called on our community members to organize in the 17 most vulnerable Republican House seats. Rallies and protests have exploded across the country. The DNC/House Dems/State Parties have kicked off People’s Town Halls in all 50 states. I have come to believe that we should be leaning on our state and local electeds to pursue these organized “condemnations” of the Trump regime and their betrayal of America. Let’s start talking now about what we are going to do on July 4th, a day with all of a sudden much more importance.
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 $205,000 from over 2,400 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 $225,000 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 $31,000 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 $69,000 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 $27,000 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!
Keep working hard all. Incredibly proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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