Morning all. First, Trump’s full-on assault in Minnesota. Here’s what we’ve made available in recent days:
Greg Sargent On Miller’s Dark Vision For ICE And The Breakdown Of The Rule Of Law In Minnesota (Video)
Governor Walz’s Address To The Courageous People Of Minnesota (Video)
Here’s extraordinary video from an incident last night in Minneapolis. A dad was trying to drive his six kids away from the escalating danger. ICE threw threw flash bangs and tear gas at his car. His youngest child, six months old, stopped breathing, and all six kids were hospitalized.
The tempo of news right now is very fast, so I am going to get this morning post out quickly and more will follow soon. Find a recording of my Wednesday night talk above, and a full transcript below (minus q and a). Some notes on my message from last night:
1 - we are entering a new phase of Trump’s second term - a period of dramatic escalation at home and abroad. Trump ended the year weak, politically and physically. He has started 2026 off with a wildly aggressive campaign to reclaim control over the national debate; restore his STRENGTH, POWER, MANLINESS; the “success” of the Maduro operation has clearly emboldened him; he has, in his desperation and growing madness, declared himself Emperor of the Western Hemisphere, High Lord of the Western Hemisphere, and has declared that the US Constitution, domestic US law, the UN Charter, international law, and Senate ratified treaties with our allies no longer apply to him and his regime. This next phase, Trump unbound, is a very, very dangerous one.
2 - Like with all of his other “strongman” plays these new 2026 ones - Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota - are already wildly unpopular and only play to a very narrow portion of his base while pushing away the majority of the country. All of this is giving Dems a chance to go on offense now, lean in, be proud patriots, and defend democracy and freedom here and everywhere. For Americans and the people of the world are relearning - painfully - now why autocracy and oligarchy are WRONG, DANGEROUS, INHUMANE, and must be challenged with everything we got. And after all we are Americans. Fighting for freedom and democracy is who we are. It’s what we’ve been doing for 250 years.
Here’s Governor Pritzker’s COS Anne Caprara last night. LOVE THIS.
3 - Republicans have clearly grown weary of defending the indefensible - his madness and Imperial ballrooms, his failed domestic agenda, all the bad news we got this week on jobs and inflation, his soaring unpopularity, his unprecedented greed and corruption, the electoral blowouts - and his control over Congressional Republicans has weakened. His whip failed on 5 votes last week in one day. The House Republicans lost another floor vote this week. While they did beat back the War Powers Resolution yesterday, the regime’s hold on DC is clearly weakening, and his hold on his party is likely to get even weaker as Republicans at the state and local level are forced to govern against the harms he has brought to their states and communities. Here’s Politico yesterday:
4 - While there is much darkness today, what we are coming to learn is that we must begin to organize ourselves differently now, to become stronger and more unified, less divided and isolated; see all this uncertainty and chaos as an opportunity to make the case to the people of America and the world about freedom and democracy; encourage the free states and cities here in American to band together and connect to other free nations and peoples around the world. We must now build a “liberal internationale” to counter its rising illiberal counterpart; and while it is easy to visualize failure right now, we must increasingly spend our time visualizing success and victory, and build a plan suited to this new day to make it so.
As I wrote on Sunday:
And I started thinking….what if the Iranian regime were to fall? If Zelenskyy were to win in Ukraine, and Putin lose? If the end of Maduro brought democracy to Venezuela not dictatorship? If Orban’s government finally was voted out of power in Hungary later this year? If the Cuban dictatorship were to fall after 67 years in power? If the new Syrian government, having overthrown a family dictatorship that lasted 53 years, was able to successfully bring democracy to the Arab world?
If were we were here in America successful in reclaiming our government from the oligarchs and Trump’s escalating authoritarianism? What if this moment became a moment, as Lincoln called it - “a new birth of freedom” - around the world and here at home rather than one of autocratic and oligarchical consolidation? What if we could look back at this year, 2026, ten years from now, not as one where freedom was lost but where it was renewed, restored and regained momentum? Where governments “of the people, by the people, for the people” did not perish from the earth……
Imagine if we were to win and Elon, and Putin, and Trump, and Orban, were to lose? Imagine……
I think this is the future we want. And thus we must start imagining it, and begin building a politics that makes it far more likely.
Finally, I felt compelled last night to read the Gettysburg Address for there are portions of it that speak powerfully to this moment. Let’s read it, again, together, now for “the great task remaining before us” here at Hopium is to ensure “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
That’s what we talked about last night. Get to the video when you can, and if you want take action today head back to yesterday’s post. For space and time reasons I couldn’t include it all in this post this morning.
Keep fighting all. We have a lot of hard and important work ahead, and I am proud - so incredibly proud - to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
Transcript - Simon Rosenberg Presentation To Hopium Paid Subscribers (January 14, 2026)
Welcome everyone. Simon Rosenberg, Hopium Chronicles, back with our weekly gathering of the proud, plucky patriots here of the Hopium community. And wherever you're watching this, whether it's on Substack, or YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you for being part of these important conversations that we have here together.
What I try to do every week is to sort of take a step back from the day-to-day news and assess where we are in the great battle against MAGA and for democracy and freedom. And, you know, right now there is a lot going on. The tempo of news and of Trump's ambitions, just the day-to-day crush of what's happening… it's been incredible the last few weeks. We're starting the year with a manic… a sense of mania from Trump, and so I'm going to do my best to kind of make sense of it all and then take your questions.
I still maintain that he ended the year in a very weak position and that the Epstein files did a lot of damage to him at the end. The economic news continued to be bad. They got blown out in the elections, and the government shutdown was a failure for him. He lost ground during that. And one of the main themes of Hopium is that every time that Trump… you know, he started feeling in early June that his powers were ebbing. And it happened because Elon Musk opened up this three-day attack on him on Twitter that emasculated him and wounded him and did damage to him inside MAGA world. His numbers basically started coming down then… and they have essentially continued to decline over this period since he was initially wounded in June. I think that a lot of what's happened in our politics is this repeated effort that he has… to do things that will restore his popularity and his strength and power and manhood. And that he is on this quest to become powerful and strong. Everything he's done… it doesn't matter what he's done since June… none of it has worked. The tariffs haven't worked. The bombing of Iran didn't work. The invasion of cities didn't work. The big ugly bill didn't work. The shutting of the government down didn't work. Whatever it was. You know, the rolling out of the red carpet for Putin, whatever he did to sort of make him appear strong and powerful when he wasn't feeling strong and powerful because in part he is aging and he's in ill health.
This is an important kind of underlying part of the story, which is that he's in clear, obvious physical and cognitive decline, which is contributing to this sense of his ebbing powers. He ended the year in a place where, you know, this thing just wasn't working and there was dissent coming. There was starting to be sort of structural dissent coming from the Hill. And so what he's done, I think, since the new year is that he's now escalating and he's trying to find ways to restore himself. You know, that talk that he gave to the House Republicans last Wednesday, he went on and on and on about what would happen if they lost the midterms. It was obvious this was haunting him, and the impeachment, the investigations. He doesn't want to go through all this all over again.
And so his central obsession is to restore his strength and power in order to keep Republicans in power, so he doesn't get investigated, and for all the crime and corruption and everything that he's done since he's been in office. I think we have to sort of take all this stuff at face value. And that what's happened is that he has not been able to have his way domestically. You know, Congress is too closely divided. He's grown very unpopular. The economy isn't working. He is actually breaking the healthcare system. Utility prices are actually really going up. I mean, when you look at the domestic landscape, he is constrained. He's failed. He's not having his way with us the way that he anticipated. And so what they're doing now, in my view, is they're trying to find new ways outside of the domestic, where we were in late December… to find new ways to restore his strength and manhood. And that this is almost like an addict where they need more to feel that kind of strength back because what he's done is… they've dramatically escalated.
What's happening in Minnesota is a wild, lawless rampage and is a dramatic escalation from any of the earlier iterations of them, you know, going into cities as they've done. And remember, the Supreme Court, one of the things that constrained him was the Supreme Court told him that he couldn't use the National Guard in cities, that it was illegal. This happened right before the holidays. And so what they've done now is they've assembled in Minnesota, and we had a great talk with Greg Sargent about it today, they have more ICE agents in Minnesota… 2,000 ICE agents, it's more than the police force of Minneapolis and St. Paul combined. And so they're now surging enormous numbers of people… and they’re not operating within any kind of understanding about how law enforcement would operate in a democracy. There is no probable cause. There is no due process.
The reports today from people on the ground, and I've been sharing videos, the reports from people on the ground is that literally these gangs of paramilitaries are driving down streets, and when they see a person of color just walking, they stop their vehicles, they run out, they tackle them to the ground, they don't ask for ID, they don't check citizenship, and they just throw them in the car and they go away. And God knows where they go, right? And we just learned today that 100 Somalian refugees who were here legally in the United States, that went through a rigorous refugee process, were arrested and sent to Texas in the last couple of days. These are legal residents of the United States who were stripped from their families and their jobs and were sent down to Texas. No explanation, no public announcement… you know, so this idea that they were going after the “worst of the worst,” you know, was always ridiculous.
So we're now in this place where… one of the things that I want to leave with you tonight is… that I think it's very important as you approach what's happening, and explaining it to your friends and having measured conversations with people that you need to stay measured with, is that we are entering a discontinuity. This is not like any other period in American history. There hasn’t been a leader like Donald Trump. There hasn't been a malevolent domestic police force like ICE. Our leader hasn't tried to, it appears, to sabotage the well being of the American people and our interests abroad and at home, doing so many things that are doing self harm to us. We haven't had a leader who's tried to burn our NATO alliance down to the ground and walk away.
Stephen Miller and Donald Trump last week… in Stephen Miller's now infamous appearance on CNN, which I wrote about extensively last week, and Trump's interview with the New York Times… what they were saying in those interviews was that Trump no longer believes that the U.S. Constitution, domestic U.S. law, the U.N. Charter, which is something that's a bound Senate treaty, passed treaty, that is international law and other Senate ratified treaties, that none of this applies to Donald Trump anymore… they've just decided that it doesn't matter, that he can do whatever he wants. And he literally said that the only check on him is his own mind. And at that moment, there should have been a movement to remove him from office because it is obviously the opposite of democracy if there are no checks and balances and there isn't rule of law.
Because what he's announcing is that… they announced in that New York Times interview… Donald Trump announced the rule of law in America had come to an end. And that America was also walking away from the rules-based global order that we had imagined and built after World War II. It was dramatic and significant. And I think that what happens is that there's a default mechanism with Trump, which is like, oh, he's just kind of joking. You know, it's locker room talk. He's not really going to go do all that. But of course… I mean, it's always the worst case scenario. And so we're operating now in a place that nobody's been in our 250 years. And so… people who immediately today started talking about this debate around ICE, like the debate we had after into 2020 or 2021, are foolish. I mean, this is foolish talk. What's happening right now with ICE, with Trump, with his regime is nothing like what came four years ago… everything is new now… and we have to stay close to the data. And what is amazing is, as I said, that every time he does one of these strongman things, the country immediately rejects it. The Venezuela operation. Immediately, direct rejection by the majority of the American people. Greenland, whatever the F*** is going on… Greenland has been rejected by the American people. ICE… you know, the incredibly tragic killing that happened last week. Minneapolis was immediately rejected by the American people. ICE’s escalation has been immediately rejected… everything that he does that is strongman related, his assertion of strongman, gets immediately rejected by the majority of American people.
And I think this flummoxes them. I think they're confused by this. That they believed that when he asserted himself and had his way with us and the world, that he would benefit because he was strong. And it just hasn't happened. And so it's creating what I call this vicious cycle of a declining strongman where he's now… they've clearly made a decision to sort of dramatically escalate domestically and around the world. And so we're entering a really dangerous period where the madman who is in charge of our country no longer believes in his madness… that he is bound by anything other than what he says is his own mind and his own morality. Imagine being bound by Donald Trump's morality. It's like a promise for malevolence. And so, you know, we're in a hard period now. And you know, the idea that… the election in 2026 is going to be decided by kitchen table issues as opposed to Donald Trump's, you know, global assault on freedom and democracy is just… it's comical in my view at this point. And that we have to continue to advocate and push our leaders to meet the moment.
And I think that there has been all sorts of ways that our leaders have tried to make what is happening here smaller rather than bigger. And our job, when we make our calls and we do our protests and we do all the things that we do, because the grassroots of the Democratic Party has shown remarkable courage and patriotism over the last year. The people of Minneapolis and St. Paul and greater… the Twin Cities, are showing remarkable, historic, unbelievable, inspiring courage.
And for those of you watching who are from Minnesota, thank you for your inspiring leadership and grit and fortitude. You're lifting us all up all around the country and maybe even around the world. I mean, you're starting to see global references now in commentary to what's happening in Minneapolis. And so thank you for those of you in Minnesota for your unbelievable patriotism and love of country and willingness to take enormous risks for all of us. We need to be there with you at every step of the way. I mean, you may all remember that because there had one of the most important leaders in Minnesota politics had been assassinated early in 2025 by a right wing lunatic, I went out and did an event with the Minnesota Democratic Party to sort of just be there with everybody to sort of lend my support, given the tragedy that had taken place. And here's the same community going through all of this all over again.
And so Trump is escalating domestically and abroad. We're entering a dangerous period where we are going to have to fight with even greater determination and grit and resilience and ambition than we were doing before. I don't want to say that [Trump] is being successful. And I think in some ways, the escalation is because he is failing. We have to be able to sort of keep those things in our mind at the same time, and continue to do what we've been doing here from the very beginning, which is mitigating… trying to mitigate the damage that he's doing.
It is important that we stay very loud with our leaders in Washington. I give you five things to lobby on every day for them. I hope everyone remembers or notes now that number four on our list, the number one thing I advocate for is to roll back the funding that ICE was given in the big ugly bill. Hopium has been for that since July when [that bill] was passed. So, you know, I know there are others who are now taking that position, but that's been our position here. And I've had conversations with leaders in the House and Senate going all the way back to the summer about… you realize at some point there is going to be a vote for the DHS bill and Democrats can't support the increase in ICE funding. Can’t do it.
You know, ICE is going to exist as an institution. The question is… how do we… in my view, our aspiration shouldn't be about funding levels. It should be about the restoration of rule of law here in America and all around the world and for America to follow international law. I think that this idea of restoration of rule of law is an important ambition for us now. And it's a newly articulated one, at least for Hopium. It's consistent with freedom and democracy, but I think it's now taking on specific meaning because what's a problem in Minneapolis isn't that ICE is there, is that it's ICE is acting lawlessly and not following rule of law or our constitution. And so I think we have this opportunity now to really be driven by very core baseline patriotism and love of country, decency, all these things that are going to be critical going forward.
But let me make one last point. I was talking about discontinuity… that we're in a new time, and I think we're living through history. I think that for many of us who've studied history, we've studied it as something that had happened. And so it sometimes can look a little bit more neat and clean than it really was at the time. I mean, George Washington didn't know that he was gonna win the Revolutionary War. There was a period where Lincoln's generals were failing him during the Civil War before Grant came along. We were bombed at Pearl Harbor and we were late getting into World War II. There are lots of examples… in which the victorious side… or all the stories of Churchill and Great Britain during World War II… France fell during World War II to the Germans. We don't know where this is going. We don't know what's going to happen.
But we're entering a new time and a new age where it would be wise for all of us be open to seeing things with fresh eyes and to not bringing old understandings and old fights. I mean, what I wrote about the other day is that we should be asking our leaders, however old they are, to be hurtling into this new age. And our enemy isn't old people, it's old ideas and old understandings as things are changing around us. And some people have been faster and quicker to understand the changes and adapt to them and try to challenge them. And that's part of what… when I founded Hopium almost three years ago, one of the things I wrote was that I want to help the pro-democracy forces understand the nature of the conflict that we're in. And so just like we're living through history that we don't know what's going to happen, sort of the general assumption now in our politics is that this next period of time will be a period of consolidation of power of oligarchs and of authoritarians.
But what if it isn't? I wrote about this on Sunday. What if this period… that it feels like that today… but what happens if… this multi-generation long dynastic regime in Syria fell a little more than a year ago. And we now have something that feels like an Arab democracy emerging in Syria. We've seen very kind of hopeful things that are happening in Syria… the Iranian regime is falling. The Cuban regime, which has been in power since 1959, uninterrupted, suppressing, you know, one of the worst dictatorships in the world, is also potentially, you know, going to be pressured during this period.
And we've seen it in Ukraine… Russia now is struggling and is clearly not winning the war. And it's lost its Syrian allies. It could lose its Iranian allies. It's lost Maduro, their great ally in South America. And we're seeing now that it's possible that the Europeans and the Ukrainians could actually come out of what's happening here in what is something that is not a loss. I don't know that it will be a win, but this idea that Russia is gonna prevail and march through Europe, I mean, I think that's looking less likely today. It's one of the reasons why what Trump is doing in Greenland is so reckless and disturbing because… the tide is turning, I think, against the Russians in that war.
But what happens if, you know, we prevail here in America and the people of Iran overthrow their dictatorship, and the Russian government loses or appears to lose the war, something like a Vietnam kind of setting in… in Russia, like what happened in Afghanistan, where, you know, Putin is perceived to have lost and that he gets replaced. I mean, we don't know how this is all going to go. And I think one of the things that I have realized in my work… because I realized the scenario that I laid out here tonight is not inherently hopeful and optimistic, it's realistic about where we are and the dangers that we face… is that also we have to be open to the idea that things could actually work out because we don't know. It's like this old line that you can't score unless you shoot… things won't work out unless we do everything we can to make them work out. And I think that what that's going to require is us thinking very differently about how we organize the free states and free cities of America together to become more powerful together rather than isolated as we are now. I mean, take what's happening in Minnesota. I mean, should a group of Democratic governors fly in there and give their insurance and bring aid or other things into Minnesota to help them during this assault from the federal government? The free states and the free cities of America need to organize themselves together.
And you're seeing the early stages of this. You're seeing with climate change. You're seeing it with health care. You're seeing with reproductive freedom. You're seeing it with rights and freedoms. You're seeing it with the Democratic attorneys general. You're starting to see this kind of free state alliances that are growing. You're seeing it around democracy promotion as well… there's collaboration happening outside of the regime. But that collaboration, I think, is also going to have to happen internationally. And we're going to have to start creating some kind of understanding. you know, they call it the illiberal international… the countries that are autocratic and illiberal and are working together and sharing ideas and coordinating. When China recently had the North Korean leader and Putin standing right by him during this big event they did… the way that our liberal politics is organized is through the global liberal order and the UN and NATO and the United States government and all these international systems.
Well, the truth is that stuff is in the process of all getting burned down right now. And that our ability to organize the liberal impulse and the liberal sentiment is being attenuated. And we're gonna have to recreate… a liberal international to band together with other free states, free countries, free peoples around the world to maximize our chances for prevailing in what is a clear and difficult set of challenges that are going to come. I want to spend our time imagining not just defeat, but victory. And I think because unless you can imagine victory, and what it looks like, and build a politics to achieve victory, you can't have victory. If you don't build a team and have a plan for winning a game, you can't win a game. If you don't have a plan to win the election and have a candidate that can win, you can't win. And so what we're lacking… and part of what we're going to be doing here at Hopium is spending more time with people, trying to imagine what this liberal international would look like, given that the traditional mechanism in which that operated has been taken away from us. And so we need to invent new things. We need to build new things.
And in some ways, as for all of the kind of Debbie Downer stuff you heard from me earlier about Trump's escalation and the harms he's doing to the country, this is also a period of entrepreneurship and creativity. And just like the way that the Ukrainians have innovated their war against Russia and found new ways, and the way that we did in the 18th century against the Redcoats in the Revolutionary War, we're going to need to build new stuff together over the next ten years. I want to try to use Hopium to really create more of an understanding of the necessity…of this kind of building of these new networks and these new arrangements and these new institutions in order to make it more likely that ten years from now, we will marvel at how there is a new birth of freedom, not only here in America, but all around the world, as Abraham Lincoln called it. That won't happen unless we imagine it and try to go do it. And that's going to be part of what we do here at Hopium together.
Because as he said, and I've been sharing the Gettysburg Address… and I'm going to read it right now as a way of ending. I think that reading things out loud matter. I mean, you can read things… they somehow take on a greater life and greater meaning. So just bear with me here… you know, trying out new things here, right, in this new year, this new time… it’s a remarkable speech, and it's very short. And the words will sound familiar if you haven't connected with this recently.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
(Silence).
Now, let’s get to questions…….
