The Madness Of The Trump Regime Has Become A National Emergency For The United States Of America

Two Live Events Today - 415pm ET with Leon Krauze From LA, 5pm With Colette Delawalla On Trump's War on Science, Research and Public Health

Afternoon/morning all. I am heading back to Washington from Florida after a wonderful night with David Jolly and the Democrats of Palm Beach County. David is a great candidate, we had a large and enthusiastic turnout, and I come away even more convinced that we have a chance to put Florida back in play this cycle.

I will be sharing video of our event when it becomes available but in the meantime to learn more about David and his spirited campaign for Florida Governor watch our recent discussion.

I will have more about our event last night in future posts this week, but let’s now turn our attention to the national emergency that Trump has become.

To go deeper into what is happening we have four events in the next two days:

Today, 415pm ET - Live discussion with Leon Krauze, former Univision anchor and longtime Los Angeles based journalist and commentator. Leon will be joining us live from Los Angeles. Click here to join us live at 415pm ET.

To get a fresh look at how the Trump-Miller national immigration escalation is impacting Florida watch my new interview with former South Florida Congressman Joe Garcia.

Today, 5pm ET - Live discussion with Colette Delawalla of Stand Up For Science. Colette will be joining us to talk about the Trump-Kennedy attack on science, research, academia and our public health which has also escalated in recent days. Click here to join us live at 5pm ET.

Wednesday, 1pm ET - I join Stuart Stevens of Lincoln Square Media live. Stuart is one of the smartest observers of American politics today and this is sure to be a great discussion. Click here to join us live at 1pm ET.

Wednesday, 7pm ET - Hopium Paid Subscriber Get Together. Register here.

As I wrote to you a few days ago I remain convinced that this dramatic escalation in Los Angeles is coming in part to change the narrative of failure and struggle that took hold last week during Musk’s brutal emasculation of Trump (and perhaps Miller too). A Sunday CBS poll showed again how much the public has come to see the Trump budget bill (and his overall economic agenda) as good for the wealthy and bad for everyone else. Trump and the Republicans have lost the argument on this terrible bill, badly, and it is a very big problem for them.

This morning the World Bank warned Trump to course correct or (lose the tariffs) or expect significant domestic and global economic damage:

The global economy is projected to slow sharply this year as President Trump’s trade policy disrupts international commerce and increases economic uncertainty, the World Bank said on Tuesday in a report that underscores the toll of America’s trade war.

Despite the weakening outlook, the global economy is not expected to fall into a recession, the World Bank said. However, the trade tension is setting the stage for the weakest decade of growth since the 1960s. Economic development in many of the poorest parts of the world has come to a standstill.

Expansion in global output is forecast to slow to 2.3 percent in 2025 from 2.8 percent last year, the World Bank said in its Global Economic Prospects report. That is down from the 2.7 percent growth that it forecast in January.

“The world economy today is once more running into turbulence,” Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank, wrote in the report. “Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.”

We just got our first bit of post-Trump escalation polling, and as expected, this shit ain’t playing well for Trump. Here’s YouGov polling of Trump job approval over the past week:

• 45%-49% (-4) - June 2

• 45%-55% (-10) - June 6

• 40%-53% (-13) - June 10 (today)

This new poll also asked about Trump’s escalation, and again, the public is neither with him or rallying to him (approval/disapproval):

• Deploying Nat’l Guard - 38%-45% (30%-47% among indies)

• Deploying Marines - 34%-47% (27%-50% among indies)

• Trump’s handling of deportations - 39%-50% (30%-54% among indies)

We need to continue to aggressively message here, stay on offense, keep contesting this space as Trump is weaker and more at odds with the public than will be likely be evident in the daily media discourse in the coming days. For remember, Trump is not a strong man nor are these the actions of a confident and successful leader of the most powerful national on Earth.

Read this remarkable editorial from the editorial board of McClatchy media in California: California under attack: a weak and failing Donald Trump seeks a punching bag

California under attack: A weak and failing Donald Trump seeks a punching bag

With his national agenda on the brink as the United States Senate balks at trillions in additional debt, and as President Donald Trump loses the support of the world’s richest man in Elon Musk, the president has chosen to shift attention westward, back to his favorite punching bag.

Instead of giving Los Angeles the tens of billions of dollars the region needs to recover and rebuild from January’s devastating fires, Trump instead dispatched federal law enforcement to round up immigrants outside of a Home Depot — then called in the National Guard.

This feels like nothing short of an attack on California, the nation’s largest state and a global engine of innovation, by our president. This weekend’s events were merely the excuse Trump needed to test this state in ways we have never confronted before. How can any state succeed when its leader wants it to bend to his political will or fail?

The effects of Trump’s growing war against California will only worsen over time. So far, D.C. has denied $40 billion in economic assistance and reimbursements for rebuilding Los Angeles, and the city and the state face an unimaginable financial blow. In addition, Trump’s global trade war has already halved activity at the once-busy Port of Los Angeles. But that’s not all: Trump officials are looking to defund grants to numerous state agencies, billions in federal funding for the High Speed Rail project are now in jeopardy and roughly a million Californians could lose their Medi-Cal health insurance if the president gets his way by denying care as a way to decrease taxes for the nation’s most fortunate.

We aren’t yet halfway through the first year of Trump’s term in office, but the pattern is fast emerging — and the reality is evident: We’re on our own.

California has only begun to come to terms with this reality. Los Angeles can seem a world away from Northern California, but our state’s largest city has been preparing for the global stage: In 2026, it will host games of the globe’s largest sporting tournament, soccer’s World Cup. In 2028, it will host the Summer Olympics. If Los Angeles shines, the country shines. Yet Trump doesn’t want to invest in Los Angeles’s success.

And what is Trump doing? He has dispatched law enforcement from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to raid garment factories, Home Depot parking lots, and donut shops. He has stripped our governor of his ability to manage protests that started calmly. He has sought to tear Los Angeles down in hopes of rehabilitating his own shaky standing. And to what constructive end? Sadly, the attacks on the Golden State play well elsewhere, but a clear pattern has emerged: The rest of the nation is not immune.

California — Los Angeles in particular — is in the president’s crosshairs today. But it will be Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle or New York tomorrow. Trump is promising Americans as much. “We’re going to have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country,” the president told reporters on Sunday. “If we see danger to our country, to our citizens, we’ll be very, very strong in terms of law and order.” This is a suffocating level of hypocrisy, coming from a president who was slow to respond to the Jan. 6 siege of the nation’s Capitol.

It was perhaps inevitable that Trump would choose California as his lead target. But we are not the lone innovator under siege; the nation’s universities, medical research apparatus, and perhaps soon our space program are all under financial attack. Trump so far isn’t building anything other than a larger apparatus to deport immigrants. And he is centering the destruction on places and institutions once without peer in the world. The geopolitics of this state make it hard to unite in the best of times. Our great regions, such as the Central Valley, Southern California, the Central Coast, and the Bay Area, are so different from one another. But we had better find a way to stand together and resist what Trump is doing to California — or he will tear us apart.

A reminder of the joint statement from the Democratic governors:

President Trump’s move to deploy California’s National Guard is an alarming abuse of power. Governors are the Commanders in Chief of their National Guard and the federal government activating them in their own borders without consulting or working with a state’s governor is ineffective and dangerous.

“Further, threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.

“It’s important we respect the executive authority of our country’s governors to manage their National Guards — and we stand with Governor Newsom who has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation.”

I found these two new articles informative, helpful:

• I Resisted Putin In Russia. Here’s The Right Way To Protest - Gary Kasparov

• What Tear Gas And Rubber Bullets Do To The Body - Wired Magazine

And this, which we will be talking about today at 5pm ET with Colette Delawalla:

Now, Let’s Get To Work - In last Saturday’s post I offered up some initial ideas of what our summer was going to look like. Please check it out if you haven’t gotten to it yet.

Job One for us this summer is fighting Trump’s ruinous economic agenda. We need to keep calling every day and demand our leaders vote down the reconciliation bill and roll back Trump’s terrible tariffs. This is the big, definitional battle of the summer and we need keep working it every day. Those of you in states with Republican Senators have a particularly important role to play.

Here’s a possible script for contacting your offices. Use whatever works for you:

I am calling to urge you to vote against the reconciliation bill and to roll back Trump’s terrible and illegal tariffs. Together these actions have raised taxes on all of us and will explode the deficit - things Republicans have always told us they did not believe in.

But your agenda is also causing all of us to “pay more and get less” for every day things including our health care; people to loses their jobs; and the economy to slow - all so you can give your rich donors a huge tax break. Your plans will weaken this great country and are an extraordinary betrayal of everything you promised during the campaign - which was to help people like me, not Elon Musk, get ahead.

Your plans are ones of sabotage, surrender and betrayal and I urge you to abandon them and to work with Democrats to find a better way.

I know many of you are involved in the June 14th No Kings events, town halls, Telsa take downs and all the other in person activities that have taken off of late. Thank you, and do keep working it everyone. I am still encouraging our community to explore ideas for how we can Own The Fourth and make our Independence Day an ugly day for our mad wannabe king.

New activities today can also include:

• Contacting our Reps and Senators to demand they fight Trump’s illegal use of the National Guard and Marines in California

• Stand Up For Science by signing on to the critically important Bethesda Declaration

Please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire me and all of us to do more and fight harder.

Three additional efforts we’re working on now:

1 - Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Simply, the Virginia elections are the most important elections we have this year, and we must win them. We have narrow majorities in both legislative chambers and while our candidate Abigail Spanberger has a modest lead in current polling, this is going to be a close election where our money and volunteer time can make a real difference. If you are to give to only one candidate or election this year it should be this one. Here’s a link to do so today……

To learn more about Abigail check out my new discussion with her, watch her new TV ad, or head over to her campaign website We have now raised over $126,000 towards our June 30th goal of $200,000 - thank you all! We need to keep working it everyone!

2 - 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. Catch our interviews with Reps Derek Tran, Janelle Bynum, Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen and give to all 7 through a single donation on our ActBlue page. Learn more about this important effort here.

We’ve already raised over $126,000 towards our $200,000 June 30th goal - great work everyone!

We also have ongoing campaigns to raise money for the new DNC, support the North Carolina Democratic Party and to thank Senator Cory Booker for his spirited leadership in a time of enormous challenge.

3 - Growing Hopium - We’ve set a goal of trying to grow the Hopium community from the 151,000 we are now to 175,000 by Labor Day. Do what you can to encourage your friends, family and colleagues to become a summer subscriber to Hopium, free or paid. To encourage the growth of our community annual paid subscriptions are 10% off through Labor Day too!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you, and a fight it truly is - Simon