Time For Criminal Referrals For Elon And His Team, Trump Caves To Canada and Mexico, Let's Keep Making Our Calls Everyone!!!!!
Leaders Schumer and Jeffries - millions want to help you. You need to put them to work
Morning all. Here we are. Two weeks in and we are now fighting to preserve American democracy. The America of the Four Freedoms - democratic, the leader of a rules-based order - is under attack. Things are moving very quickly now, and I will do my best each day to send you what I think is most important. There will likely be more than a single Hopium post for a while given the crush of events each day. We will start each morning with actions….
First, we need just need to keep calling our Senators and Representative and demand they take aggressive action to stop the escalating attack on our democracy. Know you guys have been busting your ass. Need to keep working it. Call/demand/insist your reps:
Oppose The Unacceptable 4 - Gabbard, Kennedy, Patel, Vought - unqualified extremists all.
Stop The Attack On The US Government - everything Trump and Musk are attempting to do right now is illegal. They cannot just turn off appropriated monies, shutter government programs, fire hundreds of thousands of staff, write new proprietary code to lock everyone else out of our payment systems other than them. This effects every American in every jurisdiction. 67 people already died last week due to their savagery. Millions more may die in the next few weeks. Much more carnage will come if we don’t fight.
Today I think we should be demanding that our Senators and US House Rep make a criminal referral to DOJ/FBI to stop Elon’s escalating crime spree against the United States. In their powerful press conference yesterday outside USAID, Senate/House Dems did a very good job reminding everyone that what Musk and his team were doing was illegal. Crimes were being committed. As I wrote this morning on Bluesky we are now also experiencing the most significant security breach in American history. Musk, someone who has deep working relationships with our two greatest adversaries - China and Russia - now has control of all of our money. He could give that control to other nations, letting them loot the Treasury, cripple the US and make us a vassal to Elon, the global far right movement, Putin and Xi.

In the past few days two Federal courts ruled against the Trump regime’s attempt to steal/stop Congressional mandated expenditures to all of us. The law is on our side, and we must continue to attempt to apply it. Whether Trump’s people enforce it is another matter. In moments like this we must continue to act is if the laws, norms and rules of our democracy still apply or we are obeying in advance, ceding democratic terrain to them, giving them wins. Elon Musk and his team are on a crime spree and we should be calling on them, loudly, to be stopped, immediately, arrested and prosecuted.
Trump the 34 times felon, insurrectionist and traitor is now in the process of committing the greatest crimes against our democracy in all of our history. He is attempting to end our democracy and become an American dictator. Yes at some point, I hope, the nation’s leaders and news organizations will begin to call on him to resign. For either we have Trump or a democracy, the America of the Four Freedoms. There is no longer a middle path. We are passed that point. He has once again betrayed our democracy and must go……
In what is an encouraging sign many measures of Trump’s early job approval have him in a historically weakened place. He is already running 20-30 points lower than most Presidents at this early, “honeymoon” stage of their Presidency. In Morning Consult’s weekly track released yesterday afternoon Trump lost 6 points of job approval in a single week, from 52%-44% to 49%-47%. This is huge movement in a single week, and suggests that all this new ugliness is breaking through. The Democratic polling firm Civiqs has Trump’s approval rating at 46%-49%, which would be the lowest ever recorded for an American President in their first month in office in all of polling history.
Remember, Trump is weak, not strong. A big, blubbery baby man not a strongman. And we can beat him.
For those who want to do more traditional electoral work now I offer these three Hopium-backed opportunities:
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 over 700 of you have donated almost almost $75,000 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 $20,000 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.




The Trade Wars Have Begun - While Trump blinked and backed off what would have been devastating trade wars with Canada and Mexico yesterday, the 10% tariffs on China began last night and China has already responded with tariffs and sanctions of their own. More on this in future posts.
Leaders Schumer and Jeffries, Millions Want To Help You. You Need To Give Them Something To Do - I think leaders Schumer and Jeffries should assign senior staff to work with the DNC, DSCC, DCCC and other party committees to come up with a new comms and political structure to ensure that we become the effective and ferocious opposition necessary to preserve our democracy now.
The Leaders have a powerful new team ready to go to work with and for them:
millions of donors/volunteers/info warriors
growing pro-democracy media ecosystem
hundreds of capable and battle tested grassroots groups
traditional allied groups, and the national party infrastructure
tens of thousands of elected Democrats at all levels of government across the country
Leaders Schumer and Jeffries should now empower a team to work with the new and hungry team at the DNC to imagine, design and build a new kind of political/comms super-structure integrating all of those who want and can help to respond to the needs of this extraordinary moment. We will not win what what we have. We have to build something new, more modern, more muscular, more effective.
Be Careful About Attending In-Person Protests and Rallies - Friends, as we move forward I want to urge caution about attending in person protests and rallies. Trump and his junta want violence and conflict so they can usher in a new era of repression. There are chaos monkeys on both sides who will want to hijack these events and push them to violence. Hostile foreign governments will also want to push these protests to violence. So, a couple of thoughts about how we enter this next stage of in-person protests:
Do not attend a rally or protest unless you know and trust the organization behind them, or the speakers who are speaking.
More broadly, our protest movements have to become strategic, smart, not impulsive and wild - and they must be led by trusted leaders. Do everything you can to not empower fringe organizations or inexperienced leaders. It is not really clear we are living in a democracy any more and we have to approach in person street protests carefully, strategically, or a lot can be lost, quickly.
If you go to a protest, anticipate that you will be arrested. Let others know what you are doing and ask them to check in with you to make sure you are OK, and check in with them to let them know you are OK. Federal and local law enforcement have the power to track your phone at each location, and will know whether you attended. For some that will not matter. For others it will. The way we found many of the J6 insurrectionists was through geo-locating their phones at the Capitol that day.
A final note. We have no idea what is going to happen. History, dramatic history is unfolding in front of us at a breakneck pace now, everyday. You have a simple decision to make now - fight, or not. I am fighting. All day, every day. Join me and the thousands of others here at Hopium who are fighting with everything they got every day. Make you calls. Work your networks. Volunteer and give to candidates. Whatever it is just do. Do for your your families, your future and for the America of the Four Freedoms, the most powerful force for good the world has ever known.
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
ALL IT TAKES IS ONE DEMOCRATIC SENATOR...!
The Senate functions heavily on the principle of *unanimous consent*. Without such consent, everything takes too long and the chamber is barely functional.
Take just one tiny example: The Senate regularly has to switch back and forth between Legislative Session and Executive Session. Any single Democrat can DENY unanimous consent and DEMAND a *roll call vote* for this back and forth – and thus slow things down to a dysfunctional crawl.
IT ONLY TAKES ONE SENATOR to announce: "We are shutting down and slow-walking the confirmation process until the Trump regime ceases its blatantly illegal activities. DOGE and Elon Musk is NOT authorized to do what they are doing. Neither the President nor Elon Musk are empowered to shut down USAID or other government agencies; that can only be done by an Act of Congress, and after a proper legislative process. President Trump must continue disbursing those funds that have been approved by Congress. Moreover, the firing of federal employees without due process must cease."
“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt