Is Trump STRONG Now? An Uplifting Story From New Mexico, "I Feel Like I've Been Lied To"

See folks tonight in Santa Fe at 5pm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morning all. It’s Sunday, and I try to make sure we all get to have Sundays here at Hopium. Rest and reboot days. Spend time with family and friends days. Take long walk days. Hang out with Hopium subscribers in Santa Fe days. So I will be brief.

Trump’s Presidency is failing and unpopular, and he had to do something. Elon attacked and emasculated him, and made him weak and stupid. Global leaders are not bending the knee, and there has been no 90 trade deals in 90 days. Putin is treating him like a coffee boy, and Zelensky has made him look like a clown. His economic policy is slowing the economy down in every country in the world including the US, has caused our credit to go through an unprecedented downgrade, and the American people have figured out this budget bill will make their lives worse (as it will). All across the country local news organizations are reporting on how his cuts and plans will do harm to their communities. He keeps losing in court, badly. The Vatican elected an American cardinal who has been very critical of his Administration. He had to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. No one showed up for his sad birthday parade. His ugliness has spawned what appears to be the biggest protest movement in American history. His immigration enforcement escalation has backfired. His iitel community has called bullshit on his claims of Iran’s nuclear progress.

Civiqs 6/22/25

Clearly the world, the American people, the courts, reality itself are failing to understand his GREATNESS, his BENEVOLENCE, his STRENGTH, his POWER. People claim his budget will explode the deficit - wrong! Not happening. Or that tens of millions will lose their health insurance - wrong! You gotta be kidding me. Or the he is enriching himself at our expense - wrong! C’mom, he is here for all of us, not himself.

So, something had to be done. People were not understanding. Something big. And here we are. Wherever the fuck that is.

For more on the national emergency that is the Trump regime watch my new comprehensive presentation on the current moment and my interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

A Must Read NYT Story Today, ‘I Feel Like I’ve Been Lied To’: When A Measles Outbreak Hits Home: (gift link) - This is one the most remarkable stories I’ve read about this terrible Trump era. Read the whole thing. “I Feel LIke I’ve Been Lied To” could become the defining sentiment of this era, an anthem. The story begins:

He was a chiropractor by training, but in a remote part of West Texas with limited medical care, Kiley Timmons had become a first stop for whatever hurt. Ear infections. Labor pains. Oil workers who arrived with broken ribs and farmers with bulging discs. For more than a decade, Kiley, 48, had seen 20 patients each day at his small clinic located between a church and a gas station in Brownfield, population 8,500. He treated what he could, referred others to physicians and prayed over the rest.

It wasn’t until early this spring that he started to notice something unfamiliar coming through the door: aches that lingered, fevers that wouldn’t break, discolored patches of skin that didn’t make sense. At first, he blamed it on a bad flu season, but the symptoms stuck around and then multiplied. By late March, a third of his patients were telling him about relatives who couldn’t breathe. And then Kiley started coughing, too.

His wife, Carrollyn, had recently tested positive for Covid, but her symptoms eased as Kiley’s intensified. He went to a doctor at the beginning of April for a viral panel, but every result came back negative. The doctor decided to test for the remote possibility of measles, since there was a large outbreak spreading through a Mennonite community 40 miles away, but Kiley was vaccinated.

“I feel like I’m dying,” Kiley texted a friend. He couldn’t hold down food or water. He had already lost 10 pounds. His chest went numb, and his arms began to tingle. His oxygen was dropping dangerously low when he finally got the results.

“Positive for measles,” he wrote to his sister, in mid-April. “Just miserable. I can’t believe this.”

Twenty-five years after measles was officially declared eliminated from the United States, this spring marked a harrowing time of rediscovery. A cluster of cases that began at a Mennonite church in West Texas expanded into one of the largest outbreaks in a generation, spreading through communities with declining vaccination rates as three people died and dozens more were hospitalized from Mexico to North Dakota. Public health officials tracked about 1,200 confirmed cases and countless exposures across more than 30 states. People who were contagious with measles boarded domestic flights, shopped at Walmart, played tuba in a town parade and toured the Mall of America.

But what frightened Kiley more than the potential spread was the severity of the disease: About one in five unvaccinated people with measles will be hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as one in 20 children contracts a secondary pneumonia infection. More than one in 1,000 dies. Measles stops spreading when 95 percent of a community is immune, but national vaccination rates for children have fallen to less than 92 percent. In parts of West Texas, they’ve dropped below 80.

Keep reading. “I Feel Like I’ve Been Lied To.” Sums it all up.

Upcoming Events - Our latest schedule can be always be found on Events page on the main Hopium site:

• Tonight, Jun 22nd, 5-7pm MT - Hopium in Santa Fe! We will gather in the Loft at Chomp Food Hall, 505 Cerrillos Rd, Suite B101, Santa Fe. Friends, family and guests are welcome. You can RSVP for the event by emailing community@Hopiumchronicles.com. Excited to see our active New Mexico crew in person. Looks like we are going to have a good crowd!

• Wed, June 26, Noon - Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum joins Hopium live. Link forthcoming.

• Sat, June 28th, 10:45am ET - Hopium in Northern Virginia! Simon speaks at Network NOVA’s 9th Annual Women’s Summit in McLean, VA. More info and tickets here. This is always a great event!

Remember you can find all of my interviews/podcasts on the Hopium site under Podcast and on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hopium is also now posting on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can always find me on Bluesky too where I post frequently throughout the day.

An Uplifting Report From New Mexico - Got this wonderful note from Hopium community member Deborah Potter:

Dear Hopium Community,

I am so excited to provide this update from New Mexico about local jurisdictions passing resolutions to condemn actions of the executive branch.

Our work to pass this resolution was inspired by Hopium’s A Letter To America and Owning The Fourth initiatives.

On Tuesday June 24 there is a hearing on the resolution Defending our U.S. Constitution and Separation of Powers by the Bernalillo Board of County Commissioners (see below). The Chair and Vice Chair are the co-sponsors, and the Chair’s changes are already incorporated. I am testifying at the hearing and asking many local Democrats to support the resolution. As of Friday, about 12 county residents have told me that they have submitted written comments or are on the agenda to testify in person. Some have shared copies of their powerful statements, including Veterans, lawyers, and Democratic Party leaders. The public comment period is open through about 4 pm MT on Monday and the hearing will be livestreamed. The vote to adopt the resolution will be at the next Commission meeting in August: it has strong support and is very likely to pass.

There will be two more resolutions from County Commissions in NM. We have a Commissioner to sponsor it in Santa Fe County who will find his co-sponsor, and a Doña Ana Co. Commissioner has the resolution in hand. I anticipate that both resolutions will progress toward hearing.

Others from Hopium are working at the county or city level in their communities. To the best of my knowledge, we have resolutions in planning or in progress in NM, AZ, WA, NJ, NC, MA, CA, MN, IA. On Wednesday, the day after the hearing in Albuquerque, a resolution will be introduced for consideration by a MA City Council (Rachel Poliner). The proclamations in AZ have been revised and resubmitted.

Hopium shout-outs! Thanks so much, Randy Gold in AZ, for sharing information in the chat that got me started, getting me in touch with Phin for a copy of the draft document, and staying in touch for additional comments. Cynthia Baughman and Wise Assumer in Las Cruces, have been helping me with contacts in NM. Julie Melton might testify in Santa Fe and Kate O’Shea can help in Las Cruces. Thanks for sharing information also goes to David E, Diane Romino, Elizabeth T, Michael G, Gary Fifield, Kate, and perhaps others. Sarah Peck, John Payne, and Audrey Leviton asked for copies of the resolution, so I am curious about their plans.

Let’s keep in touch and help one another. You can contact me by direct message on Substack: https://substack.com/@nmhope2024

— Deborah Potter

For those interested in replicating this important effort in your own community you can find the text of the Bernalillo country resolution and an interview with Deborah about this work here.

This idea for these “resolutions of condemnation” came from our experience during the Revolutionary period when our Founders used these kinds of resolutions to bring the story of the Mad King and the need for independence to every community in the soon to be 13 states. Here is how I wrote about it in March in one my posts advocating for a Congressional Letter To America:

One thing I think we should be encouraging our local Democratically controlled legislatures, city and county boards/councils to do is to pass condemnations of Trump. Go the record on whatever is of greatest concern - embrace of Putin, destruction of the US government, elimination of vital health research, mistreatment of workers. Whatever it is. As we discussed the other day these kind of bottom up public expressions of condemnation, of going on the record very clearly about why what Trump is doing is wrong, dangerous, a betrayal is very much in the spirit of how we last fought a mad king almost 250 years ago. We must become more comfortable going on the record with our fellow Americans laying out the case against him, spelling out what our Founders called in the Declaration of Independence “abuses and usurpations.”

Many are looking for next steps after our successful and inspiring No Kings protests, rallies and celebrations. Advancing these kinds of resolutions, fostering debate and deliberation around them, can become something that we do in every community across the country. Thanks to Deborah and the others she mentions for running with this important way of reconnecting our communities to these founding principles of our great democracy, and his ongoing, outrageous betrayal of them, and of us.

Here are a few more things to do in this next chapter after No Kings…..

Support Hopium’s Priority Candidates - June 30th Filing Deadline Is Coming Up!

• Mikie Sherrill NJ Gov - $200,000 goal, $13,900 raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer

• Abigail Spanberger VA Gov - $200,000 goal, $133k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch Our Interview

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate - $200,000 goal, $8,800 raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer

• Hopium House 7 - $200,000 goal, $133k raised - Donate | Learn More, Volunteer, Watch Our Interviews

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

Stop The Reconciliation Bill - Job One for us this summer remains 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 in the coming weeks.

The budget bill is deeply unpopular and we need to keep working it everyone!

Get The Military Off Our Streets, Fight Trump’s Inhumane Immigration Escalation - Contact your Rep and Senators to demand they fight Trump’s illegal use of the National Guard and Marines in California. Encourage Democrats at all levels of government to a stand with Governor Newsom and the California - for Trump is not just attacking California, he is attacking the rights and freedoms of all of us. See my recent interviews with Joe Garcia, Leon Krauze and Senator Chris Van Hollen for more.

Own The Fourth, The Flag And Patriotism - To keep our momentum going after this weekend’s No Kings events I encourage to explore ways of Owning The Fourth and make our Independence Day an ugly one for our mad wannabe king. Inspired by the tactics of our Founders, learn about how members of the Hopium community are advancing “resolutions of condemnation” in their communities across the country.

Volunteer To Help Your State and/or Local Democratic Parties Stand Up Voter Registration Efforts - In the presentation he made to our community on Friday Tom Bonier made a persuasive case that Democrats must once again make partisan voter registration a national priority. State and local Democratic Parties are in the planning stages to take this on. Members of our community should consider contacting their state and local parties and offer to help stand up these vital efforts in the coming months.

For more on the need to make partisan voter registration great again see my recent interview with Jane Kleeb, Nebraska Democratic Party Chair, DNC Vice Chair and President of the Association of Democratic State Committees.

Stand Up For Science - Sign on to the critically important Bethesda Declaration and watch my interview with Stand Up For Science’s Executive Director Colette Delawalla. Signing on to the Declaration is one concrete way you can take action today.

Note that we did get a great court ruling restoring the NIH grants the Bethesda Declaration calls for. Here’s how one medical journal characterized the ruling:

District Judge William Young, a nominee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, blasted the Trump administration’s NIH cuts as discriminatory and “bearing down on people of color because of their color.”

A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s sweeping terminations of NIH research contracts are not only illegal, but are also a clear manifestation of the government’s “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”

In a speech after delivering his verdict on Monday, U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts called the administration’s move to cut federal funding for certain research grants “arbitrary and capricious,” going against established government standards, as per the Associated Press. Young blasted the Trump administration, which he said was “bearing down on people of color because of their color,” NBC News reported. “The Constitution will not permit that.”

For more on the need to fight Trump’s war on science, research, academia and our public health see my recent interview with noted climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann.

Here’s a possible script to use to fight the reconciliation bill and tariffs. 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.

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

Grow 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. If each current paid subscriber brings in just one new subscriber this summer we will hit our goal.

To encourage the growth of our community annual paid subscriptions are 10% off through Labor Day and we’ve launched a new referral awards program too. So you can earn months towards a paid subscription by bringing in new subscribers to the Hopium community!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon