Trump Imposes Enormous New Global Tariffs, His Failed War Keeps Failing, And Dems Get A Strong New Wave Of National Polling

Blanche still doesn't have the votes - keep calling your Senators everyone! Loud and proud!

Morning all. Todd Blanche still does not have the votes to be confirmed as Attorney General and we must keep the pressure on. Call your Senators, and call again. Hopium community members in North Carolina and Texas need you today! Call Tillis and Cornyn. They are the swing votes. Thanks to everyone who has called this week but we need to keep working it people!

Here’s a screen shot of the NYT home page from this morning:

Seven weeks before early voting begins Trump is doing everything he can to raise prices on the American people. Endless, illegal war; higher prices, more for the oligarchs and less for all of us. No one has ever betrayed his promises and the American people more than our rapacious, corrupt, Let Them Eat Cakey leader.

The big argument I’ve been making this week is that as bad as things are for Trump and the Rs right now - and they are bad, look at this new data from highly respected Pew (via FiftyPlusOne):

the ongoing failures and fanaticism of his regime are going to make things worse for them in the coming months. I made this case in my weekly talk/analysis released yesterday, Trump Is A Titanic F*ck Up. Things Are Bad For Him And Republicans Now. They Are Likely To Get Worse, and in a new podcast with Greg Sargent of The New Republic too. Over the past two days we’ve gotten some evidence that in fact the national battlefield may be in the process of deteriorating even further for Republicans. Look at these generic ballot results. For context the averages have been running +4-5 Dem. So this would be significant movement in our direction, and away from them:

Remember what Fox News reported about our strong showing in their poll:

It’s an encouraging end to another tumultuous week in Washington.

Other Things We’re Tracking…….

Troy Jackson’s social media game has been strong this week. Expect him to officially become our Senate nominee in Maine tomorrow:

DNC Chair Ken Martin has published a great recap of his tenure so far - The DNC Is Building a Democratic Party That Can Win the Moment and Win the Future. It’s very much worth a read. An excerpt:

The current DNC has raised the most money of any DNC without the White House in the 198-year history of the Democratic Party.

Through June 2026, this DNC reported total receipts of more than $207 million. During the comparable 18-month period of the last Trump-era cycle, when Democrats were also out of the White House and rebuilding toward a midterm election, the DNC reported $109 million. That means the current DNC has reported total receipts of nearly $100 million more - roughly 90 percent more - than the most relevant historical comparison.

Our good friend Rob Shapiro has published a compelling essay at The Washington Monthly, A Unified Theory Of Donald Trump’s Presidency. This too is very much worth a read. An excerpt:

The key lies in an American president’s historic prerogative to reach beyond the authority articulated in law and the Constitution—but only under limited and clear circumstances. Under norms that go back centuries and respected by his predecessors, a president can tap his unarticulated powers only when necessity demands it to preserve and protect the people and the nation. Trump’s radical innovation has been to detach the president’s prerogative powers from necessity and overriding national purpose and use them without those constraints.

Bill Scher has a new piece up on the Washington Monthly, The Platner Collapse Is a Cautionary Tale About Polling, about the rise on our side of narrative shaping polling, a tactic used by the Republicans in both 2022 and 2024 to illicitly shape our understanding of the election. As Scher notes we are now seeing this tactic play out in the Michigan Senate. I posted this summary of recent polls in Michigan on Bluesky a few days ago. The polls released by allies of El-Sayed, including his own campaign, have him running 17 points better than on average than the two independent polls we’ve seen:

This week El-Sayed’s SuperPAC released a poll showing him beating Stevens by 16 points. The most recent independent poll in Michigan has Stevens up 7. So where is the Michigan Senate primary? It’s hard to know for as Scher notes with the decline of legacy media we are seeing far fewer independent polls in the battleground, something that will be exploited by self-interested narrative shaping polling in these final months; and this will make it harder for us to understand where these races really are are.

A brief hallway interview with Rep. Haley Stevens this week by the entertainment outlet TMZ has gone wildly viral, reaching many, many millions of views. Watch and see why…..For this is the warrior for working people Haley Stevens that I’ve known and respected for 15 years:

The Economist sat down with Elon Musk this week for a 90 minute on camera interview. Wild clips from the interview are now are coursing throughout the Internet. Watch this one where Musk tries to claim that the vaporizing of USAID caused no harm in the developing world. He is, without question, one of the great villains of our time - a mass murderer, ugly white supremacist, and a pathological liar:

I’ve been encouraging folks here to read a very informative essay about the Democratic Socialists of America, The Sane NYC DSA vs the Crazy National DSA- A Guide for the Perplexed, written by a thoughtful DSA Member, Nathan Newman. If you haven’t read it yet strongly encourage you get to it soon. Here’s a passage from his essay that helps explain why many - including me - are so worried about DSA candidates being able to win in competitive battleground races. For I simply don’t know how any one can defend being associated with these views:

The national DSA office opposed military aid to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and called for the United States to pull out of NATO. Its platform has in the past called for abolishing USAID, which lands it, awkwardly, on the same side as Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s wrecking ball. And back when Maduro still ran Venezuela, the national organization sent a delegation to Caracas that handed the regime exactly the legitimacy it was looking for- and then in 2024 condemned the Venezuelan opposition and the media for criticizing the validity of the elections.

When Russia was getting ready to invade Ukraine in January 2022, the national DSA International Committee blamed NATO and the US in a statement titled “DSA IC opposes US militarization and interventionism in Ukraine and Eastern Europe and calls for an end to NATO expansionism.” After the Russian invasion, I detailed in this piece why defending Ukraine should be a core commitment of the global left and in a followup piece on why Ukraine was a class war against Putin’s white oligarchic petrocapitalism- issues that national DSA largely ignored. What is striking about the DSA national analysis is how locked into Cold War nostrums on Russia as an opponent of US imperialism, almost as if Putin still embodied some kind of socialist alternative to US hegemony.

Gaza was of course the issue where sectarian politics burst out in national headlines, as a faction of the far left, primarily led by what is known as the ANSWER coalition - itself a front group for the Party of Socialism & Liberation (PSL), would regularly praise Hamas and embarrass the rest of the pro-Palestinian movement. Yet national DSA would continue to cosponsor national marches and national actions with ANSWER.

Pro-Hamas, Pro-Maduro, Pro-Putin, against Ukraine, against NATO, against USAID……these are the positions of the Russian and Iranian governments. They are pro-Ukrainian and Jewish genocide and for the mass killings of millions of the poorest people in the world. They echo Elon Musk’s statements in that interview above, and simply I struggle to see how they are compatible with a movement that describes itself as pro-democracy.

It’s why Newman argues that the more modern, constructive DSA Members like Mayor Mamdani should consider splitting off from the extremist national DSA, and creating something new, without all this extremist baggage. I think this is a very good idea, and something that I hope happens in the coming months.

Now, my friends, it is that time……

It’s Time Get To Work Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Winning The House and Senate In 2026

Our Winning The House Campaign - $1,003,100 raised, $1,250,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Donate | Donate to all twelve of our initial wave of House challengers with a single contribution split twelve ways | Get to know Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Chaz Molder (TN-05), Jonathan Nez (AZ-02), Janelle Stelson (PA-10), Shannon Taylor (VA-01), and Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03) by watching our recently recorded Hopium interviews.

Friends, if these twelve courageous candidates win, the House will flip, even with Callais and their rancid mid-decade redistricting. So eyes on the prize here everyone!

Winning The House - The Second Wave Fund (Newly Expanded) - $193,100 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | We’ve launched a second House fund, one supporting candidates who’ve emerged from recent primaries. Our newly expanded list now features Rebecca Bennett (NJ-07), Bob Brooks (PA-07), Cait Conley (NY-17), Johnny Garcia (TX-35), Bob Harvie (PA-01), Dr. Richard Pan (CA-06), Denise Powell (NE-02), Bobby Pulido (TX-15), Manny Rutinel (CO-8), Dr. Amish Shah (AZ-01), Randy Villegas (CA-22), and Marni von Wilpert (CA-48) (Dr. Shah’s race was called for him overnight - he is now officially the nominee).

A donation to the Second Wave Fund is split evenly among these twelve, and more as other worthy candidates emerge from their primaries. Our total above includes money we’ve raised for directly for each candidate. You can watch interviews with those who’ve interviewed so far here. We are off to a great start here everyone!

Winning The Senate - $510,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate | This new fund splits a single donation to our five candidates must likely to flip a Senate seat this November - Sherrod Brown (OH), Roy Cooper (NC), Mary Peltola (AK), James Talarico (TX), and Josh Turek (IA). Our working total includes what we’ve raised for these five so far through direct donations to their campaigns. You can watch our interviews with each of these great candidates and/or contribute directly to any of them here.

Expanding The Map - Investing And Winning In Key Battleground And Expansion States

Winning Georgia (New) - $13,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | This new fund split a contribution three ways among Senator Jon Ossoff, gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, and the Georgia Democratic Party | Watch my new interview with Georgia Dem Chair Charlie Bailey to get a terrific overview of the opportunities we have in Georgia this cycle

Winning Iowa - $25,700 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Our Winning Iowa fund splits a contribution three ways - to Josh Turek for Senate, to our gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, and to the Iowa Democratic Party | Watch my new interview with the great Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party Rita Hart to get an overview of why this is a year of such opportunity in Iowa

Winning Maine (New) - $68,100 raised, $75,000 goal - Donate | Right now this fund is only supporting the Maine Democratic Party to help them get through this challenging process of selecting a new Senate nominee. It will expand in coming days to include both our gubernatorial candidate, Hannah Pingree, and our eventual Senate nominee too. Thanks to all of you who have rallied for the Maine Dems in the past few days - it’s a big deal! | Watch our new interview with the inspiring Executive Director of the Maine Dems Devon Murphy-Anderson

Winning Ohio - $181,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Our campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton-Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party and its terrific Chair, Kathleen Clyde.

Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $637,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate | Join our campaign that has helped expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas, all now central battlegrounds in the 2026 election | Contribute to all five state parties with one contribution split evenly among these five critical battlegrounds | Catch interviews with the five intrepid state chairs leading their troops into battle this year - will get you fired up!

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Keep working hard everyone. We have a country to save, and elections to win, together! - Simon