Trump Is Making America Poorer, Weaker, Less Safe and Less Free And The American People Are Unhappy About It

Tara McGowan Joins Us Live Today At 1230pm ET/Hopium Paid Subscribers Gather Tonight at 7pm

Morning all. Our week of diving into what’s next after the passage of the big ugly continues today at 1230pm ET when our good friend Tara McGowan joins us for a live discussion. I’ve asked Tara to join us for a check in on the state of the information and media battle, the growth of pro-democracy media we are now witnessing, and for her to update us on how the innovative organization she started, COURIER Newsroom, is approaching the current moment. For background see Tara’s article celebrating COURIER’s first six years and her latest political memo, Authenticy is everything.

Click here at 1230pm ET to join our conversation and for those who can’t make it live we’ll be sharing it via email later this afternoon. Hopium paid subscribers gather tonight at 7pm ET; we are sitting down to interview CO AG Phil Weiser on Thursday; and prominent immigration attorney David Leopold joins us live Friday at 215pm ET. So lots more to follow our early forays into “what’s next” in my new essays (here, here, here) and our new discussions with Greg Sargent and Charles Gaba.

In my talk with Charles we address about something that has come up here quite a bit - when will all the damage from Trump’s assault on our health care kick in? The answer - it has already has, and will continue to get worse as we head into 2026.

Two Polls Now Show Trump Dropping After Big Ugly Passage - Had time to dive into the new Economist/You poll after posting yesterday and when looking at registered voters it finds a similar level of decline for Trump as the Morning Consult weekly track we discussed yesterday;

• Morning Consult - 45%-52% (-7) down from 47%-50% last week, 4 pt decline

• Economist/YouGov, Registered Voters - 43%-54% (-11) down from 45%-53% (-8), 3 pt decline

While we will need to see more data before confirming this as a trend, this early data suggests Trump did not a get bounce from passing his big bill, something that would not be surprising given how unpopular it became in recent months.

Here is where Trump stands today, via Strength in Numbers. Note that if we removed the very pro-Trump polls we discussed on Sunday from this average Trump would almost be certainly below his 2017 approval right now.

Here’s my updated look at the 2024 Trump coalition, via Economist/YouGov:

Trump is not having the victory lap week he thought he was going to have. The mounting death toll in Texas is a searing reminder of the harms his “more for me, less for all of you” agenda has brought to the country. The ongoing Epstein fiasco has been ugly for him in many, many ways. He’s flailing and all over the place on Russia and Ukraine. The 2026 Fiscal Year budget, the one that codifies the big ugly and his extremist agenda, is struggling on the Hill. His bestie Elon has started a new political party. And today, the deadline for his 90 deals in 90 days, he comes to the country with no deals and all sorts of new batshit crazy attacks on our allies; and new promises to keep raising prices on all of us, again betraying the central promise he made to the American people during the 2024 campaign that he would lower their prices and make the economy work better for working people.

From The Washington Post this am:

Even as President Donald Trump celebrates the passage of his sweeping legislative package, frustration and anger have roiled some of his most loyal supporters, who fear he is going back on promises crucial to his MAGA movement.

Trump is advocating a new policy that would spare swaths of migrant workers from deportations. Top administration officials, who long promised to expose hidden truths about Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy child sex offender who died in 2019, suddenly conceded this week that they had nothing more to share about the case. And Trump said he would send more weapons to Ukraine, just days after leading MAGA figures cheered the Pentagon’s decision to halt the shipments.

“I will tell you right now, MAGA has never been in more turmoil than the last 72 hours,” said a person close to Trump, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.

As we dive deeper into the conversation about “what comes next” I have become more convinced that it is vital that Dems lift their heads up now from the battle over the big ugly, and look at the broader issue landscape. The elements of the big ugly are now just elements of the broader, disastrous Trump agenda. Our focus these last few months on degrading the bill were necessary and successful. But now we must take a step back, and work to develop a next narrative that places the elements of the big ugly into the broader Trump agenda. Here some phrases I’ve been using here:

• Trump = Sabotage, plunder and betrayal

• Trump is making America poorer, weaker, less safe and less free

• Trump is making America poorer, weaker, less safe, less healthy and less free

This graph from G. Elliott Morris reminds us that the searing unpopularity of Trump’s handling of inflation and prices.

Given this, and given Mamdani’s recent success around “affordability,” it would seem like a good time for Democrats to return to a broader critiques of Trump’s reckless economic agenda and his clear betrayal of working Americans. For there has perhaps never been as a big a lie in modern American history than Trump’s lie to working people that he was on their side, and not the side of the oligarchs.

As I wrote on Monday:

I remain convinced that Job One for us in the coming months is to continue to make the case against Trump’s economic agenda, one that is slowing the economy, creating global chaos, raising prices, stripping workers from businesses across the US, weakening the dollar, vaporizing our global scientific leadership, wrecking our health care system, slowing our energy transition, and endangering the financial integrity of the United States. Our engagement with him now has to be on his whole wrecking ball agenda, not just the big ugly.

Not about the big ugly any more. About Trump’s whole agenda of which the elements of the bill are now a part of.

Now, Lets Get To Work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Support Hopium’s Priority Candidates - Friends, you all rallied these last few days. We hit our $25,000 June 30th goal for our newly endorsed candidates Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Senator Jon Ossoff - thank you! Our revised fundraising goals are for Labor Day, remarkably, only two months away, with the November elections now only four months away. We can do this people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Mikie Sherrill NJ Gov (2025) - $200,000 goal, $34k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch Our Interview

• Abigail Spanberger VA Gov (2025) - $250,000 goal, $151k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Watch Our Interview

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $200,000 goal, $32k raised - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer

• Hopium House 7 (2026) - $250,000 goal, $158k raised - Donate | Learn More, Volunteer, Watch Our Interviews

We also have ongoing campaigns to support the new DNC, the Anderson Clayton and the North Carolina Democratic Party and to thank Senator Cory Booker for his spirited leadership in a time of enormous challenge. Lots of choices - do something to support these great candidates and parties today!

I am grateful to all of you who fought so hard against the Trump’s terrible bill. We worked hard peeps. It was righteous and good work. As I said to you in my latest video we need to learn from these last few months and continue to get better, stronger, more powerful. For while we are making progress we are clearly not where we need to be.

In the coming days as I reflect on what just happened, and listen to all of you, we will be reworking and updating our collective summer and fall actions. Here is what we have now, with more to come, soon:

1 - 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.

In the coming days I want to work with all of you to do something more explicit about demanding the end of masked, plain clothes “police” snatching people here in America without warrants.

2 - Join Our Resolutions Project - Inspired by the tactics of our Founders, learn about how Hopium members are advancing “resolutions of condemnation” in their communities across the country and consider bringing this initiative to your state, country or city/town. Our resolutions passed in two New Mexico counties last week, and we now have 40 resolutions moving in 14 states. Amazing stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3 -Volunteer To Help Your State and/or Local Democratic Parties Stand Up Voter Registration Efforts - In the presentation he made to our community recently 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.

Last Monday the DNC, the DSCC, the DCCC, the DGA and the ASDC announced a major new “Organizing Summer” project. Learn more about it here. I hope to have someone join us in the coming days to help us understand how we can support this exciting new initiative. Organizing to win these 29 Republican held House districts will be one of most important collective priorities for the next 16 months:

4 - 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. Another is to back over 700 employees of the EPA who have taken a courageous stand challenging EPA Administration Lee Zeldin this week. You can learn more and sign your name in support of this remarkable effort here.

Please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder! Been impressive to see how many of you remain involved in local, in person protests of all kinds in your communities. Keep it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Grow Hopium - We’ve set a goal of trying to grow the Hopium community from the 152,000 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. Use that link to buy gift or group subscriptions, and join our new referral rewards program too.

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