Trump Warming To "Regime Change", Budget Bill Takes Big Hits In The Senate, Our Resolutions Advance In New Mexico

Anne Applebaum Joins Us This Wednesday At Noon ET - Join Us!

Morning all. We had a wonderful event in Santa Fe last night. 50 or so proud, plucky, New Mexican patriots got together to connect, discuss and plan how best to defeat Trump’s ongoing terrible assault on our great country. Thanks to all who came - was great to be with members of this community in person!

We are going to have a big week in Washington this week. The Trump team will have to keep explaining to us how we ended up in a another potential “regime change” war in the Middle East while also working to keep moving their terrible budget bill forward. Job one for us this week is to keep calling our Senators and Reps and demand they work against this terrible “more for them, less for all of us” budget bill. We have to be loud and proud everyone, loud and proud this week.

Our core “wag the dog” analysis of these last few weeks (here, here) is that after Elon attacked and emasculated Trump the White House began to do everything could to change the subject and restore Trump’s STRENGTH. So we got their immigration enforcement escalation, a military parade on his birthday, and now Iran. The country has rejected the enforcement escalation, and Trump’s already crappy poll numbers dropped even more in the last two weeks. No one showed up for his sad, desperate parade. And the country is deeply, deeply skeptical of our going to war with Iran. We will be getting a lot of polling these week about Iran but look at this incredible result YouGov released yesterday. While it’s early this desperate attempt to reboot his failing Presidency appears to be off to a bumpy start:

In another blow to the struggling Trumpistas the Senate Parliamentarian has been striking significant provisions from the big, ugly budget bill, making the job of passing this horrible thing far harder. Here’s Punchbowl News this morning:

Domestically, this is a massive week for Trump and his legislative agenda in Washington. There are just 11 days until July 4. That’s Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Trump’s deadline to get the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” signed into law. This is going to be a huge challenge that requires focus, discipline and, quite frankly, some luck.

All told, a lot needs to fall in place for Senate Republicans if they’re to meet Thune’s goal of kicking off the floor process by midweek.

What’s going down. The Senate is in the middle of the high-stakes Byrd Bath, with Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough deciding which provisions of the massive GOP package meet the strict guidelines for reconciliation.

MacDonough and her team have already thrown a lot out of the bill, including significant pieces of the Senate Banking Committee’s agenda, such as axing all funding for the CFPB.

Conservatives keep getting dealt other body blows as well. We learned overnight that a reworked version of Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) REINS Act was determined to violate the Byrd Rule. This was an effort to give Congress new authority to claw back federal regulations. The parliamentarian’s ruling is a huge blow for GOP leaders as well.

MacDonough also knocked out a Republican provision that limits judges from issuing nationwide injunctions, handing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a win. MacDonough also axed language barring undocumented immigrants from receiving food stamps and forcing states to take on a larger share of SNAP costs.

All of this accounts for tens of billions of dollars in savings in the package, so Republicans are going to have a math problem that will cause immediate problems in the Senate, as well as angering House Republicans. The White House has been talking to House conservatives about the changes in the bill.

MacDonough did, however, uphold the Commerce Committee’s proposed ban on state-level AI regulation, which is tied to broadband funding. Yet this could cause big problems on the floor, where Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has already said he’ll partner with Democrats on an amendment to scrap the provision during the vote-a-rama.

The most important Byrd meeting happens today. The Senate Finance Committee, which has all of Republicans’ tax and Medicaid priorities, will hold arguments in front of the parliamentarian.

Senate Republicans expect to see updated legislative text ahead of tonight’s high-stakes GOP conference meeting. It’s possible the new text will include a stabilization fund for rural hospitals, a key ask of Republican senators concerned about the impacts of the Medicaid provider tax cuts.

We just have to keep working as hard as we can to kill this terrible bill.

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

• Wed, June 25th, Noon ET - Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum joins Hopium live. Link forthcoming. We will be discussing her two most recent essays: This Is What Trump Does When The Revolution Sputters and Trump Has No Strategy.

• 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!

Judge Is Likely To Release Abrego Garcia On Wednesday - From The Washington Post:

A federal judge on Sunday ruled that Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland resident wrongly deported to El Salvador, is eligible for release from criminal custody, saying the government’s allegations that he is a flight risk or a danger to the community are based on problematic testimony and scenarios that “defy common sense.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes said the government “failed” to prove the Trump administration’s allegations that Abrego García poses enough of a danger to society that he should be held while he awaits trial on charges that he participated in a migrant smuggling ring for nearly a decade. She issued her 51-page decision more than a week after a highly unusual, hours-long hearing in U.S. District Court in Nashville earlier this month.

U.S. officials returned Abrego García, who is married to a U.S. citizen, to the country in early June after forcibly deporting him and more than 200 others to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador in March. Multiple federal judges and the Supreme Court have ruled that his removal was unlawful because an immigration judge in 2019 granted him protection from being deported to his native country after finding that he could face persecution from gangs there.

Holmes scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to arrange the conditions for his release while also acknowledging that Abrego García is unlikely to be freed from federal custody. U.S. immigration officials have said they are likely to detain him for civil deportation proceedings, she wrote.

Still, the judge’s ruling marked a defeat for the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Abrego García, which his lawyers say is an effort to cover up the administration’s illegal actions in this case. A federal investigator said he was assigned to the case on April 28, after the Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate Abrego García’s return to the United States.

Hopium Inspired Resolutions Will Be Introduced In Both Bernalillo And Santa Fe Counties (New Mexico) Tomorrow, Tuesday - Yesterday I detailed the great work of Dr. Deborah Potter whose “resolution of condemnation” comes before the Bernalillo County Commission tomorrow. Last night at our event in Santa Fe, Hopium community member Paul Dirdak informed us that similar resolutions will be introduced and discussed tomorrow in Santa Fe county.

To learn how to attend, offer public comment or testimony, and watch the live stream of both country commission hearings please head here. The deadline for registering for in person testimony or offering written comments is today at 5pm MT.

As we all learned from Deborah yesterday Hopium community members are now advancing resolutions like this at the local level in 9 states. Can we make it 50 by Labor Day? Just got this great note from Hopium community members Anna and Jim Hall:

Inspired by your post about Deborah, I reached out to our county commissioners here in Dekalb County, GA. They said they would be happy to consider it! I will follow up and hopefully we can get such a resolution passed here.

Great work everyone, and good luck to Deborah and all those in New Mexico who are working so hard to get these things introduced and debated this week!

Now, Let’s Get To Work!!!!

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

• Mikie Sherrill NJ Gov - $200,000 goal, $14,000 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, $9,400 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.

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. The latest viral video came from Santa Ana California this weekend and showed a father of three US marines getting beaten by the masked goons:

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 Hopium members 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