A Failed, Unpopular Trumpism Is In Retreat On Many Fronts Now - And We Cannot Let Republicans Escape
Early funding of our parties and candidates is essential to holding Republicans accountable for the extraordinary damage they've done to the country
Good morning all. Despite the bluster and the bullshit and the unceasing right wing noise machine today is a day of profound humiliation for Donald Trump. His own party is going to rebuke him, powerfully, and vote to release the Epstein files. The losses for Trump keep coming. He lost the elections, badly; he lost the shutdown fight; his own Senate voted to repeal his tariffs; his mid-decade redistricting gambit has stalled and served to wake up a slumbering Democratic Party; Republicans are openly talking now about fixing the health care mess their big ugly bill created; he just announced a narrow roll back of some of his tariffs; one of his most prominent supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has turned on him; his poll numbers just keep dropping and prominent Republicans and their pollsters are now sounding the alarm about 2026. When he returned to the White House on Sunday night to face this terrible week we saw this iconic image - a hunched, ailing, painted clownman with a fallen American flag……
I’ve been writing here since the summer that the many, many manifest failures of this terrible regime and his plummeting poll numbers would likely lead to a forced course correction, a retreat, from the catastrophic Trumpism of 2025. It’s what we are seeing now. Our friend Garrett Graff argues today in a terrific essay, Trump, Border Patrol Retreat in Failure From Chicago, that we are even seeing that retreat in the Miller-Bovino-DHS-ICE terror campaign:
In the last few days, roving Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino decamped from Chicago, where his military-style raids have terrorized that community for weeks, for Charlotte, North Carolina — a somewhat inexplicable new target (more on that below) — and a move that underscores what has to be the growing conclusion of the now six-month-old campaign of “acting president” Stephen Miller to turbocharge immigration enforcement: It’s failing. Bigly.
The Border Patrol retreated from Chicago in defeat, not victory.
And
Today, Bovino is leading a mounted raiding unit that descends, unwanted, on targeted communities, terrorizes the residents, and then — unable to break and defeat the hostile residents and ill-positioned to fight a sustained losing battle — withdraws, always trying to stay just a couple steps ahead of the judicial orders and court showdowns that have blocked its worst tactics. We’ve seen this pattern now unfold in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and now Charlotte, as well as smaller raids in places like Sacramento, and Bovino’s force has been defeated in each of them. There’s a national trail of court orders left behind in each jurisdiction finding and enjoining their tactics as illegal, unnecessary, and overly violent. In neighborhood after neighborhood, they face resistance and then, literally, pop tear gas canisters and retreat.
In fact, while the trauma and terror that Bovino’s unit instills is certainly real and damaging, it’s remarkable to note how ineffective the force has turned out to be. Time and again, these agents — and the broader DHS and White House policies behind it — are being exposed not for their strength, but their weakness. Ordinary Americas are stronger — braver and better.
Republicans and even Trump have now begun to run from 2025 Trumpism and the extraordinary harm it has done to the country.
We cannot let them get away.
Part of our job now is to work furiously to hang this agenda of sabotage, plunder and betrayal around their necks for years to come.
It starts with language. We must be direct.
Prices aren’t rising. Trump has raised prices through this tariffs.
Our health care system isn’t broken. Trump and Republicans broke our health care system.
Our rights and freedoms aren’t under threat. Trump is trampling our long- held, cherished rights and freedoms.
Trump isn’t just in the Epstein files. He knew of the crimes committed and has been covering them up for years, and legitimate questions of whether Epstein provided compromising material about Trump to Putin must be answered.
Trump isn’t seeking peace in Ukraine. He is selling out Ukraine, our European allies and democracy throughout the world.
For Democrats we cannot allow Trump and the Republicans to “locker room talk” what has happened. An oops, my bad, sorry everyone! We must be deeply focused on accountability for the extraordinary harm they’ve done to the country; the money they’ve stolen and the deep corruption of the Presidential pardon; the desecration of the White House; the damage they’ve done to our global reputation, the selling out of Ukraine and our allies, and the people they’ve killed around the world; the innocent people they’ve terrorized and thrown into foreign gulags; the many, many laws they’ve broken; the rancid Epstein cover up; the propping up of an ailing madman. All of it. There must be unrelenting accountability for all of it.
Perhaps the central dynamic of our politics now is this process of the cowardly Republicans desperately running away from this iteration of Trumpism, an historic governing and political failure. Gaslighting, lying, billions of ad campaigns, complicit media, Jedi mindtricks - there is going to be tidal wave of bullshit, deflection, scapegoating and obfuscation coming to help the Republicans memory hole the very worst of this terrible year before the mid-terms. For this is what their strategists are looking at - across the board failure, repudiation, discontent, and a 2026 blue wave.
This process of memory holing 2025 has already begun. We all saw the video of Trump and his allies this weekend repeating again and again that prices have fallen in the US. Things are cheaper now. Here is Trump last night:
We will need to hold them accountable and not let them escape in the upcoming negotiations over the fiscal year 2026 budget. Democrats across the country will need to hold them accountable in the legislative sessions at all levels of government coming early next year. We just held them accountable, successfully, in the November elections, and need now to focus on supporting our parties and candidates to ensure that we hold them accountable every single day of 2026.
It’s why early funding of our parties and candidates is so important now. For if they can staff up now rather than in the summer those resources will allow our side to be very, very loud now - not in six or seven months. For the rewriting of history has already begun, and we cannot allow them to define the terms of the 2026 elections. We must do that, and we must start that process right now, today.
So, Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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North Carolina and Ohio - Learn more about our 2026 opportunities in Ohio in this conversation with David Pepper, and in North Carolina in this new interview Anderson Clayton.
Defending America, Winning The Big Arguments With Trump - We have two recommended actions today:
1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Four-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our emerging four part agenda and for releasing the Epstein files:
Roll back Trump’s terrible, illegal tariffs that are re-igniting inflation, driving up prices, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people, hurting small businesses and farmers, reviving tyrannical “taxation without representation,” and alienating governments and people throughout the world
Defend our democracy, rule of law, and our liberties by blocking the expansion of ICE, restoring due process for immigrants across the country, vigorously defending the 1st Amendment, warring against his outrageous targeting of his domestic political opponents, and ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities
Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA and Medicaid; support and co-sponsor Rep. Haley Stevens’ effort to Impeach and remove Robert Kennedy
Stand with Ukraine and our European allies, and far more forcefully challenge Trump’s traitorous efforts to sell out the US and the West to Russia and China
Release the Epstein files
2 - Bring “Resolutions Of Condemnation” To Your Community - 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. Be sure to check out our new discussion with Deborah Potter and Rachel Poliner who have passed resolutions in New Mexico and Boston. They offer practical advice on how to get a resolution passed in your own community.
Remarkably, members of this community have passed or are advancing 85 (!!!!) resolution projects in 23 states + DC. Can we get to all 50 states by the end of the year?
Finally, please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder!
Keep working hard all, and remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope tomorrow will be better than today.
We do the work to make it so.
- Simon
Yesterday my son came home and told me that the boy sitting next to him in social studies started talking about the threat of ICE raids in Wake and Durham counties (NC; my son is in 8th grade). He told my son that his parents are in the final stages of legalizing their status but that they are terrified. My son and I have talked about this a lot, but hearing it from a classmate really brought it home to him. I am just sick to my soul that all this is happening. My son was kind of traumatized about imagining coming home to find me vanished -- and for him this is just an act of the imagination. I am enraged and heartsick all at once, and I will unleash on Tillis and Budd when I get done typing this.
And boy, if Stephen Miller wanted to absolutely tank the GOP in NC, he couldn't pick a better way to do it! The images of what is happening in Charlotte are all over the place and it is not playing well with anyone.
Thanks for the great and very important article by Garrett. Unfortunately, it's horrendous in Memphis and very few are covering/talking about it. I was on a MoveOn call last night, and a leader from BLM Memphis described how teams of every level of law enforcement/immigration are working in tandem, pulling people over for minor infractions and terrorizing folks just trying to live their lives. It's a majority Black city with a storied history. It's one of my favorite cities, and what's being done to its citizens is just unforgivable. We need to support them however we can, and bring pressure to the pro-democracy movement to stand with them & to cover this story.
Another great episode of the American Revolution last night--we learned about the awful hardships experienced by the Patriots, and how continuous pressure led to an inflection point in which the Declaration was a necessity.
Looking forward to the vote today at 1:30. Accountability is the name of the game. I mentioned that yesterday. We can't wait till the midterms -- we don't know how things will turn out, and we have to use the tools at our disposal. Rep. Garcia and Rep. Khanna and Rep. Lee and so many on the Oversight Committee have proved this point. Don't back down. Don't let up. And ensure our House & Senate Dems do the same. And if they don't, we vote them out.
Shannon Watts (founder of Moms Demand Action) used to say "we'll have your support or we'll have your jobs." Bingo.
Keep going!