Morning all. I got together with Hopium paid subscribers last night for one of our regular gatherings. A recording of my opening presentation on the political moment is above, as is a transcript for those who would like to read along. We also had a robust and spirited discussion after my talk so hang in there for the full hour if you have the time. Feel free to share our discussion with others in your networks you think might be interested.
As I discussed last night here’s my topline on where we are now:
We are stronger and Trump is weaker
We have to continue to work with great urgency as our mad leader is breaking things that will be very hard and in many cases impossible to repair. We must come to understand Trump as an American saboteur rather than an American President.
We Are Stronger And Trump Is Weaker - Last night I talked at length about how there is little question now that after a slow start, our opposition movement is gaining strength, winning and overperforming in elections and growing more confident and bolder. While we still may not be where we want and need to be there has been undeniable progress in recent weeks.
Trump, on the other hand, has weakened. His party has lost elections they thought they could win and underperformed in many others. His poll numbers have plummeted, particularly after his reckless tariff announcement last week. Look at this movement in the Strength In Numbers Trump job approval tracker:
Here’s a round up on the credible polls released in the past week. It’s very ugly stuff for Trump and the Rs. There has been a profound erosion of his standing with the public in recent weeks:
Morning Consult 46%-52% (-6)
Economist/YouGov 43%-51% (-8) 5 point drop since last week
Navigator 43%-53% (-10)
Reuters/Ipsos 43%-53% (-10)
Civiqs 42%-54% (-12)
Quinnipiac 41%-53% (-12)
Here’s Politico’s home page right now:
Here’s an excerpt from that story:
It wasn’t just Wednesday’s U-turn, though, that exposed the chinks in Trump’s political armor. It was the entire week of headlines that preceded it. The vast, impressive coalition that catapulted Trump back into the White House started to fray as the MAGA faithful took stock of the shock tariffs.
Start with the sniping on display from Trump’s allies in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, including many who were openly balking at his full-bore embrace of protectionism. Even Elon Musk, Trump’s most prominent adviser, reportedly tried to get Trump to back off his tariff obsession, then took to openly attacking top trade adviser Peter Navarro as “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
Vocal supporter and hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman warned Trump of a “self-induced economic nuclear winter” and accused Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick of profiting from a bad economy. And the discontent even spread to the podcasting bros who helped connect Trump with a legion of young men during the 2024 campaign, including Barstool Sports’ David Portnoy, who claimed to have lost $20 million after Trump introduced his latest tariffs, with Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro calling it “about as bad a rollout as you can do.”
“The idea that this is inherently good and makes the American economy strong is wrongheaded,” Shapiro told his viewers. “It’s untrue. The idea that it is going to result in massive re-shoring of manufacturing is also untrue.”
The unease spread to the populist intellectual wing of the MAGA firmament. Pro-tariff economist Oren Cass — who has close ties to Vice President JD Vance — sent a warning to Trump in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday. While he endorsed the president’s 10 percent global tariff, Cass argued that the administration was moving too quickly in enacting the additional “reciprocal” levies that could create “maximal disarray” in supply chains.
The image of Trump losing control was compounded on Capitol Hill, where the president’s chokehold on his own party appears to have slackened. Enough Republicans joined Democrats to approve a Senate measure that would reverse Trump’s tariffs on Canada, then seven GOP senators — including Trump allies like Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Chuck Grassley of Iowa — co-sponsored legislation to strip away Trump’s power to slap on tariffs without congressional consent.
Meanwhile, House conservatives who have fallen in line with Trump on essentially everything — from re-electing Johnson as speaker to backing stopgap spending bills they’ve railed against for years — drew a red line on a critical budget vote, furious that they weren’t getting promised spending cuts.
Several even rebuffed Trump’s personal outreach. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Trump he wouldn’t play ball at a Tuesday White House meeting. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the Freedom Caucus chairman, wouldn’t even take the meeting.
Trump, meanwhile, appeared to miscalculate in trying to appease the holdouts. He publicly committed to target $1 trillion worth of spending cuts over 10 years — about half of what conservatives have been gunning for. Then, at Tuesday night’s NRCC dinner, he made exactly the kind of argument guaranteed to grate on a bunch of ideologically driven conservative firebrands: Just shut up and vote.
“Close your eyes and get there,” he demanded. “It’s a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding.”
The results were predictable: After a day of wrangling Wednesday, including lengthy huddles with top leaders in both chambers, the upset members held their ground. Johnson was forced to delay the vote and find a Plan B.
I’ve been documenting the growing willingness of Congressional Rs to challenge Trump, Thune and Johnson. Last week Johnson got beat on the floor as 9 Republicans broke with him and voted with Dems on their big leg package. Last Wednesday 4 Rs broke with Thune to join Tim Kaine to pass a resolution that would have revoked the tariffs on Canada. On Sunday 7 Senate Rs signed onto a bill that would allow Congress to roll back Trump’s tariffs. Last night after Trump chickened out on his big tariff plan, Mike Johnson had to pull their budget plan from the floor because they could not round up the votes.
Trump’s madness, incompetence, plummeting poll numbers, recklessness, and repeated usurpation of Congressional authority is causing his hold on Washington to weaken. He is a weakened, diminished figure here, and around the world. It’s why we need to keep doing the work, every day. In the last few weeks little cracks have become bigger cracks, and our little wins have become bigger wins. We need to keep our heads down now and keep working as hard as we can for we are making progress my friends, real undeniable progress.
The Tariffs That Remain In Place Are Unconstitutional, Enormous, Destructive And We Need To Roll Them Back - In both my talk last night and in my interview with Senator Tim Kaine we discuss how the media coverage of what Trump did yesterday was misleading. While Trump panicked and paused some tariffs, what remains in place is a 10% across the board tariff on all goods imported into the US from every country. Tariffs with our three largest trading partners - Canada, China and Mexico - remain well over 10%. Here is a graph economist Paul Krugman shared this morning. It it his rough calculation of what the current global effective tariff rate now is as of this morning. As you will see this is not exactly a “pause:”
As we discussed with Senator Kaine yesterday the Senate resolution to roll back all these destructive tariffs will be introduced soon and it will come up for a vote later this month. In my view building support for this resolution is now job one for the pro-democracy movement. It’s where the biggest cracks in Trump’s support have appeared, and it will allow us to both talk about his destructive middle-class betraying economic policies and his unprecedented assault on our Constitutional order. As I wrote last night:
Dangerous and destructive tariffs remain in place. And as we discussed this morning, what makes all this worse is that Trump does not have the authority to levy taxes of any kind, including tariffs, unilaterally. Only Congress can do that. The power he claims to be able to do all this he simply does not have. Without Congress’s assent Trump’s tariffs are literally taxation without representation.
Trump’s tariffs are a wild assault on our Constitutional order, and perhaps the greatest abuse of power by an American leader in all of our history. We must fight them all we got over the next month as doing so not just helps our economy it can become an important step in reining in our mad leader and re-establishing our Constitutional order.
Democrats Announce More Town Halls - Welcome news from DCCC this morning:
“In March, Democrats launched the People’s Town Halls campaign to hold Republicans accountable for running away from their constituents. In the past three weeks alone, the DCCC, DNC, and ASDC have worked alongside state parties nationwide to host 71 People’s Town Halls in 35 states. Now, as Republicans prepare to vote on a budget resolution that would threaten Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare, cut jobs for veterans, put health care and food assistance on the chopping block, and enable the Trump-Musk agenda as it wrecks the economy and threatens families, Democrats are teaming up over the April recess to host five new town halls to call out House Republicans in target districts who’ve refused to meet with their constituents in-person, including:
Arizona’s 6th Congressional District on April 13th, represented by Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani
Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District “Good Trouble Festival” on April 22nd, represented by Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan
Colorado’s 8th Congressional District on April 24th, represented by Republican Rep. Gabe Evans
North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on April 24th represented by Republican Rep. and NRCC Chair Richard Hudson
Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District on April 25th, represented by Republican Rep. Ann Wagner
Democratic elected officials attending People’s Town Halls this recess period include New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Arizona Congressman Greg Stanton, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost, and Texas Congressman Greg Casar.”
If you live in one of those states and districts reach out to your state or local Democratic Party today and volunteer or attend.
Now, let’s get to work people!
Recommended Hopium Actions and Campaigns - We’ve launched some new actions and campaigns, and are for now retiring a few old ones…here we go!
1 - Demand Congress Take Back Their Tariff Authority From Trump - Call/contact your Senators and House Member today and demand they override and roll back these incredibly dangerous and destructive tariffs. Insist they sign on to the new Kaine resolution!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 - Fight The Trump-Musk Attack On Our Government, Our Privacy And Our Constitutional Order - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to follow Senator Booker’s lead and let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in a joint Senate-House Letter to America; to hold their own hearings; to file criminal referrals for Musk and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI and amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own (House Dems began doing this several weeks ago). Encourage them to hold a daily morning press conference to more aggressively challenge Musk’s ransacking of the USG that is making America less prosperous, less healthy, less safe and far less respected in the world.
3 - Loudly Protest Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of NATO and Europe - Let your electeds know you are outraged by traitorous Trump’s selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin; and that we cannot accept this level of appeasement of someone who is a clear enemy of America and the West, and certainly not an ally. Demand that Trump not let his Saudi meeting w/Putin become our Munich; demand that he not become our Neville Chamberlain; demand that we rejoin our European and NATO allies in support of Zelenskyy and democracy here and everywhere. The country is not with Trump’s embrace of Putin and we must be very loud, very, very loud now. See my new essay on the need to support our allies and not surrender to Putin, and my recent interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most important foreign policy voices in our party.
4 - Our Work In The States, The Spring Offensive - I am going to rework this section as so much has happened since we called on our community members to organize in the 17 most vulnerable Republican House seats. Rallies and protests have exploded across the country and the “Hands Off” events this weekend drew extraordinary crowds. The DNC/House Dems/State Parties have kicked off People’s Town Halls in all 50 states. I have come to believe that we should be leaning on our state and local electeds to pursue these organized “condemnations” of the Trump regime and their betrayal of America. Let’s start talking now about what we are going to do on July 4th, a day with all of a sudden much more importance.
Paid subscribers should self-report their actions today in our daily chat. So inspired by how hard so many of you are working. I want to make a special plea to all Hopium readers in states with Republican Senators - please make your calls, every day. Even 50 to 100 people calling every day in every red state can make a difference. We have hundreds of Hopium subscribers in every state in the country and it’s critical that we all do our part now.
Next, for those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind:
Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Virginia will be one of the big battlegrounds of the November, 2025 elections and we have a great candidate for Governor, Abigail Spanberger. Watch my interview with Abigail, donate, volunteer, and learn more here. Given how many federal employees live in Virginia, this race is also now on the front lines of the Trump/Musk assault on the federal government.
We’ve raised more than $76,000 so far towards our June 30th goal of $250,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!
Help Allison Riggs, Anderson Clayton And The NC Dems Stop The GOP’s From Stealing A Supreme Court Seat - A few weeks ago we began a campaign to raise $50,000 for Justice Allison Riggs, Anderson Clayton and the NC Dems. These funds will help the NC Dems get off to a great start in 2025 and help cover the costs of their fight to prevent the Republicans from stealing a Supreme Court seat we won together in 2024.
If you want to go deeper into the GOP’s rancid effort to steal a Supreme Court seat watch my new interviews with Justice Riggs and Anderson Clayton, the inspiring Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
We’ve raised $36,000 so far towards our June 30th goal of $50,000 - thank you everyone!
Support The Hopium House 7 - We’ve begun our work to help flip the House next year by supporting and shoring up the 7 newly-elected battleground House Dems we helped elect last year. Catch our interviews with Derek Tran and Janelle Bynum and give to all 7 through a single donation on our new ActBlue page. Learn more about this important effort here.
We’ve already raised over $58,000 towards our $250,000 June 30th goal - thank you all!
Thank Senator Booker For Standing Up For America - Senator Booker is up for re-election next year and many of you asked if they could channel their support and appreciation for him through Hopium. So I’ve set up an ActBlue fundraising page for him with a goal of raising $100,000 by June 30th. We’ve already raised $1,000 - thank you all. Let’s be there for Senator Booker as he been there for us at this critical time.
Keep working hard all. So incredibly proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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