Trump's Staggering Betrayal Of The Great American Project, More Kennedy Center Cancellations, The 5th Anniversary of January 6th

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Morning all. Got a few things for you today…..

Steve Rattner’s very worthwhile Annual Year in Charts for the NYT (gift link) has this this encouraging look at Gallup data over time:

Here’s our latest look at the weekly Economist/YouGov tracker:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent the following letter to his colleagues yesterday:

Dear Colleague:

I write with respect to the upcoming solemn anniversary of the January 6th brutal attack on the Capitol. Nearly five years ago, a violent mob incited by Donald Trump attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power. As a result of the extraordinary bravery of the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police and other law enforcement professionals, the treacherous effort to prevent certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election failed.

However, the cost was profound. More than 140 heroic police officers were seriously injured and many suffered lasting physical and psychological trauma. Several tragically lost their lives. In the years since that disgraceful day, far-right Republicans in Congress have repeatedly attempted to rewrite history and whitewash the events of January 6th. Our country has been indelibly scarred.

Donald Trump promised to lower the high cost of living on day one of his presidency. One year later, costs are out of control, America is too expensive and Republicans believe that the affordability crisis is a hoax. They have done nothing to lower costs for everyday Americans, but are gutting healthcare and enacted massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors.

The toxic priorities of the Republican Party are clear. On day one of his second term, President Trump issued blanket pardons and commutations to the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6th attack, including hundreds of violent felons who brutally assaulted law enforcement officers. Several of those individuals have been charged with new crimes throughout the country, putting the safety of the American people in jeopardy. A troubling number of the criminals pardoned by Donald Trump have been arrested for child molestation, sexual assault and kidnapping. Republicans own the failed economy, their broken promise to lower costs and the crime spree the dangerous criminals pardoned by the President have visited on our country.

We must never forget the horrors of January 6th and will continue to honor the brave law enforcement officers who were injured and lost their lives defending the rule of law in the United States. To that end, on the fifth anniversary of that fateful day, led by the Honorable Bennie Thompson and the Members of the January 6th Select Committee, House Democrats will hold a special hearing that will commence at 10:00 a.m.

At the hearing, we will examine ongoing threats to free and fair elections posed by an out-of-control Trump administration, expose the election deniers who hold high-level positions of significance in the executive branch and detail the threats to public safety posed by the hundreds of violent felons who were pardoned on the President’s first day in office. We will also present a panel of Members who wish to share their personal experiences from that horrific day. If you wish to testify, please contact Emily Berrett by 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday, January 2.

Thank you for your leadership and I look forward to our continued work in the new year to make life better for the American people.

The Foreign Minister of Ukraine issued the following statement this morning:

What remains so hard to believe this morning is that Trump and his team have somehow convinced themselves, and are working to convince us, that a world without the American-led, rules-based global order is somehow better for us. That carving up the world - Venezuela/the Americas, Greenland, and Gaza for us; Ukraine/Eastern Europe/All of Europe? for Putin; the Middle East for the Gulf Arab states and Israel; much of the rest of the world, including Taiwan, for China - will somehow be better for the United States rather than just an extraordinary and world altering own goal, one benefiting our adversaries and dramatically weakening us.

For without our allies we are less safe. Without the global trading system we will be less prosperous. Without Pax Americana we will all - every person in the world - be less free. And yet, somehow, in all of his insatiable greed, Olympian corruption, and titanic idiocy, here we are…..

Trump is failing to defend Ukraine from Moscow’s dangerous advances. He is blowing apart the global system as we know it by attempting to seize Greenland and Venezuela’s oil. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported on an astonishing development - “Project Sunrise” - a plan to seize Gaza, and have America fund the building of a modern “Rivera,” and implicitly establish the Trump family as the new Emirs of this new polity (gift link). For the Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff families, all real estate developers, it would be the deal of a lifetime.

No, this is not satire:

WASHINGTON—Beachside luxury resorts. High-speed rail. AI-optimized smart grids.

Welcome to “Project Sunrise,” the Trump administration’s pitch to foreign governments and investors to turn Gaza’s rubble into a futuristic coastal destination.

A team led by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, two top White House aides, developed a draft proposal to convert the bombed-out enclave into a gleaming metropolis. In 32 pages of PowerPoint slides, replete with images of coastal high-rises alongside charts and cost tables, the plan outlines steps to take Gaza residents from tents to penthouses and from poverty to prosperity.

The presentation is labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” and doesn’t go into details about which countries or companies would fund Gaza’s rebuilding. Nor does it specify where precisely the 2 million displaced Palestinians would live during reconstruction. The U.S. has shown the slides to prospective donor countries, U.S. officials said, including wealthy Gulf kingdoms, Turkey and Egypt.

In a related story two weeks ago a Trump-Kushner real estate play in Belgrade, Serbia, fell apart due - shocker! - to a wild corruption scandal (via Judd Legum):

In 2024, armed with billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments, Kushner inked a deal with the Serbian government to redevelop the former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army in Belgrade into a luxury hotel and residences. The building was damaged by NATO in 1999 during an aerial bombing campaign.

The deal included extremely favorable terms for Kushner. The Serbian government agreed to grant Affinity Partners a 99-year lease to the property, which is a prime location in central Belgrade, for free. Kushner also had the option to convert the lease to full ownership at no cost. Affinity Partners would then keep 78% of the profits from the $500 million development, with the Serbian government entitled to 22%.

In January 2025, shortly before Trump’s second inauguration, Kushner reached a deal with the Trump Organization to brand the development as a Trump Tower. That agreement meant Trump would directly profit from the successful development of the site.

There was one big problem: the property was designated a culturally protected site by Serbian law. It could not be developed unless the Serbian government changed its status.

The deal struck between the administration of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kushner required the Serbian government “to remove the cultural designation of the complex and to complete demolition work of the existing buildings” by May 2026. Failure to do so would entitle Affinity Partners to millions in penalty payments from the Serbian government.

And……

the Trump Tower project continued until Monday when prosecutors criminally charged Nikola Selakovic, one of Vucic’s closest political allies, and three other officials. Selakovic and the others were accused of “falsification of an official document” and other crimes.

Hours after the charges were announced, Affinity Partners released a statement saying it was pulling out of the project. “Because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and stepping aside at this time,” the company said.

The collapse of the deal is a case study in how Kushner’s dual role as an international investor and top Trump foreign policy advisor puts immense pressure on foreign governments. In Serbia, according to prosecutors, the pressure to deliver Kushner what he wanted was so great that top government officials were willing to violate the law.

(Photo via TrumpBelgrade.com and Judd Legum)

It’s pretty clear that the Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff families are approaching the world now the way New York real estate families approach real estate development in The City. We get our stuff, others - in this case the Gulf Arab states, Israel, the Russians, and the Chinese - get theirs, and everyone prospers.

Except, of course, we don’t. We and the world become less prosperous, less safe, and less free. The corruption, the betrayal, the greed, the clear compromise, the War Crimes, and the profound and dangerous idiocy we are witnessing right now demands a far greater response from our leaders, and from all of us. For things are being broken that will be very, very hard - if not impossible - to repair.

Politico has a new story, States step into the breach as Obamacare subsidies lapse, that does a good job looking at what will be one of the big stories of 2026 - the struggle in the states and local communities to govern against the harms - higher prices, rising unemployment, cuts to health care/energy/universities/R and D/out of control DHS/ICE - Trump and the Rs have brought:

“We can carry the cost for a little bit, but at some point, we will need Congress to act,” said Javier Martínez, speaker of the House in New Mexico, the only state so far to cover all lapsed subsidies. “No state can withstand to plug in every single budget hole that the Trump administration leaves behind.”

The New York Times has published a must-read, long-profile of Marjorie Taylor Greene (gift link), ‘I Was Just So Naive’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump. Here’s one of the many remarkable passages:

For Greene, the decades that Epstein spent eluding justice for exploiting and sexually assaulting countless girls and young women while amassing a fortune, and the seeming efforts by the government to cover up the injustice, “represents everything wrong with Washington,” she told me. This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.

After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

When she urged Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office, she says, he angrily informed her that they had done nothing to merit the honor. It would be the last conversation Greene and Trump would ever have.

The Washington Post details (gift link) the growing list of performers who have cancelled their appearances at the Kennedy Center in the coming months. It is now a long list, and a glorious act of defiance by musicians and performers of all kinds. Enjoy this passage:

Saxophonist Billy Harper, a member of the Cookers who played in groups with Art Blakey and Max Roach, was more explicit about not wanting to perform at the Kennedy Center in an interview quoted on the Facebook group Jazz Stage on Saturday.

“I would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name (and being controlled by the kind of board) that represents overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture,” he said. “... After all the years I spent working with some of the greatest heroes of the anti-racism fight like Max Roach and Randy Weston and Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Stanley Cowell, I know they would be turning in their graves to see me stand on a stage under such circumstances and betray all we fought for, and sacrificed for.”

Things To Do Over The Holiday

Watch or listen to our most memorable conversations this year, or the many discussions with the candidates and party leaders on the front lines next year (below).

I’m excited to announce that in the last few days we hit our most important remaining 2025 goals - $50,000 for our four intrepid House candidates, and $250,000 for the Audacious Expansion Fund - amazing work everyone!

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $61k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversations with Gov. Cooper and NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $106k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $51,100 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)

Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $255,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas | Enjoy my conversations with Alaska Chair Eric Croft, Florida Chair Nikki Fried, Iowa Chair Rita Hart and Texas Chair Kendall Scudder | Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties and to all of you - we have hit our audacious 2025 goal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last Tuesday’s post recapped our our very productive year together. In three new essays (here, here, here) I look forward to next year and discuss how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up, be loud, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land.

The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got.

Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our Democracy - We have three recommended actions today:

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:

1. 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; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender

2. Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean and the Pacific - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law

3. 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. To put America on a sounder fiscal course due to the enormous deficits brought by Trump’s 2025 tax cuts we should reverse these cuts to the wealthy and corporations

4. 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; ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress, end the rancid cover up, and release all of the Epstein files

5. Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and our clean energy investments; support and co-sponsor Rep. Haley Stevens’ effort to Impeach and remove Robert Kennedy

2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - Next year, on July 4th, America celebrates it’s 250th birthday. We need to make this holiday, a celebration of our Declaration Of Independence from a mad king, our day, and not allow it to become his.

One way we can do this is by bringing our Resolutions Project to your community or state. Imagine if by July 4th of next year a large number of towns, counties and states had passed formal resolutions, in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, defending our Constitution and condemning the “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations” of our mad king. For as our Founders wrote in the Declaration:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

So far Hopium members have introduced or passed resolutions in 85 communities in 23 states. In the coming days we will be convening to discuss how to bring this campaign to more places and start planning to Own The Fourth next year.

3 - Make Hopium Stronger - There are several ways you can help make our community stronger:

• Take advantage of the 10% discount through 12/31, become a paid Hopium subscriber for the all important 2026 election year

• Invite your friends, bring in new subscribers, earn rewards

• Buy holiday gift or group subscriptions for colleagues, friends, and family

• Hit “like” on our posts and videos. This will encourage the algorithm to push our work to more people on the Substack app

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. We have a country to save and a future to secure for our kids and grand kids - Simon