Trump's Wrecking Ball Keeps Wrecking Things, And American Patriots Need To Keep Raising Our Game

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Afternoon and morning all. We often talk here about how there are going to be good days and bad days in fight against Trump. Yesterday and today are bad days. Tuesday’s Presidential address will be another. I had a hard time posting today. I fear for the good people of Ukraine now, and for us, and our once great nation.

This new post from Tim Mak’s Counteroffensive Substack is a very good read on why Zelenskyy had to stand up to Trump yesterday. Perhaps we all need to take more inspiration from Ukraine’s courageous leader. Here is a powerful photo montage from this important article:

In yesterday’s post, written before the Zelenskyy-Trump Oval Office meeting, I made an extended case for Democrats to open up a second comms and political front against Trump, one that focused on his attack on the America of the Four Freedoms and the dismantling of our government:

I don’t know how the Trumpian fever breaks, how the madness subsides, and how we return to the Constitutional order and the America we and the world has known for generations. It’s clear that in these early days Democrats have not yet found their voice on the extremism and danger of Trump - his alliance with Putin, his abandonment of Europe and Ukraine, his “off with their heads” tariffs, his unconstitutional and illegal dismantling of the US government including our global and domestic public health systems, his clear and worsening madness. Our early, narrow focus on costs and the terrible GOP budget while tactically sound, is strategically insufficient as Trump and Musk rip apart the global order and our own government in ways that will be very hard, if not impossible, to put back together. Some of the damage being done right now to what I call the America of the Four Freedoms is irreparable, which is why in the coming weeks our leaders - all of them - must work harder to find their voice on this assault and do everything they can to stop it.

After yesterday’s terrible events, there is an even greater urgency for our elected leaders to rise to the moment, make clear that they understand the stakes of the fight we are now in and work against Trump with everything they got. Trump is doing extraordinary harm to our country, and our leaders simply must challenge him far more aggressively than they have.

In a new column in the Washington Post, ‘Tech Bro Maoists’ are torching the country that made them rich, Fareed Zakaria added his powerful voice to those warning of the damage Trump and Musk are doing to America:

All of this thrills a base that believes the establishment is a bunch of arrogant urban cosmopolitans who have, over the past few decades, hollowed out America and left it dispossessed. The reality, however, is that, over the past three decades, the United States has massively outperformed its rich peers — surging well ahead of Europe and Japan. As Michael Beckley notes in Foreign Affairs, “In 1995, Japanese citizens were, on average, 50 percent wealthier than Americans, measured in current dollars; today, Americans are 140 percent richer. If Japan were a U.S. state, it would rank as the poorest in average wages, behind Mississippi — as would France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. From 1990 to 2019, U.S. median household income rose 55 percent after taxes, transfers, and adjusting for inflation, with income in the bottom fifth seeing a 74 percent gain.” As conservative former senator Phil Gramm has exhaustively documented, even income inequality has not actually risen when you factor in government transfer payments and taxes.

The MAGA disgust at the establishment is joined by a new “tech bro Maoism” (hat tip to James Crabtree) that, like the Chinese revolutionary, glorifies disruption and destruction. Epitomized by Elon Musk, this is an attitude that says, in Mark Zuckerberg’s words, “Move fast and break things.”

But is that really the best way to build companies? It isn’t how Microsoft or Google was built. It’s not how Nvidia operates. Jensen Huang, who has led the chip company for nearly 32 years, is said to view the fact that his company has just a 2.7 percent attrition rate as one of his crowning achievements. More important, what might work in a company does not work in building the enduring programs and institutions of government, on which people rely for stability and predictability.

And strangest of all, these nihilistic strategies are being suggested by people who have presided over the greatest creation of private sector success, innovation and wealth in human history. This same America, this same federal government, is where the information revolution exploded, where the world’s best tech companies were created and built, where AI is being pioneered, and where the fortunes of the tech bro Maoists were made.

It is in this country — in fact in California, the poster child for overregulation and out-of-touch liberalism — that Musk, who came to North America as a penniless young immigrant from South Africa, started a string of successful companies and became the richest person in the history of humanity. It is these same governing elites who trained JD Vance in the U.S. armed forces (supposedly part of the “deep state” and infected by woke ideology), gave him a scholarship to a state university (more deep state) and then another to Yale Law School, arguably the most elite educational institution in America.

And the response that Musk and Vance have to that country, that government and those elites is: Burn it all down.

In another sign of just how destructive Trump’s economic policies have already been (another form of burning it all down) the Atlanta Fed’s real time forecast of Q1 GDP has dropped almost 5% points in recent weeks, and is now in contraction and recession territory. The Trump recession may already be here my friends. It only took him a few weeks to ruin the strong economy he inherited.

As hard as all this is there are reasons for optimism. Public opinion is turning on Trump. Consumer confidence in his economy is falling. The courts are holding, and our state Dem AGs have become a powerful force. Cracks are starting to appear in Trump’s Congressional support over Russia, his plutocratic budget plan and Musk’s illegal dismantling of the US government. The American people are rising up all across the country and House Democrats are starting to raise their game, significantly. Yesterday they filed their first amicus brief supporting an ongoing law suit fighting to block the dismantling of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (Hello Senate Democrats!!!):

House Democratic leaders are getting directly involved in one of the legal battles against the Trump administration, filing an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit seeking to block the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In the brief, which was shared first with NBC News, top Democrats argue that President Donald Trump’s attempt to shutter the CFPB creates significant and irreparable harm to consumers, violates the law and undermines the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.

“Defendants’ stop-work order will have severe consequences for the American people. The CFPB has been a resounding success,” the lawmakers wrote in the brief, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. “It has delivered more than $21 billion back to consumers who have been defrauded by entities like large banks, loan servicers, debt collectors, and payday lenders, some of which were previously not subject to federal supervision. ... Defendants have now stopped these congressionally mandated activities in their tracks.”

Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the top Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, is leading the effort in conjunction with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Assistant House Democratic Leader Joe Neguse of Colorado and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. So far, more than 175 House Democrats have signed on to the brief…..

…….

The amicus brief was the product of the House Democrats’ newly launched Litigation and Rapid Response Task Force. As Democratic leaders search for alternative methods to battle Trump, given their limited power in the minority in Congress, Jeffries created the task force this month to help counter the administration’s slash-and-burn effort to remake the federal government.

The task force has already met around a half-dozen times and formed several subgroups dedicated to exploring legislation, litigation, oversight and investigations. It is also closely coordinating with relevant committee leaders.

“The leader created this task force as a central hub for developing creative strategies for us to ultimately respond to the litany of unlawful and unconstitutional actions,” Neguse told NBC News. “We still have a number of tools available to us, including the legal tool of being able to speak with one voice singularly in the litigation as these cases move through the federal courts.”

The task force plans to support numerous legal challenges against the Trump administration. Task force members told NBC News that filing an amicus brief in the CFPB case was an obvious first choice for their opening salvo, given the potential impact on consumers.

We need much more of this kind of leadership from Democrats now, much much more. And we, my friends, need to keep working as hard as we can.

My Notes On The Path Forward And Building An Effective and Ferocious Opposition - See my new essays (here, here) on this process of building the opposition and our critical role in leading the way; watch my new video that goes into greater detail, reminding us that

We are Americans. Fighting for freedom and democracy is what we do. Who we are.

Learn why I think it’s time for Congressional Dems to “let Facts be submitted to a candid world;” read my post that pulls together all my big recommendations for the pro-democracy family; and watch my recent interviews with Rep. Eric Swalwell and journalist Leon Krauze for in-depth discussions on how we must fight harder, smarter and get much much louder now.

OK, Let’s Get To Work - Here are my current working recommendations for calls/contacts this week. Four today, and thanks to all of you who are busting your ass right now:

Fight The Musk Attack On Our Government And Our Privacy, End His Historic Crime Spree - . Encourage your Senators and Reps to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world and criminal referrals filed for him and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI; insist Senators and Reps file amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own; 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.

Organize Against The 17 Most Vulnerable Republican House Members - For those of you who live in AZ, CA, CO, IA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WI please start talking to your local orgs - state and local Democratic parties, grassroots groups, traditional Dem allies - about mounting a campaign targeting the most vulnerable 17 Republican House Members to urge them to vote against whatever joint House-Senate reconciliation bill emerges in the coming weeks. We launched this new effort last Monday, and while we should be urging all our Senators and Reps to vote against these emerging plans, those of you can work these 17 House Rs have a special role to play in this next phase of the battle over the budget. As we discussed yesterday there is a lot of concern in the Republican House about the size of the Medicaid cuts required in the House outlined passed on Tuesday and we need to keep working it people!

Keep Calling Attorneys General In The States - Ask them to protect you and your data, tax returns and privacy, and to keep federally mandated monies flowing to your states and communities. For those in the 19 states that brought the successful Treasury suit thank them and encourage them to keep going. I still believe these 19 states should make criminal referrals of Musk/his posse to DOJ/FBI and raise the stakes.

Protest, Loudly, Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of 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.

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.

A note - while physical protests and rallies are a vital part of how we build our new opposition movement, make sure you only attend or promote events by organizations you know and trust. Please do not support any action - boycott, protest, rally, etc - unless you know and trust the organizers. Given the import of our work now I don’t think it wise or advisable to lend our support to newly formed, opaque organizations without a proven track record of working with Democratic groups and leaders.

For those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind right now:

Help Susan Crawford and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin - As a way of honoring our good friend Ben Wikler and supporting this critical April Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, I’m asking our community to donate to the Wisconsin Democratic Party today. The money raised here will make sure Ben has the resources he needs to keep his team in place so they can support this critical statewide race. I know many of you are already deeply involved here - thank you all.

Watch our new discussion with Susan and Ben and thanks to a huge surge of support in recent days we have already raised $93,000, blowing past our $50,000 goal. We are now upping this to a stretch goal of $100,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. Two weeks ago we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly, over 1,000 of you have donated over $92,000 so far. Watch my interview with Ken about what he wants to do with the DNC, and chip in whatever you can to help Ken and the new exciting team at the DNC get off to a strong start. We now have a new stretch goal of $150,000 by March 31st after our very strong start for this effort (note that we did have some money clawed back due to an error in the amount someone gave!)

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 $50,000 so far towards our March 31st goal of $100,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!

Get Anderson Clayton And The NC Dems Off To A Great Start - Yesterday webegan a campaign to raise $50,000 for 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. Watch my new interview with Chair Clayton. We’ve raised $12,000 so far - thank you all!

More Things To Do - Dive into my recent interviews with folks who are making a difference. Check out our upcoming events. Register for my March 5th event with Heather Cox Richardson!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon