I am really, really hoping the standoff between Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Trump lasts past Election Day. Neither we nor Wall Street want a lackey at the Fed who drops interest rates just because Trump says he should.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro supposedly has directed her office to drop the criminal investigation into Powell and the Fed's renovations. To his credit, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is refusing to move forward on Trump’s nominee for new Fed Chair until that absurd investigation is permanently closed.
But, hey, Trump’s obstinacy and thirst for vengeance could still save the day!
Rrright. That’s right up there with Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett and Alito promising to “respect precedent” and deeming reproductive rights and the right to abortion to be “settled law”.
Yeah Pirro said she would reopen the investigation when they have "facts", which means they are doing an investigation now without facts. She admitted the corruption and may not even realize it.
“President Donald Trump calls environmentalists “terrorists.” Yet he is responsible for destroying more oil and gas infrastructure, and possibly more fossil-fuel demand, than the most optimistic ecoterrorist could in their wildest dreams. By going to war with Iran, the president, who has been openly hostile toward the clean-energy transition, may unintentionally turn out to be one of its greatest allies.”
– Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg
.
“Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive. The attack on Iran is not the way any of us wanted this to happen, but the unintended consequences of Trump’s pointless war could help sink Trumpism everywhere – and the corrupt and filthy industry that props it up.”
I love "Fix the News"! And I recommend to everyone I can. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it several times here on Hopium as well. Point is: there is a lot of good news happening! It just doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
And when I need an antidote to all the negativity, and all the insanity of the Trump universe, reading "Fix the New" is a great pick-me-up. :)
As the owner of an EV (not a Tesla), I have the receipts. It cost us $4.16 to fully charge our car the other night, which has a range of ~200 miles. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: $4.16 TOTAL.
I've been thinking about that too. At Wednesday's subscribers talk, Simon ventured into the extreme energy shortages, particularly in Asian and African countries, but in many places throughout the world. Despite high gas and deisel prices in this country, many other places are much worse.
Well, the sun shines all over the planet, and it doesn't have to go through the Strait of Hormuz. This stupid war could be the biggest boon to alternative energy development globally, particularly solar. Neccssity is the mother of invention (and expansion.)
Boy would I really like to see the Likely Rs flip too. And they might for 2026 at least if things keep progressing the way they have on the economy, immigration, the war of choice, Epstein Files, etc.
Would be nice to see a 1994-type situation in which Democrats gain multiple layers of GOP seats, from the frontline bellwethers, to the competitive red-leaning districts, and the Likely R ones that would have been called distant reaches and fruit just last year.
I think we all want that. It's why we need to view 2026 now as a year of opportunity, and to refocus the efforts, attention, and money of the family to seizing it, together. The time for intra-party squables and efforts to undermine the leadership just have to end. We are here now. The Rs are weak, and we are strong, and we just need to make backing our battleground candidates and state parties job one, every day, get to work and go out and win this thing.
I just can't with another day of digs about how 'weak' Jeffries and Schumer are.
One, it is totally counterproductive and two, it doesn't even seem to be true anymore.
Certainly Hakeem Jeffries appears to be rising to the moment more and more every single day and pretty sure he got the memo about the fight, considering the strength of his recent rhetoric!
Some of those conversations for the primaries are fine, but I do agree that once the state primaries end, including the very last ones in September, the party has to position a united front against Republicans. That should be the mode full-throttle from Labor Day to Election Day when almost all of the primaries are said and done.
No, that's not right Michael. If we wait till September to unify and go into the general we will not have the election we all want to have. The general election has begun. We need to begin acting like it as a party and focus on seizing the opportunity in front of us.
State primaries take place in March, May, June, July, etc. So state parties can unify even earlier than that. You're right. But it needs to go into overdrive even more by Labor Day.
Montana seems poised to flip MAGA Ryan Zinke's MT-1 seat to the Democratic side. Zinke (Trump's disgraced former Interior Secretary famed for riding horseback through downtown DC) announced his retirement and there are several Democratic candidates vying to replace him in the upcoming primary election. Ryan Busse (who lost the 2024 MT governor's race) has the best name recognition. I'd put him in the frontrunner's position.
If you don’t want to watch the entire interview, just take a minute to feel the energy in the video at Sam Forstag’s web site: https://samformontana.com/
Simon, thanks for the good information on the polls. We can win this if we do the work!
Trump was, again, falling asleep in public yesterday. I'm surprised the WH hasn't worked out some way to deal with this. Like there's a designated person to hand him something and put a hand on his shoulder to gently shake him? Or a call coming in on the phone on the desk? They just keep letting him fall asleep over and over. I get that Wiles is getting medical treatment, but you'd think someone would want to address this as it's only going to get worse over time.
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen to say the president is not in touch with reality and must be removed.
Polling is encouraging. I'll continue to work, but not next week. I'll be away.
I heard Rick Wilson this morning say that Republicans were beginning to view the AK and ME Senate races as "out of reach". Not a reason to not keep pushing there, but if true, it is a good sign.
I wonder if viewing it as "out of reach", if that is true, would be done because they are making a decision to focus resources elsewhere. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that is why they make calls like that.
What will matter is how they actually spend, not what they tell us they are going to spend. These big SuperPAC spend announcements are part of the mind war of these elections. They will obscure their real strategy, continue to pretend to support Zombie candidates, etc; and things are still very early, very fluid. But yes, the Senate polling got very bad, very quickly for the Rs. I think they are still in shock. The war just moved everything 2-3-4 points and made a tough election much harder for them. GA and NC look out of reach, and we do have solid leads in AK and ME in recent polling. That puts us at 50. The fight then becomes whether we can get to 51 in IA, OH, TX and potentially longer shots like FL and NE. But they have a lot of money and man are they going to spend it, against everyone, for months and months. Which is why none of this is a done deal anywhere. We should have won in 2024 but just didn't get it done. Must stay focused and keep fighting, keep getting stronger every day.
Sure that makes sense. I'm hoping our candidates can make the case that these SuperPacs are all funded by billionaires trying to disadvantage ordinary people, and tie that around the Republicans' necks. The money advantage they have looks to be quite substantial.
Are the superPacs basing their spending threats on money they have already received, or just money that the big R donors have pledged to pay? I’m wondering if there will come a point where the big donors decide that it’s a waste of their gazillions to keep supporting a party that will only be in minority in 2027. Or are the donors as willing as the congressional lickspittles to stick with tRumpy’s magical thinking to “stay the course, I’ll be fine no matter how f**ked the country is”?
Nancy Pelosi has apparently been warning the party of concerns the GOP will attempt to manipulate the voting machines come November. Forewarned is forearmed but also, I’m not sure how exactly we fight that offensively. Hopefully, there are mechanical failsafes in place. This is where the layers of our agencies and most importantly, our Secretaries of State come into play. Not to mention, the voters…needs to be too big to rig and fortunately, it seems to be heading that way 🙏.
Many ways to combat this - Marc Elias did a great explainer on this. What we can do:
-pre-bunk amongst your friends - tell 'em to expect shenanigans from Rs at the polls and post-election
-vote early and tell friends to do the same
-help register voters, help voters get ID
-train to be a poll watcher or worker
Here in NJ, we use several different voter machine brands. Just having those sorts of differences makes it a lot hard to "rig." as does mandatory paper record of each vote.
Thank you Lisa. Deeply appreciate this feedback. Not to mention, that’s why I remain a cautious optimist even in spite of my own neurosis…cuz we have figures like Elias deep in the trenches ✌️🙏💕.
a statement said he is expected to make a full recovery...wtf? is he incapacitated? he won by over 5 points so he's at risk this cycle, but this redistricted 7th is a tough nut to crack.
It's influenced by Democrats that keep criticizing their own party or fall in perpetual disappointment instead of standing in solidarity to fight maga.
Steady as she goes! Stay focused on the tossups, and expand as the Republicans abandoned the tossups as unwinnable, and start trying to fortify lean and likely R…. The battleground in this election will probably continue to shift and expand right up until the last goddamn week.
Attended a congressional district candidate forum last night (the new congressional districts in CA are hard to figure out!) Sb on the Secretary of State’s website IMHO, but NOPE!) so I attended in error, but still was interesting to see the spectrum of candidates running. The one I liked was probably 30 years old, if that, former Marine, Jeopardy champion, no really, the format really favored him over the other candidates with his calm, but punchy call outs to the detestable Kevin Kiley, R turned Independent to save his sorry a$$! (Kiley inferred that it was his tough questioning of Kristi Noem during her last appearance in front of congress was that she was fired THE NEXT DAY)! It was all any of us in the audience could do to contain our laughter and derision at that claim!. What a tool.
Ordered 500 postcards and stamps for GA Supreme Court election for a May Day postcard potluck party with 5 like minded folks in my community. I’ve connected with 4 these women since No Kings 2 rally and this is our 1st get together to Resist together in community and to support each other and the May Day goals of no shopping, no work, no school. I think of this as a Mayday, Mayday, Mayday democracy on fire postcard party!
G’morning folks. Good work on the Big Things! My small recent contribution to the achievement of locally big things was to tramp around in the roadside mud to take photographs of quite probably illegal roadside campaign billboards so that a more adroitly savvy (and less flexible) campaigner could pursue said legality question. I am permanently royally pissed off about that fire station closure.
Great news; however, how does a disgusting pedophile and the party that supports him who unilaterally raised our taxes without our consent, started an illegal war in the Middle East, gleefully deports women and children still have that much support? We have a problem in the United States, and that problem is our own citizens. They're deviants.
Not one penny should have to be spent to convince these MAGA trash that what they support is immoral, harmful and wrong. There needs to be a reckoning in this country for this.
I am really, really hoping the standoff between Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Trump lasts past Election Day. Neither we nor Wall Street want a lackey at the Fed who drops interest rates just because Trump says he should.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro supposedly has directed her office to drop the criminal investigation into Powell and the Fed's renovations. To his credit, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is refusing to move forward on Trump’s nominee for new Fed Chair until that absurd investigation is permanently closed.
But, hey, Trump’s obstinacy and thirst for vengeance could still save the day!
Oh, no, no, no. The potential new Fed chair has already told us he is going to be totally and utterly independent not a 'sock puppet' at all!!!!
🤣🤣🤣
Rrright. That’s right up there with Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett and Alito promising to “respect precedent” and deeming reproductive rights and the right to abortion to be “settled law”.
Or pretty much every single nominee for the current cabinet, who lied over and over again to congress during confirmation hearings!!
Patel, Bondi, Noem, Kennedy, Hegseth etc, etc, etc....
my understanding is its a committee decision, and he would not be able to drop rates on his own.
Correct.
I'm watching to see if Pirro isn't one of the next ones to get fired. She's a lush and she's been a major failure for Trump.
Rank incompetence and a drinking problem seems to be a major plus in this administration.
But not being a man may count against her!
LOL - The Liquor Cabinet.
love it!!!
can't claim authorship, but thanks :)
It's women (and thankfully no *actual* children) first!
That’s a good one 😂😂😂
Made me laugh out loud
Yeah Pirro said she would reopen the investigation when they have "facts", which means they are doing an investigation now without facts. She admitted the corruption and may not even realize it.
They are all such stable geniuses 🤣
Two telling quotes:
“President Donald Trump calls environmentalists “terrorists.” Yet he is responsible for destroying more oil and gas infrastructure, and possibly more fossil-fuel demand, than the most optimistic ecoterrorist could in their wildest dreams. By going to war with Iran, the president, who has been openly hostile toward the clean-energy transition, may unintentionally turn out to be one of its greatest allies.”
– Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg
.
“Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive. The attack on Iran is not the way any of us wanted this to happen, but the unintended consequences of Trump’s pointless war could help sink Trumpism everywhere – and the corrupt and filthy industry that props it up.”
– George Monbiot, The Guardian
And, more good stuff from Fix the News. Some political, mostly not.
https://fixthenews.com/p/335-transition-flagellar-motor-measles-b92?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=30f9km&triedRedirect=true
I love "Fix the News"! And I recommend to everyone I can. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it several times here on Hopium as well. Point is: there is a lot of good news happening! It just doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
And when I need an antidote to all the negativity, and all the insanity of the Trump universe, reading "Fix the New" is a great pick-me-up. :)
Thank you for sharing! Don't know how I never found fix the news. It's awesome!
As the owner of an EV (not a Tesla), I have the receipts. It cost us $4.16 to fully charge our car the other night, which has a range of ~200 miles. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: $4.16 TOTAL.
We have 2 hybrids, only bc no garage and no infrastructure to charge nearby. Next vehicle will be EV. My monthly cost is around $45.
I've been thinking about that too. At Wednesday's subscribers talk, Simon ventured into the extreme energy shortages, particularly in Asian and African countries, but in many places throughout the world. Despite high gas and deisel prices in this country, many other places are much worse.
Well, the sun shines all over the planet, and it doesn't have to go through the Strait of Hormuz. This stupid war could be the biggest boon to alternative energy development globally, particularly solar. Neccssity is the mother of invention (and expansion.)
Good podcast chat between Greg Sargent at the New Republic and G Elliott Morris dropped today.
If anyone is interested, then here is a link to the transcript...
https://newrepublic.com/article/209463/transcript-trump-wrecked-brutal-new-fox-poll-he-bad-mood?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily&vgo_ee=r%2B%2FHdql7hFON29uo1w4Au2YTduRC4PjAL80QXjGOgsL01whTbA%3D%3D%3ANkN6sD%2FTrXTIBbifVN3v3NpAk6zB9G1H
Boy would I really like to see the Likely Rs flip too. And they might for 2026 at least if things keep progressing the way they have on the economy, immigration, the war of choice, Epstein Files, etc.
Would be nice to see a 1994-type situation in which Democrats gain multiple layers of GOP seats, from the frontline bellwethers, to the competitive red-leaning districts, and the Likely R ones that would have been called distant reaches and fruit just last year.
I think we all want that. It's why we need to view 2026 now as a year of opportunity, and to refocus the efforts, attention, and money of the family to seizing it, together. The time for intra-party squables and efforts to undermine the leadership just have to end. We are here now. The Rs are weak, and we are strong, and we just need to make backing our battleground candidates and state parties job one, every day, get to work and go out and win this thing.
Amen to that.
I just can't with another day of digs about how 'weak' Jeffries and Schumer are.
One, it is totally counterproductive and two, it doesn't even seem to be true anymore.
Certainly Hakeem Jeffries appears to be rising to the moment more and more every single day and pretty sure he got the memo about the fight, considering the strength of his recent rhetoric!
Some of those conversations for the primaries are fine, but I do agree that once the state primaries end, including the very last ones in September, the party has to position a united front against Republicans. That should be the mode full-throttle from Labor Day to Election Day when almost all of the primaries are said and done.
No, that's not right Michael. If we wait till September to unify and go into the general we will not have the election we all want to have. The general election has begun. We need to begin acting like it as a party and focus on seizing the opportunity in front of us.
State primaries take place in March, May, June, July, etc. So state parties can unify even earlier than that. You're right. But it needs to go into overdrive even more by Labor Day.
Montana seems poised to flip MAGA Ryan Zinke's MT-1 seat to the Democratic side. Zinke (Trump's disgraced former Interior Secretary famed for riding horseback through downtown DC) announced his retirement and there are several Democratic candidates vying to replace him in the upcoming primary election. Ryan Busse (who lost the 2024 MT governor's race) has the best name recognition. I'd put him in the frontrunner's position.
I was really inspired by this interview yesterday with Sam Forstag, another contender in MT-1 Democratic primary:
https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/a-blue-flame-in-montana-the-two-joes
Talk about a can-do attitude!
If you don’t want to watch the entire interview, just take a minute to feel the energy in the video at Sam Forstag’s web site: https://samformontana.com/
The work is worth. Keep moving forward.
Europe should give Ukraine all it asks for since it is keeping Russia’s aggression from extending to other European countries.
Simon, thanks for the good information on the polls. We can win this if we do the work!
Trump was, again, falling asleep in public yesterday. I'm surprised the WH hasn't worked out some way to deal with this. Like there's a designated person to hand him something and put a hand on his shoulder to gently shake him? Or a call coming in on the phone on the desk? They just keep letting him fall asleep over and over. I get that Wiles is getting medical treatment, but you'd think someone would want to address this as it's only going to get worse over time.
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen to say the president is not in touch with reality and must be removed.
Maybe the White House should just substitute a Trump sock puppet to stand in.
No, it would look smarter than Trump, and he wouldn’t allow himself to be upstaged.
A cattle prod?
Polling is encouraging. I'll continue to work, but not next week. I'll be away.
I heard Rick Wilson this morning say that Republicans were beginning to view the AK and ME Senate races as "out of reach". Not a reason to not keep pushing there, but if true, it is a good sign.
I wonder if viewing it as "out of reach", if that is true, would be done because they are making a decision to focus resources elsewhere. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that is why they make calls like that.
What will matter is how they actually spend, not what they tell us they are going to spend. These big SuperPAC spend announcements are part of the mind war of these elections. They will obscure their real strategy, continue to pretend to support Zombie candidates, etc; and things are still very early, very fluid. But yes, the Senate polling got very bad, very quickly for the Rs. I think they are still in shock. The war just moved everything 2-3-4 points and made a tough election much harder for them. GA and NC look out of reach, and we do have solid leads in AK and ME in recent polling. That puts us at 50. The fight then becomes whether we can get to 51 in IA, OH, TX and potentially longer shots like FL and NE. But they have a lot of money and man are they going to spend it, against everyone, for months and months. Which is why none of this is a done deal anywhere. We should have won in 2024 but just didn't get it done. Must stay focused and keep fighting, keep getting stronger every day.
Sure that makes sense. I'm hoping our candidates can make the case that these SuperPacs are all funded by billionaires trying to disadvantage ordinary people, and tie that around the Republicans' necks. The money advantage they have looks to be quite substantial.
Are the superPacs basing their spending threats on money they have already received, or just money that the big R donors have pledged to pay? I’m wondering if there will come a point where the big donors decide that it’s a waste of their gazillions to keep supporting a party that will only be in minority in 2027. Or are the donors as willing as the congressional lickspittles to stick with tRumpy’s magical thinking to “stay the course, I’ll be fine no matter how f**ked the country is”?
Nancy Pelosi has apparently been warning the party of concerns the GOP will attempt to manipulate the voting machines come November. Forewarned is forearmed but also, I’m not sure how exactly we fight that offensively. Hopefully, there are mechanical failsafes in place. This is where the layers of our agencies and most importantly, our Secretaries of State come into play. Not to mention, the voters…needs to be too big to rig and fortunately, it seems to be heading that way 🙏.
Many ways to combat this - Marc Elias did a great explainer on this. What we can do:
-pre-bunk amongst your friends - tell 'em to expect shenanigans from Rs at the polls and post-election
-vote early and tell friends to do the same
-help register voters, help voters get ID
-train to be a poll watcher or worker
Here in NJ, we use several different voter machine brands. Just having those sorts of differences makes it a lot hard to "rig." as does mandatory paper record of each vote.
Thank you Lisa. Deeply appreciate this feedback. Not to mention, that’s why I remain a cautious optimist even in spite of my own neurosis…cuz we have figures like Elias deep in the trenches ✌️🙏💕.
Keep the faith, and do what you can. Taking action helps! Thanks for being here.
where the hell is tom kean jr? no one has seen him or heard from him since march 5....
he's a slippin' in the polls, that's where he is LOL
a statement said he is expected to make a full recovery...wtf? is he incapacitated? he won by over 5 points so he's at risk this cycle, but this redistricted 7th is a tough nut to crack.
If Trump approval is 34 how is the generic Democrat only up 6?
It's influenced by Democrats that keep criticizing their own party or fall in perpetual disappointment instead of standing in solidarity to fight maga.
brilliant reply!
Hi Simon: any read on the Michigan Senate race, and its relevance to flipping the Senate? Thanks.
aren't they still at the primary?
Hi Simon - I think there’s a small big mistake in your thank you to the Buckeye State donors? Here’s what is written:
This total includes $21,00 sent by a Hopium community member directly to each of our three Buckeye State partners!
Yes, $2,100 or $21,000? Probably the latter.
I guessed the latter. wow!
They wrote $7k checks to each of the three......
Steady as she goes! Stay focused on the tossups, and expand as the Republicans abandoned the tossups as unwinnable, and start trying to fortify lean and likely R…. The battleground in this election will probably continue to shift and expand right up until the last goddamn week.
Attended a congressional district candidate forum last night (the new congressional districts in CA are hard to figure out!) Sb on the Secretary of State’s website IMHO, but NOPE!) so I attended in error, but still was interesting to see the spectrum of candidates running. The one I liked was probably 30 years old, if that, former Marine, Jeopardy champion, no really, the format really favored him over the other candidates with his calm, but punchy call outs to the detestable Kevin Kiley, R turned Independent to save his sorry a$$! (Kiley inferred that it was his tough questioning of Kristi Noem during her last appearance in front of congress was that she was fired THE NEXT DAY)! It was all any of us in the audience could do to contain our laughter and derision at that claim!. What a tool.
Ordered 500 postcards and stamps for GA Supreme Court election for a May Day postcard potluck party with 5 like minded folks in my community. I’ve connected with 4 these women since No Kings 2 rally and this is our 1st get together to Resist together in community and to support each other and the May Day goals of no shopping, no work, no school. I think of this as a Mayday, Mayday, Mayday democracy on fire postcard party!
G’morning folks. Good work on the Big Things! My small recent contribution to the achievement of locally big things was to tramp around in the roadside mud to take photographs of quite probably illegal roadside campaign billboards so that a more adroitly savvy (and less flexible) campaigner could pursue said legality question. I am permanently royally pissed off about that fire station closure.
Great news; however, how does a disgusting pedophile and the party that supports him who unilaterally raised our taxes without our consent, started an illegal war in the Middle East, gleefully deports women and children still have that much support? We have a problem in the United States, and that problem is our own citizens. They're deviants.
Not one penny should have to be spent to convince these MAGA trash that what they support is immoral, harmful and wrong. There needs to be a reckoning in this country for this.
I understand where you’re coming from, the problem is Trump and the Republicans in office that enabled him.