We Must Stop Blanche And Clayton, More Terrible Polling For Trump, Powerful New Ads From Dems
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Morning all. We have one job today - call and call and demand your Senators and Rep oppose and work against Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton. The installation of these two venal men, given Trump’s intensifying spiral and escalating desperation, would be a national emergency, a five alarm fire for our democracy. The confirmation hearings for both begin this morning in the Senate.
Here’s the NYT’s Editorial Board this morning in an editorial opposing Blanche (gift link, read the whole thing!):
On Monday, two days before the Senate hearing to consider Todd Blanche’s nomination to become the nation’s chief law enforcement official, a federal judge strongly suggested that he may not even be fit to practice law.
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Of all the powers Americans give their government, none can curtail personal liberty like those of the Department of Justice, and this editorial board has listed the ways Mr. Blanche has abused that authority. He has celebrated the Jan. 6 rioters. He has misled Congress under oath. He has said it is Mr. Trump’s “right,” and “indeed it is his duty,” to use the department to investigate people he “has had issues with.”
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To understand why Mr. Blanche poses such a threat to America’s system of justice, look at how sharply he and Mr. Trump have strayed from traditional restraints on the use of law enforcement powers.
Mr. Blanche’s relationship with the president stems from his role as a private lawyer. Over the past decade, Mr. Blanche first represented Trump allies like Paul Manafort before joining the team that defended Mr. Trump over his hush-money payments to the actress Stormy Daniels. After Mr. Trump won the election in 2024, he chose Mr. Blanche to be deputy attorney general.
Ethical guidelines exist to prevent government lawyers who previously were in private practice from using their offices to aid their former clients rather than their current one, the people of the United States. In Judge Williams’s suggestion that Mr. Blanche be a candidate for punishment, she cited these conflict-of-interest guidelines.
He has brazenly defied them at the Justice Department over the past year and a half. He has presided over the frivolous indictments of the former F.B.I. director James Comey and the investigations of the former C.I.A. director John Brennan and the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, all perceived enemies of the president. The cases have gained no traction in the courts.
Mr. Blanche has also mounted an onslaught against the news media, attempting to undermine the First Amendment. Under his watch, the F.B.I. raided the home of a Washington Post reporter and issued multiple subpoenas against news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal. Last week, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, who works for Mr. Blanche, went to the White House to oversee an investigation that led to the subpoenaing of five New York Times reporters who broke the news that Mr. Trump’s new version of Air Force One had security flaws.
These acts represent an appalling politicization of law enforcement. Mr. Blanche has helped Mr. Trump violate decades of bipartisan tradition and use the Justice Department as an instrument of personal power.
If Mr. Blanche is confirmed, the problems are likely to worsen. Mr. Trump has repeatedly indicated an interest in interfering with this year’s midterm elections. He continues to lie about his 2020 defeat, and his administration, including Mr. Blanche, has investigated election officials who have done nothing wrong. There is every reason to worry that Mr. Blanche might use the powers of the Justice Department to intimidate voters or interfere with ballot counting this fall.
I would two more things to these long list of “injuries” and “abuses” - the green light he’s given to Trump’s historic corruption, and a refusal to prosecute or even investigate the DHS agents murdering people on our streets.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, sent to the Senate today. Yes, House Members can and should weigh in on what happens in the Senate:
“I write to urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States. More than any other individual, Mr. Blanche oversaw and implemented the White House coverup of the Epstein files. He oversaw the violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), botched the release of the files, and continues to withhold millions of documents from Congress and the American people. He released information which put Epstein’s survivors in danger, while the names of Epstein associates and accomplices were and remain withheld. Further, he is a central architect of the Administration’s policy of providing preferential treatment to Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for favorable testimony.
Mr. Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files shows his only loyalty is to President Trump, his former client, and not delivering justice to Epstein’s survivors or transparency to the American people. No nominee with his record should be confirmed to lead the Department.”
Trump dropped this little bomb in Blanche’s lap this morning - he appears to have reversed DHS’s decision yesterday to end traffic stops that keep resulting in dead people on our streets. Yes this is Trump encouraging state-sponsored killings of every day people in America - for violence, illiberalism and lawlessness is at the very core of the Trump-Blanche project…..
Make your calls everyone. Urge your networks to join you. As Trump’s failed regime keeps failing here and abroad he is growing more desperate and willing to do “whatever it takes” to prevent a free and fair election and a peaceful transfer for power next January.
We need to act as if our democracy is on the line today. For it is.
Make your calls everyone. Be loud and proud today………
Polls, Ads, Elections
Trump Keeps Eroding - In their new monthly tracking poll released this morning, Echelon Insights, a respected Republican firm, has Trump down 23 points, 38%-61% in a survey fielded July 9-13. Below is the monthly results of this poll. Trump starts recovering in February. The war comes and he starts eroding. No recovery even with gas prices dropping, just more erosion. Every GOP operative in the country will be reviewing this data today, mainly in horror. It explains why we’re seeing escalating desperation from Trump and the White House.
Making Voter Reg Great Again - G. Elliott Morris writes today about the new large sample Pew Poll, which among other things find non-voters swinging back towards Democrats. This data suggests that Democrats should be pouring more money into voter activities in these closing months of the 2026 election.
Michigan - A new, independent poll in Michigan has Rep. Haley Stevens leading Abdul El-Sayed 48%-41%. This is the first independent poll we’ve seen in Michigan in a while and was fielded entirely after their one-on-one debate last week. While Stevens leads there is a lot of soft support for both candidates and many undecided. Things could still move in these final weeks before their August 4th primary - this thing ain’t cooked yet.
I want to highlight two things from the linked article above. First, like in Maine with Platner and in other recent races the demographic group that’s powering the success of “new left” candidates are white college educated voters, not non-college, working class voters:
Stevens’ strengths in the poll are with Black voters (67% to El-Sayed’s 21%), non-college-educated voters (56% to El-Sayed’s 34%), voters over age 55, Metro Detroit voters and traditional Democrats.
El-Sayed is getting the most support from White voters (51% to Stevens’ 39%), college-educated voters (48% to Stevens’ 41%), outstate voters, those under age 55 and likely primary voters who identify as Democratic Socialists.
Pew had similar findings in a poll earlier this year about how Democratic voters feel about leaders who identify as Democratic Socialists. In their poll 32% of Democrats like someone with the DSA affiliation, and here again we see the upper income, more highly educated skew:
Differences by education
Democrats with a college degree are more likely than those without one to like leaders who identify as democratic socialists (41% vs. 26%).
Differences by income
Four-in-ten upper-income Democrats like leaders who identify as democratic socialists. Smaller shares of those with middle (34%) and lower incomes (24%) say the same.
The second point is this observation from the pollster:
“Abdul El-Sayed wants to make this a race about the direction of the Democratic Party, and Haley Stevens wants to make this a race about the direction of America,” Czuba said.
This is something that I’ve argued repeatedly here - that the “new left” messaging that has emerged in recent months may be well suited towards Democratic primary audiences in blue places, but I think has significant limitations with battleground general election audiences; and that the “new left” seems a lot more focused on beating Democrats than Republicans.
While most of our Senate candidate this cycle have been overperforming the partisan lean of their states, both El-Sayed and Platner (even at the height of his polling) have consistently underperformed the partisan lean. The jury is still out on whether this new, insurgent narrative and messaging can work outside a Democratic primary audience in blue places for it is designed, purposefully, for taking out Democrats and not Republicans.
Paige Cognetti (PA-8) has released this new ad:
Here’s a new ad from Governor Josh Shapiro:
Here’s a new ad from Jon Ossoff:
Hopium paid subscribers gather tonight at 7pm ET to talk about it all (register here), and yes, my friends, it is that time……
For We Have A Whole Lotta Elections To Win!!!!!!!!!!!!
Winning The House and Senate In 2026
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Friends, if these twelve courageous candidates win, the House will flip, even with Callais and their rancid mid-decade redistricting. So eyes on the prize here everyone!
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A donation to the Second Wave Fund is split evenly among these seven, and more as other worthy candidates emerge from their primaries. Our total above includes money we’ve raised for directly for each candidate. You can watch interviews with all of seven of these intrepid leaders here. We are off to a great start here everyone!
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2026 Election Analysis And Interviews
Catch my recent lively and informative conversations with Heather Cox Richardson, Marc Elias, Katie Phang, and Brian Tyler Cohen. You can find all of Hopium’s interviews on the Podcast tab and on our YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify channels. too.
A Few More Things To Do
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Keep working hard everyone. We have a country to save, and elections all across this great country to win, together! - Simon
Called both my VA Senators -- Kaine and Warner -- this morning and spoke to staffers. What I said is something along these lines:
My name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [CITY, ZIP].
I'm calling to ask [REP/SEN NAME] to oppose Todd Blanche for Attorney General. Todd Blanche has shown that his loyalty is to the president, not the Constitution or the American public, making him unfit to serve as Attorney General.
Agree! Listening to SenatorAmy Klobuchar question Blanche - feels soft ball and makes him appear legitimate - he just keeps saying he will follow the law. But Blanche's behavior with the Epstein File and Maxwell was not by the book. While serving as Deputy Attorney General, Blanche personally interviewed Maxwell in July 2025, stating he wanted to give her a chance to speak about her past with Epstein. Interviewing her by himself is not protocol. We all know Blanche will do Trump's bidding. So Democrats need to not give him the benefit of the doubt. No one vote.