Morning all. We have two things to do today - help Abigail Spanberger win Virginia, and work, together, to defeat the GOP’s ruinous economic agenda. Let’s get to it……
Winning Virginia This Year - My Conversation With Abigail Spanberger - Excited to share a new interview I did late yesterday afternoon with our great candidate for Governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger. The recording and transcript is above.
Simply, the Virginia elections are the most important elections we have this year, and we must win them. We have narrow majorities in both legislative chambers and while Spanberger has a modest lead in current polling, this is going to be a close election where our money and volunteer time can make a real difference. If you are to give to only one candidate or election this year it should be Abigail Spanberger for Governor of Virginia.
Our commumity has already raised close to $100,000 for Abigail since she last spoke to us a few months ago. Our goal is to get to $200,000 by the all-important June 30th filing deadline. I hope you will consider supporting Abigail with a contribution of any amount today. You can learn more about her and volunteer here.
In 2023 this community played a big role in Virginia’s off-year success. We raised $300,000 for six of the most competitive Senate and House seats, helping Virginia Dems flip the House, keep the Senate, dash Youngkin’s national ambitions and elect the first Black Speaker of the House in the 400 year history of the Virginia Assembly. Many of you volunteered and wrote postcards from across the country. Helping Virginia Dems overcome Governor Youngkin’s huge spending in those 2023 elections was one of this community’s most significant, early achievements. And I am excited now to be working with all of you to build on those successes, keep our majorities in both chambers and elect Abigail Spanberger Governor this November!
For those in Northern Virginia and the DC area, note that I will be once again speaking at the Network NOVA’s wonderful Women’s Summit on Saturday, June 28th. Tickets will sell out so be sure to grab yours today. This is one of my favorite events of the year and a great way to help build mo’ for November!
So, my friends, watch this interview, share with others, and do your part to make sure we send a very loud and clear message to the country by winning Virginia this November!
Hopium Housekeeping - A few reminders to help you navigate our community:
Events - this new page has links to our upcoming Live and paid subscriber events, and my public talks.
Pods and Interviews - You can find all of my interviews and podcasts on the Hopium site under Podcast and on YouTube and Spotify too. Catch my recent conversations with David Jolly, Katie Phang and Ryan Lizza.
Housekeeping - we’ve built a new page with info on how to manage your Hopium subscription, go Live with us, trouble shoot event registration and more.
Grow And Support Hopium - A Hopium annual paid subscription is 10% off through the end of May. While Trump is raising your costs, here at Hopium we are cutting them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Defeating The GOP’s Ruinous Economic Agenda - We learned a lot in the last few days about what Trump and Congressional Republicans want for the country and the American people. Here is my current working summary:
A 14% across the board tax hike on all foreign goods imported into this US. These terrible Republican tariffs are among the largest tax increases in American history; they will raise prices of just about everything in America despite Republican election promises to lower them; these tax increases are regressive, falling disproportionately on working American not the wealthy; they will slow the economy, increase unemployment and keep interest rates high - another way working Americans are paying more and getting less under Trump.
Enormous cuts in health care for tens of millions of Americans and a weakening of the overall health care system in America. There is no way to make America healthy again if you are cutting access to care for the poor, working people and seniors and causing hospitals in rural areas to close.
Enormous cuts in food assistance for the poorest Americans.
While raising prices and cutting vital programs for every day Americans the Trump-GOP plan will enact enormous tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It’s clear now their strategy is to shift the tax burden of the United States from billionaires (income tax) to hard working, every day Americans (import taxes).
The math of all this doesn’t add up and these plans taken together - import taxes, slower economy, enormous tax cuts for billionaires, gutting of health care and benefit programs - will end up exploding the deficit. As Rob Shapiro argued in our talk last week this reckless fiscal strategy, coupled with Trump’s weakening of America’s safe haven status and inflation causing tariffs, could end up creating an historic economic and financial crisis in America.
Unprecedented corruption, plunder and the ransacking of the Federal government for their private gain.
The gutting of America’s world-leading federal research infrastructure and an ongoing attack on our higher education system. This inexplicable strategy will mean less America-led innovation in tech, science and medicine which in turn will make our companies less globally competitive and America less prosperous, less healthy, and more dependent on foreign nations. It is a strategy of sabotage and surrender not success.
The Trump-GOP economic strategy is ruinous for the country, and an extraordinary, reckless betrayal of the American people themselves. To give the wealthiest among us enormous tax cuts Republicans are raising prices on virtually everything in the US; slowing the economy, putting people out of work, keeping interest rates high; cutting health care and food security programs for seniors and working people; weakening our overall health care system; exploding the deficit, alienating our allies, vaporizing America’s global tech and innovation leadership and putting the fiscal integrity of the United States at risk. All this to satisfy the insatiable greed of Trump, Musk and their rancid allies.
Trump and Republicans are pursuing an agenda of sabotage, surrender and betrayal, and we must fight it with everything we got.
Today, three House Committees take up various aspects of this terrible reconciliation bill. Passage of these three bills in Committee is not guaranteed, nor is final passage guaranteed in the planned full House vote next week. So, I am asking this community to go into battle mode now. We need to contact our Congressional offices with everything we got. Call both House and Senate offices. Tell them that you want to work against this reconciliation bill and to keep working on rolling back Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional “taxation without representation” tax increase (tariffs).
Everyone on the Hill in both parties need to hear from us today. Our anger, our sense of betrayal needs to become a very loud roar today and in the days to come until this terrible bill is defeated and these ruinous tariffs are rolled back.
For those of you with Republican Reps and Senators you need to be particularly loud now.
A proposed script. Use whatever works for you:
I am calling to urge you to vote against the reconciliation bill and to roll back Trump’s terrible and illegal tariffs. Together these actions have raised taxes on all of us and will explode the deficit - things Republicans have always told us they did not believe in.
But your agenda is also causing all of us to “pay more and get less” for every day things including our health care; people to get layed off; and the economy to slow - all so you can give your rich donors a huge tax break. Your plans will weaken this great country and are an extraordinary betrayal of everything you promised during the campaign - which was to help people like me, not Elon Musk, get ahead.
Your plans are ones of sabotage, surrender and betrayal and I urge you to abandon them and to work with Democrats to find a better way.
Here is Leader Jeffries on MSNBC last night:
That’s it peeps. We have two things to do today - help Abigail Spanberger win Virginia this November, and work with everything we got to block the ruinous Republican economic agenda.
Paid subscribers should self-report today in the chat below, and good luck everyone. We have a country to save, a future to reclaim for our kids and grandkids and lots of work to do, together - Simon
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