With Our Elections A Week Away Our Malevolent Leader Pushes The Country Deeper Into Crisis

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Morning all. We have a week left in the 2025 elections and need to keep working it. Vote early, donate, volunteer - let’s do everything we can to close strong and win these things. Grateful for all the work this community has done but we cannot let up now. We should all be inspired (haunted?) by this data from the 2024 Exit Polls - elections can be won, or lost, in the final week:

2024 Exit Polls

This is a very important week for another reason - our mad leader is pushing the country ever deeper into crisis. From the NYT: ‘No Idea How Long People Can Hold Out’: Federal Workers Feel Brunt of Shutdown (gift link):

When Jill Hornick woke up on Monday morning, her first thought was that her timecard would be submitted that day for her job with the Social Security Administration in Chicago. But this Monday was different. The federal government was locked in a shutdown, and she received a paycheck for $0.

“This is the only income I have,” she said. “And I just started crying. I had a meltdown.”

Ms. Hornick, 59, is one of 730,000 federal employees working without pay because of the impasse. Another 670,000 federal workers are furloughed without pay, according to data from the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

As the shutdown stretches toward its fifth week, those government employees are confronting an increasingly acute and stressful scenario. Their bills are mounting, and there is no clear resolution in sight.

Some are turning to side hustles like delivering food, walking dogs and selling personal items to bring in a bit of income. Others are relying on food banks that have been hastily organized to provide federal workers and contractors with free groceries — efforts that community service providers say reflect a broadening food insecurity caused by the shutdown.

The widespread anxiety is punctuating what has already been a grueling year for federal workers as the Trump administration has raced to shrink and reshape the government, and moved to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The last shutdown, which came during President Trump’s first term, was the longest ever, lasting 34 full days. The current standoff, which began Oct. 1, could stretch even longer. There are no negotiations for a deal to reopen the government, which Democrats say must include an agreement to extend expiring subsidies for health insurance.

Mr. Trump has shown no inclination to start talks.

“I will only meet if they let the country open,” he said on Tuesday, just days before he left Washington for a trip to Asia.

The impact of the political paralysis could be seen early Friday morning as hundreds of cars lined a road in Northern Virginia, filled with federal workers and government contractors waiting for boxes of food being distributed by United Community, a local nonprofit group.

From Politico - Six ways the shutdown is about to get worse:

The government shutdown gets uglier at the end of this week.

With President Donald Trump traveling abroad and Congress still deeply divided over a path to fund federal agencies, a pileup of deadlines on and around Nov. 1 is set to put many U.S. households at risk of new hardship: Popular programs that provide nutrition assistance, early childhood education and air service to rural communities are now among those about to run out of money.

Thousands of federal employees will also miss their first full paychecks this week, so services like TSA screenings and air traffic control operations could be further stunted if those workers stop showing up, as was the case during the 35-day partial shutdown that ended in early 2019.

“Things are about to get worse,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune warned in a floor speech late last week.

And that’s to say nothing of the Nov. 1 date that open enrollment begins for Affordable Care Act health plans. That’s when people will start to see just how much their premiums are set to skyrocket because insurers aren’t confident Democrats and Republicans will reach a deal to extend enhanced tax credits before they expire at the end of the year — a central point of conflict amid the partisan shutdown impasse.

Trump employed a strategic — and unprecedented — maneuver to alleviate the first major pain point of the shutdown earlier this month, when he paid active-duty members of the military out of other accounts. Still, the White House has yet to take similar steps to fund several other priorities where payments come due in the coming days.

In Congress, some lawmakers are working to mitigate the shutdown’s effects on select services with piecemeal bills. But none of those measures are on the fast track to final passage.

The NYT has a remarkable article today, In Trump-Friendly Iowa, the President’s Policies Have Hit Hard (gift link), that details the escalating Trump is causing in rural America:

When President Trump announced a $20 billion bailout for Argentina this month, Larry Ory, 86, a farmer in Earlham, Iowa, could hardly believe it, especially after boatloads of Argentine soybeans began shipping to China, a once-critical customer for Mr. Ory’s family.

For Iowans, losing China’s soybean market in the president’s trade war was only one of many economic shocks that have hit the state since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term. The cost of tractors and fertilizers have shot up with his tariffs. Labor has grown scarcer in agribusinesses. Major manufacturers have laid off workers. Even the ubiquitous wind turbines that provide income for some Iowa farmers are in the president’s sights.

“Right now, we’re fighting different economic wars all at once,” said Summer Ory, 37, the wife of Mr. Ory’s grandson, Dan. The couple works in the family’s farm business. “You can sustain it one at a time, but right now it’s death by a thousand paper cuts.”

Ms. Ory said she votes in every election, but she, like Mr. Ory, declined to say who she cast her ballot for last November.

Since siding with Barack Obama twice, Iowa has become a stronghold for Mr. Trump. Yet perhaps no state has struggled more with his economic policies. During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa’s gross domestic product dropped by 6.1 percent, more than any other state aside from neighboring Nebraska.

Manufacturing, which drives 17 percent of Iowa’s economic output, has been hit with higher production costs in part because of steep tariffs on inputs like aluminum and steel. Meatpacking plants, which help make Iowa the nation’s leading pork producer, rely heavily on foreign-born workers, hundreds of thousands of whom saw their legal status stripped away by the president. Mr. Trump’s war on renewable energy also threatens the wind industry that produces more than half of Iowa’s electricity.

Some of the state’s troubles, like bad weather, high interest rates, an aging and shrinking rural population, and global commodity prices, are beyond the president’s control. But new economic policies have magnified the state’s woes, according to economists, agricultural groups and some business leaders.

“This is as challenging as I’ve seen it,” Kirk Leeds, the chief executive of the Iowa Soybean Association, said. “We’ve got uncertainties beyond compare.”

Next year’s midterm elections could indicate how Iowans feel about those policies. At least two competitive House districts will be up for a vote. The state will also choose a replacement for its retiring governor, Kim Reynolds, and a retiring senator, Joni Ernst. All those posts are held by Republicans.

We enter this crisis week with Trump out of the country and Mike Johnson having functionally dissolved the House. Republicans are completely AWOL. Unconcerned. Reckless. Irresponsible. Just un-American levels of sabotage, plunder, and betrayal.

We talk a lot here about the clear material harm Trump is doing to the country, about his lack of concern for America and the American people. That it has become “more for me, less for all of you” 24/7/365; he builds a palace as lines to food banks grow; cuts health for the poor and working Americans while he enriches himself; lets millions of the poorest people in the world die, including millions of children, while bailing out his political ally in Argentina; raises prices on essential things we all need because he got mad at an ad while watching TV……

It’s why Trump’s poll numbers are so ugly, and his agenda so wildly unpopular:

It’s why the country is blaming the Republicans for the shutdown:

Why we are now seeing some of the lowest consumer confidence numbers in the last 65 years:

Why Democrats now lead on who will be “better to keep the country prosperous” for the first time in more than a decade:

Just watch this segment with CNN’s Harry Enten, and listen to the “what the fuck is Trump doing” sentiment in his voice:

The Trump Presidency is a crisis for America, and that crisis is about to get a whole lot worse. To echo Harry Enten it is hard to believe what Trump is doing to the country; hard to believe how ridiculous this all has become; hard to believe that he is content letting people starve here in America and die across the world; hard to believe that he plunging the country deeper into crisis, which he will be blamed for, in the final days of the 2025 elections.

But my friends, this where we are now, and it’s why we have to work so hard to make this November elections a clear repudiation of all of this. So……

Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hopium members in CA/NJ/PA/VA or wherever you have elections on November 4th - please vote on Day 1, or as early as you can, either by mail or in-person. When you vote early your names comes off the campaign GOTV rolls allowing them to move on to lower propensity voters, which increases D turnout and makes it more likely we win. Voting early = another way to help us win.

Defending America, Winning The Big Arguments With Trump - We have two recommended actions today:

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Four-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our our emerging four part agenda. Demand that your Senators and House Member work to:

1. 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

2. 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, and ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities

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

4. 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 and China

2 - Bring “Resolutions Of Condemnation” To Your Community - Inspired by the tactics of our Founders learn about how Hopium members are advancing “Resolutions of Condemnation” in their communities across the country and consider bringing this initiative to your state, country or city/town. Be sure to check out our new discussion with Deborah Potter and Rachel Poliner who have passed resolutions in New Mexico and Boston. They offer practical advice on how to get a resolution passed in your own community.

Remarkably, members of this community have passed or are advancing 85 (!!!!) resolution projects in 23 states + DC. Can we get to all 50 states by the end of the year?

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! Please include reports of voting early and consider sending photos of your completed ballot or or your “I’ve voted” sticker to community@hopiumchronicles.com.

Keep working hard all, and remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We don’t just hope tomorrow will be better than today.

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