Morning all. As I’ve been writing here of late I think the central dynamic in our politics now is the growing realization that Trump is a historic, unserious, out-of-control, vainglorious, addled, dangerous fuck up, and that we must do be doing everything we can to wrest control from him in order to limit the damage he’s doing to the country and the world (here, here).
The warning signs about where we headed are there for those who choose to see them.
Here’s David Lynch in the Washington Post today:
Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to its e-commerce deliveries. Mortgage rates have risen to their highest mark in seven months. And consumers may soon see higher prices for soda bottles and detergents.
These are all early indications of the Iran war’s impact on the U.S. economy. So far, the costs of the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign have been modest, especially compared with the economic turmoil roiling Asia, and U.S. growth remains solid. On Friday, the Labor Department said employers added a robust 178,000 jobs in March.
But like thunderclaps that herald an advancing storm, rising energy bills, interest rates and supply shortfalls may be warnings of worse to come.
The New York Times has a story this morning about the ridiculous budget proposal the White House dropped yesterday, during recess, on Good Friday. An excerpt:
It’s the most number-free budget we’ve seen in recent history,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “I have to imagine that there’s a story that the numbers would tell that they don’t want to tell.”
What the White House presented as its fiscal outlook relied on spending cuts that would be difficult to get through Congress and projections of strong government revenue, fueled by tariffs and bounding economic growth. Every administration’s budget presents optimistic assessments of its own plans, but this year’s felt particularly perfunctory to independent budget experts.
Absent were proposals for how to address growth in spending on Social Security and Medicare, the two most expensive federal programs, and the supersized military budget could add significantly to the debt if continued in perpetuity.
“They’re not even pretending to try,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
This week Senator Thune and Speaker Johnson publicly defied Trump, rejecting his SAVE + restoration of DHS funding demands, and backed a bi-partisan Senate plan to fund DHS without ICE/CBP. It was an extraordinary moment of the Congressional Republicans attempting to work with Democrats to do simple things like fund DHS - six months late, during war - over Trump’s increasingly insane and dangerous diktats. Trump’s response to this open defiance was to hurl at Congress his Voughtian budget proposal yesterday, one with outrageous defense spending requests and huge cuts to programs Republicans in both chambers just voted to fund in the current 2026 budget in an election year that is going poorly for them.
This is not not “being on the same page.” It is the White House and Republicans in Congress not being on the same planet.
I think Thune and Johnson are waking up the gravity of the mess Trump has created for them, and have started to moving into self-preservation mode. For at the end of the day while they are aligned with Trump each owe their leadership positions to their conferences, and their incumbents and candidates have to be getting alarmed at what is happening to their election prospects.
Earlier this week I shared this data from one of the most loyal Republican pollsters, Quantus Insights. This is data that is seen inside the MAGA bubble, and by Republican operatives across the country:
Yesterday another very pro-Trump poll, RMG/Napolitan Institute, dropped an equally ugly poll. Look at this rapid, dramatic erosion.
Here’s support for the war in Economist/YouGov data. Similar rapid, erosion:
The other polls they are seeing are the ones showing us leading in four key Senate races that would cause the Senate to flip to us - Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio - Paxton likely to win in Texas (disaster), and they see us overperforming expectations in two other states with possibly competitive Senate races - Florida and Iowa.
Basically, their whole political and electoral thing went to shit in the past ten days.
In national polling averages Trump is now below where he was at this point in 2018 when Democrats won the House by 8.6 points, and below where Biden was when he was forced out of the Presidential race in the summer of 2024:
Listen to those Democratic candidates I’ve been interviewing in recent weeks are saying about the issue landscape, and what they have to work with, as almost every Republican Congressional candidate in battleground states and districts support or have voted for:
tariffs that have raised prices on everything, slowed the economy, hurt farmers and small businesses
health care cuts that are making care more expensive and harder to get
cuts to clean energy subsidies that helping raise utility bills and increase our dependency on oil and fossil fuels
the war that is raising prices even more, and creating dangerous second order effects that will ripple through the economy this year
while cutting taxes on the wealthiest among us that also leaves America in a far weakened fiscal condition
How in the hell can you defend, or run on any one of these things, let alone all of them?
Things were trending against the Rs before the war. The war has done real damage to Trump - prices are raising, the economy is slowing, it isn’t working as he promised, and many MAGAs are outraged that he betrayed his “no war” pledge - and things have rapidly deteriorated not just economically for them, but politically. His grip on his party is loosening, his coalition fracturing. Their poll numbers are tanking. Democrats could really win the Senate. We keep winning elections of all kinds in places we should be winning.
There was something weird and desperate about Thune and Johnson tried over the last week. As if they were trying to batten down the hatches before the coming storm, just trying to control what they could control in all this wild, reckless Trumpian swirl - and even that failed, adding to the sense of chaos and tumult.
There is no easy path left for Trump and his allies. He can escalate in Iran, and attempt to take the Strait. High risk, no guarantee of of success, profound domestic opposition, Americans will die, prices will spike in the short term, and we have to somehow count on Hegseth and Trump leading us through the battle. Or Iran and Russia control the Strait, and have our economy and the global economy in their control. Or, perhaps, we can prevail on Rubio and Vance to launch a bi-partisan backed plan to seek a rough peace through diplomacy, one that will be humiliating and very, very politically and economically costly for Trump. That process has already begun, without America being at the table:
Over this recess I think Congressional Democrats should be thinking long and hard about how we approach what comes next. I’ve been recommending that we articulate and fight for a big agenda, which you can find below. But I wonder now whether we should be demanding something much bigger - some form of power sharing, a high level bipartisan group to steer us through the disastrous global crisis Trump has thrust us into, the rescinding of the tariffs, the immediate resignation of Hegseth, Miller, Blanche and others. We can and should work diligently in the upcoming appropriations process to maintain sanity in that process, but we can no longer operate as we have been.
Something dramatic must be done to wrest greater control from Trump for he and his regime no longer have the consent of the governed or the legitimacy to lead. He is a failed President. This is a failed regime, here and all around the world. The costs of these failures are going to become even more apparent in the coming days, and the calls for a major course correction will grow louder and more pronounced from every corner of the country and the world.
New Discussions For Your Weekend Viewing Pleasure - We’ve had some great discussions in recent weeks. Do get to them when you can:
Democracy Defenders - Marc Elias, Ezra Levin, Hardy Merriman
Terrific Candidates - Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Mary Peltola (Alaska), David Pepper (Ohio)
Inspiring State Party Chairs - Anderson Clayton (North Carolina), Nikki Fried (Florida), Kendall Scudder (Texas)
You can find all of these discussions on the Hopium site under the Podcast tab, and on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify too.
New Hopium Phonebank Nights For Vote Yes In Virginia, April 9 and 16 - We are joining forces with our friends at Network NOVA to do two nights of phonebanking to drive our vote in the Vote Yes campaign in Virginia:
I will be kicking off both events and hanging around for a while to greet folks and thank everyone. Training will be provided for those who need it.
This statewide ballot initiative takes place on Tue, April 21st - so need the Hopium community to rally now, as you always do! Sign up for a shift today, bring friends, promote this through your networks. Let’s close strong in Virginia and bring this baby home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This Thursday, April 9th, 7pm - Live Hopium Event in Bethesda, Maryland - Friends, I am excited to be joining my good friends at the Women’s Democratic Club of Montgomery Country this coming Thursday at 7pm. You can register here. Bring friends and colleagues, spread this through your networks. Going to be a lot of fun, and I am excited to be able to see members of this remarkable community in person!
Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $543,000 raised, $500,000 - Donate to all twelve of our endorsed House challengers with one click | Enjoy our new conversations with Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10) | Learn about the eight candidates we just added to our campaign here.
Huge shout-out to the team at FridayAction. Our event a week ago Wednesday with them has now raised $96,000 for our House candidates - amazing, amazing stuff! That total is included in our new amazing total, as is the money given to each individual House candidate in recent weeks.
James Talarico For Texas - $54,400 raised, $100,000 - Donate | Volunteer and Learn More | Enjoy my inspiring interview with Rep. Talarico as he fights to turn Texas blue
Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $74,400 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer and Learn More | Enjoy my uplifting conversation with Mary Peltola as she fights to turn Alaska blue
Winning Ohio - $114,300 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue! This total includes $21,00 sent by a Hopium community member directly to each of our three Buckeye State partners!
Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $99,900 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper as he fights to turn North Carolina blue
Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $163,300 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff
Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $505,700 raised, $500,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas, and catch interviews with 5 intrepid state party chairs leading us into battle this year.
Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $20,000 to each of our five state parties over the past two years.
There are a few more ways to go to work in the coming days - call your leaders and advocate for elements of our working, ever evolving Hopium Agenda; bring resolutions that condemn our Mad King and lets facts be spoken to a candid world to your state or local government.
Here’s our working Hopium Post-Iran Disaster Agenda:
Work To End This New Gulf War, And Trump’s Global Imperial Ambitions
Make Clear We Support Ukraine and Europe, Not Russia
Roll Back The New, Illegal Tariffs
Rescind The Trump Tax Cuts, Claw Back The Extra ICE Funding
Make The US A Clean Energy Superpower, Fight For True Energy Independence, And Lower Energy Prices For The American People
Keep Fighting To Rein In ICE, End Mass Deportation
End the War on Science, Health and Public Health
Make Clear To American Farmers That We Want To End The War, Repeal The Tariffs, Find Legal Pathways For Farm Workers, And Make Health Care And Energy More Affordable
This week our calls should clearly focus on reining in the illegal war in the Middle East and ICE here at home, and rescinding the tariffs that are doing so much damage to our economy.
And please use the paid subscriber chat to self-report the good trouble you make each day.
Thank you everyone! Let’s keep working hard. We have a country to save and an election to win this November!!!!!!!!!!!!- Simon
