We Must Choose FreedomIt's time now to "abandon caution" and do what Americans do - fight for freedom and democracy, here and everywhereMorning all. Some notes on a hard week…… We will be talking a lot about the DHS vote in the days ahead but it’s important to understand the strategic backdrop to what’s happening in Congress this week. The passage of individual appropriations bills by Congress, something that has not been done in a long time, was a way for Congress to claw back some of the power it had recklessly given to Trump and Russell Vought. That both parties were able to come together, largely around Democratic funding levels throughout government, will end up being a bi-partisan, bicameral repudiation of Trump’s attempt to functional eliminate the legislative branch. Trump’s wild overreach and assault on our Constitutional order forced Congress - even Republicans in Congress - to fight restore their power and begin repairing our system of government. Some excerpts from a Punchbowl News story this am:
Is the deal here - claw back Congressional powers Trump had illegally appropriated for himself, get meaningful funding wins, accept ugly DHS appropriations - worth it? We will be debating this vigorously in the coming weeks. But at the very least our expectation should be, after these bills are passed, and hopefully signed by Trump, that our Congressional leaders offer a plan to work to rein in ICE and restore rule of law this year - not after we win back power in the elections. In this week’s talk I argue that this first year of Trump was a good one for us electorally and politically. We’ve won elections of all kinds all across the country, some by enormous margins. New, promising leaders have emerged for the pro-democracy movement. We are likely to win the redistricting wars with Trump. The No Kings movement has brought millions of people to the streets, peacefully. The response we are seeing from every day citizens in Minnesota has been inspiring and powerful. Trump and his agenda have been powerfully rejected by the American people, including his various puerile strongman plays. His ironclad control over Congress had frayed, and he is starting to regularly lose votes on the Hill - as he is with these appropriations bills. Republicans have clearly grown weary of defending the indefensible. But where we were not successful in this first year of Trump, and should be not satisfied, has been in our ability to block the damage Trump is doing to the country and the world. Thus in 2026 we need to maintain our electoral and political momentum and seize the clear opportunity in front of us; and we must do more to stop him from wrecking the country and destabilizing the world. Here’s how I described this second responsibility in last Sunday’s post, Coming Together: We are here now, deep into dangerous Mad King/Bond Villain territory. 2026 is no longer about affordability or restoring the ACA subsidies. It is about pro-democracy movement somehow coming together and forming a unified and far more powerful front against his dangerous Imperial and dictatorial designs. In an ideal world, what we would see next week is a public statement signed by all Dem Governors, AGs, Senate and House Democrats that states clearly that
Stake in ground. Unified voice. Muscular defense of liberty, democracy, and the American creed. Yes, it is time now for something akin to our Letter to America, and for our leaders to make clear, before it is too late, that we are willing to come together and fight for America, freedom, and democracy; and for us to start listing, clearly, his modern day “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations.” That we elected an American President and not a dictator, and it is way past fucking time he start acting like one. As we discussed yesterday the Europeans have shown us the way - no appeasement, only strength; come together for we are always stronger together than apart. To me these are the two big lessons from his history - appeasement signals weakness, and encourages authoritarian escalation; and we must stick together at all costs no matter how hard that is at times. For when this appropriations battle ends, and Congress has re-asserted itself in a way that we have all wanted and called for, then it becomes time to really start focusing on “coming together” and creating more power for ourselves in this fight to stop the harms he is doing. We have more power than we understand. We just have to organize ourselves differently in order to be able to wield it. To do this we will, as EU President Ursula van der Leyen counseled this week, have to “abandon caution.” (cc Leaders Schumer and Jeffries). In trying to make sense of this challenging week I find comfort in seeing that our adversaries - the champions of dominion, autocracy, and oligarchy - are weaker than their strongman posturing suggests. Russia is not winning the war in Ukraine. Putin’s close allies in Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba have been thrown from power or are teetering. It’s economy is on the brink and global oil prices continue to drop. Russia is a far weaker nation today, despite the extraordinary help Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner have provided it. Trump was humiliated on the global stage this week, and looked weak, addled, desperate and pathetic. Trump’s stumbles not only weakened him here, but it will hurt the far-right movements in Europe aligned with him. Orban, the Putinist/Trumpist in the middle of Europe trails in public polling in his upcoming April election and could very well lose. Putinism may well be on the retreat in Europe soon, not on the ascent. When I launched Hopium almost three years ago I wrote this:
I think after these appropriations bill are passed it will be time for our leaders to lift their heads up, raise their gaze, and embark on a course that is much bigger than flipping the House and Senate this November. We need to accept the gravity of the moment we are in, and the opportunity we have, over the next ten years, not just to win elections and claw back power, but to ensure that here in America and all around the world there is a “new birth of freedom,” and that forces of freedom, of America, of democracy, prevail in the great ongoing struggle between freedom and dominion. It remains “the great task before us,” as Lincoln challenged us at Gettysburg 163 years ago:
We need to start visualizing not just tactical success, but strategic success here and all around the world. For Trump and Putin, in their greed, bloodlust, buffoonery, idiocy, and vanity are helping the people of the world, of this time, understand why it is we must choose freedom. They’ve become powerful teachers of an ancient lesson, the same lessons that drove our founders to imagine and visualize and build this great nation, and for FDR and mid-20th century Americas build a global system whose foundation was freedom and not dominion. It’s why in 2026 our ambition must be to “come together” as the Europeans just did and
When I think this way, see the world this way, I get excited. I feel opportunity. I am starting to visualize success. In this struggle over the next ten years we will have good days and bad days. We will have invigorating wins and debilitating losses. But through it all we must stay on mission, and remember that other great lesson from our own Revolution, and from the historians of autocracy:
There is nothing more that Trump, and Putin, and Orban want than for us to turn on one another, and see ourselves as the adversary, and lose sight of what this fight is really all about. Together, my friends, we must choose freedom…… Recent Related Discussions:
Now, Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Winning The Midterms - Support Our Candidates
Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)
3 Campaigns Where We’ve Hit Our Goals, But Are Still Active - We have three campaigns where we’ve hit our goals but that folks can still participate in - Ken Martin’s New DNC, Anderson Clayton and the North Carolina Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party of Minnesota (DFL). Why We Must Invest Early, Now, And Not Wait - In three new essays (here, here, here) I discuss how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up, be loud, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land. The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got. Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our DemocracyWe have two recommended actions today: 1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:
2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - This July 4th America celebrates it’s 250th birthday. We need to make this holiday, a celebration of our Declaration Of Independence from a mad king, our day, and not allow it to become his. One way we can do this is by bringing our Resolutions Project to your community or state. Imagine if by July 4th of next year a large number of towns, counties and states had passed formal resolutions, in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, defending our Constitution and condemning the “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations” of our mad king. For as our Founders wrote in the Declaration:
So far Hopium members have introduced or passed resolutions in 85 communities in 23 states. In the coming days we will be convening to discuss how to bring this campaign to more places and start planning to Own The Fourth next 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! Keep working hard everyone, and I remain so incredibly proud to be in this righteous fight with all of you - Simon You're currently a free subscriber to Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
Friday, January 23, 2026
We Must Choose Freedom
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We Must Choose Freedom
It is time now to "abandon caution" and do what Americans do - fight for freedom and democracy, here and everywhere ͏ ͏ ...
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