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“The Republican Freak Out Is Here”

Jamie Ager (NC-11) joins us live today at 130pm ET/Hopium paid subscribers gather tonight at 7pm

Simon Rosenberg

Sep 23

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Morning all. Let’s start with some Punchbowl News reporting from an article entitled “The Republican freak out is here”:

There are 41 days until Election Day, and Republicans are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at their sinking political fortunes.

Over the past few weeks, the electoral climate for President Donald Trump and Republican leaders has worsened dramatically, according to lawmakers, aides and political advisers who see daily polling.

Gas prices are sky-high. Diesel sets a new record almost daily. Trump said at the United Nations Tuesday that the Iran war won’t end until “after the midterm elections.” That’s a frightening prospect for GOP lawmakers who are now publicly calling for an end to the seven-month conflict.

Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate candidate in Iowa, is demanding the House return to session to enact a ban on diesel exports. This won’t happen, but it shows a suddenly vulnerable Republican desperately scrambling for a message.

Let’s talk about what Republicans are doing in the Capitol and beyond to try to save their own careers.

The money. Over the next 10 days, Republicans will make critical decisions about where to keep spending and where to pull back.

What’s clear is this: In traditionally red states, the GOP is being forced to spend staggering amounts of money — far more than ever before — to defend their seats.

Texas is Exhibit A.

Texas PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund’s Lone Star State super PAC, is adding more than $35 million to its $65 million in TV reservations. That puts the GOP leadership-endorsed group above $100 million in TV ads to boost Attorney General Ken Paxton over Democrat James Talarico.

All told, Republicans expect to spend between $150 million and $200 million in Texas to save Paxton.

In more news. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) raised $1.1 million Monday in Houston and Dallas for all of the other battleground candidates and incumbents — excluding Paxton. Former President George W. Bush attended the Dallas event.

Lets now spend a little time looking at why Rs are freaking out. Today’s FiftyPlusOne Trump job approval tracker clocks in at 35%-62% (-27). This is a three point drop from a week ago:

A new Marist poll of Texas is the second high quality poll there this week showing both Talarico and Hinojosa ahead. A reminder that the last time we won a statewide race in Texas was in 1994, 32 years ago. Our updated round up of high quality battleground polls show all three of these Senate candidates with leads outside of the margin of error. These are devastating polls for Republicans:

A new analysis by the NYT’s Nate Cohn, Hispanic Voters, Abandoning Trump, Are Transforming The Midterm Map, explains what the gains Dems are making with Hispanic voters means for November:

President Trump’s enormous gains among Hispanic voters in the last election propelled him to victory in the national popular vote and prompted talk of a political realignment. Two years later, that talk is over.

In an average of high-quality national polls over the last month, Democrats led Republicans among Hispanic likely voters by 35 percentage points, 64-29, on the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they will support for Congress.

That would mark an extraordinary reversal since 2024, when the same pollsters found Kamala Harris leading Mr. Trump by an average of only seven points among Hispanic voters in their final surveys.

A shift toward Democrats on anything like this scale could remake the electoral map — threatening longtime Republican incumbents, new Republican gerrymanders and the party’s crown jewel, Texas — and represent a final unraveling of his winning 2024 coalition.

If one applied the demographic trends from recent Times/Siena national polls to districts across the country, Democratic gains among Hispanic voters would imperil Republicans in more than a dozen districts that Mr. Trump won by double digits but where Republicans depend on support from Hispanic voters. Texas and Florida would become ground zero for a possible Democratic tsunami, with the party’s chance at a large congressional majority potentially hinging on whether it could break through Republican gerrymanders in those states.

A new CNN poll shows Democrats much more motivated to vote - 16 points!

Overall, voters say, 49% to 41%, that they’d support a Democratic candidate over a Republican candidate in their congressional district. Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters are 16 points likelier than GOP-aligned voters to say they’re extremely motivated to vote this year.

For Republicans perhaps the scariest data we are seeing right now is what is happening to the generic ballot. We are now regularly getting double digit Dem leads with likely voters. Double digit generic ballot lead = big, big blue wave:

Here’s a summary and a graph from G. Elliott Morris and his new Strength In Numbers monthly poll. It’s just full of confirmations of the ongoing erosion of Trump and the GOP:

Headline poll findings

Job approval: 33% approve / 63% disapprove (net −30 before rounding), down from −24 in August and below April’s −26 floor. Among adults, 50% strongly disapprove vs 15% who strongly approve — a record 35-point intensity gap in the president’s approval.
Republicans: net approval among Republicans and Republican leaners fell from +54 to +43, the lowest in the tracker. Among 2024 Trump voters, strong approval is 35%, down from 53% in May 2025.
Prices: The president now has a net approval on prices of −54, a new record low for any issue, down from −48 in August. 21% approve, 75% disapprove.
Generic ballot: Democrats lead 50–42 among registered voters (D+9 unrounded), 52–42 among likely voters (D+10), and 55–42 (D+12) among registered voters who say they will definitely vote. Democrats have led in all 16 of our polls since May 2025.
Party trust: Democrats lead on 10 of 13 issues, set series highs on five, and pull ahead of Republicans on trust to handle immigration (D+1) for the first time. They lead by 11 on handling of each voter’s own most important problem (45–35).
Top problem: 38% name prices/inflation the single most important problem facing the country; 59% put it in their top three.
Better off than you were four years ago? 26% say they are, versus 45% who say they’re doing worse. 24% of adults say the country is better off, 58% worse.
Direction of the country: 54% say things are going poorly and major, disruptive changes are needed; just 7% say things are going well.

The final bit of scary data for the Rs today comes from the site The Downballot:

It starts with this graph of each party’s total number of primary votes from every election that just took place:

Here’s how the article (partially paywalled) kicks off:

Throughout this year’s just-concluded primary season, there’s been one consistent storyline: Democratic primaries have seen much higher turnout than their Republican counterparts. But does this meaningfully indicate what we might expect in November?

It turns out the answer is very much yes.

In midterms over the past 80 years, there’s been a surprisingly tight relationship between voting behavior in a given cycle’s primaries and the House popular vote in the general election that follows. Based on that relationship, this year’s primary turnout suggests that Democrats would win the House vote by an enormous 13-point spread.

That’s much larger than what the generic congressional ballot forecasts. That metric, according to a polling aggregate calculated by FiftyPlusOne, currently gives Democrats a smaller 7-point edge (note that today this measure is now +8).

Either would be more than enough for Democrats to take back the House, and neither outcome would be surprising. Both measures have great predictive power, but like any other forecasting tool, they both come with uncertainty attached to them.

Below we’ll explain what precisely the primary results are telling us, and why they matter. The bottom line is that Democrats need to be prepared to capitalize on the potential for an electoral tsunami on Nov. 3.

The other thing that is clearly eroding is Trump’s sanity and any claim that he remains fit to do the job:

Friends, things are breaking our way but that should cause us to work even harder now. For the opportunity we have to take power away from them all across the country may be the most significant of my many years in politics. Which is why it is time now to…..

Go Kick These Corrupt Traitors’ Asses And Win The Midterms Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three things you can do in addition to supporting our intrepid candidates:

Become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations.
Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too. Our next training is this Wednesday at 8pm ET.
Email photos of your electoral work or physical act of voting to community@hopiumchronicles.com or via links on our daily chat. We want to start showcasing them here on Hopium.

Now, Let’s Go Win The House and Senate

Our Winning The House - Stake In The Ground Fund - Donate | $1,364,100 raised, $2,000,000 goal (new stretch goal) | This is our #1 fund, updated now with new intel to include the twelve most competitive races where money and volunteers is most needed (largely due to the expense of the district, and understanding now where Republicans have decided to spend and contest). If we win these twelve races the House flips - period.

Our Stake In The Ground Fund now includes Jamie Ager (NC-11), Rebecca Bennett (NJ-7), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Cait Conley (NY-17), Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Christina Hines (MI-10), Brian Poindexter (OH-7), Bobby Pulido (TX-15), Manny Rutinel (CO-8), and Randy Villegas (CA-22). You can meet all there remarkable candidates by watching our recently recorded Hopium interviews.

Our Winning The Senate Fund - $1,048,100 raised, $1,500,000 goal - Donate | This fund splits a single donation to our six candidates must likely to flip a Senate seat this November - Sherrod Brown (OH), Roy Cooper (NC), Troy Jackson (ME), Mary Peltola (AK), James Talarico (TX), and Josh Turek (IA).

These are the majority makers in the Senate this cycle.

You can watch our interviews with each of these exciting candidates and/or contribute directly to any of them here. Our fundraising total includes money we’ve raised directly for each of the six candidates.

Our New Growing Our House Majority Fund - Donate | $430,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal | We’ve combined our Second and Third Waves Funds and added some candidates from our OG Winning The House Fund in a new fund we are calling Growing The House Majority. The idea is simple. We win the House with the first fund. We grow our majority with this one.

This fund now splits a contribution evenly among 18 candidates - Bob Brooks (PA-07), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Sean McCann (MI-04), Johnny Garcia (TX-35), Bob Harvie (PA-01), Lindsay James (IA-02), Jake Johnson (MN-01), Jessica Killin (CO-5), Nancy Lacore (SC-01), Chaz Molder (TN-05), Jonathan Nez (AZ-02), Dr. Richard Pan (CA-06), Denise Powell (NE-02), Dr. Amish Shah (AZ-01), Janelle Stelson (PA-10), Shannon Taylor (VA-01), and Marni von Wilpert (CA-48). You can watch interviews and learn more about these great candidates here.

Our Wining The States Series - Due to space limitations for today we’ve moved our state “Winning” series to this new page. Head there to make state specific investments in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin!

Supporting The State Parties’ Election Protection Program, Supporting Hopium

Support The State Parties’ Election Protection Program - Donate | $68,100 raised, $100,000 new stretch goal | We’ve launched a new, targeted fundraising campaign to help get the new election protection program of the State Democratic Parties, one this community helped develop, off the ground.

Help Hopium Close Strong - $81,000 raised, $100,000 new stretch goal | We’ve launched a new fundraising drive for Hopium to allow us to expand our programming in these final critical days of the 2026 election and free up a bit of my time to support the State Parties’ Election Protection program. It will allow me to add some additional capacity here and make sure the vital State Party program is successful.

Remarkably my friends we hit our initial goal of $50,000 in just a few days - and have stretched our goal of this targeted fundraising campaign to $100,000. A huge, huge thank you to everyone who has chipped in here - I am humbled and energized by this rousing show of support for Hopium - and am starting the process now of bringing on some additional help for the home stretch.

Here are the ways you can support Hopium today:

Become A Paid Subscriber, Upgrade To Founding Member, Purchase Paid Subscriptions For Others - You can do all that here.

Donate Directly To Hopium - You can do that here via our first ever donation link.

Mail A Check To Hopium HQ - Send a check of any amount to 5185 MacArthur Blvd, NW, #600, Washington, DC 20016. Checks should be made out to “Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg.” Donations to Hopium Chronicles are neither tax-deductible nor tax-exempt.

Finally, self-report all the good trouble you are making each day in our paid subscriber chat below. Here’s a note and photo from MN Hopium member Martha G. Let’s keep working the early vote peeps!

St. Croix Indivisible has a post card brigade and the most recent focus is on early voting locally. I am completing 100 of these cards to send to local voters. Post card writing by a group of people in our area has a long history of working to encourage voters.