Morning all. Still in Los Angeles for DNC/State Chairs’ meeting so a shorter post today.
First, there is a very good feeling here among Dem party leaders. We had a good electoral year. Won in races of all kinds all across the country, many by big margins. We should end the year feeling like we all did something important and necessary, and excited and confident about what we can do together in 2026. See my new discussion with Jen Rubin and yesterday’s post for more, and I will be reporting in about my trip here more in the coming days……
Here is a photo of Trump yesterday. His decline has become impossible to ignore.
Next, here is Punchbowl News’ remarkable reporting on Mike Johnson’s waning control over the House, also something that has become impossible to ignore. For Washington, this is extraordinary stuff:
Four live discharge petitions. Being forced to bargain for GOP support during simple procedural votes. Calls to Cabinet secretaries from the House floor to help win over members. A prolonged debate on health care with a disengaged president. Potential retirements on the horizon.
This is the House Republican majority with less than 11 months until the midterm elections.
OK, we won’t say that the House is in total chaos. Total chaos is when members unleash censure resolutions against each other or a trio of House Republicans publicly claim Speaker Mike Johnson has no business running the chamber. That was last week.
But there’s a very tenuous reality for Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer as they navigate the post-shutdown climate with a soon-to-be-even-thinner three vote margin.
Fear of President Donald Trump kept everyone in line earlier this year, especially on the One Big Beautiful Bill. Trump’s poll ratings have fallen, however, and Republicans took a bad beating in last month’s elections.
Members are retiring or running for other offices, meaning they have their own agendas. Most importantly, Republicans could lose the House next year, and GOP lawmakers are beginning to think more about their own political survival rather than what party leaders are selling.
There were a pair of episodes this week to demonstrate just how shaky the House GOP leadership’s control is.
House Republicans struggled for more than an hour Wednesday to pass a rule to begin debate on the NDAA, the typically bipartisan Pentagon policy bill.
In order to flip hardline conservatives, including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Johnson had to call Secretary of State Marco Rubio from a room off the House floor. Rubio agreed to look into NGOs that are funneling money to the Taliban. This was just one of a trio of promises made to pass the rule.
Separately, GOP moderates wanted to hear from Johnson on whether he’d put a bill on the floor to extend enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies, a huge political and policy problem for Republicans. Unsatisfied with his answer, these Republican moderates dropped a discharge petition to go over Johnson’s head.
Live discharge petitions — which effectively strip power from the GOP leadership — have become more common than ever in Johnson’s House. The sheer number of successful discharge petitions is stunning and shows just how poor the outlook is for Johnson and his top lieutenants. Remember what happened with the Jeffrey Epstein vote.
Consider this:
— Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) will get a vote today on a bill overturning Trump’s executive order barring federal workers from collective bargaining rights. Five Republicans signed onto the petition. The measure will pass the House, delivering a rebuke to Trump, although it won’t pass the Senate. But we’ll see it come up again during January’s government-funding fights.
— Luna is among a bipartisan group of members pushing a discharge petition to institute a stock trading ban for members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children. Johnson disagrees with the bill and doesn’t want it to pass. The petition only has 41 signatures, including 14 Republicans. But during the NDAA standoff, Luna was able to extract a promise from Johnson to put a stock trading ban on the floor.
— Frustrated with Johnson’s inaction, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) has a discharge petition to extend the enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies. Fitzpatrick, a swing-district centrist, has enough Republican signatories to win a floor vote. What Democrats do here remains to be seen, lending credence to the argument that the minority has major sway on the House floor.
— Five Republicans have already joined Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) on a different discharge petition for a bill that would extend the Obamacare subsidies for one year. That means this effort also has enough GOP backing to be successful if Democrats universally back it. The House Democratic leadership prefers this petition to Fitzpatrick’s.
This new petition or Fitzpatrick’s measure could feasibly reach 218 signatures, starving Johnson of his ability to set the party’s course on health care.
Here is a clip from a press conference yesterday in Minneapolis about an incident of a savage ICE assault on an American citizen that was filmed and went viral. Listen all the way to the end and remember that the loss of rights for any one of us means a loss of rights for all of us - this too has become impossible to ignore…..
Yesterday Robert Garcia’s House Oversight Committee along with Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut held a “shadow hearing” called “Our Values At Stake: DHS Overreach And Violations Of US Citizens’ Rights.” It featured testimony from five US citizens assaulted by DHS/ICE all of whom were part of a new report released by Senator Blumenthal that details the shocking stories of 22 American citizens assaulted by DHS/ICE in recent months.
Here is a brief clip from one of those who testified, and a link to the full 2 hour hearing:
While we should be pleased and encouraged with our electoral progress this year - and it has been meaningful and important - we simply must be doing more to mitigate the extraordinary damage they are doing to the country, to our rights and freedoms, to our standing in the world, and to our national security.
For as we say here our mission is to mitigate the damage/weaken the regime, advance our agenda, and win back power……
In two new essays (here, here) I talk about 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 now, be loud now, 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 Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates
Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $58k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper
Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $102k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff
Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $37,000 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)
Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)
Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $226,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas | Donate to all five state parties in a single contribution | Enjoy my conversations with Alaska Chair Eric Croft, Florida Chair Nikki Fried, Iowa Chair Rita Hart and Texas Chair Kendall Scudder | Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties!
Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Making Hopium Stronger - We 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:
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; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender
Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law
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
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; ending the use of the military on our streets and the unlawful occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress, end the rancid cover up, and release all of the Epstein files
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
2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - Next year, on 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:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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.
Still drawing inspiration from this passage from FDR’s Four Freedoms speech:
In times like these it is immature--and incidentally, untrue--for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion - or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement.
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.
I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war.
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 all, and remember Hopium is hope with a plan. We do not hope tomorrow will be better than yesterday. We do the work to make it so - Simon
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