The Fight That Exposed a Crack Running Straight Through Trump's Coalition
A conservative activist took on some of the most powerful people in her own camp—and exposed a problem that isn't going away.
Amy Kremer, conservative American political activist
The Fight That Exposed a Crack Running Straight Through Trump’s Coalition
A conservative activist took on some of the most powerful people in her own camp—and exposed a problem that isn't going away.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #940: Monday, June 22nd, 2026.
There is a kind of outrage that exists solely to make the person expressing it feel better.
You know the kind.
The social media post.
The performative denunciation.
The public declaration that leaves the world exactly as it was five minutes before it appeared.
Then…there is another kind of outrage.
The kind that organizes.
The kind that recruits.
The kind that shows up in person.
The kind that turns anger into pressure and pressure into policy.
Whether we like it or not, Amy Kremer just handed us a fascinating case study in the difference.
And…it forces us to wrestle with a question most people would rather avoid.
Because the target of her anger wasn’t sitting across the political battlefield.
It was sitting inside her own tent.
Most People Don’t Want Results. They Want Relief.
One of the easiest traps in politics is confusing emotional release with meaningful action.
They look similar from a distance.
Both involve passion.
Both involve conviction.
Both involve people declaring that something is wrong.
But…only one changes outcomes.
The other merely changes moods.
That’s why I’ve argued repeatedly that outrage only earns its keep when it accomplishes something.
Otherwise…it’s just a form of entertainment.
A temporary emotional drug.
A way to feel involved without actually being involved.
The uncomfortable reality is that Amy Kremer’s campaign against unchecked AI development looks a lot more like the first category than the second.
You may disagree with her.
You may dislike her politics.
You may think her concerns are overblown.
That’s not the point.
The point is that she did what most outraged people never do.
She built something.
She organized.
She traveled.
She rallied supporters across multiple states.
She coordinated pressure campaigns.
She helped transform a concern into a political force that policymakers could not easily ignore.
That is what channeled anger looks like.
Not another viral post.
Not another day of performative outrage.
Not another cycle of people screaming into a digital void.
Actual pressure.
Actual effort.
Actual organization.
And…eventually…an executive order she could point to and say:
“We moved the ball.”
Whether you believe the order went far enough is beside the point.
Whether you think it was good policy is beside the point.
The mechanism matters.
Because it demonstrates something many people claim to believe but rarely practice.
Anger becomes powerful only when it becomes disciplined.
The Problem Is That The Story Gets Complicated
This is where things become uncomfortable.
Many people prefer politics to have clearly defined villains.
It’s emotionally satisfying.
The bad people are over there.
The good people are over here.
The threats are external.
The solutions are obvious.
Life becomes much simpler when the lines are clean.
But…reality has a habit of making a mess of our favorite narratives.
Consider what happened here.
For many conservatives, concerns about AI are real.
The fear isn’t entirely irrational.
Rapid technological disruption.
Concentrated power.
Massive economic consequences.
Potential impacts on privacy, employment, and democratic institutions.
These are serious questions.
But the people driving much of the AI revolution…are not political enemies standing outside the coalition.
Many are major donors.
Major influencers.
Major allies.
Major power centers.
They’re inside the house.
And…that’s what makes this interesting.
Because suddenly…the usual framework breaks down.
The fight isn’t between two opposing teams.
It’s happening within one.
The fire isn’t outside the building.
It’s in the living room.
Now the question changes.
How do you confront a perceived threat when the people benefiting from it are members of your own coalition?
How do you apply pressure without fracturing the alliance?
How do you challenge power when the power is sitting next to you at the same table?
Those are harder questions.
And they don’t come with easy answers.
The Fantasy Of Perfect Unity
One comment I received recently argued that people spend too much time fighting among themselves.
That we should stop the infighting and focus on the obvious threats.
I understand the instinct.
Unity feels efficient.
Unity feels powerful.
Unity feels like the mature response.
But unity…is often easier to preach than to practice.
Because coalitions are not families.
They’re temporary agreements.
Groups of people who happen to share enough interests to move in roughly the same direction for a period of time.
The moment interests diverge…the stress fractures begin to appear.
That’s not a failure.
It’s not evidence that everyone secretly hates each other.
It’s simply the reality of politics.
The same coalition can contain people who agree on immigration…but disagree on trade.
Agree on taxes…but disagree on technology.
Agree on culture…but disagree on corporate power.
The larger the coalition becomes…the more inevitable these internal conflicts become.
Eventually…someone discovers that the threat they care about most…is being enabled by people they’re supposed to consider allies.
That’s where the easy slogans stop working.
A Lesson From A Failed Alliance
One of the most revealing aspects of this story is that efforts to build a broader coalition around AI concerns repeatedly struggled because participants weren’t actually speaking the same political language.
On the surface…everyone was talking about AI.
Underneath…they were talking about entirely different things.
Some were worried about economic displacement.
Others about censorship.
Others about corporate concentration.
Others about existential risk.
Others about democratic accountability.
Same issue.
Different fears.
Different assumptions.
Different worldviews.
Different priorities.
The coalition looked unified until…it was forced to answer specific questions.
Then the differences became impossible to ignore.
This happens constantly.
People imagine that shared concern automatically creates durable partnership.
It doesn’t.
Shared concern creates temporary alignment.
Durable partnership requires something more difficult:
Shared priorities.
Shared incentives.
Shared language.
Shared vision.
Those…are much harder to build.
The Limit Of Focus
One reader recently made a point I largely agree with.
They argued that resilience, discipline, and focus ultimately matter more than emotional volatility.
I think that’s mostly right.
Focus wins more battles than panic.
Steadiness wins more battles than hysteria.
Discipline wins more battles than outrage.
But there’s an important caveat.
Focus can win a fight.
It cannot guarantee you will keep together the coalition that won it.
Those are different challenges.
Kremer’s campaign demonstrates the distinction.
Focused pressure helped create results.
Focused pressure generated momentum.
Focused pressure transformed concern into action.
But maintaining the alliance afterward?
That’s a separate problem.
History is full of movements that succeeded in achieving a specific objective only to fracture immediately afterward.
The thing that united them disappeared.
The deeper differences remained.
The victory exposed tensions that the battle had temporarily concealed.
That pattern shows up again and again.
Because achieving something together…is often easier than deciding what comes next.
The Real Lesson
The lesson here isn’t that outrage is good.
The lesson isn’t that outrage is bad.
The lesson is that outrage is a tool.
And tools have limits.
A hammer can build a house.
A hammer can also smash a window.
Its value depends entirely on how it’s used.
Anger works the same way.
Undisciplined anger burns energy.
Disciplined anger creates leverage.
Undisciplined anger seeks attention.
Disciplined anger seeks outcomes.
Undisciplined anger feels satisfying.
Disciplined anger becomes effective.
Amy Kremer’s campaign is a useful reminder that anger…when directed with focus and persistence…can move institutions.
But…it also reminds us…that moving institutions…is only half the battle.
Holding together the people who moved them may be even harder.
And that question extends far beyond AI.
It applies to every movement.
Every coalition.
Every organization.
Every cause.
The ability to channel outrage into action is rare.
The ability to sustain what gets built afterward is rarer still.
That’s the challenge.
Not simply getting angry.
Not simply staying focused.
But figuring out what comes after the victory.
Because anger has a short shelf life.
And…eventually…every movement discovers whether it was built on outrage…or on something stronger.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
Sources
Drew Harwell & Cat Zakrzewski, “She helped plan the Jan. 6 rally. Now she’s fighting to rein in AI companies,”The Washington Post, June 22, 2026.
Travis Gettys, “Trump’s tech allies are losing a fight they didn’t see coming — from his MAGA base,” Raw Story, June 22, 2026.
“Trump to Sign Order on AI Oversight as Security Fears Mount Among Supporters,” Reuters via Insurance Journal, May 21, 2026.
“Steve Bannon and others in MAGA world beg Trump to control AI,” MSNBC (opinion), May 18, 2026.