From the Editor:

Greetings! My name is David Brande. I’m pleased to have been asked to edit this new blog on the Indivisible Sequim website. My background is mostly in higher education: I taught literature and combined humanities at a couple of universities and a few colleges. My wife and her career brought us to the Sequim area fifteen years ago. We’re now both retired but staying busy, both of us volunteering with Indivisible Sequim and attending protests in addition to our usual activities. 

My goal here is to offer short pieces by people in the Dungeness valley who oppose the Trump regime and have a particular perspective on a topic relevant to the defense of our democracy. 

A post might be on timely national or local news--but not simply repeating the news we’ve all already read. (For example, it could be the writer’s analysis of current news or of how the media is covering it.) It might be the transcript or summary of an interview conducted by the writer. It might be a personal narrative that sheds a particular light on a topic (again) relevant to the defense of democracy. I’m thinking in terms of pieces in the 500-word range: longer than a social media post but not so long as to take a significant chunk out of one’s day. 

In my first post here, I want to nod to the “challenges” (in polite speech) of our current media environment by listing a few of the people I rely on most for analysis of events, saying why I trust them. Yes, I know that most of you will be familiar with most of the people listed below. In those cases, please just congratulate yourselves on your perspicacity. 

• Heather Cox Richardson, professor of American history at Boston College: I think most of us, by now, know of and treasure her, but I must begin this list with her, in case someone is missing out. Her rigorous training allows her to put our current nightmare into historical context and to explain how it is that we’re here and why there is sometimes a perverse logic and historical precedent to things that seem uniquely insane. Subscribe to her on Substack to get her daily letters via email. You can also find audio versions of the letters (usually with her own narration) on any major platform that publishes podcasts. 

• Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Obama on strategy and communications: Here’s a  source you might be missing, to your cost. You might know that he’s with Crooked Media, the “Pod Save America” people. If you’re not listening to or watching (on YouTube) his podcast called “Pollercoaster” and subscribing to his Substack account “Message Box,” you are missing the most informed domestic political and polling analyses available, in my opinion. 

• Andrew Weissman, professor of law at New York University; former Assistant US Attorney, chief of the Fraud Section at DOJ, and lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller's Special Counsel's Office. He and his colleague Mary McCord do the “Main Justice” podcast, an excellent source of in-depth explanations of the most important legal questions of the moment. (To clearly understand the Fourth Amendment violations being committed by ICE, and to understand your rights, watch his video discussion with law professor Ryan Goodman at http://bit.ly/4pRSfej.) 

• Marc Elias, attorney: Elias has been as effective a legal warrior for democracy as any living American that I’m aware of. The GOP hates and fears him. He’s done extensive legal defense of voting rights both for a large firm and now as head of his own firm, including arguing before the Supreme Court. He recently launched “Democracy Docket,” an independent news platform focused on legal fights over voting. I am proud to support his platform with a paid subscription, and I warmly encourage you to do the same. 

• Brian Beutler, journalist, former beat reporter on Congress: Beutler’s Substack “Off Message” is always one of the most thoughtful political analyses I read over the course of a week or two. I don’t always read it, but when I do I am intellectually engaged. He’s worked for The New Republic and Talking Points Memo, both great sources of political reporting and analysis.

• Ezra Klein, journalist: Public policy nerd and great interviewer. For me, his podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show,” can be irrelevant to my immediate concerns and occasionally tedious, but it can also be the best thing I listen to or read all week. Check out his recent interview with Russian-American journalist M. Gessen of The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Be angry at the daily attacks on our democracy and the rule of law, and channel your righteous anger into good action. Take care of the people around you. Thanks for reading. 

Best regards,

David