David Blankenhorn

In a little bit, we'll be joined by Jeremy Horpedal, associate professor at the University of Central Arkansas College of Business and adjunct scholar at Cato.

First... we talk with David Blankenhorn, president of Civic Life.

You can find more at civic-life.org. Also the author of a recent essay over at Deseret News, Don't Dismiss Trump Accounts Just Because of the Name.

David, thanks so much for joining us.

So but, you know, as you point out, family situations are

different and not everybody has to do this.

Talking with David Blankenhorn, he is the president of Civic Life.

You can find more at Civic-Life.com. Also his piece over at Deseret News.

Braver Angels was founded in 2016. during the midst of the intensity of the 2016 election.

And we knew that we were, it was really the brainchild of our first president, David Blankenhorn, and then Bill Doherty, one of our co-founders, and myself, and others, we helped to start it.

But it was really, the idea was, okay, so we've got growing political polarization in the U.S. for at least a couple of decades now.

and you know coming to a kind of crescendo in 2016 at the time and we were figuring out you know what we wanted to do we knew we wanted to found an organization that was addressing polarization head-on but you know where are we going to be a most uh kind of an academic organization you know bringing together scholars to study and talk about it or a grassroots organization bringing together ordinary people so the 2016 election results were in trump was elected and um David Blankenhorn lives in Upper West Side, New York City.

I benefited from the DACA program during the Obama years, et cetera, and eventually became a us citizen.

And so that's, that's where I am today.

Um, now I work with an Alliance of college university presidents, um, where, um, I lead the policy portfolio for, for the, uh, presidential association.

And, you know, I'm excited about the work that we have been doing and it's crazy to think that we have been doing this work for about two years now.