Dan Morain

Severe weather from a Kona storm continues to impact Hawai‘i, with flooding, outages, and ongoing disruptions. Direct Relief is expediting essential supplies & supporting partners statewide to reach affected communities, including displaced residents. directrelief.org/2026/03/medica…

If you're not following the @CATargetBook's amazing campaign data/finance guru @RPyers -- one of the nation's best -- you should be

WTF??!!

With outbreaks occurring in Florida and other states, health providers are urging the public to take the risks of this once-obscure disease seriously. bit.ly/4r50u7m

After receiving multiple email invitations for amazing parties in the last few weeks, only to discover they're phishing attempts, I will never open an online invitation. If anyone receives an online invitation from me, please know I would never send an online invitation.

When civil war began in Sudan, Direct Relief expanded its work to supply providers with wartime support to manage cancer, diabetes, and more. bit.ly/4qRvjx9

Very cool piece about a news organization on the ascent, and the guy who started it—David Lesher. calmatters.org/inside-the-new…

Chaos! We talk Trump's wild first year in office with a great panel -- @KamalaHarris biographer @DanielMorain, veteran Dem strategist Bill Carrick and the Santa Barbara Newsmakers host and legendary CA journalist Jerry Roberts. Tune in and join us! santabarbaranewsmakers.com/p/watch-365-da…

Over the past week, Direct Relief has delivered 500 shipments of requested medical aid to 44 U.S. states and territories and 14 countries worldwide. The shipments contained 6.9 million defined daily doses of medication. bit.ly/45WPBwG

Today marks one year since wildfires ignited across Los Angeles County, devastating communities. Since the fires began, Direct Relief has delivered more than $18 million in aid across the county.

It’s old-fashioned to defend mainstream journalism these days but some of the most reliable reporting from people actually on the ground will be the AP and Reuters the next 24 hours. Your Substack journalist writing takes will be using frontline reporting from them.

A note: one our most-read stories this year was actually published in 2024 - @DanielMorain's profile of Republican legislator Frank Lanterman who led the effort to transform how CA cared for people with severe mental illness capitolweekly.net/the-republican…

Winters Healthcare, located in Yolo County, California, is the latest U.S. health facility to strengthen its energy resilience through Direct Relief’s Power for Health Initiative. bit.ly/3MhDbZu

Terrific, terrifying story by Jordan Rau of Kaiser Health News, @jordanrau @KFFHealthNews kffhealthnews.org/news/article/v…

Amy Davidson Sorkin: "Once one makes it to the end of '107 Days,' though, Harris’s lack of generosity toward others makes it harder to be generous toward her and the campaign that she ran, as much as one may want to be." newyorker.com/news/the-lede/…

Judge Nicholas Garaufis: “It’s extraordinarily essential that we understand the role of the Fourth Estate in making situations like this known ... The New York Times dedicated tremendous resources to do so in the case of the seriously mentally ill." nytimes.com/2025/10/03/nyr…

Oliver (Billy) Sipple, a disabled Vietnam Marine veteran, happened to be at Union Square when Sara Jane Moore aimed a .38 caliber revolver at then-President Gerald Ford. Sipple lunged and knocked away the gun. The bullet went wild. latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

Betty Medsger knows something about the misuse and abuse of the FBI having broken the story for the Washington Post about CoIntelPro in 1971. Here, she writes about the 2025 FBI. No matter your politics, you should be alarmed: theconversation.com/trumps-use-of-…

Sam Quinones, a journalist who does first-hand, shoe-leather reporting, has an excellent Substack and podcast, and is author of "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic." Check out his latest: youtu.be/z3nbJeS1Vys?si… H/t @samquinones7 samquinones.substack.com