
Lisa Wells
11.2K posts

Lisa Wells
@LisaWells
Marine wife / Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor. ♥️ dogs, greasy diners, fireflies, traveling, scuba diving, ghost👻hunting, and true crime podcasts. I hate peas.











🚨🧵 THREAD: Braver Angels says they're bipartisan and just bringing people together. Their own leadership coordinates with an anti-Trump political infrastructure network.🚨 This thread is not about BA's members. Many are sincere, and I thank @wilksopinion and @JohnRWoodJr for communicating with me. This is about the infrastructure steering them: IMIP. On August 18, 2025, Harry Boyte, a former Democratic Socialists of America board member, YES, that DSA announced Maury Giles' new role as Braver Angels CEO on video and their shift in strategy from depolarization to civic action: "David has put together a featured plenary at the National Conference on Citizenship... which will be a launch of a new stage for Braver Angels that some of us have been working on for a while." IMIP is the Inter-Movement Impact Project. It coordinates BA's strategic direction. Its own May 2025 document quotes David Brooks approvingly: "Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits." Braver Angels' members are bipartisan. Their leadership is adjacent to anti-Trump infrastructure. This thread has all the receipts. As always, patience as I pull together the thread.👇



















It is good to collaborate on common ground where it can be found and to disagree accurately where it cannot. Depolarization (treating everyone as though they have God-given human dignity, because they do) is a good thing to promote and help others promote, even if they do things other than depolarization that frustrate you. IMIP does not in any way control Braver Angels, and frankly, the idea that it does is laughable. Braver Angels is extremely decentralized and mostly volunteers. IMIP doesn’t tell us how to improve the political culture; if anything, our members are often encouraging their members to consider different perspectives on their efforts, and I have personally pushed back on reform efforts that I believe undermine our republican form of government, even as I have encouraged efforts to improve people’s understandings of each other (depolarization). Jennica, you and I both want less political violence and for Americans to be able to use their right to free speech to attempt to influence their government, even when we strongly disagree with that person’s vision for government. Braver Angels actively works to create an environment where all Americans feel like they can compete in the marketplace of ideas— and thus don’t need to resort to violence to advance their goals— even though I have extremely strong personal beliefs about which ideas are the best ideas and ought to win. I believe in the pluralistic American republic the founders fought for and I want to preserve it, which also means preserving the rights of Americans to accurately promote their own, distinctly different view of a better America. Like our Network Partner FIRE, we work with everyone to see each other as friends with strong disagreements instead of as mortal enemies that must be avoided, mischaracterized, canceled, or killed.


