Caplan Communications

08/10/2026

The Message Isn’t the Strategy. The Messenger, Audience, and Stakes Are.

Trusted messengers decide whether a campaign lands. Aric Caplan on choosing the voices audiences believe, from physicians to the people living the issue.

07/29/2026

Trust Is Earned in Public: Practicing Public Interest Communications

Public interest communications earns trust when the people living the reality shape the work: listen early, recognize existing leadership, name the stakes.

07/22/2026

A public comment period creates a communications opening to challenge how an issue is framed and reach the people who are still deciding what to believe or support.

A public comment period strategy treats the filing window as a communications campaign: contest the framing, reach the movable middle, and start early.

07/16/2026

An audience watches, consumes, and scrolls on. A stakeholder understands that a decision affects their livelihood, health, or children—and is willing to speak out, show up, or push back.

Advocacy communications turns audiences into stakeholders: helping people see how a decision reaches their water, health, and work, then giving them a way to act.

06/09/2026

The most important communications challenge is not persuading people what to think. It is helping enough people understand an issue well enough to think about it at all.

People often mistake visibility for success in communications. They see the headline, the interview, the op-ed, the viral post, or the policy outcome and assume that is the work. It isn't.

05/19/2026

As a truck driver, Luis Sanchez has lugged everything from restaurant food to gravel across the country.

Sanchez ticked off all the boxes since he applied for his commercial driver's license two decades ago: a valid work permit, Social Security number and he proudly claims he has had a perfect safety record. But now, his livelihood is gone. https://cnn.it/4nIlWzk

05/11/2026

Bhupinder Kaur at global humanitarian nonprofit UNITED SIKHS said the policy “has no basis on safety, it is basically just targeting immigrant communities.”

Texas was among the first states to heed Trump administration directives to revoke commercial driver’s licenses from some immigrants as a safety measure.

04/28/2026

UNITED SIKHS is warning that Texas CDL rescissions are sidelining a substantial portion of the commercial driver workforce—without clear evidence of a safety benefit.

03/11/2026

03/06/2026

“Safety is a concern with how you behave on the road, it’s not who you are,” said Amarjit Singh, a trucker from Livermore, CA, whose license is being canceled. “Black, white, which country you’re from, it doesn’t matter.”

The cancellations will likely deepen a crisis spurred by an ongoing Trump administration audit of the state’s processes for doling out licenses.