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Every day (Monday-Friday), we’ll update this space with protests, signs, and other public demonstrations against the actions of the administration. Keep checking to see how Americans all across the country are protecting and defending democracy. Get help organizing from Indivisible, find protests in your area at mobilize.us, and send us your protest photos at submit@contrariannews.org.

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First, in keeping with his telltale authoritarian habit of ignoring, sidestepping, or outright violating unambiguous statutes regarding federal properties, Trump has been trying to thwart the FBI headquarters’ move to Maryland in violation of an ongoing, congressionally authorized relocation process. Just as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently slapped down his East Wing building project (and before that, a district court nixed his renaming of the Kennedy Center), U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang in Greenbelt, Maryland, this week held that Trump could not negate the decision of the General Services Administration’s action, pursuant to its statutory authority, to relocate the headquarters. Trump and embattled FBI director Kash Patel, in deciding to countermand the GSA’s site selection without going back to Congress, had acted “unlawfully,” Chuang held.

Maryland’s attorney general and governor took a victory lap, as the Associated Press reported:

“Maryland and Prince George’s County committed more than a decade of work to earn the FBI headquarters and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. “By blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to move the FBI to the Reagan Building and divert the funds Congress set aside for this project, the Court has cleared the path back to Greenbelt.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, also a Democrat, said, “Now it is time to stop the games and get to work building the world-class FBI headquarters that our public servants deserve, where it belongs: in Prince George’s County, Maryland.”

As Brown put it, the case (in keeping with other recent humiliating Trump defeats) was really about separation of powers and defending the legislative branch’s powers, which Trump threatened to override. “[W]hen Congress makes a decision, the Trump administration does not get to ignore it because they do not like the outcome,” Brown said simply. He added, “Congress made a promise. The Trump Administration tried to break it. Now, the jobs, investment, and opportunity Marylanders deserve are within reach.” Trump vows to appeal, but for now his imperious move is on hold.

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This was not Trump’s only court loss this week, nor even the only case in which a judge slammed the regime for capricious, arbitrary action. A White House that posits itself as the great defender of religion has been overtly hostile to groups other than white Christian Evangelicals (e.g., Muslims), blasphemous in its imagery of Trump, and disrespectful of places of religious worship.

In a case that came to the 4^th Circuit, Trump tried to reverse a longstanding government policy limiting immigration raids at places of worship. The panel unanimously held in favor of litigants from Cooperative Baptists, Quakers, and Sikh congregations, whose houses of worship had been imperiled by indiscriminate, often violent immigration dragnet operations:

In January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded a long-standing policy of limiting immigration enforcement actions at or near houses of worship. Among other things, DHS’s new policy removed guidelines requiring that immigration officers weigh various considerations before conducting enforcement actions at these sensitive locations. Instead, the new policy requires only that the officials use their discretion and “common sense” in deciding where to conduct immigration enforcement actions. . . .

The plaintiffs assert, among other things, that the new policy has and will continue to chill immigrant attendance at the plaintiffs’ worship services and other ministries. They further allege that this decline in attendance burdens their ability to worship communally and to minister to immigrant communities, both acts of which are fundamental to their religious exercise.

The 4^th Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, issuing a preliminary injunction under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), finding many immigrants decided “not to attend the plaintiffs’ houses of worship because of the new policy. . . . [and that] the plaintiffs’ asserted injury of a decline in attendance at worship services and other activities is fairly traceable to the new policy.”

Despite the court’s restrained language, it highlighted the White House’s obvious contempt for diverse religious faiths for whom communal worship is vital:

DHS has made clear that it intends to target houses of worship in future immigration enforcement actions. As recounted above, a DHS spokesperson explained in January 2025 that the new policy expands the reach of law enforcement in sensitive locations so that “[c]riminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.” For the plaintiffs, who welcome immigrant worshipers and have locations in or near immigrant communities, DHS’s statement emphasizing the rationale for this policy change shows that the threat of immigration enforcement at their houses of worship is real and substantial.

This was not a close call. “[W]e easily conclude that the district court did not err in determining that the balance of equities and the public interest support granting the preliminary injunction.”

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Third, in another defeat for the Trump regime’s gambit of trying to install U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation (following a similar defeat in the Third Circuit regarding Alina Habba), a 9^th Circuit panel unanimously slapped down Trump’s attempt to leave in place interim U.S. attorney Sigal Chattah, a Trump flunky and election denier who “has reportedly sought to investigate a political adversary and benefit allies and pushed the FBI to investigate claims of noncitizens voting in the 2020 election,” the Nevada Independent reported.

In an opinion authored by Trump appointee Judge Eric D. Miller, the court held Attorney General Todd Blanche could not “make someone an Acting United States Attorney — bypassing the usual requirement that a U.S. Attorney be confirmed by the Senate — by designating that person as the first assistant to an already-vacant office of U.S. Attorney.” It refused to allow Blanche to make her a “de facto acting U.S. attorney by delegating all of the functions and duties of the U.S. attorney to someone else.” The court thereby preserved the Senate’s constitutional role, despite Trump and his puppet Blanche’s antics, which, as the New York Times reported, have fomented “a sense of chaos within the Justice Department, which has pivoted in some instances to a retribution campaign against President Trump’s perceived enemies” and severely damaged its prosecutorial record, with defeats ranging “from its immigration-related prosecutions to the recent abandonment of [the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool] vandalism case.”

Trump’s raging arrogance, contempt for Congress and due process, and willful disregard for Americans’ rights will not abate, nor will his spineless congressional allies defend their own institutional prerogatives. However, lower federal court judges have consistently defended the rule of law, the separation of powers, and due process against arbitrary actions by an unhinged president. We should be grateful for their undaunted and uncompromising stance in defense of our democracy that keeps tyranny at bay.

The President’s lack of respect for our troops, on the other hand, does not seem to be improving.

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Here are our top suggestions for getting involved in the days ahead. These are heated times; we encourage non-violent and lawful activism.

March on Washington

A new March on Washington is scheduled for August 28. Sponsored by the Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, and a coalition of civil rights groups, marchers will gather at the Lincoln Memorial beginning at 8 a.m. to demand voting rights — in the face of the ongoing Republican assault on fair representation — and economic justice.

The march is being organized around the 63rd anniversary of the original 1963 March, at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Find out more about the event at MarchonWashington2026.com, where you can register to attend, sponsor a bus to the event, organize on behalf of a religious congregation, or partner with march organizers.

Stop Government Spying

A stunning New York Times report describes how federal authorities used invasive surveillance practices against Minnesota activists who opposed the Trump administration’s violent “Operation Metro Surge” ICE deployment. The feds reportedly infiltrated houses of worship and community meetings and tracked activists using license plates and financial records.

The ACLU of Minnesota is highlighting “profound First Amendment concerns” about this activity, particularly “federal law enforcement’s use of facial recognition software” to identify people not suspected of any specific crime. Join the ACLU in demanding “a full accounting” of this federal overreach. The civil liberties organization offers language that could be fashioned into a letter to members of Congress: “The public deserves to know who authorized this surveillance, what legal basis was asserted for it, how broadly it was conducted, what information was collected and retained, with whom information was shared, when it will be deleted, and what processes — if any — were in place to safeguard constitutionally protected activity.”

Stop ICE Shock Gloves

ICE announced plans last week to spend up to $20 million to buy electric-shock gloves for its agents. The G.L.O.V.E, or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, by Compliant Technologies, allows agents to “deliver a pain stimulus” to an individual to “gain compliance.” Despite being touted as “nonlethal,” the gloves pose significant danger; according to the company’s own manual, the shocks “may cause or contribute to death or serious injury.” Considering ICE’s recent escalations and history of violence, many fear that the gloves will be used to inflict wanton cruelty on suspects, detainees, or those protesting the agency. Join the NAACP and LULAC in calling for transparency, accountability, and oversight by contacting your representatives in Congress to ask them to halt the procurement of these taser gloves. As LULAC CEO Juan Proaño told The Contrarian: “It is degrading, it is dehumanizing, and it puts at great risk the general population — American citizens and immigrants alike.”

Stand Up for Sailors

Conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, amid an eight-month deployment, have become desperate — with reports of depleted rations, squalid bathrooms, and a lack of soap, deodorant, toothpaste and other necessities. Crew have been unable to regularly communicate with family and working shifts have been extended, pushing service members to the brink. Several sailors have attempted to throw themselves overboard or made other attempts at self-harm.

The commander in chief, Donald Trump, has dismissed this scandal as “fake news,” even insisting that the extended carrier deployment has not been “nearly long enough.” Families of the deployed called out the president, and the NAACP posted a call to action on behalf of the ship’s sailors of color, with a list of demands: “Relieve these Sailors. Investigate these conditions. Protect their mental health. Support their families. And bring them home safely.”

You can also call on your elected officials to join Senate efforts to demand transparency from the Department of Defense. As 15 Senators wrote to Secretary Pete Hegseth: “Denial and defensiveness are not acceptable responses. Congress and these families need accountability.”

Preserve the ‘Roadless Rule’

The Trump administration is attempting — again — to open pristine stands of federal forest to logging and development roads. The Department of Agriculture announced this week it is attempting to rescind a landmark 2001 “Roadless Rule” that protects nearly 45 million acres of national forest from resource exploitation.

The administration is dressing up this giveaway to logging and mining companies as a way to reduce wildfire risk. However, according to the Center for Western Priorities, the move would actually “degrade drinking water, fragment wildlife habitat, and increase the Forest Service’s $10 billion road maintenance backlog.” You can comment on the proposed regulation through September 21.

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Sign Up for a Weekend of Action

Swing Left aims to defeat MAGA in the midterms on the strength of voter-to-voter contact. It is organizing a Weekend of Action on August 28 and 29, for which it is seeking volunteers to conduct 50 on-the-ground canvasses and 10 phone banks for the benefit of 55 target races across the country. The group is aiming to spark 500,000 conversations with voters before election day. Visit Swing Left’s website to find out how to volunteer on a race near you. For a quick volunteer orientation, click here. Or watch a Contrarian interview to learn more about Swing Left’s big-picture strategy and practice.

Join ‘Hands Off Our Vote’

Indivisible has mounted a campaign to empower citizens against voter suppression efforts and even election interference in the midterms. The group warns of the MAGA administration: “It’s going to be no-holds-barred from them this year as they try desperately to block free, democratic elections.” Check out the group’s 19-page election-protection toolkit for actions and strategies to ensure fair elections in November.

Vote Like Your Nation Depends on It

The “November” midterms actually begin as early as September in some states, with early voting set to start in just weeks. Opportunities differ by jurisdiction, so check out ElectionInnovation.org for a state-by-state breakdown of how to cast your ballot early, whether in-person at an early voting center, or by mail. Vote.org also offers an early-voting calendar. Check your voting details at Vote411.org and make a plan to cast your ballot.

An earlier version included an incorrect date and incorrect link for the comment period on the roadless rule. This version has been updated.

I experienced this arc from a unique perch: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where I was among the tech policy staff in the Biden White House. I helped write the AI Bill of Rights laying out basic guardrails for these tools, took part in negotiating the first international agreement on AI, and worked with colleagues to develop President Biden’s sweeping executive order on the technology.

Our efforts were mooted with the arrival of the second Trump Administration, which quickly dismantled AI governance efforts in favor of deference to mutual enrichment with Silicon Valley. But even before the presidential election, I sensed that something was missing from our approach. The more hours I spent in Washington’s wood-paneled drafting rooms, the clearer it became that my colleagues and I were participating in a policy project while failing to cohere around a political one.

One major reason for this disconnect: The average American just didn’t yet know enough about AI, or how it was already shaping daily life. As policymakers, we were trying to solve the technical and social problems posed by this emergent class of technology, but doing so without a real mandate from the public to do so.

Those days are gone. In the span of a few years, AI has erupted as a political issue, and one on which people will increasingly cast their votes. Mere mentions of the technology set off thunderous boos at recent college graduations across the country. Impassioned citizens in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and elsewhere are mobilizing to block costly and energy-consuming data centers from going up in their neighborhoods. Many of us now associate tech companies and their leaders with brute power plays into our lives. And the popular frustration extends well beyond data centers, from social media firms concealing what they know about their products’ harms to once-useful online platforms extracting more from users while offering us less — a phenomenon writer Cory Doctorow has dubbed “enshittification.”

The tide has turned and the anti-Big Tech mandate is here. What, then, will Democrats do with it?

Though many Democratic officials and candidates remain beholden to the deep-pocketed interests behind data center development, a growing number have seen an opportunity in the outrage — and made the fight against these hulking structures part of their pitch to voters. In Texas, James Talarico has proposed ending state tax breaks for data centers and giving local communities the power to decide whether they can be built in their towns. Sherrod Brown has run ads branding his Republican senatorial opponent as the “face of data centers in Ohio.” Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democratic Senate nominee from Michigan, supports a moratorium on new data centers until protections are put in place at the federal level.

Data center siting is largely a state and local matter, but without meaningful federal standards, communities across America have been left to negotiate with some of the world’s most powerful companies on their own. Perhaps the most significant effort to change that has come from Congressman Ro Khanna, whose northern California district includes significant portions of Silicon Valley. This week Khanna introduced a “Data Center Bill of Rights” that would give communities the authority to reject new centers and establish federal guidelines, including limits on electricity prices and clean energy requirements.

These proposals are a good start, but limiting the focus of Democratic tech reform efforts to data centers would be a generational missed opportunity. Moments when the public suddenly sees and feels the consequences of unchecked corporate power are rare. Democrats squandered such an opening after the financial crisis, focusing on providing immediate relief to devastated families and businesses but failing to turn public fury at Wall Street into a broader reckoning with its unchecked power and abuses. We must not make the same mistake with Big Tech today.

Reform advocates have struggled for decades to make highly consequential tech issues like privacy, surveillance, and concentration of power concrete enough for the average person to care about. But today, Americans increasingly understand the control that a small handful of tech barons hold over our work, wallets, information, and ever more provinces of our daily lives.

AI surveillance enables companies to track workers’ every move, often at the expense of their safety. Landlords and supermarket chains are using AI-driven pricing systems to squeeze consumers on rent and groceries. Social media platforms surveil young people, selling their data and feeding them harmful content. Crypto tools, sometimes marketed as helping marginalized communities build wealth, are plagued by operational delays and hidden fees. Data centers are the physical manifestation of years of creeping disempowerment. And the architects of these practices have become richer than anyone in the history of the world, even as Americans struggle to keep up with the cost of daily life.

Despite these and other documented harms, the U.S. has failed time and again to establish any meaningful governance of the technology industry.

Herein lies the unique opportunity for Democrats. With more Americans than ever connecting the dots, a party wrestling with how to convince a skeptical public to trust them with political power once again has a new entry point to become the standard-bearer of progress on a winning issue.

Ahead of the coming midterm and general elections, progressive activist groups and Democratic elected officials must cohere around an ambitious tech reform platform. But it matters how these ideas are framed. Public interest policy proposals often come in wonky terms difficult for the average person to map onto issues they care about: repeal Section 230; net neutrality; federal investment in semiconductor manufacturing; comprehensive data privacy; fight algorithmic discrimination. These ideas require explanation and have difficulty competing in a crowded marketplace of political priorities.

Instead, the North Star of such an agenda should be legibility and ambition — bold, clear policy ideas a president could announce in a State of the Union Address as a major breakthrough for working people. Think cancel student debt, ban non-compete agreements, universal healthcare. Each is a case study in how policy framed with pith and poise can change the national discourse and ease the path for progress. For the substance of reform, there is no shortage of ideas: look to, among others, the Roosevelt Institute, the AI Now Institute, the Center on Democracy and Technology, California’s TechEquity organization, all of whom have laid out politically imaginative agendas. Against strong antidemocratic headwinds, anything less ambitious will fail; in this political environment, only bold ideas can survive, compete, and inspire action.

The coming elections will be many things, not least a verdict on the fate of our democratic institutions. It will also be the biggest opening in modern American history to limit the unchecked power of the tech elite. Seizing on the wellspring of opposition to AI, now is the time for Democrats to turn popular anger into a political mandate with the force and momentum of what Victor Hugo called “an idea whose time has come.”

Ami Fields-Meyer is a political strategist, former White House senior policy advisor, and New York Times bestselling author of ON COURAGE.

Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist whose cartoons have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Find him on Substack at nickanderson.substack.com.

One of Democracy Defenders Fund’s core missions is protecting the rule of law, which means we go to court when government officials abuse their authority or violate the Constitution. Trump’s vanity projects are flagrant abuses of power. Through these projects, he and his administration repeatedly try to extend executive authority beyond the areas that Congress or the courts traditionally allowed. Each ruling further defines the scope of executive power going forward. Therefore, we must challenge every instance of executive overreach, even his seemingly silly projects, especially as we approach midterm elections.

The White House ballroom litigation addresses whether the president can undertake major construction on federal property without congressional authorization or review by the independent federal agencies Congress has tasked with overseeing such projects. The D.C. Circuit recently held that the administration could not proceed with construction of the ballroom without congressional authorization but allowed any construction necessary to ensure public safety and presidential security, i.e., the underground military complex that sits below the ballroom. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene, calling the D.C. Circuit’s decision “extraordinary and unlawful” and claiming any pause in construction will endanger the president’s security and override advice from senior officials. How the court responds to this argument will determine whether the president can invoke national security to evade legal constraints on executive action. The ruling could have significant consequences if, for instance, the president invokes national security concerns as a basis for interfering in elections. The president has already invoked national security to justify expanding federal and presidential authority over elections, including proposals to seize voting equipment (after the 2020 election), federal efforts to investigate state election systems (2026, when he gave a prime-time address claiming to have declassified intelligence that showed vulnerabilities in American elections and foreign interference, and when he used the national security narrative to justify his demand for sweeping election-law changes like the SAVE Act), and executive orders attempting to dictate state election practices (Executive Order 14248, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” claiming foreign interference in our elections justified substantial federal authority over elections administration).

The Kennedy Center litigation asks whether a board made up of members hand-picked by the president can change an institution’s congressionally prescribed identity, purpose, and governance. Last year, Trump ousted most members of the sitting Kennedy Center Board, replaced them with a loyalist majority, and named himself chair. The new board then voted to take voting rights away from ex officio members who might challenge the president’s plan to rename the center and close it for a two-year Trumpian renovation. The district court held that the newly reconstituted board lacked statutory authority to rename the center or change the governance of the board and abused its discretion by voting to close the center for two years. The court’s ruling made clear that control over the center’s personnel did not give the president or his allies unlimited authority over the institution itself. Thus, when Congress has assigned a function to an institution, the president cannot take over that function simply by controlling the people who administer it. Despite this clear mandate, the board voted last week to put Trump’s name back on the building and close it for two years. How this case plays out may determine whether the president can circumvent Congress by controlling an entity’s leadership.

The stakes in these cases extend far beyond a ballroom or a cultural institution. They may help define whether a president can use control over federal entities, national-security justifications, or other asserted executive powers to circumvent limits Congress has imposed. In that sense, these cases are not really about Trump’s vanity projects. They are about whether the presidency is bound by the laws Congress enacted—or whether a president can find an end run around them. This is why it is important to challenge executive overreach wherever it occurs, even when it takes the form of seemingly trivial vanity projects amid far greater threats to our democracy.

Lindsay Zimliki is a senior litigation counsel at Democracy Defenders Fund. She served in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation.

So now you have religious groups running around the state with framed copies of the Ten Commandments, the Protestant version, and giving them to schools to get them on the wall. Of course, Texas got sued immediately, but in April an appeals court allowed the law to stand, even though it flies directly in the face of a Supreme Court precedent from 1980 on the exact same topic and subject, just involving a Kentucky state law.

Now, the ACLU is appealing that appeals court’s decision to the Supreme Court, and it’s very likely that they’ll take up the case in this coming term. And just to be clear, the Supreme Court in 1947 said that the First Amendment also applies to state governments. They cannot ban or establish a religion.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s also running for Senate, is the one responsible for enforcing this law. He says that school districts must let him know whether they are or aren’t complying with it, and also that they are setting at least some time aside every day for prayer.

Now, the law doesn’t say how schools that don’t comply with it would be punished, but the Texas Education Agency could apply penalties and the attorney general could also sue school districts. So we shall see if the Supreme Court does take the case up.

Ben Sheehan is a political commentator and digital creator. He specializes in civics education, which is showcased in his latest book, What Does the Constitution Actually Say?: A Non-Boring Guide to How Our Democracy Is Supposed to Work. Check out his Substack, Politics Made Easy.

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As we know, the nation rounded the corner to 1973, the year Roe was decided. The ruling quickly showed itself to be more porous to legal limitations than full-blown liberation — with its narrow roots in privacy interests rather than principles of equality; its reverence for doctors’ decision-making; and, especially, its rickety trimester framework, about which Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later noted all but ensured the decision was on a “collision course with itself.”

Sure enough, Roe was soon degraded by federal interventions like the Hyde Amendment, which prevents Medicaid from paying for abortions, as well as by restrictive state laws like parental consent, waiting periods, and mandatory counseling — the constellation of which meant that the legal right to abortion did not equate to access for all.

Nearly 50 years later, the Dobbs decision brought a devastating reversal. But it simultaneously ushered in a moment akin to 1972 — the opportunity to reimagine bodily autonomy and build something better. And now, in 2026, we have begun to see glimmers of such vision emerge in the law by way of more expansive court rulings and bolder legislation. Among some recent examples:

• Abortion and mental health. Last week, a federal judge issued a ruling chipping away at Idaho’s extreme abortion ban and making clear that women in the state can get an abortion if their health is in danger or if they are at risk of taking their own lives. The language of the decision harkens to a novel but essential right to defend oneself from harm: “It is an affront to human dignity to bar pregnant women from receiving life-saving care on the basis that the threat comes from a mental health condition, rather than a physical health condition.”

• Abortion and equality. Earlier this summer, a Pennsylvania intermediate state appellate court ruled that the exclusion of Medicaid coverage for abortion is a violation of both the state Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the federal Equal Protection Clause, noting: “There is no comparable exclusion of any health coverage — reproductive or otherwise — for men” (covered by The Contrarian here). Equality arguments are powerful, and, when it comes to state constitutions, there are 29 that have broader sex equality language than the U.S. Constitution. (The center I lead at New York University Law is home to the Marcy Syms Equality Initiative, a law and policy think tank that provides expert analysis on the mobilization of state ERAs, among other work. This year we hosted a full-day symposium on leveraging equality arguments in support of reproductive rights; panel discussions can be viewed here.)

• Legislation. Massachusetts became the tenth state — joining Alaska, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland, and Vermont, plus Washington, D.C. — to remove restrictions on gestational limits for abortion. A law signed last week by Gov. Maura Healy eliminates the state’s prior Roe-fueled four-pronged framework that guided abortion decisions after 24 weeks for life-threatening situations for the patient or fetus. (And they are quite rare; according to Reproductive Equity Now, abortions after 24 weeks account for less than 1% of all performed in the United States.)
  
  Championed by major medical groups, including the national Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Massachusetts Medical Society, and the state chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, state lawmakers were deliberate in their effort to help more patients stay in-state should they need emergency care. According to Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Mike Day, the bill’s passage comes after 16 years of failed attempts “to get government out of the way of a health issue, and to lessen the trauma inflicted on pregnant women, who are suddenly confronted with unbelievably tragic news about their pregnancies more than six months into their term.”

  
  For decades, conservatives have sought to derail expansive approaches like these by weaponizing them as political wedge issues, often with conjured vocabulary — descriptors like “late-term abortion” and “partial-birth abortion,” for example, are not actual medical terms but rather gimmicks to sway the public. It still works. Media about the Massachusetts law has been similarly hyperbolic, from the Wall Street Journal headline “Massachusetts Enacts Abortion Until Birth,” to Fox News calling it “extremist and barbaric.”

There is no doubt that abortion will be a political pawn and electoral issue for the foreseeable future. Let’s commit to keeping our eye on the bigger prize — beyond taking it to the polls, we need to afford ourselves the space to think long-term and big picture, to push back on backlash, and be clear about what a future of reproductive freedom could be and what it will take to get there.

As if it is 1972 all over again.

A few resources: For readers interested in tracking abortion-focused litigation, Kaiser Family Foundation publishes a regularly updated round-up; Center for Reproductive Rights does the same for abortion legislation nationwide.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.

In these sorts of free-wheeling environments with combative primary races, Democratic minority leaders can easily wind up in a no-win situation. You can bet that corporate media figures and agitated corporate Democrats, alarmed at Nixon’s socialist affiliation (she joined the DSA in June, but it did not endorse her), will be looking to egg on intraparty fights.

Between trying to avoid gaffes, responding to unhinged lies from the White House (which helpfully generates non-stop backlash against MAGA lackeys), and refereeing factions of their diverse party, Democratic leaders can easily sound defensive or overly cautious just when the base is itching for boldness. And while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is among the most hesitant to get out ahead of his members, Democrats’ greatest risk is skittish failure to convey that leadership has internalized the base’s demand for bold change.

However, with Donald Trump collapsing in the polls and suffering one defeat after another, Democratic leadership and their surrogates are well positioned to project strength and avoid the trap of excessive timidity.

In this environment, Democratic leaders should not waste time on Sunday legacy media shows (whose aging audiences have dwindled), on which hosts recycle tired tropes (Dems in disarray!) and false equivalence. If Dems want to reach persuadable voters, they should recall a crucial 2024 election lesson: independent media, podcasts, and candidates’ own social media accounts offer a reach as large as — if not larger — than legacy media’s, allowing access to critical swing voters. Moreover, as Nixon (as well as Senate nominees in Maine, Michigan, and Minnesota) proved on Tuesday, high-energy grassroots campaigning must not be underestimated.

If Democratic leaders talk about “socialists’” role in the party (in part because some corporate Democrats fuel the left vs. center-left sniping by punching left rather than forging an anti-fascist common front), they should remember that voters do not agree on the meaning of “socialism,” let alone attach a negative connotation to the term. The party's leaders would be foolish to flyspeck the policy views of voters or candidates identifying as “socialists” who support the party’s basic agenda (e.g., extending healthcare access, halting the illegal war, upholding the rule of law).

As Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) said in his Atlanta speech on Sunday, Democrats need to present their campaign as a place “for everyone who craves sanity, competence, [and] quality public service.” Anyone irate that the Trump regime and its MAGA enablers make you “pay more for everything and took us to war on lies and spent most of last year trying to cover up for the world’s most famous pedophile while the crook president and his crook family rake[d] in billions” should feel right at home.

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On policy, Democratic leaders need not get tied up in knots debating the details of issues that will not get resolved before the 2028 election (e.g., Medicare for All). Their present task regarding healthcare is stopping MAGA’s assault on Medicare and Medicaid and fighting to restore Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Democrats should also seize the chance to flip the script when, as often happens, Trump’s accusations turn out to be nothing more than projection. Trump hollering about “communism” is deeply ironic, given his own infatuation with the most ruthless communist dictator on the planet, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Regarding Trump’s order to cancel or curtail military exercises with longtime ally South Korea, the New York Times reported:

President Trump denounced [joint summer military exercises], dealing yet another blow to the seven-decade-old alliance between Washington and Seoul. Under Mr. Trump, bilateral relations have already come under immense strain from ​his punishing tariffs on South Korean exports.​ And his transactional diplomacy has frustrated South Korea, most recently when he appeared to put Saudi Arabia on the path to enriching nuclear fuel on its own soil, a demand Seoul has made for years.

In recent years, North Korea has not only expanded its nuclear arsenal but also repeatedly threatened ​to use it against South ​Korea, labeling its neighbor ​a “most ​hostile enemy.” Its leader, Kim Jong-un, has also forged a mutual defense treaty with Moscow, dispatching troops and​ weapons to ​support Russia’s war against Ukraine. Despite these escalations, Mr. Trump, in a social media post, characterized North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful” while boasting of his “very good relationship” with Mr. Kim.​

Between Trump’s latest gift to the communist regime and his suck-uppery to China’s President Xi Jinping (at Taiwan’s expense), Trump and his congressional enablers deserve every ounce of condemnation Democrats can muster for his facilitation of communist aggression.

In addition, Democrats can be much more explicit about their commitment to reform (e.g., a mandatory Supreme Court ethics code and term limits) and oversight. In vowing to hold Trump — as well as his family, cronies, and Cabinet — accountable for malfeasance and gross incompetence, Democrats can underscore Republicans’ acquiescence in unprecedented corruption and their tolerance of life-endangering incompetence.

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Impeachment should remain on the table for the worst offenders. Since his confirmation, despite ample evidence of unfitness, Attorney General Todd Blanche showed up to campaign for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the GOP’s New York gubernatorial nominee. Blanche’s participation potentially violated the Hatch Act and was an outrageous breach of ethical norms expected from the top law enforcement official for all Americans. Blanche revels in his role as a political hack, while refusing to reassert the department’s independence (further highlighting the moral cowardice of Republicans such as Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who couldn’t bear to oppose his nomination).

Given that, plus Blanche’s ongoing flouting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Democrats should remain committed to investigating his conduct and pursuing impeachment. While they’re at it, they should explicitly remind Justice Department employees of their ethical and legal obligations to the Constitution, the courts, and the public. Regardless of what orders their MAGA bosses deliver, they too will have to answer for their conduct.

Democrats must reiterate that Blanche and other flagrantly incompetent and/or dishonest Cabinet members (e.g., RFK, Jr., who destroyed our national health infrastructure, or Pete Hegseth, who bollixed the war and corrupted military promotions) will not get a pass for lying, malicious assault on the rule of law, or stomach-turning malfeasance.

In sum, Democratic leaders’ task is to sustain an aggressive attack on the MAGA menace while keeping the flaps of the big tent wide open for all who want to defeat fascism. They should avoid feeding legacy media horserace storylines designed to highlight intraparty conflict. Instead, they must work 24/7 to forge the broadest pro-democracy coalition in history and relentlessly attack MAGA’s reckless, pro-communist foreign policy; domestic policy disasters; and relentless corruption.

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In an upset last night, democratic socialist candidate Angie Nixon won the nomination for Florida’s Senate seat, beating out Alex Vindman with more than 56% of the vote, Nixon’s win underscores the power of organizing.

Nixon talked about how she’s preparing for her general election fight against incumbent Ashley Moody, the importance of Medicare for All, and about Cafe Resistance: her thriving bookstore, cafe, and community hub.

That wasn’t the only big news out of Florida last night. Former Representative David Jolly [17:48] won the state’s gubernatorial primary and will be running against Trump toady Byron Daniels in the fall.

Jolly is a capitalist and a former Republican who now calls himself a proud Democrat, not a reluctant one.

We talked about his vision for defusing the culture wars in Florida and his agenda for championing affordability and the middle class.

David Jolly is leading that charge. Fresh off his victory last night, Jolly joins Tim to illustrate his vision for investing in Florida’s future. The Democratic nominee also hits at the government’s role in creating a sustainable system for everyone.

If you ask Jolly, Democrats have a real chance to take back the state this November. He argues that Floridians deserve real change, not to live in a nonstop culture war battlefield.

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David Jolly is the Democratic nominee in the race to become Florida’s governor. He previously served in Congress as a Republican. Jolly has also been a long-time political commentator on NBC and MSNBC.

The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.

Tim Dickinson

Hey, this is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is David Jolly, who is now the Democratic candidate for governor in Florida. David, welcome, and congratulations on your primary victory.

David Jolly

Thank you, good to be with you, Tim. I appreciate it.

Tim Dickinson

Did you get much sleep last night?

David Jolly

No. But, look, I’ve been through some races where nobody cares. I’ve actually won some races where nobody cares. It’s exciting to be in an environment where, you know, change is here, where the movement has launched, and I’m just one piece of that. I’m a candidate. None of this works if voters aren’t engaged and excited. So, yeah, big night in Florida on primary night. I do think change is here, and I think we’re in a position to win this race.

Tim Dickinson

Well, talk to me about that, because I think, you know, from the outside, Florida looks like a state that’s gotten red and is getting redder, and Ron DeSantis has turned the state into, like, a laboratory for the culture wars, and you’re preaching something different, and also seeing an opportunity here, so I wonder if you could talk to us about what is the opportunity you see to turn Florida back to the blue?

David Jolly

Yeah, I’ll give you the real Main Street answer, and then a little bit of political analysis. Look, the Main Street answer is people are desperate for answers to an economy that’s slipping away from us, and, you know, it’s easy to say affordability crisis, but the reality is, think about the pillars of people’s personal economic lives. Housing, healthcare, and education, those priorities. They shift often through the generations of one’s life. But if you think about the cost of housing in Florida, can you stay in your home because of an insurance market that has collapsed? If you’re a renter, can you live in the community in which you work? Now more people going without healthcare than ever before. And then a state that’s abandoned public education, where can you send your kids to school? Those are the basics of the grip of the economy.

Tim Dickinson

And then.

David Jolly

And we are a state, as you mentioned, that’s been a lab for some of these right-wing experiments. largely defined around the culture wars, and people are just exhausted by it. So, look, we were a deep red state four years ago, even 2 years ago, 13 or 14 points, but I’ll tell you we’re a purple state now, not just because of what we see in November, but the performance of all of our special elections in the last 18 months. Our two congressional specials swung by 15, 16 points, state legislative races by 20, the city of Miami elected a Democratic mayor, for the first time in 30 years, it wasn’t even close, it was 19 points. Deep red Sarasota, that wall is breaking. Mar-a-Lago elects a Democratic state representative. Hillsborough County replaces their Republican state senator, now Lieutenant Governor, with a Democrat with less than $100,000 to spend on his campaign. I say all that for this reason. Voters always tell us what they want. And right now, in 2026, in Florida, voters are saying, we want change. We want somebody to address our economic needs and just stay out of our personal lives. Voters tell us what they want. If Republicans had listened over the last two years, wouldn’t be in these straits, but they haven’t been listening. We’re building a campaign that is.

Tim Dickinson

When we talk about change, I’m looking at, you know, Donald Trump’s national polling numbers are as low as they’ve been. and your opponent, Byron Donald’s, like, real claim to fame is just being buddies with Trump. And so, here’s a guy who’s tied himself really extravagantly to the Commander-in-Chief. Trump’s numbers may be somewhat different in Florida, but I imagine that in itself creates a bit of an opening.

David Jolly

It does, but, you know, I saw a report. I don’t think he mentioned Donald Trump’s name once during his primary night speech. I think he mentioned me 5 or 6 times. He mentioned Mandami, he mentioned the economy. He didn’t mention Donald Trump. Look, what you’re gonna see is what’s typical in the sixth year of a presidency. You know, the president’s own party, the down-ballot candidates, run away from the president, and so… Yes, Donald Trump’s numbers are softening because the economy’s not working, but also, in the midst of a broken economy, we’re seeing the gilded ballrooms, we’re seeing the open corruption, if you will, that’s just been platformed, and so Byron Donald has to reconcile with that. Look, I’m not litigating the president in this race.

Tim Dickinson

But I…

David Jolly

I’m litigating the current state of our state and our country under this president. That’s what we’re all living through. Byron Donalds, he is known for two things. First, he’s Donald Trump’s guy, and second, honestly, in Florida, he’s been bought by every special interest that’s controlled our state for 30 years. The $100 million he’s received isn’t charity. It came from the data centers, the utility companies, the for-profit schools, the insurance companies that want to control the future of Florida.

Tim Dickinson

Now I’ve done some reporting in Tallahassee on the influence of the utility companies in particular, and it’s a place that gets wired by special interests, and I… then I was looking today at Byron Donalds has taken… you know, not only money from, like, in-state interest, but also can Griffin, like, some billionaire heavyweights, Jeff Glass, what is that… is that the kind of guy who is going to be thinking about the average voter when it comes to make decisions?

David Jolly

Yeah, look, I’m a reformer. I’m actually for the public financing of campaigns. I introduced a bill in Congress to prohibit members of Congress from asking for money. This is a real heartbeat of kind of my reform agenda, but… and so I don’t mean this as a cheap shot. Byron Donalds has just been bought by every special interest. He’s a vessel, right? If it wasn’t Byron, they would find somebody else to try to buy, and what does that mean for people’s economic lives? It means that when the hedge funds who are gobbling up real estate to put party houses and Airbnb houses in your neighborhood, and Congress goes to limit that, Byron Donalds votes against the bill, the bipartisan bill, one of only, like, 20 candidates. When the for-profit schools and the funds that back the schools, the big hedge funds, want to come in and take over education, Byron Donalds takes their money, and then he’s a school choice champion. It means when the big data centers want to be built, and he takes the utility money and the big tech money and the developers, he gives away, in his words, Florida’s pristine lands to build data centers. There is a downstream impact of Byron Donald’s decision makings. Listen, I say this, and I understand it’s a hard hit. Byron Donalds will sell the governorship for a buck. He already has. You know, a lot of people talk about his past indiscretions. He had some run-ins with the law when he was, you know, in his 20s. I say, look, I’ll give him grace. I don’t need to litigate the fact that he sold drugs to young kids in his 20s. I’m more worried he’s selling the Florida governorship right now.

Tim Dickinson

You are charting sort of a centrist path. You’re a former Republican, and I wonder, does that give you, like, a way to message Democratic politics, to a broader audience?

David Jolly

It’s a great question. I’m really in a post-ideological place, right? Former Republican, 6 or 7 years as an independent, one of the most informative parts of my political journey. Today, I say I’m a proud Florida Democrat, not a reluctant one. I believe in the values of our party, that the economy should work for everyone. That where the private sector can’t solve some things, housing, healthcare, education, sure, there’s a role for government. That’s the way we’ve approached this for the last hundred years, and I think we should simply respect everybody’s privacy. Keep government out of your bedroom, out of your life. So those are democratic values. But I’ve also suggested that those values are bigger than our party. If you’re an independent or a Republican who’s looking for economic answers, look, I think we need a state catastrophic fund for insurance, to reduce insurance by 60-70%, homeowners insurance. I think we need to scale up workforce and affordable housing, we need to scale up the direct delivery of healthcare, and we need to celebrate education. The interesting thing is, a lot of those policies, you know, are some very bold agenda items that Democrats would typically really embrace, and they’re glad to hear me talk about it, but Republicans are saying, well, Jolly just makes business sense. Right, a state catastrophic fund for homeowners insurance recognizes that the market has collapsed in the natural disaster state. Scaling up workforce and affordable housing creates a more resilient economy. Making sure more people have primary healthcare improves qualitative outcomes, but reduced costs in a state that is currently 49th in avoidable hospital costs. A celebration of public education allows us to lead the world in education, but it also strengthens our economy and changes lives. This is where I don’t litigate the left-right spectrum. We have big problems that need big solutions. A lot of those are celebrated, those solutions are celebrated in the Democratic Party, but they’re just smart public policies that Republicans and independents can say, look, if this is the platform, count me in. That’s why if the election were tonight, we’d win.

Tim Dickinson

I think so. I saw that you have a running mate in this race, this is Gwen Graham, right? Yes. It’s a big name from Florida politics. Can you talk about that partnership?

David Jolly

Yeah, you know, sometimes the Florida Lieutenant Governor position is overlooked. I would make the case it’s always overlooked. I wanted to reshape the Lieutenant Governor position, and I found in Gwen, one, a longtime friend, but a governing partner, capable of leading the state in her own right. demonstrating that in a moment of crisis, that we could have somebody in the lieutenant governor position to help lead a renaissance in education, to begin to work on housing and healthcare and the other economic needs. But of course, she comes from a family, you know, that is just legend in Florida politics, not simply because of name, but because of service. Her father, Governor and senator Bob Graham, represented an era where the governor just lifted every community up, fought for everybody across the state of Florida. Gwen served in the United States Congress, continuing that legacy, and she’ll do that as our next Lieutenant Governor as well.

Tim Dickinson

Just this morning, I talked to Angie Nixon, who is obviously a politician from the left in the same party, and I can think about this in sort of two different ways. One is there’s two different kinds of candidates in the statewide ballot who could get everybody energized and carry Democrats to victory, or there could be some tension there, and I wonder how you think about running under the same tent with someone whose views might be quite different from yours.

David Jolly

Sure. You know, I’ve been out of politics for 10 years. I say I’ve been out of politics long enough to tell the truth. And you’re exactly right. Angie Nixon and I are very different candidates in some respects. So, look, I reject socialism. I’m capitalist. I reject the DSA. I don’t agree with the values of the DSA. Here’s what I do know about Angie Nixon. Just as I’ve been in every community around the state, so has she. She’s been in every community, in every town hall, in every civic center, talking about improving people’s economic fortunes and improving their life, whether it’s housing, healthcare, education. So I think there’s going to be areas where you’re going to see all of our Democratic nominees focused on the affordability crisis, but with specific solutions in housing, healthcare, and education. But let’s keep it real, keep it honest. There are going to be some areas where Angie and I have strong disagreements. Now, a lot of those disagreements are also the differences between a Senate race and a governor’s race. So I don’t need to worry about those disagreements as much as I need to worry about what’s the future of Florida as the next governor. And look, I would also say, politically, I’m not running for governor to referee a family conversation in the Democratic Party. I’m running to… I’m not. I’m running to lead the state of Florida as a Democratic governor, and when I do that. I demonstrate how I think that the Democratic Party can continue to grow, and can continue to lead.

Tim Dickinson

As you reflect back on 8 years now of DeSantis governance, what are the top things that come to mind in terms of approaches that would be very different?

David Jolly

Well, let’s start with where we’re the same, because Florida’s a state of incredible economic growth. We should continue it. I want South Florida to be the finance capital of the world. I want us to continue to bring in jobs and industry. But I think where the real difference is, is there has not been the concentration, call it, on the middle class, or those in most need of economic growth and economic mobility. You could argue, statistically, we’re becoming the Hamptons in too many parts of Florida. Where those who are doing well continue to do well, but others are being kind of frozen out by this K-shaped recovery. You’re losing your home because of an insurance market that Tallahassee and DeSantis have really refused to do anything about. You can’t live in the community in which you work because we haven’t invested in workforce and affordable housing. You can’t get healthcare because we have not sufficiently funded the clinics that can provide primary healthcare. And we’re a state that’s attacked and abandoned education, public education. So, a lot of differences there. I would also say everyone knows Florida’s the home of the culture war. I just think it should end. Look, I’m a person of deep Christian faith. I speak of that often. I recognize my role of governor is to protect the religious liberty of everybody, whether you practice a faith or not. But I say it because whether it’s rooted in faith that you believe everybody deserves dignity, or whether it is Jefferson’s natural rights of man, we gotta get past the culture wars, be a state where everyone’s welcome and everyone’s lifted up.

Tim Dickinson

I’ve seen you talk about, reverting back to more local control, and I mean, the Republican Party that I sort of saw growing up was about getting, you know, getting government off your back, not getting them in your community, but having liberty from government, and the focus seems to have changed, where the government’s now trying to get in here and say, you can’t paint a crosswalk with rainbow colors or something. That’s right. So help me understand how you see a tradition, sort of like a through line in your views about local control.

David Jolly

Yeah, look, I call it big government conservatism right now. You’re seeing it in Washington, you’re seeing it in Tallahassee. And, you know, one of the reasons we’re bringing so many Republicans over is not only do I still believe in some of the tenets that I had when I was a Republican, but I actually defend them more than Republicans do today. Two big examples. Yeah, look, two big examples are local control. Remember the language, government closest to the people knows best. I think the state should have a very limited role when it comes to local decisions. The only areas really being in environmental protections that have an outsized impact on the state’s natural resources, particularly water, and then obviously in areas of protecting personal liberty if a community were to move in a direction that violates personal liberty. But otherwise, the role of the state is to invest in and to fund the priorities of local communities And let them determine how to grow their own community, how to celebrate their own. The other language I use about ending the culture wars is really old-school Republican-libertarian language. Just keep government out of your life, out of your bedroom, out of your doctor’s office, out of your library. And so, you know, Republicans say, oh, jolly, he’s this radical. I’m not a radical, I’m an old-school Republican. I’m not even cool. And the language I use sounds familiar to a lot of old-school Republicans who are saying, wait a minute. This guy, Jolly, he’s a Democrat, but he’s talking about local control. He’s talking about keeping government out of your life. He’s a capitalist that believes in the private sector, but recognizes Where there are gaps, there is a role for government in housing, healthcare, and education. Maybe it’s how our politics used to be, right? I was a bit of a Bush 41 Republican. I think I probably never really strayed from there. You could pull some progressive or some conservative votes and say, oh, Jolly, was this, that, or the other. My roots are kind of in that Bush 41 era, and I’ll tell you this, the funny thing is, that was the first major campaign I worked on, Bush 41. And in 92, you know, we were told Clinton was the devil, and Clinton was radical, and Clinton wanted to nationalize healthcare, and gays in the military, and all this stuff, and as a young campaign staffer, I thought, oh, we gotta beat Bill Clinton, right? You look at it now, I’m not sure what the difference was between Bush 41 and Bill Clinton. Back in the day when our politics actually had this… the VIN diagram overlapped at least enough that we all agreed the economy should grow, government had some role, whatever you thought that role might be, and yes, let’s extend liberty and dignity to the most number of people. Look, it’s a story of our national trend in politics over the last 30 years, but I think there’s a coalition now emerging in American politics. It’s starting right here in Florida, big enough to change the future of the country.

Tim Dickinson

Well, David, it’s been just extraordinary to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time. Do you have any closing thoughts you want to leave with our listeners and our viewers?

David Jolly

Now, keep an eye on Florida. We can win this race, we’re up in the polls, and sure, I need your help. If you like what you hear, go to davidjolly.com, be a part of our campaign.

Tim Dickinson

Alright, well, thank you for joining us on the Contrarian. We’ll see you next time.

David Jolly

Thank you. Good to be with you.

Tim Dickinson

Good to be with you.

Michael de Adder is an award-winning editorial cartoonist. You can find him on Substack here.

In October 2024, Israel’s war on Gaza had been raging for one year, and Poh Si Teng was in despair over what she saw as widespread indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

“Nothing was changing,” said Teng, then an executive at ABC News Studios. She decided to quit her job and put her two decades of journalism experience to use. “Maybe I can make a film, to move the needle on things, to get people to start thinking about Gaza and Palestine,” she recalled in a video interview from her home in New York.

She then heard Dr. Mark Perlmutter — a Jewish American doctor who had recently volunteered in Gaza — speak at a fundraiser for a medical charity. “I looked around the room, and everybody was quiet and weeping silently,” she said. Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon, introduced Teng to two other doctors who treated Palestinians on the frontlines: Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American emergency doctor from Chicago, and Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California who was raised in a Pakistani Parsi family that practiced Zoroastrianism.

“I remember thinking to myself how these three men couldn’t be more different,” said Teng. It was the perfect hook for a documentary: three American doctors, from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, caring for Palestinians injured in a war enabled by the American government.

Nearly two years later, Teng’s kernel of an idea has come to fruition as American Doctor.

The documentary, now playing in New York and expanding across the country over the next month, follows the trio of physicians as they travel to Gaza — or attempt to — to care for patients during a tenuous ceasefire. (Despite previous trips there, Ahmad is denied permission to re-enter and must advocate from afar.)

As different as they are in background and personality, the doctors share a sense of purpose and feel compelled to speak out about the atrocities they witnessed on the ground.

Inspired by his father, who cared for Holocaust survivors in liberated concentration camps, Perlmutter is determined to stop what he considers another genocide. Ahmad takes a heartfelt, humanistic approach. “I am not ‘pro’ anything,” he says in the film. “I’m a Palestinian who wants to see babies that look like my babies not be killed anymore.” By comparison, Sidhwa is the calm, cerebral one, with a longstanding intellectual interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“I approach it as an American, as a humanitarian, as a doctor, as a witness,” Sidhwa said in a joint interview with Teng.

Filmed over several months beginning in December 2024, American Doctor brings viewers inside Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, where Perlmutter, Sidhwa, and a team of Palestinian healthcare workers care for patients under harrowing conditions.

In one particularly dramatic sequence, they operate on an injured ten-year-old girl who faces the potential amputation of both legs and an arm. American Doctor is as nerve-wracking as an episode of The Pitt, with the tension heightened by the looming threat of an Israeli missile attack. (A strike in August 2025, which killed more than 20 people, including five journalists, is chronicled in the film.)

The similarities between American Doctor and popular TV dramas like ER and Grey’s Anatomy are intentional, Teng said. “I watch and binge on all these shows. There’s something about good-looking doctors and mortality that people just can’t stop watching. In the conceptualization of this film I thought, ‘I’m gonna make The Pitt.’ The difference is, it’s real. It’s set in Gaza, and this is how we’re going to bring Palestine back to the United States.”

Though Teng has produced and commissioned numerous documentaries, American Doctor marks her directorial debut. Making the film was no easy feat: for starters, she was not personally able to film in Gaza (although Perlmutter, ever the optimist, offered to bring her along as his scrub nurse). Instead, she hired co-producer Mohammed Sawwaf and director of photography Ibrahim Al-Otla to be her eyes and ears on the ground.

“Everything that was filmed in Gaza is a result of their work and their sacrifice, filming at a time when literally there were bombs falling over, and there was a blockade,” she said.

One of the more salient themes in American Doctor is how each doctor talks about Gaza based on their religious and ethnic background, and how conscious they are of what they can and cannot say because of who they are. Aware that his identity grants him certain privilege, Perlmutter is the most uncensored and incendiary of the three physicians. As he says in the film, “I gain an audience because I have a white face.” Ahmad is more cautious and notes that Perlmutter uses language, particularly regarding Zionism, that he would get “crushed for.”

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Sidhwa says he is “not a religious person at all,” though he has spent decades learning as much as he can about the Israel-Palestine conflict. “Before I was even a physician, I approached it as an American, wanting to know what’s actually going on, what is my government’s involvement in it, and then discovering that I, like most people, very adamantly disagree with what the government is doing with our money; with our diplomatic corps.”

“It’s not the American way to just say ‘Oh well, the government can do whatever it wants,” he said. “That’s not in line with my values or what I was raised to understand are the values of the United States.”

He was in college when the Second Intifada broke out, followed by Sept 11th and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, fueling his curiosity about the region’s geopolitics. He decided to spend a year living in Israel, working at an Arab-Jewish cooperative, and was inspired by an Israeli physician who treated Palestinian patients and worked alongside Palestinian doctors.

Since becoming a doctor himself, Sidhwa has volunteered in conflict zones including Ukraine and Haiti, and has visited the Palestinian territories multiple times, including a stint in Gaza in spring 2024. Later that year, he published a devastating New York Times article about healthcare workers in Gaza who reported treating a high number of children with fatal gunshot wounds to the head or chest.

Sidhwa believes that it’s important for him, as a physician, to advocate for patients, not merely tend to their physical ailments.

“Physicians, especially trauma surgeons, are natural witnesses to crimes in many ways,” he said. “If your patients live next to a factory that’s blowing carcinogenic smoke into the air, and they’re getting lung cancer, you’re supposed to go to the city government and say, look, you should put this factory somewhere else.”

Gaza is different from other conflict zones, he said, noting that the territory is smaller than the city of Kyiv, where he has also spent time. “The entire power — not only of the Israeli military, but of the United States military — has been unleashed on this tiny little place. This tiny little place is an enclave surrounded by barbed wire and populated by 50 percent children,” he said. “You don’t need to know much else about what’s going on to know that that’s not going to work out well.”

The most important thing, in Sidhwa’s view, is that we are the ones paying for this. “It’s American airplanes burning American jet fuel to drop American bombs outfitted with American guidance systems on targets that are mostly selected by AI software that was developed in the United States, mostly in the Bay Area, near where I live. We don’t have to accept that as Americans. We don’t have to continue feeding the destruction of these people. We could just stop doing that.”

The film follows Sidhwa and his peers as they meet with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., who are largely unwilling to reconsider their unflinching support for Israel. At one point, a defeated Sidhwa calls his advocacy “useless.” A year later, public sentiment around Israel and Palestine has shifted rapidly, something Sidhwa has noticed, as American Doctor has been warmly welcomed at festival screenings from San Francisco to Columbia, Missouri.

“If people are willing to listen and if there’s enough popular pressure, then governmental officials might have to start listening,” he said. “I hope I can make that kind of difference through this film.”

Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian

Last night, her $975k campaign beat a $16.2 million campaign, making the former single mom and union organizer the Democratic nominee for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat. Nixon beat out Alex Vindman, Former Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council, and earned over 56 percent of the vote, underscoring the growing appetite for progressive policy nationwide.

In one of her first post-victory interviews, Nixon sits down with Tim Dickinson to talk general election preparation against Republican incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody. Nixon explains the importance of making life affordable for Floridians, and discusses Cafe Resistance — her thriving bookstore, cafe, and community hub.

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Angie Nixon is the Democratic nominee from Florida for the U.S. Senate. She is a State Representative in Florida and previously served as a union organizer.

The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.

Tim Dickinson

Hey, this is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is fresh off a stunning victory in Florida to become the Senate nominee for the Democratic Party. Angie Nixon, welcome to The Contrarian.

Angie Nixon

Hey, I am so happy to be here.

Tim Dickinson

You won under the slogan, Change Can’t Wait, and it’s provocative, and I wonder if you could just tell us a bit about yourself in the context of that slogan, and just introduce yourself to our listeners and our viewers.

Angie Nixon

Yeah, for sure. So, change can’t wait. I am a lifelong Floridian, born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. I watched my mom struggle to make sure that me and my brother had food on the table and a roof over my… over our heads. And right now, I am a married woman with 5 kids, me and my husband have a blended family. And I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a state lawmaker for 6 years, but before that, I was a union organizer and a community organizer. And I actually am proof positive of what happens when you invest in members of the community to become community leaders that would later become lawmakers. And what’s so interesting about my trajectory as a state lawmaker is that, I really only file legislation that would actually help benefit the community, because it comes from the community, right? And I believe that hard-working, everyday people should get to shape what our economies look like and what our communities look like. And right now, what’s happening is. we have corrupt politicians in DC, like the unelected Ashley Moody’s of the world and Donald Trump, who are so out of touch with everything that’s happening right now, because they get to work less and less. Meanwhile, we are working harder than ever, us everyday working families, with very little to show for it, and also. Basically, kind of struggling just to stay afloat. And so, I am, running for United States Senate because I believe now is the time to send bold fighters to Washington, D.C, who are gonna stand up and push back against all of the chaos and corruption that’s happening at the hands of Ashley Moody and Donald Trump. You see, Ashley Moody is someone who is only beholden to these corrupt corporations. She actually voted to end the ACA subsidies, which knocked off nearly 300,000 people in the state of Florida off of the Affordable Care Act rolls. And she also made our… that also made, private insurance, Folks, their private insurance premiums to go up. And what else Ashley Moody did that was very corrupt was she allowed Ron DeSantis to divert $10 million of funding that should have gone towards the most medically needy kids in our state to be used to defeat two citizen-led ballot initiatives in our state that would have helped improve the health and well-being of residents here in Florida. And so she is not someone who should be our U.S. Senator. She is someone who honestly needs to be investigated and possibly locked away for basically taking advantage and utilizing money that was supposed to go and help people help our children, get healthy, right? And so, that’s a little bit about me and why I’m running. I know I just gave you a mouthful.

Tim Dickinson

No, I appreciate it. I really… I like it when guests burst out of the gate, because it helps us get a sense of your fire, which I think is partly… Must be part of your secret sauce here, because you were outspent, I think, 16 to 1, is what I read. And so help us understand a little bit, like, mechanically, how did you win the state of Florida against somebody who was sort of handpicked by the establishment and had so much backing?

Angie Nixon

Tim, let me tell you. So, I have been an organizer, organizing in this state for nearly two decades, so I have been able to build a very diverse and large coalition of people all across the state of Florida who know how to organize and know how to run an old-fashioned organizing, grassroots, organizing a ground game. But what’s even more important, Tim, to note is that I was a single mama for 12 years. So I know how to make a dollar stretch, okay? And I was able to stretch. We actually crossed the million dollar mark. I was able to make that dollar stretch like it was probably 15, and so I am going to continue to do that, but we are happy because we’re getting a lot more attention based on the fact that we had this massive upset that we knew was gonna happen, we just didn’t know it was gonna be by that much. But we’ve been able to fundraise off of, this win, and we know that we’re gonna have what we need to unseat Ashley Moody and also make her get ready to call me U.S. Senator.

Tim Dickinson

The president on True Social last night referred to you as a radical left lunatic, among some other nonsense that he added to that. I’m out here in Portland, Oregon. The idea that someone calls them a democratic socialist doesn’t have a lot of sting out here, but I imagine in South Florida, maybe that has a little bit of a sting. Do you want to contextualize your politics and your association with the DSA?

Angie Nixon

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I just recently joined the DSA because I was asked. I also just recently joined Working Family Party, and the reason I joined those organizations is because they believe how… I believe in how the majority of Americans feel that housing is a right. They believe that we should all have access to affordable healthcare, as well as fully funded public schools. I also believe that we need to get rid of the corruption and hold people accountable if they are lawmakers and doing the wrong things, and they believe in transparency. Now, the only lunatic, I would say, would honestly be Donald Trump, who is actually, going off on tangents and threatening judges, and he needs to get checked out. And as a matter of fact. I just think he possibly needs to be arrested. And for him to say, I am this left-wing lunatic when I simply want people to have housing is very disrespectful and disingenuous. And so, I just want folks to know that they should not allow people’s labels to deter them. They should worry about the fact that I care about people’s needs, and I have a proven track record of doing such. And so, I am not going to let Donald Trump deter me from going out having conversations with millions of Floridians here in this state. to let them know that I am their only hope to actually drive down these costs, and to make their lives better here in the state of Florida.

Tim Dickinson

You’re somebody who… who… I got arrested in a protest at a sit-in at Ron DeSantis’ office, protesting. the egregious redistricting plan. Can you talk to us a little bit about, you know, you have this role as a lawmaker, but you’re also willing to sort of take a more grassroots approach, as it were, to drawing attention to an important issue?

Angie Nixon

Tim, you know, the late, great Congressman John Lewis said, sometimes it’s necessary to get in some good trouble, you know, that necessary trouble. And Donald Trump asked Ron DeSantis to rig maps so that he could have the, the elected officials, the chambers that he needed. He wanted them to be read, because he’s fearful that he has gone quite too far. And so, I am someone who is clearly a Black woman, and I come from people, elders, who some are still alive. Who faced death. who faced… the bludgeoning of axe handles, simply because they wanted to gain their right to vote, and gain the right for someone like me to be a sitting state lawmaker and a future U.S. senator. And I could not sit idly by, as I witnessed. Ron DeSantis and Republican legislators here in the state of Florida want to take away our ability to decide who would represent us. and allow these politicians to decide who their voters were. And so, I did lead a peaceful protest. And right now, we are boldly being attacked, Tim, and in this moment, it does not require us to continually send strongly worded emails. People are actively being shot and killed on the streets by masked people that are, they are law enforcement officers, you know, ICE, and they are on camera, and they’re not being held accountable. Our democracy is being actively destroyed. I’m not gonna sit idly by and not say anything. I’m going to work to galvanize our country, galvanize people outside, and I’ll organize people on the inside so that we can have an inside-outside strategy to actually build a new vision for our country, one where every family has stability, and one where every worker has dignity. And that has been resonating with people, and that is what’s going to save our country.

Tim Dickinson

The polling shows this is going to be an uphill fight, and I suppose having just won an uphill fight, you maybe have some confidence about it. What gives you the confidence, especially in Ron DeSantis’ Florida, right? This is a state that has been trending redder and redder, that the state is ready to elect someone like you to be the senator.

Angie Nixon

So, this state is not red. This state has not been invested in. the only polls that I care about are the polls on Election Day, and that was evident because of what just happened last night. And so, I am going to unseat Ashley Moody. She should be very concerned. Ashley Moody does not like talking to people. She only goes on, news stations where they are favorable. I will go any and everywhere if it is for the benefit of my people, and my people are everyone in the state of Florida. And I’m gonna look out for them because I have their back, I know what we deserve, and I look forward to engaging them into our campaign. We have amassed over 30,000 volunteers to sign up, and several, I would say. Over 10,000 have signed up since last night, and so people are ready for change. They like what I’m talking about, but more importantly, they like that not only do I talk the talk, I walk the walk. And so I’m ready to, be 10 toes down with them, get my hands dirty so that we can actually win this thing come November.

Tim Dickinson

Would you tell us about your bookstore?

Angie Nixon

Yeah!

Tim Dickinson

Cafe.

Angie Nixon

Oh, you mean the one that she did not state correctly? It is not called Resistance Cafe. It is called Cafe Resistance Bookstore and Coffee Shop, and we are a community hub which, sells books, we sell coffee, we sell healthy food options. We also are a third space Where we do free tutoring and free mental health workshops. We have a free mentorship program for Black boys, because there has been this negative connotation out there that Black boys are a problem, and so we want to dispel that and really uplift and feed into our young Black men, and we have a ton of Black mentors that are helping with that program. We also offer free, Black history lessons, because, you know, Ron DeSantis doesn’t like to allow us to be taught, our children to be taught, true and accurate history here, and so we provide free Black history lessons. We also provide free, music lessons for, neighborhood residents as well, and so we are a a pretty cool place. We give away free Plan B to those that needed free condoms, and we’re excited to have a staked a claim in the Northside community, where I was born and raised at, in Jacksonville, and people love us there, and we’re gonna continue on. Would love to pop some more up across the state in the South, so that we can actually, use it to organize and build power within our communities.

Tim Dickinson

Some of the things on your platform, Medicare for All, in particular, are not supported by the, sort of, leadership of the Democratic Party. I’m imagining you’re getting to the U.S. Senate, and then what? How do you fight for these policies in a body that is sort of resistant to the change that you’re calling for?

Angie Nixon

Because I’m coming to the United States Senate with nearly 25 million people alongside me who want Medicare for All, and we are going to work to organize them to be louder and to actually put pressure on lawmakers. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat, I am going to help organize the state of Florida to pressure lawmakers to do the right things that will benefit them, and so that’s how we’re gonna get things passed.

Tim Dickinson

I’m conscious of our time and that you’ve had very little sleep in the last 24 hours. The final thoughts, introductions that you want to make sure that people come away understanding about you and your candidacy?

Angie Nixon

Yeah, I just want people to know that, I am a Florida girl through and through. I love my state. I’m looking forward to, like, Mayor, Mayor Mamdani did, when he won, the New York Knicks became the NBA champions. I’m looking forward that when I become the next United States Senator, that the Jacksonville Jaguars are gonna win the NFL championship. So, that’s all I have to say. I’ve said enough, but I just want to say thank you for having me on your show. I want people to lean in and join our People Power Campaign at AngieNixon.com. Donate, sign up to volunteer, follow us on social media at Angie4FL, Angie for Florida. And let’s make history… again.

Tim Dickinson

Well, Angie, thank you so much for your time and your passion, and for joining us here on The Contrarian.

Angie Nixon

Thank you, Tim!

The Democrats’ “hang together or hang separately” ethos has carried over into the current Congress. They’ve played their weak hand pretty well — using procedural maneuvers to force and win votes on everything from ending the Iran War to releasing the Epstein files to canceling Trump’s tariffs. The Republicans, on the other hand, despite controlling all branches of government, have led the least productive Congress in modern history, with surprisingly little of the Trump/MAGA agenda etched into permanent law.

In some ways, this is good. A competent pro-Trump majority would have enacted laws codifying his tariffs, his cancellation of foreign aid, his mass deportations without due process, and voter-suppression schemes. Instead, federal courts have stymied him again and again by enforcing laws Congress has left in place.

In other ways, the dysfunction hurts. There was a time when self-respecting members of Congress would have stood up to blatant corruption even by a president of their party; not this group of Republicans. Nor have they shown any interest in bipartisan deals on big challenges (as pre-Trump Republicans often did). So, immigration remains broken; we’re fighting climate change with air conditioning; artificial intelligence lacks guardrails; and no one expects this Congress to act. It’s a good day when it merely keeps the government open. (Even partisan Republican bills aren’t passing — Sen. Ted Cruz, of all people, has complained that House Republicans are not taking up any bills that passed the Senate. In fact, the current House has passed only 21 percent of Senate passed bills — the lowest rate this century —despite Republican control of both houses. Overall, the current Republican Congress under Trump has enacted fewer bills than any in the last 50 years — even fewer than a Republican majority managed under Joe Biden!)

That’s one reason why I think Republicans will lose the House and Senate in November. But what will the Democrats do if they win? Every American working for that goal should have a realistic sense of what can and can’t be achieved.

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Let’s start with the realism.

In 2027, Donald Trump will still control the regulatory arms of government and wield a veto pen. The narrow majorities Democrats can hope to win will not be enough to overcome GOP filibusters in the Senate or to override Trump vetoes of whatever bills they pass. We should also remember that if Democrats do win majorities, the margin they’ll need to pass anything will come from newly elected members representing purple states and districts, who will be more cautious than the Democratic base demands. (One wild card here is that Trump has asked Senate Republicans to get rid of the filibuster this year to pass his horrible voter suppressing SAVE Act. I’d go along with that if I were in the Senate — even at the risk letting more GOP bills pass for what’s left of this congressional term — and then take full advantage if Democrats win the majority next year. But I doubt Senate Republicans will actually be dumb enough to let this happen with almost no time left before the midterms, so I’m assuming here that the filibuster will stay in place.)

Still, there will be big opportunities. Let’s look at four possible lines of effort:

Investigating

Democrats chairing investigative committees (like Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who will likely lead the House and Senate Judiciary committees) will have subpoena power and a target-rich environment: The president’s crypto schemes and other money-making foreign deals. The alleged selling of pardons. Shakedowns of American companies to fund vanity projects. Selling advance notice of policy announcements to Wall Street investors. Denying federal grants to states that voted for Democrats. Defiance of court orders.

The purpose of investigations should be to deter, not just shame. Yes, Trump may eventually pardon his partners in crime. But that won’t protect them from state-level prosecution or from U.S. sanctions (if they’re foreign nationals), or shield companies involved in corrupt acts from criminal and financial penalties. Congressional committees can build an evidentiary case for action by a future administration and signal that henceforth anyone with something to gain or lose from the U.S. government who buys Trump bitcoin or a piece of his ballroom will be exposed, questioned, and potentially held accountable. That’s a risk I expect a lot fewer people will take starting in 2027.

Blocking

From 2019 to 2020, Democrats controlled only the House of Representatives, but that was enough to prevent first-term Trump from getting a single bill through Congress without their assent. In his last two years, if Democrats win even just one chamber, there will be no more gutting of federal programs and agencies, no more tax breaks for billionaires, no additional restrictions on voting rights, no new tariff authorities, and no money for ballrooms or statues.

If Democrats win the Senate, there will also be no new Supreme Court justices and no more MAGA loyalists who’d rule that two plus two equals five if Trump asked them to. This is especially important because, if blocked by Congress, Trump will double down on unconstitutional executive orders that will have to be struck down by the courts.

Fixing

Can a 2027 Democratic majority undo any of Trump’s policies and abuses of power? Yes, within limits. The best chances will come when Congress takes up bills that everyone agrees must become law: appropriations bills to fund the government, the annual national defense bill, the farm bill (which was supposed to get done this year), and the next extension of the federal debt ceiling, likely next year.

Members of Congress often attach their legislative priorities to these “must-pass” bills. To get their riders considered, Republicans will need to accept some of what the Democrats want, so there will be room for negotiation to get the filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate even on some things (if not many) that Trump doesn’t like. The trick for Democrats will be to choose their battles, setting up potential veto confrontations with Trump that he’ll lose in the court of public opinion or prefer to avoid.

The first test may be a government funding bill early next year. If that doesn’t pass, or if Trump vetoes it, the government will shut down. Democrats may use it to force a fight on restoring the devastating cuts to Medicaid that will hit Americans in January, 2027, or at least to ease their impact. They could try to prohibit Trump from shifting resources and personnel from real law enforcement to chasing non-criminal immigrants and to add restrictions on ICE operations that moderate Republicans can accept. They could restore some of the aid to Ukraine that Trump axed. They could make it harder for the president to refuse to spend money that Congress appropriates. They could deny non-essential funding to the Supreme Court until it adopts an ethics code.

The farm bill will give Democrats a chance to demand restoration of SNAP nutrition benefits for low-income kids. In the defense bill, Democrats could strengthen existing provisions that prevent Trump from abandoning our allies and go after his corrupt foreign dealings. Would he veto a bill that gives our troops a pay raise if it also prohibits him from personally accepting crypto payments from foreign countries? Maybe! But that would be a good fight to have.

Imagining

The first ten bills Democrats introduce in January 2027 probably won’t become law while Trump is president. Their aim will be to show Americans what unites the party and what it hopes to do if it wins back the White House in 2028. I’d expect a big focus on lowering healthcare and energy costs, a pragmatic and humane immigration bill, anti-corruption and other laws to prevent future abuse of presidential powers, electoral and campaign finance reforms, a vision for rebuilding demolished and demoralized federal agencies, and, I hope, a comprehensive effort to safeguard artificial intelligence. Come to think of it, there may be a chance to legislate on that last one in 2027 and 2028 given how much Americans of both parties worry about AI — especially as Trump’s power diminishes.

It will be essential to remember that the mission of the next Congress, if Democrats earn control, will be to keep things from getting worse and to restore checks and balances, so that the long process of renewal can begin. It will not be to resolve the argument between centrist and progressive Democrats — if either side prioritizes winning power in the party over winning power for the party, the opportunity will be lost. In short, the Democratic majority’s task will be to save America, not to change it; the more fundamental change Americans demand will require winning the White House, too.

I’m optimistic that Democrats will rise to an occasion that demands discipline and unity, because they’ve done it consistently these past few years. And we’ll all be there to remind them if they falter.

If you have any questions, please pose them in the comments and I’ll try to respond.

Tom Malinowski is a former member of Congress from New Jersey who was an assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration.