Opinions
Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and the deeply unsatisfying matter of re-litigating their trial
The series was panned by critics
On Aug. 16, Netflix released a three-part docuseries revisiting last summer’s televised civil litigation over allegations that Amber Heard had defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp by claiming to have survived sexual violence and domestic abuse during their four-year relationship.
Rather than offering anything new by way of insight or analysis from anyone with relevant qualifications or experience, each episode features clips from some of the online “creators” who turned their hot takes on the trial into a veritable cottage industry of amateur legal commentary and courtroom conspiracy theories, feeding the rapacious demand for anti-Heard and pro-Depp content. (As if to underscore the project’s unseriousness, these included a men’s rights YouTuber who wore a Deadpool mask and was surrounded by Spider-Man costumes.)
Worse still, “Depp v. Heard” director Emma Cooper fails not only to answer but also to even ask the obvious questions that have lingered since a verdict was returned more than 14 months ago by seven jurors in northern Virginia who were not sequestered as the case became, by far, the most popular topic on social media and online platforms.
At the same time, however, the episodes include footage of courtroom testimony that offer a glimpse, though incomplete, into some of the trial’s more salient and dispositive moments that I otherwise would never have seen (with neither the time nor the inclination, either last year or now, to follow 120+ hours of argument by the parties presented over the course of a seven-week trial.)
Do these scenes redeem the series? Hardly. But that does not mean they offer nothing of value, especially considering that while this was not the retelling of last summer’s events that we deserve, it remains the only one we’ve got. At least, for now.
Susan Sontag, in her 1977 collection of essays “On Photography,” proclaimed “The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”
In “Depp v. Heard,” the cameras facilitate a very specific kind of tourism that feels both exploitative and voyeuristic, because the reality in which we find ourselves trespassing is dark: the unraveling of a relationship between movie stars through patterns of dysfunction and abuse both familiar and alien, knowable and unknowable, like a city you have visited but never called home.
Especially when coupled with the more outrageous moments from trial that made headlines at the time – such as the debate over whether Heard defecated on Depp’s bed and blamed his teacup Yorkshire Terrier – there is a temptation to treat footage of testimony concerning the smashing of liquor bottles and hurling of wine glasses, the shoving and taunting and threats, even the physical and sexual violence, as though it were pure spectacle.
However, this would suggest, wrongly, that the painful realities of the actors’ relationship are so far removed from our lived experiences that we do not, cannot, or should not relate to them. As if a seven-week trial adjudicating the conflicts in our own intimate relationships or those involving the people we love would not turn up evidence of trouble and dysfunction, or worse.
Considering that we are primed to pick winners and losers and heroes and villains, perhaps it was unsurprising that incomplete and selectively edited footage from the case provided ample fodder for Instagram reels and TikTok videos that were created in the service of narratives that, most often, favored Depp and vilified Heard.
For me, witnessing these scenes in their proper context revealed a picture so much more complicated and, frankly, ugly that the prospect of framing the case in this manner seemed as preposterous as the idea that audiences leaving a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” should find themselves allied with either Martha or George.
To take just one example: From the witness stand, Heard recounted how she would often return home to their shared Los Angeles penthouse to find Depp nodding off in a chair because he had washed Roxicodone down with whiskey, or lying supine on the sofa fully unconscious with melted ice cream pooled in his lap. Worried about her husband’s apparent substance use disorder and unsure how best to help, the actress admitted she would sometimes take photos of him and share the pictures with a trusted friend.
Or, Depp’s attorney asked, was she just trying to humiliate him? Or, online commentators asked (often rhetorically), was this a calculated and premeditated move to collect evidence she would use against Depp in litigation or for purposes of extorting him?
As if these motives are mutually exclusive.
Having experienced the pain of watching loved ones spiraling in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction, I can tell you why I suspect Heard took the photos, but of course the reality is neither I nor anyone else – perhaps not even she – has any clue.
Last year, so much of the online noise about the trial came from content creators who made specious arguments to poke holes in the credibility of Heard’s testimony or alleged ulterior, sinister hidden motives based on the actress’s countenance, demeanor, speech, and other behavior.
For example, in clips that were often selectively edited or presented outside of their proper context, Heard might have seemed to cry more hysterically upon realizing the cameras were trained on her, which were used as supposed proof that her claims of suffering abuse at the hands of her ex-husband must therefore be fabricated.
Watching the footage in the manner presented on screen in “Depp v. Heard,” it becomes even more obvious how silly these interpretations were. In reality, of course, no one – not even police officers, trial court judges, F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents, trial lawyers or forensic psychiatrists – can reliably spot when someone is lying to them.
However convincing some YouTuber may have been, and however comforting the idea that we are able to see through the lies of others, I’m sorry to tell you the research on this is overwhelming and uncontested.
As Malcolm Gladwell observes in “Talking to Strangers,” Amanda Knox was falsely convicted for a murder she did not commit because “much of the prosecution’s case…rested on the allegedly strange, guilty behavior she exhibited,” which “the public deemed not in line with typical responses to grief and trauma.”
The cameras did not tell the complete story.
Well before 2022, private details about Depp and Heard’s troubled relationship had spilled onto the pages of tabloids like The Sun, which called Depp a “wife beater” in a 2018 story alleging that “overwhelming evidence was filed to show Johnny Depp engaged in domestic violence against his wife.” After he sued the paper for defamation, London’s High Court of Justice ruled against the actor in 2020, concluding the claims at issue were “substantially true.”
Still, last summer’s litigation between the actors earned far more public attention and unearthed far more (and far more titillating) private information, causing, therefore, far more damage than the supermarket rags and gossip blogs – as well as, ironically, the financial and reputational damage resulting from the very defamation claims that were adjudicated at trial.
As a reminder, Depp sued his ex-wife for a 2018 opinion article in the Washington Post in which she had written, “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Heard was referencing the backlash against, essentially, identical claims she made in a statement after securing a restraining order against Depp following their divorce in 2016. (“During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me,” she wrote.)
In so many cases including this one, intimate partner abuse is messy. An audio recording of one of the couple’s arguments shows Heard acknowledging she had struck her ex-husband but denying that she punched him. Her testimony, meanwhile, detailed serious violent crimes, including that Depp had thrown her into a ping pong table and repeatedly hit her in the face before sexually assaulting her with a liquor bottle that may have been broken.
Of course, assuming their sworn testimony to be true, it must also be said, domestic violence is a gendered crime. And the imbalanced power dynamics within their relationship put Heard at a disadvantage, including in this respect. While both are famous actors, the wealth, power, and fame wielded by Depp was then (and remains, now) much greater.
The disparity was evident from the outset. In the Netflix series, throngs of fans are shown cheering the Pirates of the Caribbean star and booing Heard on the first day they were sighted arriving separately to the Fairfax County Circuit Court. Meanwhile, online, evidence of a sustained and coordinated character assassination of Heard had just begun to emerge.
The smear campaign would persist through the trial and beyond. The actress was called a manipulative liar, a gold digger, an abuser, a violent psychopath, a drug addict, and worse. Some of the most outrageous claims were among the most widely circulated: She snorted cocaine on the witness stand, killed her own mother to conceal testimony that would have exonerated Depp, plagiarized lines from the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Creators mocked Heard by lip-synching over audio of her testimony about suffering violent abuse in videos that went viral on TikTok along with hashtags like #JusticeForJohnnyDepp, which was seen nearly 3 billion times on the platform. (#justiceforamberheard earned just 25 million views.) One-sided articles and videos, many containing false and misleading claims, were promoted by Ben Shapiro’s conservative media outlet The Daily Wire through its estimated $35,000 and $47,000 purchase of Facebook and Instagram ads.
“Depp v. Heard” was panned by critics.
“If ever a true-crime documentary needed the usual collection of talking-head interviews with esteemed journalists, law enforcement veterans and legal experts to put things in perspective,” Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times wrote, “this is it — but that never happens.”
Others, like CNN’s Brian Lowry, agreed: “How much is gained from listening to a guy in a Deadpool mask offering extensive trial takes is a question ‘Depp v. Heard’ should have contemplated and apparently didn’t,” he wrote.
Several reviews added that part of the problem was that not nearly enough time had elapsed between the events and their retelling. Bustle’s Scaachi Koul pointed to other recent projects involving the private lives of public figures (especially women) that, with sufficient space and distance, found new and interesting things to say about their subjects and opportunities to tell their stories anew.
Ryan White’s excellent documentary “Pamela: A Love Story,” which was released by Netflix in January, manages to find plenty of material about actress and model Pamela Anderson along with the broader sociocultural forces of the 90s and early aughts that helped shape – and were shaped by – the era’s most enduring sex symbol.
The film would have been nothing, however, without Anderson. Listening to her tell her own story, one realizes how poorly suited everyone else was to the task – particularly the leering talk show hosts and journalists who treated her as nothing more than a sex object.
And maybe that, above all else, is the lesson to be gleaned from “Depp v. Heard”: Let’s come back to this story, sure, when we’re ready to cut through the bullshit, reframe the conversation away from the “him vs. her” framing, stop relying on provably unreliable evidence, and consider the broader context of their relationship and the impact of the trial that happened on TikTok and YouTube. And let’s definitely listen to Heard if and when she’s ready to talk about this again.
Until we get that docuseries (or documentary, scripted series, film, book, whatever), I fear everything else will be deeply unsatisfactory and unsatisfying.
Opinions
Border to border: modern slavery and human trafficking in refugee movements across East Africa
LGBTQ people disproportionately targeted for sexual exploitation
I did not choose to become a refugee. I did not choose to become a victim of trafficking. I only chose to live as myself. Yet in the world I come from, choosing to live as myself was enough to make me a target. As a transgender woman from Uganda, my identity alone placed me in danger. What followed was not just displacement, it was a journey through systems of exploitation that closely resemble modern slavery, hidden in plain sight along the borders and pathways that refugees are forced to travel.
People often imagine modern slavery as something that happens in secret: in locked rooms, in distant brothels, in hidden factories. Human trafficking is portrayed as a dark underworld run by organized criminals. But for many refugees in East Africa, exploitation does not hide in the shadows. It exists in the open, woven into the very routes of survival. It is present at border checkpoints, in refugee camps, in the hands of smugglers, and even in the institutions meant to protect us. It is not always marked by chains or cages. Sometimes it looks like a bus ticket, a border crossing, a promise of safety, or a demand for money that you cannot refuse.
My journey across borders is only one example of how these systems operate. But it is a story shared by many LGBTQI+ refugees whose lives are shaped by violence, silence, and the constant negotiation of safety.
In Uganda, being transgender is not simply misunderstood, it is dangerous. My family, deeply rooted in conservative religious beliefs, saw my identity as a disgrace. I was threatened, rejected, and made to feel that my life had no value. Outside the home, communities policed identity through violence. The legal environment offered no protection. Instead, it reinforced fear. Laws targeting LGBTQI+ people made it impossible to seek help from authorities. Reporting abuse often meant risking arrest. Every day became a calculation of risk: where to walk, who to trust, how to hide. Eventually, the threats became too real to ignore. Leaving was not a choice, it was survival.
My journey out of Uganda began through unofficial routes. Like many refugees fleeing persecution, I could not rely on safe or legal pathways. Instead, I was forced into networks of smugglers and traffickers operating along border regions. From Uganda through border points like Maraba, and later through movements connected to Kakuma Refugee Camp and into South Sudan, each step came with a cost financial, emotional, and physical. At border crossings, money speaks louder than rights. Payments were demanded at checkpoints. There was no transparency, no accountability. You either paid, or you risked being turned back or worse.
For LGBTQI+ refugees, these journeys are even more dangerous. Visibility can mean exposure. Exposure can mean violence. There is constant fear of being outed, harassed, or assaulted not only by traffickers but sometimes by those meant to enforce the law. This is how modern trafficking operates not always through chains, but through systems of dependency, coercion, and fear.
Human trafficking is often imagined as a distant or extreme phenomenon. But for many refugees, especially LGBTQI+ individuals, it exists in subtle and systemic ways. It is in the forced payments demanded at every step of the journey. It is in the exploitation of vulnerability by those offering “help.” It is in the silence of systems that fail to protect. Many LGBTQI+ refugees face extortion by smugglers and intermediaries, threats of violence or exposure, sexual exploitation and abuse, and discrimination by officials and communities. These experiences are rarely documented. Fear prevents reporting. Lack of access prevents justice. What remains is a hidden crisis, one that continues across borders.
Reaching South Sudan did not bring safety. I now live in Gorom Refugee Settlement Camp, where the reality for LGBTQI+ refugees remains harsh and dangerous. Discrimination is part of daily life. Access to food, water, and healthcare is often affected by stigma. Moving freely within the camp can be risky. Violence and threats are constant. As a transgender woman, I am highly visible. This visibility increases my vulnerability. I have faced harassment, intimidation, and threats from both host communities and other refugees. Some blame LGBTQI+ refugees for misfortunes accusing us of bringing curses or problems. These beliefs, rooted in stigma and misinformation, fuel violence and exclusion. Safety, even in a refugee camp, is not guaranteed.
Despite these challenges, I have chosen not to remain silent. In Gorom, I serve as a leader and representative of an LGBTQI+ Refugees and Asylum Seekers Network. Our community includes individuals who are traumatized, isolated, and often unable to advocate for themselves. Many cannot read or write. Some are dealing with serious medical conditions. Others are too afraid to speak. I support them by helping fill out applications and forms, writing emails to organizations, connecting them with protection pathways, and providing peer support and coordination. Through this work, several members of our community have managed to access opportunities for relocation and protection. Some have received case numbers and are progressing through international processes. While I am proud of this work, it comes with a cost. My visibility as a leader makes me a target. The more I help others, the more I am exposed.
The systems I have experienced reflect a form of modern slavery that is not always recognized. It is not defined by ownership, but by control. It is not enforced by chains, but by fear and dependency. When refugees are forced to rely on informal and unsafe systems to survive, exploitation becomes inevitable. International frameworks like the Palermo Protocol recognize trafficking as involving coercion, exploitation, and abuse of vulnerability. By these definitions, what many refugees experience during displacement falls within this reality. Yet, these experiences are rarely acknowledged in policy or response.
My story is one thread in a much larger tapestry of exploitation. Across East Africa, displacement has created informal systems where movement is controlled not by law, but by power, money, and vulnerability. Within these systems, trafficking and modern slavery are not isolated crimes; they are embedded in the everyday experiences of refugees. The blurred line between smuggling and trafficking becomes clear when a voluntary agreement turns into coercion. Payments increase unexpectedly. Conditions worsen. Threats emerge. At this point, smuggling begins to resemble trafficking. People are forced to pay additional fees under threat, detained or abandoned if they cannot pay, and subjected to coercion, intimidation, or violence. The journey becomes one of survival under control, rather than movement by choice.
Checkpoints are one of the most visible forms of exploitation. Across multiple borders, movement is regulated not only by official policies but by informal practices. Travelers are often required to make payments to pass through, regardless of their legal status. These payments are rarely documented. They are negotiated at the moment, often under pressure. Failure to comply can result in detention, forced return, physical intimidation, or exposure to further risks. For those already vulnerable, checkpoints become sites of control and exploitation. This system benefits from a lack of accountability. It thrives in environments where oversight is weak and corruption is normalized.
Modern slavery is not always about physical confinement. It can also take the form of economic exploitation. During transit, individuals may be required to pay escalating fees at each stage of the journey, surrender money or belongings, or depend entirely on intermediaries for movement. In some cases, individuals are left stranded if they cannot meet financial demands. This creates a cycle of dependency: you rely on the network to move, the network controls the cost, and the cost determines your safety. Such systems exploit vulnerability in a way that aligns closely with definitions of modern slavery particularly the abuse of power and the extraction of value through coercion.
Reaching a destination, such as a refugee settlement, does not necessarily end exposure to exploitation. In many camp settings, individuals continue to face restricted access to resources, dependency on aid systems, and informal economies that can be exploitative. Where formal support systems are overstretched or under-resourced, informal structures emerge again. These structures may involve gatekeeping access to services, manipulation of aid distribution, or continued financial or social exploitation. The conditions that enable trafficking do not disappear; they evolve.
Beyond East Africa, modern slavery takes other forms that mirror the same patterns of vulnerability and exploitation. Labor trafficking to the Gulf has become a major issue for migrants from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Recruitment agencies promise good jobs, but many migrants end up in forced domestic labour, with confiscated passports, unpaid wages, and conditions amounting to slavery. Some never return home. Organ trafficking has also been documented, with victims from Africa ending up in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, and China. Kidneys are the most commonly trafficked organs. Some victims are coerced; others are deceived; some are killed. Women, girls, and LGBTQI+ individuals are disproportionately targeted for sexual exploitation. For refugees, “survival sex” becomes a coping mechanism in the absence of protection and resources. Modern slavery thrives because the global economy rewards cheap labour. Migrants from East Africa are used in construction, domestic work, agriculture, and manufacturing. Their exploitation is hidden behind the products the world consumes.
From a humanist perspective, the existence of such systems raises urgent ethical questions. If all human beings have equal dignity, why are some forced to risk exploitation to survive? If rights are universal, why are they not accessible in practice? Human trafficking and modern slavery in refugee movements are not only criminal issues, they are moral failures. They reflect a gap between principles and reality. They expose the distance between what we claim to value and what we allow to happen.
Addressing these issues requires more than isolated interventions. Safe and legal migration pathways must be expanded. Border accountability must be strengthened. Anti-trafficking measures must be integrated into refugee protection. Refugee-led initiatives must be supported. Those with lived experience are best positioned to identify risks and solutions.
Modern slavery and human trafficking are not always visible in chains or confinement. In many cases, they exist within systems that appear as ordinary border crossings, transit routes, and refugee settlements. Recognizing these systems is the first step toward change. The movement of people across borders should not come at the cost of their dignity, safety, or freedom. Yet, for many, it does. Until safe alternatives exist, and accountability is enforced, these hidden systems of exploitation will continue.
The question is not whether they exist.
The question is whether we are willing to confront them.
Aby lives in the Gorom Refugee Settlement Camp in South Sudan.
Today nearly 99% of us watch wars on television. We see news reports, and watch bombs exploding and people dying, somewhere else. The only people actually involved are those who volunteered to serve in the military, and the national guard. I am sure most of them didn’t join to fight illegal wars like the one the felon in the White House is waging in Iran. But I respect them, and their willingness to serve our country.
But we are in Iran, and the felon is now asking Congress for $200 billion more for this war. We have been spending over a billion dollars a day. Who is paying for this? Right now, no one. We are simply adding it to the national debt, for our children to worry about. I propose a 5 or 10% surtax on every person, to cover the cost of this illegal war. Just have it added to your tax bill. If Congress passed such a surtax, I am sure we would already be out of Iran, as people would rise up to stop this illegal and unnecessary war very quickly.
I am old enough to remember the Vietnam War, and what we did to try to end it. It took time, but the people spoke. I did not serve, but unlike the felon in the White House, was willing to. I got my draft notice, along with a subway token, and reported to Whitehall street in NYC. It was as the Arlo Guthrie song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” said it would be. I got there at 7 a.m. and at 3 p.m. was told they wouldn’t take me because of my bad knee, sending me home with my 1Y designation. My friends had given me a going away party the night before, and my mom cried. So, it was a little embarrassing when my friends found I was still home. But my mom was happy and cried again.
I had been to anti-war demonstrations in D.C. in front of the DOJ, and got tear gassed. I demonstrated in London, in Russel Square, in front of the American embassy. While so many more were involved in that war because of the draft, we knew then if a 5% surtax had been levied, it would have ended much faster. Seems we never learn.
Today there is no draft, and no surtax. It is taking a while for people to recognize the felon who opposes any help for people to pay for their healthcare, easily asks for the $200 billion in funds for a totally unnecessary war. He closed USAID, which showed the United States in a positive light, helping people around the world, and that agency’s budget was only $25 billion. On top of not asking Americans to pay for this illegal war, he is giving tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations, adding more to the national debt. What is the definition of insanity? Today it is clearly having voted for, and still supporting, the felon in the White House.
To make things worse and give us even less chance to stop his destruction of our democracy, the felon is trying to make it harder to vote. Millions of women who changed their names for marriage will not have a birth certificate with their current name on it, or a passport with their current name, allowing them to vote if the felon has his way. Reality is less than 50% of Americans even have a passport. The fact the Constitution gives states the right to set voting procedures, isn’t deterring the felon and his fascist cohorts, from trying to do it. He is doing it while we are losing American lives, the lives of heroes, who he has fighting a war he would have never signed up to fight himself. He is running it from the gold-leaf painted Oval Office, and from Mar-a-Lago, where he is golfing. He is a racist, sexist, homophobic, POS, working with the war criminal in Israel, causing a renewed spate of antisemitism and Islamophobia, and possibly creating World War III.
If you care about the future of the United States, you must stand up and speak out. We must defeat every Republican sycophant of his in the midterms — it’s the only way to let the felon know that we will not put up with his shit anymore. His grifting, and that of his family and appointees, must end. We the people, must not let him destroy 250 years of democracy, because he thinks he is a king. We fought a king once before and won. We will defeat him too. We will not let the felon implement the rest of Project 2025 and will take his name off everything he illegally plastered it on. He will be relegated to the trash heap of history, where he belongs, and we will reclaim our democracy for the next 250 years.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
SAVE Act could silence millions of trans voters
New administrative barriers pose threat to voting rights
In Washington, debates over voting rights usually arrive loudly — through court rulings, protests, or sweeping legislation that captures national attention.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, now under debate in Congress, may reshape voting access in a quieter way — through paperwork. The bill would require Americans registering to vote in federal elections to present documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate. Supporters argue the measure would strengthen election integrity and restore public confidence in the voting process. But for millions of eligible voters, particularly transgender Americans, the practical consequences could be far more complicated.
According to Gallup, about 1.3% of U.S. adults identify as transgender, representing roughly 3.3 million Americans. Far from disengaged politically, transgender voters participate in elections at high rates. Data released by Advocates for Trans Equality shows 75% of transgender respondents reported voting in the 2020 election, compared with 67% of the general population. Registration rates are also higher.
This is a community that shows up for democracy. Yet the SAVE Act could place new administrative barriers directly in its path. Birth certificates, the document many supporters believe should verify citizenship are among the most difficult identity records for transgender Americans to update. According to data released by The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School and the U.S. Transgender Survey, 44% of transgender adults had updated their name on government identification, but only 18% had successfully updated their birth certificates.
That gap matters.
If birth certificates become a central requirement for voter registration, millions of eligible transgender Americans could face bureaucratic obstacles that other voters rarely encounter.
History offers a warning. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, Kansas implemented a similar proof-of-citizenship law that blocked more than 30,000 eligible voters from registering before the Kansas Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional.
At the same time, evidence suggests voter fraud remains extraordinarily rare. Research cited by the American Immigration Council estimates fraud at roughly 0.0001% of votes cast.
The question before lawmakers is not whether election security matters. It clearly does. The question is whether policies designed to solve a rare problem could intentionally disenfranchise legitimate voters.
The broader cultural debate surrounding gender identity often becomes emotionally charged, particularly when conversations turn to pronouns or language. Yet polling suggests the issue remains unfamiliar to many Americans. A 2022 YouGov poll found only 22% of Americans personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns.
Meanwhile, the problems weighing on everyday Americans are far larger: rising grocery prices, health care costs, housing shortages, and economic struggles in both rural towns and urban neighborhoods. Yet, many conservatives choose to focus unnecessary time, energy, and resources litigating the use of pronouns.
A healthy democracy should be able to debate cultural questions without allowing them to become barriers to the ballot box.
So, what should transgender Americans, and allies, do in this moment? First, stay engaged politically. Contact legislators and explain how identification requirements affect real voters. Personal stories often reach policymakers in ways statistics alone cannot.
Second, document the impact. Write letters to local newspapers, share experiences publicly, and ensure the real-world effects of voting policies are visible.
Third, consider running for office. Local school boards, city councils, and state legislatures shape many of the rules governing elections. Finally, protest with discipline and purpose. The most transformative movements in history — from Mahatma Gandhi to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — were rooted in peaceful persistence and moral clarity.
The SAVE Act may ultimately pass, fail, or change significantly as Congress debates it. But the larger principle at stake should guide the conversation. America’s democracy has always grown stronger when more citizens can participate, not when the path to the ballot becomes harder to navigate. For transgender voters, and for the country as a whole, that principle remains the quiet foundation of the republic.
James Bridgeforth, Ph.D., is a national columnist on the intersection of politics, morality, and civil rights. His work regularly appears in The Chicago Defender and The Black Wall Street Times.
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