March 16, 2026
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) — Across the country, Democratic doctors are stepping up to run for office in response to Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s dangerous cuts to science and research. Recent polling has shown that trust in RFK Jr. and his federal agencies has sharply fallen, while confidence in doctors and health care providers remains strong.
“As Trump and RFK Jr. lead us down a dangerous anti-science path, Americans are searching for who they can trust ‒ and doctors and scientists bring something Washington desperately needs right now: credibility rooted in evidence and real-world experience,”314 Action president Shaughnessy Naughton said in a statement.
USA Today: “Democratic doctors run for Congress to challenge Trump, RFK Jr.”
Sarah Wire
03/13/26
Key Points:
- But one year into the tenure of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and the rise of the Make America Healthy Again movement, scientists and doctors like Fisher are stepping into politics, motivated by concerns over changes to health policy, anti-science movements and cuts to social programs.
- Emergency room physician Thomas Fisher, 51, is running for Congress to challenge changes the Trump administration has made to health care. “The wheels have come off. We’ve undermined the fundamental tenets of health care, of science and so I feel called to this moment, to public service,” Fisher said. “I think I can speak with moral clarity.”
- Advocacy groups, including progressive political action committee 314 Action, are pushing for Democratic doctors and scientists to step into the ring at all levels of government.
- “As Trump and RFK Jr. lead us down a dangerous anti-science path, Americans are searching for who they can trust ‒ and doctors and scientists bring something Washington desperately needs right now: credibility rooted in evidence and real-world experience,” 314 Action president Shaughnessy Naughton said in a statement.
- Jasmeet Bains, a family physician and California assemblymember, said she wouldn’t have run for Congress before Republican Rep. David Valadao voted for the Republican tax and spending law last summer. The law, which Valadao initially pledged not to support, is expected to strip health insurance from millions of low-income Californians, including nearly 290,000 residents in his rural farming Central Valley district, according to the California Budget and Policy Center.
- “You’ll get a very different perception of what needs to be done to strengthen health care,” she [Bains] said. “A lot of times people have ideas of healthcare, but if you don’t have the expert that’s actually worked in those areas that need it most, you’re not going to create a program that’s effective.”
- Pediatrician and California state Sen. Richard Pan has already faced off with Kennedy, who attacked Pan’s 2015 legislation to make it harder for parents to opt out of school vaccine requirements by saying vaccines were causing an autism “holocaust.”
- Pan said Kennedy has transformed an agency that used to be one of the most accurate sources of American medical and scientific information into a major source of disinformation. He urged other doctors to join him in running for public office.
- “This
calls on people like physicians and scientists to step up because we’re not gonna be able to do it from our clinics or from our hospitals, from our operating rooms, from our labs,” Pan said. “We are watching the fruits of our work being undermined by policy decisions by people who are unqualified, and frankly, it seems like they’re making decisions based on their own personal gain, whether it’s political or financial or both, instead of on what’s best for the American people.”
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