Some sad news today:
Attorney and liberal activist Ady Barkan has died.
Ady Barkan, a progressive activist and attorney who used his years-long struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to call for the protection and expansion of public health care coverage, died on Wednesday. He was 39.
Barkan’s wife, Rachael Scarborough King, announced the news on the social media platform X.
“I’m devastated to share the news that Ady has died from complications of ALS,” she wrote on Wednesday evening. “You probably knew Ady as a healthcare activist. But more importantly he was a wonderful dad and my life partner for 18 years.”
Over the course of a career cut tragically short by illness, Barkan managed to shape policy debates on workers’ rights, the Federal Reserve, the Trump tax cuts, Medicare for All and civil liberties.
Rather than retreat from public life after his October 2016 diagnosis with ALS, a fatal disease that causes paralysis, Barkan vowed to use his last breaths to leave the world better than he entered it.
RIP Ady.