Overview

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed — commonly known as Abdul El-Sayed — is a Muslim American who was born on October 31, 1984, in Rochester Hills, Michigan, to Egyptian parents who had immigrated to the Detroit area in 1978. He was raised in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills by his father, Dr. Mohammed El-Sayed, and Michigan-born stepmother, Jacqueline El-Sayed — both of whom were engineers by profession.

Abdul El-Sayed graduated from the University of Michigan in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and political science.

He then received a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Michigan Medical School (UMMS), where he completed the first two years of a combined M.D./Ph.D. program.

During his second year at UMMS, El-Sayed was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where in 2011 he earned a doctoral degree in public health.

With support in 2012 from a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and the Medical Scientist Training Program, he completed a Doctor of Medicine degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2014. (Paul Soros, 1926-2013, was the older brother of George Soros, the multi-billionaire funder of leftwing causes.)

El-Sayed subsequently became an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, serving also as the director of Columbia’s: (a) Systems Science Program, and (b) Global Research Analytics for Population Health (GRAPH) program.

In August 2015, Detroit’s Democrat Mayor, Mike Duggan, appointed El-Sayed as Health Officer and Executive Director of the city’s Health Department, a post he would hold until 2017.

In June 2016, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed El-Sayed to the state’s Childhood Lead Elimination Board. That same year, El-Sayed also served on:  (a) the State of Michigan’s Public Health Advisory Commission, and (b) the Advisory Committee for the Healthy People program of the Department of Health & Human Services.

In 2018, El-Sayed sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for that year’s gubernatorial race in Michigan. His campaign was endorsed by such notable leftists as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Linda Sarsour. He was also endorsed by organizations like the Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Democracy for America, and The Nation magazine. Moreover, El-Sayed was part of the Sunrise Movement’s first-ever round of candidate endorsements, along with notables Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Julia Salazar, Deb Haaland, Ilhan Omar, Cynthia Nixon, and Ben Jealous.

El-Sayed lost the August 7, 2018 Democratic Party primary election to Gretchen Whitmer, capturing just 30.2 percent of the votes. Whitmer would eventually be elected as Michigan’s governor in the November general election.

In September 2018, El-Sayed founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee dedicated to promoting leftwing political candidates and ballot initiatives across the state.

During a speaking-tour stop in Detroit on April 19, 2019, El-Sayed addressed the crowd attending the Sunrise Movement’s “Road to the Green New Deal” event, which was co-hosted by the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Another high-profile guest speaker that day was Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

In 2019, El-Sayed began hosting America Dissected with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a podcast about politics and public health. The show eventually stopped airing in November 2025.

In July 2019 in Washington, D.C., El-Sayed spoke at the inaugural Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy Conference, a national gathering of Islamic politicians. A major focus of this event was the alleged epidemic of “Islamophobia.” Other notables who spoke at the conference included Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Judy Chu, Keith Ellison, and James Zogby,

On October 29, 2019, El-Sayed and Rashida Tlaib were keynote speakers at the Greater Detroit Democratic Socialists of America’s Douglass-Debs Dinner, an event named in honor of the nineteenth-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the five-time U.S. presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, Eugene Debs.

In 2020, El-Sayed was a national campaign surrogate for Bernie Sanders‘ presidential campaign. After Sanders was defeated by Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries, El-Sayed served on the Biden–Sanders Unity Task Force on healthcare.

On September 23 2020, El-Sayed participated in a “Building the Movement for Health Care Justice” virtual town hall, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, among others.

Supporting Black Lives Matter in the COVID Era

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021, El-Sayed advocated in favor of the most draconian public restrictions. As Breitbart.com reports: “He … supported vaccine mandates, criticized police officers who opposed COVID-19 vaccination, and argued that the United States should continue universal masking and testing as states began lifting restrictions and reopening.” Even after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s administration moved away from statewide mask requirements, El-Sayed continued to call for mask mandates covering children as young as two.

One week after the infamous May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, El-Sayed personally participated in a Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Flint, Michigan. Such BLM demonstrations, he argued, should not be subject to the same public-health-related concerns that were being used to justify restrictions on other types of social gatherings, such as church services. As he explained to commentator Brian Tyler Cohen in a 2020 interview, “There is no fair pitting of the protests for black lives against public health.” Citing systemic racism as the root cause of some 83,000 deaths in the United States each year, El-Sayed cast the BLM protests themselves as part of a vital effort to save lives from potential racism in the future. “The protesters were out there because we want that to end, and in that respect, this is a public health intervention,” he said, adding: “Unless you devalue the lives that we’re fighting for, which are black lives, by saying that they’re somehow less important to focus on than the lives that are lost to COVID-19, which, by the way, are disproportionately black lives as well, then there is no coherent approach to pitting these protests against public health.”

2023 to 2025

In March 2023, El-Sayed became the director of Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services, a position he would hold until his eventual resignation in April 2025.

On April 17, 2025, El-Sayed announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan, after the incumbent Democrat, Gary Peters, announced that he would not seek re-election.

Sharia-Compliant Muslim

In 2009, El-Sayed told The New York Times that he viewed adherence to the dictates of Sharia Law in his personal life as his permanent, solemn duty as a Muslim. “Ultimately,” he explained, “the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way. Not because of fear but because of obligation.”

Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood & Other Extremists

Muslim Students Association

Abdul El-Sayed served as both the vice president and president of the University of Michigan chapter of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) during his time as an undergraduate there. In fact, both El-Sayed and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, were MSA leaders in their young adulthood.

The MSA was established in January 1963, mainly by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic supremacist entity that Islam expert Robert Spencer has described as “the parent organization of Hamas and al-Qaeda.” In 2003, Richard Clarke – the chief counterterrorism advisor on the U.S. National Security Council during both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations – told a Senate committee that Hamas, al Qaeda, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were all “descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers.”

The MSA has long served as the Muslim Brotherhood’s main campus recruiting arm in America. It also has functioned as a recruiting arm for al-Qaeda. Over the years, a number of MSA presidents and key figures have subsequently attained leadership roles in American politics or with al-Qaeda. Among these individuals were: (a) Wa’el Hamza Julaidan, a former MSA president at the University of Arizona who co-founded al-Qaeda; and (b) Anwar Al-Awlaki, who headed the MSA at Colorado State before heading al-Qaeda in Yemen.

An Investigative Project on Terrorism report says the following about MSA:

“With nearly 600 chapters … located in the United States and Canada, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) is the most visible and influential Islamic student organization in North America…. MSA has gained legitimacy on American campuses as a benevolent collegiate faith club; however, under this moderate veneer MSA advances a different agenda among impressionable college students. Through conferences and events, publications, websites and other activities, MSA disseminates and promotes militant Islamic ideologies.”

Radical Family

(1) Abdul El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, is a Founders Committee member of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), to which he contributes “at least $5,000 … annually,” according to a July 2026 report by The Washington Free Beacon, ISNA’s roots can be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood, as an Investigative Project on Terrorism analysis explains:

“The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is the largest and most influential Muslim advocacy group in the United States. Its … leadership ranks … include people who date back to the group’s foundation by Muslim Brotherhood members. The organization grew out of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which … was founded by Brotherhood members. The Brotherhood is an 80-year-old Egyptian movement that seeks to spread Shariah, or Islamic law, far and wide.

“Federal prosecutors included ISNA on a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Hamas-financing prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). ISNA is listed among ‘individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.’ [… ISNA’s] conferences have featured rhetoric in support of terrorist groups and other radicalism.”

(2) Tayeb Jukaku also served stints as a president and a Board of Directors member of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). A comprehensive Investigative Project on Terrorism report says the following about CAIR:

“Born of efforts to scuttle hopes for a negotiated Middle East peace, CAIR was listed among organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood’s American network. Its founders emerged from a separate Islamic organization that two courts have found played a supporting role for the terrorist group Hamas…. [A]fter a careful review of the history, activities, statements, and causes of and by CAIR, it seems that its primary goals are to silence and de-legitimize its critics and redefine what it means to be a moderate Muslim. And when it comes to U.S. efforts to crack down on terrorists and their financiers, CAIR takes an almost visceral stand in opposition.”

(3) Both Tayeb Jukaku and Abdul El-Sayed’s father, Dr. Mohammed El-Sayed, have served on the board of Life for Relief and Development, which in 2006 was raided by the FBI and the U.S. military, on suspicion of having given “millions [of dollars] to a group the FBI identified as Hamas’ Jordanian operation” and “suspected of funding al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq” — the latter of whom would eventually become the genocidal terrorist organization ISIS.

• Life for Relief and Development was once linked to the Muslim Brotherhood‘s Iraqi branch, whose political organization called itself the Islamic Party of Iraq (IIP) and operated a covert Brotherhood presence in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Funded by Muslims in the United States, that covert entity refused to back regime change in Iraq. Its relationship with al-Qaeda fell apart, but the IIP was accused of backing terrorism through the Islamic Army, and parts of that Jihadist group later joined ISIS.

(4) Abdul El-Sayed’s mother and uncle both worked with the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) whose parent organization, the Islamic Africa Relief Agency, mixed funds with Osama bin Laden’s Afghan Services Bureau network, which he used to finance his activities before the founding of al-Qaeda.

• In 2004, the Treasury Department designated the IARA as part of a terrorist network that provided support for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
• The Midwesterner reports that exhibits in a federal case reference El-Sayed’s mother “14 times, documenting participation in eight wire transfers, and five recorded calls between 1999 and 2002.” These calls and transactions included dealings with Khalid Al-Sudani, who was listed later as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”
• According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism: “A branch of the IARA-USA, designated a terrorist organization on October 13, 2004, was located in Orlando, Florida. IARA-USA and five of its former employees and associates … were indicted for illegally transferring funds to Iraq, falsely denying that an associate of Osama bin Laden had been an employee of IARA, and engaging in prohibited financial transactions for the benefit of U.S.-designated terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…. According to a Department of Treasury press release, IARA was responsible for moving funds to terrorists in the Palestinian territories, ‘notably serving as a conduit to Hamas in one Western European country.’”

(5) On June 24, 2012 – shortly after Egypt had elected Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi as its new president, Abdul El-Sayed’s half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, boasted in a social media post that “my family has long been MB [Muslim Brotherhood].” A few days later, on July 3, she wrote: “I have had family jailed for being a part of it [the Muslim Brotherhood].”

(6) Abdul El-Sayed’s sister-in-law, Mariam Jukaku, was named on the federal terrorist watchlist from 2012-2016.

Contempt for the U.S. & Israel

(a) In a January 3, 2020 tweet, El-Sayed blamed America’s “imperialism” for creating numerous terrible outcomes in various places around the world:

“Our country’s imperialism in Iran created the pathway to this regime.
“Our imperialism in Iraq is what created the circumstances there.
“Our imperialism emboldened the Saudis in Yemen.
“Our imperialism destroyed the #Irandeal and led to the brink of war.”

(b) In March 2020, El-Sayed tweeted that “US sanctions on Iran are contributing to that country’s #CoronavirusPandemic. It’s time to #EndCOVIDSanctions” and save lives.”

(c) In tweets which he posted in August 2021, El-Sayed implied that the United States was responsible for the Taliban’s violent takeover of Kabul during the Biden administration’s catastrophic withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. On August 15, for instance, he blamed the calamity on “the fateful choice 20 yrs ago to wage endless, aimless war in pursuit of an undefined mission under G. W. Bush.”

(d) During the September 7, 2021 episode of his America Dissected podcast, El-Sayed condemned the U.S. response to al-Qaeda’s September 11 terrorist attacks of 20 years earlier. “9/11 scarred our country in profound ways,” he declared, “but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people. When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them.” The United States had “wasted trillions of dollars to wage a war that we would ultimately lose,” El-Sayed added, “era of death, destruction and destitution” that America had created.

(e) Four days later — on September 11, 2021 — El-Sayed posted a tweet that portrayed the U.S. as a force that was more evil, and more destructive, than al-Qaeda: “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith, Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.”

(f) At a July 2025 political event, El-Sayed asserted that terrorists across the globe frequently commit atrocities as a logical response to the “pain and frustration” caused by “hypocritical” U.S. actions. Some notable excerpts from his remarks:

• “I think the approach that we’ve often taken with terrorism has been to figure out how to leverage the might of the U.S. military to go in and root out, right, certain terrorist organizations, et cetera. And where that’s necessary, that’s necessary. But I also think we need to be curious about why those things happen in the first place. Like, what drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act?”
• “And I think, too often, the way [America has] engaged in the world has been that we set up this rules-based international order, and then we break the rules of the rules-based international order, and that creates a situation where there are a lot of people who look at us and say that’s hypocritical and that’s wrong. And I think the best thing we can do is be honest about that.”
• “I think that’s the thing that I can bring to the table, is an empathy for what it’s like for people seeing America from outside of America. And I think that’s a perspective that is very lacking in the Senate right now.”
• “One of the things I’ve often come to realize is that when people feel some kind of way about what terrorism is—it’s political violence, doing heinous things in pursuit of a political end, right? There is a level of pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency that they have to feel [in order] to do something so insane and absurd, right? And so I’ve often tried to ask, like, so what moves somebody into that, and how is it that we’re behaving that may get somebody to think that we don’t see them, and that’s creating pain?”

(g) In July 2026, El-Sayed attended a virtual rally where left-wing podcaster Kyle Kulinski stated that:

• The American and Israeli governments “are the terrorists” “in the midst of creating the Fourth Reich,” and “it is absolutely accurate to compare these people to the worst criminals in history, to Mussolini, to Adolf Hitler.”
• “We’re governed by dead-eyed psychopaths and sociopaths and bloodthirsty imperialists.”
• Israeli officials are “genuinely repulsive, disgusting, wretched, depraved human beings.”

Further, Kulinski lamented that if the U.S. and Israel were to successfully neutralize Iran politically and economically, some of the most formidable genocidal enemies of Western civilization would lose access to most of their funding. “If Iran’s off the table as a regional power,” he said, “that means Hezbollah can’t be funded. Hamas can’t be funded. The Houthis can’t be funded, Like, the Shia Crescent falls, and you have nothing but regional domination for Israel.”

Other Democrats who tuned in to watch Kulinki’s rally included such Democrat notables as Ro Khanna, Cori Bush, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Melat Kiros.

Promoting a Radical, Anti-American Book

On at least ten occasions on his America Dissected podcast, El-Sayed promoted the 2023 book Let This Radicalize You, authored by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba and proudly described by its promoters as a resource “for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.”

In one chapter of the book, the authors contend that violent protesters who destroy property are not necessarily bad people:

“Fetishizing distinctions between violence and nonviolence can lead to the indulgence of rhetoric about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ protesters, where ‘peaceful’ protesters are celebrated and ‘violent’ protesters — for example, those who engage in property destruction that disrupts profit — are viewed as disposable and disreputable.’ And when they refer to ‘peaceful protest,’ they are talking about cooperative protest that obediently stays within the lines drawn by the state. This licenses people to care about the cause being protested without caring about what happens to the ‘bad’ protesters. For example, even as significant numbers of people supported the uprisings following the racist murder of George Floyd [in 2020], many fewer people vocally defended the rights of protesters who were arrested for acts of property destruction and funneled into the racist carceral system.”

Hayes and Kaba also write: “Organizers campaigning to defund the police and redirect funds toward life-giving services are blamed for alleged spikes in violent crime, even though no correlation exists between defund efforts and crime rates.”

Declaring that “there is no greater purveyor of violence in the world than the U.S. government,” the authors state: “From war to policing to incarceration to border violence to the slashing of the social safety net, the U.S. government kills untold millions. The violence of rebellion is infinitesimal by comparison.”

“The maintenance of global capitalism necessitates mass death,” the book claims as well. “If you choose to disrupt these systems, passively, destructively, or by way of extending mutual aid, the concept of violence may be stretched and manipulated by the powerful to encompass your work. That is why we must not allow the frameworks of the powerful to define the bounds of morality in our politics and our action.”

Senate Campaign of 2026

On August 4, 2026, El-Sayed defeated U.S. House Member Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary by the narrow margin of 48.5% to 47.5%, and advanced to the November 2026 general election against former U.S. House Republican Mike Rogers.

Political Aggressiveness

El-Sayed conducted his Senate campaign with a highly aggressive spirit of political combativeness, as evidenced when he appeared with Senator Bernie Sanders at an October 2025 “Fight the Oligarchy” event.  There, El-Sayed told the audience: “When they [Democrats’ political adversaries] go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out.”

Senate Campaign Platform & Positions

Defunding the Police

Through the early months of his 2026 Senate campaign, El-Sayed denied accusations that he had ever advocated the defunding of police departments in U.S. towns and cities. But his claims were contradicted by social media posts and recordings of public statements he had issued in the past:

(a) In a 2020 radio interview, El-Sayed declared bluntly: “We do need to defund the police.”

(b) In a since-deleted social-media post from June 2020, El-Sayed had written: “Most major US cities spend WAY TOO MUCH on police departments to police poverty & WAY TOO LITTLE on public schools, health departments, recreation departments, & housing to eliminate poverty. Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about.”

(c) In a June 2020 interview on Detroit Public Radio, El-Sayed said that U.S. taxpayer funds should be redirected away from police departments, and toward schools, mental health services, and redistributive programs claiming to target poverty. Some key excerpts:

• “We are in a moment when a lot of our public conversation gets chewed down into 280 characters or less. And that is not the best way to talk about anything. So, you’ll note, I didn’t say ‘defund the police,’ I just described what needed to be done. And I do think we need to be really focused on describing or explaining rather than sort of hedging on one side or the other behind a hashtag,”
• “Defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets and investing more in the means of educating and empowering and engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty that we’ve allowed to fester in too many communities.”
• “I want a re-fund on the taxpayer dollars that I pay to police who use that to buy war materiel to wage war in our streets. And I want to re-fund public health and public libraries and public schools and the means of uprooting poverty. What we call that is, to me, less important than what we do on the problems on the ground.”

(d) El-Sayed said in 2020 as well: “Defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets and investing more in the means of educating and empowering and engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty that we’ve allowed to fester in too many communities.”

(e) In July 2020, El-Sayed posted a video to social media wherein he suggested that police departments were largely over-funded — as a manifestation of societal racism against nonwhites:

“Now, when we talk about this present moment, I want to make sure that people understand what it means when we talk about how to invest or disinvest or re-invest in policing…. If you look at almost every major municipality in the country, there is a disproportionate amount of money spent on policing rather than on public goods that would root out poverty, like public health, like mental health, like public schools, like public libraries, like public parks, [and] play places.

“You ask yourself, why are we investing so much in people with guns, and less in people with the means of being able to invest in young folks, empower folks through their livelihoods, and empower them to live their best life? When we talk about where we go from here, after having watched the brutal assassination of Breonna Taylor in her home, George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis. The question becomes, why is it that we’re invested so much in people with the means of killing, rather than investing in people with the means of giving life? So as we think about what we want, as we think about rooting out systemic racism, the question we have to ask ourselves is where do we put our money? Because if we’re serious about rooting out systemic racism, we should be investing in folks at every step of their lives, rather than investing in policing the poverty in a very racialized way, that our disinvestment in all of the other things has left people suffering. This is the question. […]

“So what do we need to do when we say we want to root out systemic racism, when we say black lives matter? [… It] means rethinking why it is that we’re spending so much money policing one group of people systematically and racially.

“So we have to ask ourselves, do police departments really need tanks and weapons of war and the material that’s coming back as hand-me-downs from the military abroad? Do police really need to use guns? Do we need as much of a police force? If we ask ourselves about how we spend money in the public, where that money goes, where it comes from, we need to make a lot better decisions about investing in the things that root out poverty rather than investing in policing poverty, and we need to understand that these are racialized questions because of systemic racism. When we make a choice to invest in policing in a majority-black community, rather than to invest in public schools, that choice is influenced by systemic racism. So we need to take that on, we need to root it out, and we need to be investing in people, in the communities in which they live, learn, work, pray, and play, rather than be investing in policing them in those communities. When we talk about the question of ‘defunding the police,’ it’s a question of asking, how do we right-size government away from the racist ideologies that have led us to investing in war material for policing rather than public health for children?”

Education

“I believe in … universal childcare, universal pre-K, and public K-12 education.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

“Public school should be truly public–and I oppose efforts to privatize public education through vouchers and other programs intended to move public money into private pockets.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

“I believe that every student deserves a debt-free and tuition-free pathway toward the skills they need to thrive, be that a two-year apprenticeship or a four-year college education and beyond.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

Elections & Voting

(a) “Voters should be automatically registered to vote when they turn eighteen and reregistered automatically when they move.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

(b) “We need no-reason absentee and early in-person voting.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

• A December 2022 Heritage Foundation report identifies the many problems inherent in absentee voting. One excerpt: “Mail-in or absentee ballots are the ones most susceptible to being stolen, altered, and forged, and to having the voters be pressured or coerced when voting, because they are the only type of ballots marked in an unsupervised, unobserved setting. The many cases of proven absentee ballot fraud in the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database demonstrate and underscore the reason why Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement concluded in a 1998 report that the “lack of ‘in-person, at-the-polls’ accountability make absentee ballots the ‘tool of choice’ for those inclined to commit voter fraud.”

(c) During a Senate campaign debate held in Detroit on October 21, 2026, El-Sayed was asked to offer his opinion regarding the “SAVE Act,” officially known as the Save America Act, which sought to: (a) require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and (b) require states to purge the names of non-citizens from their voting rolls. “If elected,” said the questioner to El-Sayed, “you may be asked to vote on legislation requiring voter identification and other key changes to federal election laws. Would you support or oppose that legislation and why?”

“Let’s be clear,” El-Sayed replied, “this is about voter suppression. You know, the SAVE Act would require women who changed their names [when they got married] to go back and find their birth certificates just to be able to vote in our election. I mean, I think that’s pretty crazy, and you pile that on to the voter suppression tactics we’ve seen out of the Supreme Court, backed by Donald Trump, backed by [Republican Senate candidate] Mike Rogers…. We deserve the right to vote. Nobody should take that away for you, from you. People have fought and died for that right.”

Gerrymandering

“I believe that congressional districts should be drawn by a federal nonpartisan committee of experts who are appointed for defined terms on a rolling basis and who work alongside the U.S. Census Bureau, similar to the Federal Reserve Board. This would come as close as possible to eliminating the partisan gerrymandering that exists because of apportionment by partisan state governments in most states.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

Money in Politics

(a) “To get corporate and special interest money out of politics, I support legislation to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.” – Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

• The January 2010 Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commissionhad: (a) struck down a ban on corporations and labor unions using money from their general funds to produce and air campaign ads in races for congressional and presidential races, and (b) overturned a prohibition against corporations and unions airing campaign ads during the 30 days immediately preceding a primary or the 60 days preceding a general election.
• In February 2010, Heritage Foundation scholar Hans von Spakovsky wrote: “In the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,… the Court upheld some of this nation’s most important founding principles: the right to engage in free speech—particularly political speech—and the right to freely associate. Although corporations and unions still cannot contribute directly to political candidates, the Court overturned a federal ban on independent political advocacy by corporations and unions.”

(b) “I support banning outside spending through corporate 501(c)4s, SuperPACs, and 527 groups.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

(c) “I also support public election funding and campaign spending caps.”  — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

Senate Filibuster

“The filibuster … is antidemocratic and should be abolished.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE)

“ICE has become a tool for autocracy. Its culture of aggression, impunity, and disregard for the rule of law cannot be reformed or retrained. It must be abolished.… I believe that ICE funds should be repurposed to build out the legal infrastructure of courts to create a clear pathway to citizenship for those who are stuck in limbo in our current system. — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

During a May 1, 2026 interview with podcaster Evan James, El-Sayed characterized ICE agents as a “paramilitary force of thugs” who had been deployed by President Trump “to shoot people in the face” and be “only accountable to him.”

In a July 19, 2026 interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, El-Sayed asserted that “right now, ICE is being used to terrorize people on our streets.” “You’ve got this [Trump] administration,” he added,  “… making a show out of ICE enforcement, and at the same time, they’re making it fundamentally unlivable for people south of our Southern border. How does that make sense at all? This whole point of the Trump administration is to weaponize immigration against the Constitution itself.”

“Sanctuary” from Immigration Laws

In 2017 and 2018, El-Sayed declared his desire to make Michigan a “sanctuary state” wherein illegal aliens would be shielded from federal immigration laws. As he said in a July2017 interview: “I don’t believe the state of Michigan has a responsibility to enforce federal policies that don’t make sense and are ruining families and sections of our economy. I believe that Michigan should be a sanctuary state …”

Energy & Environment

“I’ll fight for a pathway to 100% renewable energy. We will anchor it in massive investment in solar, wind, and battery storage, a modernized smart grid, and the energy efficiency upgrades.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Mark Mills contrasts El-Sayed’s call for “100 percent renewable energy,” to the realities of physics and technological limits:

“[Environmentalists] think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries. The simple truth is that we can’t. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet. To understand why, consider some simple physics realities that aren’t being talked about.

“All sources of energy have limits that can’t be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun’s photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%. So, we’re pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren’t any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution, we’re told, is to use batteries. Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.

“Consider the world’s biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day’s worth of America’s electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world’s energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.

“Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they’re built from nonrenewable materials.”

Green New Deal

The Green New Deal (GND). was a Democrat legislative proposal whose ambition was to eliminate America’s use of fossil fuels and make the country 100 percent reliant on renewable energy sources (wind, water, solar) by the year 2035.

Scholar Tim Huelskamp, who has described GND as “the most radical socialist proposal in modern congressional history,” explains that its provisions extend far beyond matters that are even remotely associated with energy efficiency, the environment, and climate. That is, the Green New Deal seeks to remake the entire American economy:

“[T]heir real desire is to accomplish the Left’s longtime goal of moving the United States toward full adoption of socialism. This isn’t just a theory. Significant provisions of the Green New Deal reveal its true purpose of imposing socialism on an unprecedented scale. The plan would create a ‘basic income program’ and federal jobs guarantee providing a ‘living wage’ to everybody who says they want one. It would impose a federal-government-run, single-payer health care system with bureaucrats and liberal politicians in Washington, D.C. in charge of every American’s health care. It would encourage the Federal Reserve to unleash inflation and create a system of government-owned banks to ‘create’ tens of trillions of dollars needed to fund these immense programs. None of these proposals has anything at all to do with climate change.”

On August 24, 2026, Fox News host Jesse Watters pointed out that El-Sayed was officially on record as having been a supporter of the GND. Watters and El-Sayed then had the following exchange:

WATTERS: “You want to get rid of the internal combustion engine.”

EL-SAYED: “No, I don’t. Who told you that?”

WATTERS: “That’s what the Green New Deal says.”

EL-SAYED: “No, that’s not what the Green New Deal says. It says that we could build renewable energy opportunities. Look, I’m not going to defend the Green New Deal. But what I’m telling you, though, is that we could make a whole lot more amazing jobs if we actually invested in renewable energy.”

WATTERS: “Wait, you’re on the record as backing the Green New Deal, Abdul.”

EL-SAYED: “Look, I’m just going to tell you this: Are you opposed to the idea that we could reduce energy costs and create jobs in Michigan? Are you for that?”

Health Care

Like virtually all leading Democrats, El-Sayed endorses a government-run system of “single-payer,” “universal” health care which he dubs “Medicare for All.” On his 2026 Senate campaign website, he states that “Medicare for All does not have to ban additional private insurance through unions or employers, although [it] should make those choices redundant and unnecessary.” —

In a July 2026 interview on Intellectually Petty Radio, El-Sayed said: “I think you need to guarantee health care for everyone, cradle to grave, without premium, copay, deductible… Medicare for all.”

A Heritage Foundation analysis says the following about government-run health care:

“A total government takeover would be a massive and disruptive enterprise, consolidating the federal government’s direct control over the entire health care sector of the economy, currently valued at approximately $3.6 trillion. That would be an unprecedented expansion of government power, and it would inevitably increase costs and the burdens on providers, stifle innovation, and inevitably limit access to high-quality care, especially for patients in need of complex and technologically advanced medical services. […]

“The advocates of Medicare for All promise a universal program of publicly financed health care that would be fairer, more equitable, more economical, and more efficient than the current system. Practical experience, as already indicated, tells a very different story. In ‘single payer’ countries, such as Britain and Canada, millions of patients have faced frustrating delays and denials of medical care, experiencing long and often painful waits for needed medical services.”

El-Sayed contends that Medicare for All would help eliminate the racism that allegedly pervades America’s existing healthcare system, which, by his telling, treats black and Arab patients worse than white patients because the nonwhites are more likely to rely on government-funded insurance, which pays providers less than private insurance. As he said during an interview at the Medicare for All Strategy Conference in 2022:

• “Because in this country we have a privatized, partitioned health insurance system, the value of providing care, the reimbursement of providing care to different people’s bodies, differs based on how much money they make. And how much money they make because of structural racism differs based on the color of their skin.”
• “Right now in our country, the vast majority of people of color are funded on government health insurance programs that do not reimburse at the same level as private health insurance. So we basically are saying that in our country, care provided for a black child, for example, is reimbursed at nearly half the rate as a white child. We’re basically valuing that child’s body differently.”
• “But if you have the security of Medicare in your back pocket, no matter who you are, the system doesn’t discriminate against you, because your body commands the same quality of care, the same reimbursement rate as anybody else. It removes that profit incentive.”
• “I have seen too many people from communities where they look like you or look like me being discriminated against at the point of care because of the health care that they have. I want to end that. Medicare for All would end that.”

Iran

“I oppose the illegal and unjustifiable war in Iran and demand an immediate end to the hostilities. While I oppose a nuclear-armed Iran, I understand that diplomatic means of achieving that goal are more effective and come with a far lower human cost, just as President Obama had achieved under the JCPOA.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

On July 14, 2015, the Obama administration — along with the leaders of Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany — together finalized a nuclear agreement with Iran. Its official name was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), whose key elements included the following:

• Iran was permitted to keep and operate more than 5,000 nuclear centrifuges, machines necessary for enriching uranium to the degree necessary for the production of nuclear weapons.
• Iran received $150 billion in revenue from sanctions relief, even though the Obama administration  acknowledged that Iran would likely use some of that money to fund its military and terrorist activities.
• Iran was prohibited from purchasing weapons from other countries for five years, and from buying missile technology for eight years. But there were two significant exceptions: Russia and China could continue to make weapons deals with Iran.
• Iran was given the discretion to block international inspectors from its military installations.
• Only inspectors from countries that had diplomatic relations with Iran would be given access to Iranian nuclear sites. Thus, there would be no American inspectors.
• Sanctions were lifted on critical parts of Iran’s military, including a previously existing travel ban against Qasem Suleimani, leader of the terrorist Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
• Iran would not be required to renounce terrorism against the United States, as the Obama administration deemed such an expectation “unrealistic.”
• Iran would not be required to affirm a “clear and unambiguous … recognition of Israel’s right to exist” — a requirement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pleaded for.
• Whatever restrictions were placed on Iran’s nuclear program, would expire — due to so-called “sunset clauses” — at various times over the ensuing 5 to 11 years.

During an October 2026 interview with ABC News, host Linsey Davis asked El-Sayed: “[F]or those who do want to hear, do you condemn the current Iranian regime? What do you say?”

El-Sayed responded:

“They’ve engaged in horrific acts. There’s no question about that….But the big picture question is not — like, for us is, what’s in our best interest? Go back to the Obama administration. They had negotiated a JCPOA that had created a space within which we had contained the nuclear threat and we are on a pathway to more peace. That is a good thing. We want that, right? And now, we find ourselves in a situation where, after two Trump terms, we have torn apart the JCPOA, and now we’re fighting a war. So, yes, are we in active war against Iran? Yes. Are they an enemy combatant in this war? Yes. Should we be here, is that actually where we want our public policy to go? And now you want me to, like, answer a question within the context of this current war, but the bigger, better question we should have asked is, what should we have done here? We should not have torn up the JCPOA. We were in a position for nuclear containment, and we were in a position of peace. We should not have gone to war in the first place. We didn’t have clear war aims. They told us that this was about regime change, then they told us that this was about securing the nuclear threat, then they told us that this was about protecting the Strait of Hormuz. We have accomplished nothing.”

Reparations

During the August 24, 2026 broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s Jesse Watters Primetime show, host Jesse Watters asked El-Sayed if he supported the notion of making reparations payments to compensate black Americans for the historical consequences of slavery and segregation.

El-Sayed answered:

“I think we need to have an honest conversation about the incredible debt that was put upon black folks as a function of slavery, that we have yet to pay, and I just think that’s fair. Like, if people are enslaved and forced into servitude, and then we don’t actually have a conversation about all that was owed, that our own country agreed was owed, I just think that it’s past time to have that conversation. That shouldn’t be a crazy thing. I understand that, like, for folks who really want to inflame [the] culture war, I just think it’s important to think about how do we make sure that communities like the city of Detroit, that have been segregated so that you have a disproportionate number of people, as a function of redlining, who are forced into certain communities, how do we make sure that their schools are made whole? I’ll just tell you this: In the city of Detroit right now, they just had $700 million invested in their schools, they’re still $1.7 billion behind. And a lot of folks want to say, oh, well, that’s profligacy, etc., etc. No, a lot of that has to do with public policy. And if public policy created a level in which black folks disproportionately suffer everything from maternal mortality and infant mortality, to lack of access to jobs, I think it’s important for our country to have a conversation about how do we make people whole.”

Second Amendment

During an October 17, 2026 town hall in Midland, Michigan, El-Sayed articulated his views on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Said El-Sayed sarcastically: “Conservative folks, they hew to this idea called ‘originalism,’ and ‘originalism’ is the idea that you should interpret the Constitution in the context in which the Constitution was written. When they promised the right to bear arms, they had muskets, so, yes, everyone should have … equal rights to a musket.”

Breitbart.com reporter AWR Hawkins poked holes in El-Sayed’s logic by noting: “He did not mention that when the First Amendment protections on free speech were ratified, everyone was writing with quill pens and there was no such thing as texting, emails, social media, or YouTube.”

Taxing Wealth

“The ultrawealthy should no longer be able to hide behind loopholes that leave them paying lower tax rates than the rest of us. Toward that end, I support taxing capital gains over $1 million at the same rate as ordinary income and closing the stepped-up basis loophole.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

“I also support taxing inheritance greater than $1 million like ordinary income and imposing a progressive tax on wealth held by trusts.”  — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

“I support raising the marginal tax rate on earnings over $1 million and a billionaire tax on wealth over $1 billion.” — Abdul El-Sayed, on his 2026 Senate campaign website

• The Tax Foundation explains that a seemingly low-percentage wealth tax is actually massive, when we examine exactly how it affects a person’s after-tax return-on-investment:

“Compared to income taxes, wealth tax rates seem much lower, but this rate can be deceptive. The best way to interpret wealth tax rates is to translate them into an equivalent income tax rate. For example, consider an investor who owns a long-term bond with a fixed rate of return at 5 percent each year. A 3 percent annual wealth tax would imply that 60 percent of the capital income from owning the long-term bond would be remitted as tax—the 3 percent wealth tax translates to a 60 percent income tax rate in this example. A 5 percent annual wealth tax would equal a 100 percent income tax rate, because the wealth tax would take all this taxpayer’s capital income. A 10 percent wealth tax, calculated in the same manner, implies that all capital income earned in this year plus part of the stock would have to be turned over as taxes, which means a 200 percent income tax.”

Transgender Issues

El-Sayed supports the right of all people – including minors — to receive “gender-affirming care,” a term denoting medical and surgical procedures like the administration of blockers, hormone therapy, and genital mutilation surgery. “Healthcare decisions should be made by a patient (and their parents if they are a minor) and their doctor–no one else,” he wrote in his 2026 senatorial platform, adding, “That includes reproductive and gender-affirming care.”

(a) During the August 24, 2026 broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s Jesse Watters Primetime, host Jesse Watters had the following exchange with El-Sayed:

WATTERS: “Sex changes for minors. Do you support that?”

EL-SAYED: Look, you know, I remember having great conversations with my conservative friends about right to try legislation. The idea that the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of health care you should have. I just think the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of healthcare you should have, and if you’re a minor, it is between you, your doctor and your parents.

WATTERS: You want to try on kids?

EL-SAYED: Now, if you disagree with that, if you disagree with that, if you disagree that healthcare decisions need to be made by a doctor and their parents and a patient, then I just we think we agree to disagree.

But you know, you want to put government inside a clinic or a hospital —

WATTERS: So Abdul, you’re a doctor —

EL-SAYED: — selectively.  I am.

WATTERS: So you think it’s okay for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off? You think that’s okay?

EL-SAYED: I mean, do you — so do you really want to have this conversation? Are you circumcised?

WATTERS: Yes, yes, But I mean, that’s a personal question, Doctor.

EL-SAYED: So you probably should want to move on. You probably should want to move on.

WATTERS: A circumcision is different than castration.

EL-SAYED: I think it’s a problem. It’s a problem that you think that you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor, and a patient. And I’m just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid’s ding-a-ling. So if you really want to bring that up, you can. I just think you guys are really selective about the way you talk about these things.

(b) At an October 2026 press conference in Detroit, a questioner asked El-Sayed to comment on the practice of incarcerating gender-dysphoric male criminals who identify as females, in men’s prison facilities where they allegedly experience “very, very high rates of sexual assault.” Said El-Sayed in response:

“What you’re speaking to is too often a choice that we make about failing to invest resources to keep people safe, and when it comes to investing resources to keep people safe, I think it’s important for us to realize that these are unfortunate choices … that we make that force people into positions of danger.”

(c) During a November 1, 2026 appearance on 60 Minutes, El-Sayed was asked to comment on the practice of permitting biological boys to compete on girls’ sports teams. “What happens with transgender kids on sports teams and so on, right?” asked correspondent Ross Douthat. “Like, these are places where rights are in conflict, right? …What do you think happens there?”

“I don’t know that that’s actually true,” answered El-Sayed. “I think we manufacture these social issues…. Because here’s the thing about it, Ross. You have an iPhone in your pocket, probably. Or is it iPhone or Samsung? You have a phone in your pocket, right? You can get access to everything and anything in the whole world, all the world’s information in your pocket. The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school is so profoundly outdated. Because of course you have all the information, and they have all the information.”

Asserting, further, that “the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing,” El-Sayed added that it is “really important” to “not try to protect a person from seeing a thing.” “It’s really important,” he elaborated, “and the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a thing. It’s about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world, that you are engaging with them and saying, ‘Here’s what I believe. Here’s what you may see in the world. You get to make your choices about who you’re going to be in the world, but that’s going to require us to make do with the fact that like the internet is a real thing.’”

Unionization

Over the course of his adult life, El-Sayed has been a member of several different labor unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (Local 477 and Local 6244), the Service Employees International Union (Local 500), the National Writers Union, the American Association of University Professors, and the United Auto Workers.

El-Sayed has expressed support for the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

He also advocates for unionization in professions where it has heretofore not existed.

El-Sayed & Israel

Israel’s Right to Exist

On the July 2, 2026 broadcast of CNN’s The Arena, host Kasie Hunt asked El-Sayed, “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?”

The candidate answered evasively: “… Now, the question about a right to exist, it’s interesting, because nobody’s ever asked me whether or not I believe Palestine has a right to exist. Every single president who’s served has said that they believe in a two-state solution. Israel exists. The question is whether or not we want a politics where our money is sent over to Israel to do genocide and apartheid instead of investing in our own kids.”

Hunt followed up by asking, “You say it exists, but does it have a right to?”

El-Sayed responded, “No, I didn’t say that. I just said the question of Israel’s existence is not a question. I’m not going to play this gotcha game about whether or not it has a right to exist. The question, ultimately, is about whether or not we want a politics that dignifies equal rights –.”

Hunt then cut in to ask, “You’re not going to play the gotcha game, but you’re not going to say you think Israel has a right to exist?”

El-Sayed replied: “Well, my question — Kasie, I think the question we all ought to ask is, does everybody have equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination? That’s Jewish, Israelis, and Palestinians. And, to me, the folks who should answer what the ultimate peace there looks like should be Jewish, Israelis, and Palestinians. I want my tax dollars spent here in Michigan to provide schools in Michigan, to build healthcare in Michigan, to invest in Michigan, rather than to be sent abroad to kill Palestinian people, do genocides and apartheid. The question about whether or not Israel has a right to exist is actually quite secondary to whether or not they have a right to our tax dollars. And people don’t ask that question in good faith. So, if you want to ask me about a Palestinian right to exist, you want to ask me about what I want to do for kids in Michigan, I’m happy to answer that question. But the — AIPAC and Israel have become secondary questions that too many people have to talk about because our tax dollars keep getting spent over there, rather than being spent over here.”

Accusing Israel of “Evil” & “Genocide”

At daybreak on October 7, 2023, the Islamic terror group Hamas carried out a massive, multi-front, surprise attack against Israel, firing thousands of rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, while dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the Israeli border in a number of locations by air, land and sea. The attack had been planned in conjunction with officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with agents of three other Iran-sponsored terrorist groups. “In an assault of startling breadth,” reported CBS News, “Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.” By October 8, at least 600 Israelis had been killed and 1,800 wounded, making it the bloodiest day that Jews had experienced since the Holocaust. Moreover, Hamas took more than 240 Israelis hostage, including dozens who were American citizens, and moved them to the Gaza Strip. By October 19, the official casualty toll in Israel had reached more than 1,200 dead and 4,500 injured. In response to the foregoing atrocities, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a military invasion of the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of destroying Hamas and its leadership once and for all.

El-Sayed portrayed Israel’s military response to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, as a brutal campaign of “genocide.” During a Democratic Senate primary debate on July 8, 2026, for instance, he described Israel as a “rogue state” that was guilty of committing “human rights abuses, genocide, and apartheid.” Moreover, he called for the U.S. to “stop funding the Israeli military [with] unilateral blank checks.”

Drawing a moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas, El-Sayed said in an April 2026 interview with CNN: “Killing tens of thousands of people makes you [Israel] pretty damn evil. It’s not how evil is this one versus that one. Hamas: evil. Israeli government: evil. We can say both.”

“Hurt People Hurt People”: Blaming Israel for Islamic Terrorism

El-Sayed had a famously controversial reaction to a March 12, 2026 incident in a Detroit suburb where a 41-year-old Muslim man named Ayman Mohammad Ghazali — the brother of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon — rammed a truck filled with explosives into the Temple Israel synagogue. When it was subsequently reported that the perpetrator had lost four relatives — including the Hezbollah commander — in an Israeli airstrike against Lebanon a few days earlier, El-Sayed attempted to place Mr. Ghazali’s actions in context by explaining that “hurt people hurt people” — a reference to the spirit of righteous vengeance that Israel’s airstrike had likely unleashed in Ghazali’s heart. Critics of El-Sayed claimed that his remark was intended to justify Ghazali’s actions.

Rejecting Israel’s Existence As an “Ethno-State”

El-Sayed opposes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation. “I don’t believe in ethno-states,” he said in July 2026, “and I certainly don’t believe that our country is responsible to sustain ethno-states.”

No Military Funding for Israel

(a) During the August 5, 2026 broadcast of CNN’s The Source, Host Kaitlan Collins asked El-Sayed: “Can you clarify for us what your position is on funding for Israel. If you do become a U.S. senator, are you opposed to all funding for Israel, period, military funding?”

El-Sayed answered:

“I’m opposed to unconditional military aid for any country. That is Israel, yes, but that’s also Egypt, where my family immigrated from. That’s Pakistan. That’s Saudi Arabia. That’s the UAE. And that’s not because of a focus on what’s happening anywhere, except for a focus what’s happening here. We’ve got communities in my state where the median income is $14,000, and I believe they have a right to their tax dollars.

“I also believe in international law and upholding international law, and there are Leahy Laws against dealing arms to countries who are engaged in human rights abuses, and I don’t want to fund a foreign military that does genocide, apartheid, or has taken us to a war we don’t need to fight. I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Collins followed up by asking, “Some people might hear that and say, well, does he support funding defensive systems like the Iron Dome in Israel? Do you?”

El-Sayed replied: “I don’t believe that there’s really a difference between offensive or defensive weapons. And I also don’t believe it’s my responsibility to buy defensive weapons for a foreign government when our kids are defenseless against schools that have been underfunded for a very, very long time. My responsibility, as the next senator from Michigan, is children in Michigan, rather than thinking about what’s in the interest of a foreign government.”

Collins clarified, “Okay, so that’s a yes that you are against funding to things like the Iron Dome?”

El-Sayed responded, “I am against it, in large part because I just don’t understand why anybody thinks it’s the right thing to do to send our tax dollars abroad, to fund foreign militaries, when our own kids barely get to go to schools that are functional.”

(b) During a senatorial debate in Grand Rapids, Michigan on October 8, 2026, political reporter Rick Albin asked El-Sayed if he would vote to provide defensive weaponry to Israel if it were to be attacked by Iran or some other country. El-Sayed did not offer a definitive response, saying only that he was opposed in principle to American tax dollars “buying weapons for other countries.” “I’ve been absolutely clear,” he elaborated. “I want our tax dollars spent here to provide schools here … I want to make sure we’ve got good schools here and health care here. I want to make sure that we are taking care of people here. That is my priority.”

“You know,” El-Sayed added, “you asked a hypothetical question about being attacked by Iran, but let’s be honest about what happened here. Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran. And of course, my colleague who thinks there’s a war for everything went right along with it. And here we are. Israel had clear war aims. They wanted us to go to war with them, and their war aims were what? The annexation of southern Lebanon? Ask yourself, are we safer because of that war? He wants unconditional support for a foreign government. I want unconditional support for kids in our schools, unconditional support for our health care, child care, things that he would vote to defund.”

When Albin once again pressed El-Sayed to reveal whether or not he would “provide defensive weapons for Israel,” the candidate answered: “I don’t want our tax dollars buying weapons for other countries. I don’t know what’s so hard about that.”

Comparing Iran & Israel

(a) During an October 6, 2026 interview with NewsNation host Leland Vittert, El-Sayed refused to say if he viewed Israel as a bigger threat to the U.S. than Iran. “One of your supporters we interviewed seemed to think that … Israel was a bigger threat than Iran to the United States,” said Vittert. “Do you agree?”

El-Sayed responded: “Well, look, at the end of the day, our job is to address our issues diplomatically. But, right now, we are in the war in Iran, in part, because of the advocacy of the Israeli prime minister. There’s no disagreement on that. He came to the Situation Room and advocated for the war. And we’re now paying, what? $1,600 for it. Our gas, our groceries are unaffordable. And that’s on top of the billions in tax dollars that we spend sending our money over there.”

(b) During a senatorial debate in Grand Rapids, Michigan two days later – on October 8, 2026 – El-Sayed was again asked to say which country, in his estimation, posed a “bigger threat to the United States, Israel or Iran?”

He answered: “That’s a ridiculous hypothetical because here’s what’s happening right now: our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran. We have watched as Iran has responded by bombing all kinds of countries in the Middle East and then choking off the world’s energy supply. So, this is a situation in which I don’t think we should be a part.”

“I don’t want to be pushed into war by Israel,” El-Sayed continued, “and I don’t want to be in a war with Iran. I want our money spent here to buy schools and health care and child care here. I don’t understand why that is so inconceivable.”

El-Sayed went on to say he does not “consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight, and I don’t want to be fighting wars we don’t need to fight.” I just think that makes both of them kind of dangerous,” he added.

At that point the debate moderator, longtime political reporter Rick Albin, pressed El-Sayed to answer, saying, “I’ll ask one last time: Israel or Iran?”

“That’s, again, a ridiculous question,” El-Sayed replied. “I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way: one at risk of attacking us, one, getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”

Smearing the Slain Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk

In a social media post of September 20, 2025 — nine days after conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist gunman in Utah – El-Sayed acknowledged that Kirk’s killing had been “wrongly and unjustly” carried out, but added that Kirk’s speech was “often xenophobic, hateful, and inflammatory.” “We can condemn the political violence that claimed a father and a husband,” El-Sayed explained, “without revising the history about who he was and what he stood for.”

Ties to Hasan Piker

El-Sayed made campaign appearances with leftist commentator Hasan Piker — famous for incessantly articulating his deep contempt for both the United States and Israel — at a pair of April 2026 college-campus rallies in Michigan, and also at a primary-night party in Detroit on August 4, 2026.

During a June 30, 2026 appearance on CNN, El-Sayed was asked to address the critics who had rebuked him for campaigning with Piker at the Michigan campuses. El-Sayed answered, “Look it’s a pretty crazy … The idea that we’re going to tie people together and say, well, guilt by association so is just not in keeping with the way most of us think about the world. I’m sitting on a panel with a very diverse group of people. Did I vet all of you before I came and sat here because one of you might have said something I disagree with? I just think it’s a ridiculous way to think about politics.”

On August 9, 2026, NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker said to El-Sayed: “You’ve faced scrutiny for campaigning with Socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has made a series of inflammatory comments, as you well know, including saying America deserved 9/11, describing Hamas as a lesser evil than Israel. Do you plan to continue to campaign with Hasan Piker in the general election campaign?”

El-Sayed said in response: “Look, I’m less concerned now with who I’m campaigning with and a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to. We’ve got a lot of work to do to continue to build the coalition that’s going to beat Mike Rogers.”

Ties to the George Soros Family

In 2012, El-Sayed received a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans — an award that had been established by Paul Soros, the older brother of multi-billionaire Democrat donor George Soros, and Paul’s wife, Daisy, to support the graduate-study aspirations of immigrants to the U.S. and their children. As part of the evaluation process by which potential fellowship recipients were evaluated, Paul Soros’ son Jeffrey, who was CEO of the Los Angeles Media Fund, personally interviewed El-Sayed. At that time, this Soros Fellowship program advertised awards of up to $90,000 over two years.

Fourteen years later, in September 2026, Jeffrey Soros and his wife, Catharine, opened their California home to serve as the venue for a closed-door fundraiser for El-Sayed’s U.S. Senate campaign in Michigan. Co-hosting the event were Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Ben Rhodes. Guests were permitted to contribute up to $57,800 to the Abdul for Michigan Victory Fund.

Question of Dual Citizenship

On January 9, 2026, The Washington Free Beacon reported that in 2014, a résumé that El-Sayed had published on an academic networking website listed his “citizenships” as “USA, Egypt.” In response to the publication of this story, Roxie Richner, spokeswoman for El-Sayed’s Senate campaign, told the Free Beacon: “Abdul is not a dual citizen by any verifiable metric and never has been.” The error, she explained, had resulted from El-Sayed being wrongly “told as a child that his grandfather had pursued Egyptian citizenship on his behalf, for which he was eligible due to his parents being born in Egypt.” “When he [El-Sayed] tried to verify this [dual-citizenship] later on in life,” Richner said, “he and his family were unable to find any documentation to verify this claim.”

Nine months later — on October 5, 2026 — The Washington Free Beacon posted a video that showed El-Sayed, during his tenure as Detroit’s health director in 2016, telling a GlobeMed conference in that city: “I carry dual citizenship, and I grew up spending most of my summers in another country where I understood what it meant not to have the right to self-govern.” In response to that Free Beacon story, El-Sayed’s U.S. Senate campaign reiterated its earlier denial of any suggestion that the candidate was a dual citizen of the United States and Egypt.

El-Sayed Compares Himself to Jesus Christ

In a 2026 interview with leftwing podcaster Jennifer Welch, El-Sayed likened his own political agenda to the “essential teaching” of Jesus Christ – a message “about upending the system against the richest and most powerful and the ways that they used their power and their money to subjugate other people.”

In a 2026 appearance on The Progressive Christians Podcast, El-Sayed was asked for his response to critics who had called him a “radical” for promoting “Medicare for All” and other socialist policies that, according to the interviewer, were viewed by “progressive Christians” as being “very similar to the teachings of Jesus.” In the course of his reply, El-Sayed said: “Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him, was considered radical in his time too. And there is a radical nature to being willing to stand forthright in a time of corruption.”

Contempt for President Trump & His Supporters

(a) On the August 22, 2026 broadcast of the MS NOW program Politics Nation, host Al Sharpton said to El-Sayed, “If you’re elected, you’ll be spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C.  So I have to start by asking you about the scene there today. As we are at war, as Americans are struggling to pay for necessities as the debt has topped $40 trillion. And while we’re hitting our ally, Canada, just today with a 50% tariff, the President [Trump] is playing host to an IndyCar race on the National Mall. What do you make of the display?”

El-Sayed replied: “Rev, I don’t have to tell you this, but this is not a serious person. This is America’s version of Nero in 2026. He’s never been serious about actually solving our problems. He’s always just made them worse. And then you think about the fact that this is a guy who’s more interested in traveling around the world. He’s more interested in putting drapes in his new ballroom, and now he’s interested in hosting a car race. This is not what we need and deserve from an American president in a moment of turmoil like this one. We need somebody who’s going to be serious about actually solving problems.”

(b) During the September 13, 2026 broadcast of CBS’s Face the Nation, host Weijia Jiang played a video clip that showed Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson saying: “We know who the Mamdanis [a reference to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani] and the El-Sayeds are, but it’s the Democrats in the swing seats who say one thing and then join forces and vote with the socialists that they’re afraid of. That is the dangerous part. They’re the ones who have let the barbarians inside the gate.”

Jiang then asked El-Sayed: “What do you make of Republicans focusing so much attention on you?” The Senate candidate replied:

“Well, I’ll tell you this: the barbarian is in the White House, and we’re seeing the consequences of that right now. You know, it was not a subject at all of the RNC? the gas prices, grocery prices, these ridiculous tariffs, and this war with Canada that’s raising our prices an average $5,600 a year for the average Michigan family. The war in Iran- didn’t want to talk about any of it. The fact that you can’t see a doctor in the United States. So, they’re going to point to me. They’re going to talk about me. They’re going to point to my name. They’re going to point to our faith. And at the end of the day, they’re doing that so that you don’t pay attention to the fact that you are being nickeled and dimed by the barbarian in the White House and by a set of public policies that are not in your interest, but in his.”

Endorsers of El-Sayed’s Senate Campaign

Among the many endorsers of El-Sayed’s Senate campaign were the following:

Individuals: Jamaal Bowman, Greg Casar, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Keith Ellison, Kamala Harris, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Brad Lander, Summer Lee, Ed Markey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Elizabeth Warren, Raphael Warnock

Organizations: AFL-CIO, AFSCME, American Association for Justice, American Association of University Professors, American Federation of Teachers (Michigan), Bend the Arc, Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Friends of the Earth Action, Indivisible, Jewish Voice for Peace, League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, MoveOn, Our Revolution, Peace Action, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Progressive Democrats of America, Progressive Women’s Alliance, Service Employees International Union, Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, UNITE HERE! (Local 24), United Auto Workers (Michigan), Working Families Party

Campaign Support from Pro-Muslim Brotherhood Islamists

On November 25, 2012 – just three days after Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president, Mohamad Morsi, had granted himself broad new powers as a means of thwarting open opposition to his rule — Abdul El-Sayed was one of 46 self-identified “leaders of the Egyptian community” who signed their names to an Arabic-language statement that appeared on the Egyptian news portal Al-Ahram Gate. Calling for an uncompromising crackdown on freedom of the press, El-Sayed and his fellow signatories wrote, in part:

“Egypt has experienced a state of tension in the recent period and a clear narrowing of the powers of the president, which had the greatest impact on the failure to achieve the demands of the revolution, given the control of the rest of the former regime in many pillars of the state, the most important of which is the judiciary, which gave release to all those accused of killing revolutionaries, as if a revolution had not taken place, as if no blood had been shed for the sake of this dear country….

“We, the leaders of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the president, and call on him to purge the media and the police as soon as possible, and since we do not hide the fear that such powers are in the hands of the president, we would like the president to clarify that this supplementary constitutional declaration ends as soon as the constitution is written, and we affirm that we as Egyptian-Americans strongly reject these voices that are courting America and Europe to take a stand against the Egyptian regime, and we will stand together in support of the elected president.”

Fourteen years later, when El-Sayed was running for the U.S. Senate in 2026, at least 6 of the people who had co-signed the aforementioned 2012 statement contributed a combined total of more than $25,000 to his campaign. Among those donors were:

• Egyptian Association In America member Hany Saqr, who: (a) was listed in a 1990s phone directory of U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood leaders; and (b) in 2018 derided Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was an adversary of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a “dog of the Jews”;
• Ahmed Shehata, a leading official with Islamic Relef USA, who: (a) wrote a December 2013 opinion piece for Roll Call that supported the Muslim Brotherhood and exhorted the United States to reinstate President Morsi, who recently had been removed from office in a military coup led by el-Sisi; (b) attacked efforts to brand the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in 2014; and (c) had also donated money to El-Sayed’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign.
• Hesham Gayar, a Michigan-based oncology/proton therapy specialist who not only contributed at least $7,000 to El-Sayed’s 2026 Senate campaign, but also had donated nearly that same amount to El-Sayed’s 2018 gubernatorial bid.

Campaign Support from Radical Imams & Islamist Groups

In a September 2026 article that focused heavily on El-Sayed’s U.S. Senate campaign in Michigan, the Middle East Forum reported that:

• “Tax-exempt nonprofits, including Islamist organizations tied to foreign extremist movements, are openly electioneering—endorsing candidates, soliciting campaign donations, distributing campaign literature, hosting campaign booths, and campaigning from the pulpit—all actions that potentially violate the Johnson Amendment’s absolute ban on political campaign intervention by 501(c)(3) organizations.”
• “Imams at Michigan mosques campaigned for [El-Sayed] from the pulpit—two of them hosting the candidate himself during services.”

Additional details as per the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI):

• During Labor Day weekend 2026, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) permitted El-Sayed to speak from the main stage at its annual national convention in Detroit, and allowed his senatorial campaign staff to display posters and distribute literature at the event. Moreover, ISNA chief executive officer Azhar Azeez praised and embraced El-Sayed on the stage and made it clear that, in Azeez’s estimation, supporting El-Sayed would constitute a “very smart, very wise” course of action.
• On August 3, 2026 — the day before the Democratic senatorial primary in Michigan — Imam Husham Al-Husainy delivered a sermon at his Dearborn mosque wherein he called for the defeat of “the Zionist lowlives” and “infidels,” and declared that an El-Sayed victory would be a “victory to God.” (Al-Husainy had a long history of incendiary, anti-Semitic rhetoric. In 2015, for instance, he hosted a rally where he wished death upon Saudi Arabia and smeared its people as “agents of the Jews.” And in 2006 at his mosque, he allegedly held a picture of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.)
• On June 6, 2026, the Islamic Institute of America invited El-Sayed to speak at the grand opening ceremony of its new headquarters in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.
• On July 31, 2026 — Imam Hassan Qazwini delivered a sermon at the Islamic Institute of America, wherein he said: “The Zionists are pouring over 60 million dollars so they can hijack your voice. Don’t allow them. If you allow them, I would say, respectfully, I would say shame on you. And shame on me, if we allow them.” Qazwini added, “The way to deal the Zionist a bigger blow is to go and cast your vote on Tuesday [August 4], and don’t allow the Zionist candidate to win.”
• In a July 24, 2026 speech at the Warren, Michigan headquarters of the Islamic Organization of North America, Nihad Awad – executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – said in a sermon: “There is an election [Democratic senatorial primary] on August 4.… The Muslim community in Michigan … you have made history. Continue to make history!’”
• On July 31, 2026 at the Muslim Educational Community Center of America in Canton, Michigan, Islamic scholar Sayed Mohammed Qazwini told worshippers: “It’s mandatory to go and to elect brother Abdul El-Sayed because at least we know he’s a Muslim, he will support Muslim issues here in this country.”
• As the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported, a pro-Sharia imam at the American Muslim Diversity Association in Sterling Heights stated in a summer 2026 speech: “The tide is changing. We need to take advantage of that and get involved. Abdul El-Sayed, if he gets elected, he’s going to be the first [Muslim] U.S. senator in the history of the United States.”
• During a religious service at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights in late June 2026, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi — an Iranian-trained cleric who once directed the Political-Ideological Bureau of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy — called on El-Sayed to step up to the pulpit. “Brother Abdul El-Sayed, welcome,” Elahi said, before proclaiming: “I’m going to vote for this man!” He then proceeded to exhort his congregation to do the same, as a way to “stop Trump” and “this war against Iran.”
• A few days before Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary election of August 4, 2026, Elahi wrote on social media that El-Sayed was “the best person for Michigan, the best for the U.S., the best for humanity.”

Alleged Ties to Terrorist-Linked Organizations

On September 15, 2026, the campaign website of Mike Rogers – El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in the Michigan Senate race — listed “the money donated to [El-Sayed] from terrorist organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (‘CAIR’) and the Muslim Brotherhood.” Specifically, the Rogers website reported that:

• “[El-Sayed had received] nearly $130,000 from donors with identified connections to CAIR, an alleged Hamas-linked group and Designated Terrorist Organization in multiple states. The donations come from over 41 staff or board members, including national board chair Manal Fakhoury, national board treasurer Eyas Abdeen, national board vice chair Emad Sabbah, and Michigan board member Muzammil Ahmed.”
• “Abdul El-Sayed’s Father-in-Law, Tayeb Jukaku, has donated at least $300,000 to a Pro-Abdul Super PAC. Tayen is a top leader of a Muslim Brotherhood Organization linked to terror funding and is the President of CAIR Michigan.”

In addition, the Rogers website noted that El-Sayed’s Senate campaign had received:

• $7,000 from Amani Barakat, the chairman of Al-Awda, an organization that has called for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state, and the dismantling the U.S. military; and
• additional funds from “the Unity & Justice Fund, the super PAC controlled and funded by CAIR’s lobbying arm which claimed credit for helping Abdul win the Democratic primary.”

Moreover, as noted earlier, Abdul El-Sayed’s half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, boasted in a social-media post that indeed their family had a significant history of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdul El-Sayed, however, repeatedly denied that either he or any of his relatives possessed any such connections.

El-Sayed Is Elected to the U.S. Senate

On November 3, 2026, El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in the general election for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat by a margin of 52.5% to 45.5%.