The University of Michigan’s largest undergraduate unit, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), announced a pilot program starting in fall 2027 where incoming freshmen will receive “Pass” or “No Credit” on external transcripts for their first semester instead of letter grades.
Freshmen get ‘pass’ or ‘no credit’—no real grades required. In other words, they are producing Democrats.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN JUST WENT FULL PARTICIPATION TROPHY
Incoming students will no longer get real grades.
Just “Pass” or “No Credit.”
All in the name of “mental health.”
No more A’s. No more F’s. No distinction between the kid who worked his ass off and the one who barely showed up.
They’re turning a competitive university into expensive daycare.
In a world where kids from other countries are grinding for every point, Michigan just decided effort doesn’t matter.
Soft school. Soft standards. Soft future.
This is how you raise a generation that can’t handle reality.
The University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and Arts (LSA) will get rid of final letter grades for first-semester students starting in fall 2027.
The college unveiled the change on its website, saying it will designate all first-year LSA students with pass or no credit on their first-semester transcripts. Those students will still receive letter grades and feedback from instructors, the announcement noted.
The change is intended to help first-term students “establish early momentum” and “curb the mental health crisis unfolding” among college students.
“Our goal is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys—core elements of a liberal arts and sciences education,” the announcement stated. “For example, they can explore a subject that may not come easily to them or take a course in a new field without the fear that a low grade may have long-term consequences.”
Eighteen percent of college students reported severe depression symptoms in the 2024-25 Healthy Minds Study — which is administered by the Healthy Minds Network at Michigan’s flagship university — marking the third straight year of decline.
Justin Heinze, an associate professor at the university’s School of Public Health, noted the reductions are “not a blip.”
Heinze said, “Whether it’s distance from the pandemic, better institutional support, or something else driving the change, I think this is a promising counternarrative to what seems like constant headlines around young people’s struggles with mental health.”
All first-year LSA students will be enrolled in the program, with the college noting an “opt-in” program would “defeat the purpose of facilitating students’ transition to campus,” supporting their mental health and motivating them to learn.
“If covered grades are optional, covering an individual’s grades will inadvertently become equated with them not doing well in a class,” the announcement added.
New transfer students will not be eligible for the program, while the university will maintain final grades internally for athletic eligibility, compliance reporting and students’ eligibility for financial aid, among other purposes.
The LSA college is the largest at Michigan, with 19,733 undergraduates and 3,521 first-year students enrolled as of the fall of 2025. As of last fall, roughly 35,300 undergraduates were enrolled at the university, which the U.S. News & World Report ranks as the third-best public institution in the country.
Michigan is not alone in eliminating letter grades for first-semester students. Since 1968, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has assigned pass or no credit grades during first-year fall and letter grades in the spring.
The obstruction from anti-Trump GOP senators is severely threatening Republican chances in the upcoming midterms.
By: Samuel Kimzey, The Federalist, August 8, 2026:
The tension between President Trump’s MAGA administration and the obstructionist elements within the Senate GOP ranks continues, with the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general serving as the newest flashpoint of conflict. President Donald Trump directly blasted Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, last week after it became clear that they remained intransigent in their opposition to confirming Blanche.
Tillis and Cornyn ultimately announced their support for Blanche’s confirmation and advanced him out of the committee hearing, but not without doing their best to obstruct Trump and Blanche. And by obstructing the MAGA agenda, Tillis and Cornyn are simultaneously doing their best to hurt Trump’s party in the upcoming midterm elections.
To get the necessary support from Tillis and Cornyn, Blanche was forced to announce that he had instructed the Department of Justice to terminate the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” This fund of $1.776 billion dollars was announced in May as part of the settlement of the civil lawsuit filed by Trump against the IRS over the 2020 leak of his tax returns.
Demonstrating his shrewd political maneuvering and an honorable, magnanimous desire to vindicate his supporters, President Trump had opted for the anti-weaponization fund to provide relief to his many ordinary American supporters instead of receiving any personal compensation for damages. The fund was intended to provide financial relief to those who could demonstrate they had been unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the Biden administration’s weaponization of the government against conservatives and especially the former president and his supporters.
Tillis also signaled his displeasure with the anti-weaponization fund, and it appears his support for Blanche’s confirmation as AG (if Tillis will indeed ultimately support Blanche) became contingent upon the scrapping of the anti-weaponization fund. Tillis has become one of the most vociferous anti-Trump Republicans in the Senate, notably attacking the administration’s key policy of enforcing immigration law. Specifically, Tillis has shown nothing but vitriol for the Trump supporters prosecuted by the Biden administration in the wake of Jan. 6, 2021, and he deliberately blocked the confirmation of Ed Martin as U.S. district attorney for Washington, D.C., because of the legal support Martin provided for J6ers. Tillis also criticized the anti-weaponization fund and argued that the actions taken by the Trump administration were of the same kind as those from Biden’s weaponized government.
Tillis and Cornyn are simply the clearest examples of a repeated pattern of obstruction of President Trump’s agenda by establishment Republican senators who dislike Trump and the way he is remaking the Republican Party. These senators manifest their obstruction by refusing to eliminate the filibuster or utilize the talking filibuster, pass the SAVE America Act and other urgently needed legislative reforms, confirm some of Trump’s best nominees, or eliminate the outdated “blue slips” process for judicial confirmations, which only helps the left.
Reforming the makeup of the Senate GOP cannot come quickly enough. Thankfully, some of the worst anti-Trump senators have been successfully primaried. Cornyn suffered a resounding defeat in May to Ken Paxton, the pro-Trump attorney general of Texas. Paxton will likely carry the general election in November to replace Cornyn in the Senate. Bill Cassidy, a longtime anti-Trump Republican senator from Louisiana, also suffered a primary defeat to Julia Letlow, the Trump-endorsed candidate. And Tillis is retiring at the end of this term, rather than risk being primaried himself.
It is long past time for the Republican Party to field and elect candidates for Congress who will protect the rights and defend the interests of ordinary American citizens: restricting immigration, restoring law and order, and limiting foreign entanglements. For far too long, the Republican establishment — particularly the Republican senators — have been eager to sell out their voters in preference for cheap foreign labor, arming supposed “allies” in overseas conflicts, and making performative political displays in Washington while refusing to play hardball against the Democrats.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/RINOs-Are-Tanking-The-Entire-Republican-Party.jpg360640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-08-09 05:16:272026-08-09 05:20:12RINOs Are Tanking The Entire Republican Party, Not Trump
It is the one issue that has bipartisan support across the nation, voter ID.
Senate Democrats vote against bill requiring photo ID to cast ballots
Story by Nicholas Ballasy
Senate Democrats voted against advancing a bill early Saturday that would have required photo ID to cast ballots, leading to the failure of the measure.
Under the bill, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 would be amended to require voters to show photo identification to vote.
The final vote was 52-46, which wasn’t enough to pass it.
Speaking out against the bill on the Senate floor, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said the bill is “stricter” than the rules in some states with voter ID laws.
Padilla said it would require voters to input a copy of their identification when voting by mail.
Many people in the West have lost the will to fight the Muslim invasion of their countries. Instead, some embrace the Muslims who are, by the tens of millions, already in their midst, treating them as legitimate “asylum refugees,” to be provided with every sort of welfare benefit, and not as the economic migrants that in fact they are. Some in the West see themselves as having to atone for the colonial conquests of their ancestors, and what better way to do so than by admitting into their countries the descendants of those who supposedly suffered from such colonialism? More on this Western masochism can be found in Giulio Meotti’s article here: “Masochism: the gravest mental illness in the West,” by Giulio Meotti, Israel National News, August 5, 2026:
At the end of his long and magnificent life, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote:
“I began to reflect at a time when our culture was aggressing other cultures, and in that period I set myself up as their defender and witness. Today I have the impression that the movement has been reversed and that our culture has ended up on the defensive in the face of external threats, among which figures the Islamic explosion. And suddenly I found myself being an ethnological defender, and firmly resolved, of my own culture.”
Pippa Bacca, a Milanese artist, pseudonym of Giuseppina Pasqualino Di Marineo, niece of Piero Manzoni, began her itinerant tour “Brides on tour” in a white wedding dress.
To teach Israel “how to make peace,” the Italian leftist decided to hitchhike from Italy to Israel. She had even learned Arabic, to demonstrate that “Islam is not violent.”
The Jewish state needed no lessons on “how to make peace” from the pro-Palestinian Pippa Bacca. Israel has been attempting to make a real peace, and not just a temporary hudna, or truce, with its Arab enemies ever since the 1948 war. Egypt, notably, signed a peace treaty with Israel in order to get back the entire Sinai, that it had lost in the Six-Day War, but relations between Israel and Egypt have hardly improved since. The Egyptian media is still full of vituperative attacks on Israel; at the UN, Egypt leads the anti-Israel bloc of Arab states, and pushes for the General Assembly to adopt anti-Israel measures. Sadat explained to his fellow Egyptians that he only signed the Camp David Accords in 1978 in order to have Israel turn the entire Sinai back to Egypt.
But let’s go back to Pippa Bacca, the innocent Italian leftist, hoping to hitchhike all the way from Italy to Israel, to help bring “peace” between Arab and Jew.
A hitchhiking journey, unconditional trust in others and in the brotherhood among peoples. What could possibly go wrong?
“The only thing that scares me is the cold,” Pippa had said before setting off through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Bulgaria.
But in Turkey, Pippa met Murat Karatash and her life ended in horror and brutality. Raped and murdered.
Thus concluded Pippa’s parabola, within her own creative work.
Meanwhile another Italian activist, Vittorio Arrigoni, a homosexual, had arrived in Gaza on a boat against the Israeli “blockade” (of weapons) to help “the Palestinian Arab people.” He had tattooed on his arm the Arabic word for “resistance” (مقاومة, muqāwama).
The jihadists of Gaza kidnapped and killed him.
For twenty years it is as if we had put Pippa Bacca in charge of Europe.
Too many in the Western world, like the terminally naïve Pippa Bacca and Vittorio Arrigoni, who paid with their lives, have sympathized with, and trusted, the Palestinians, and other Muslims, and that diseased sympathy has prevented many in the West from comprehending the demographic threat from the Muslims now in their midst. And too many Western officials have for decades been admitting hordes of Muslims — there are now 44 million in Europe — who have no intention of assimilating into Western societies, for why should the “best of peoples” want to integrate with those they know are the “most vile of created beings”? And they are convinced, too, as Muhammad famously said, that “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated.”
The attack at Berlin’s Pride once again demonstrates that out there roam wolves who in the name of Islam want to tear us bodily apart. Faced with this very serious danger, a country can react in two ways. Either the rule of law passes from prey to hunter, even if unpleasant images will arise, for example during raids….
In other words, European governments must do everything they can to cease being “prey” to Muslims. This means they must discourage, or prevent altogether, Muslim immigration. Such measures could include putting a stop to all migration from Muslim lands, rounding up and deporting those Muslim migrants who are already in the West illegally, promptly deporting Muslims convicted of crimes at the conclusion of their sentences back to their countries of origin, and preventing migrants — overwhelmingly Muslims — from receiving any welfare benefits during the first five years of their presence in the land.
Pippa Bacca feared the cold, not the man. Arrigoni feared Israel, not the Salafists. The organizers of Berlin Pride fear “instrumentalization,” not those who kill them.
Perhaps the end of Western civilization will not arrive with barbarian invasions, but in a wedding dress, a resistance tattoo and prayers that the murderer be white and Christian.
Giulio Meotti is too pessimistic. He should know that everywhere in the Western world the anti-immigrant parties — or more exactly, the anti-Muslim-immigrant parties — are now in the ascendant. In Germany, Alice Weidel’s Alternative für Deutschland, in Italy Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, in Spain Santiago Abascal’s Vox party, in the UK Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party, and Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party are all determined to diminish the presence of Muslim migrants.
The peoples of Europe have been slow to grasp the demographic threat, but now the scales have fallen from their eyes, and many are bestirring themselves to support leaders well aware of the Muslim menace. Note to Giulio Meotti: Sursum corda! The cavalry is coming.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Pippa-Bacca.jpg360640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2026-08-09 04:46:162026-08-09 04:52:04The Masochism of the West
I have served alongside government civilian employees for more than 40 years in varying capacities and watched too many good people in uniform and the civil service choose to not speak out instead of putting the mission first.
Mission first is the standard. What we saw from Pentagon employee Brandon Newsom is a good example — and he is not an isolated case.
Newsom, a 16-year Pentagon employee and Director of Business Operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, was caught on hidden camera by James O’Keefe admitting he intended to stay in place precisely so he could “undo whatever’s been done” by the Trump administration once the political winds shifted.
“I have the influence… I can undo whatever’s been done,” he said. “When the election changes… I want to stay and stick it out so that when the time comes, I can undo whatever’s been done.”
He openly dismissed the president as a “textbook narcissist” and called U.S. policy toward Iran “completely stupid … driven on one man’s ego.”
He even targeted the voluntary monthly prayer service held by Secretary Pete Hegseth and the policy that allows senior officials to be held accountable and removed.
This is not policy disagreement. This is calculated resistance by a career government employee who views the elected leadership of the United States as an inconvenience to be waited out and then reversed.
Newsom admitted he lacked formal authority but planned to use the influence of his position to slow-roll or reverse lawful directives.
That is the textbook definition of the “disloyal government employee problem” that has plagued the Pentagon and the broader federal bureaucracy for years.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao did the right thing by placing Newsom on administrative leave immediately. Accountability must follow. Suspension is the minimum. Removal should be the outcome.
Anyone who takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, then plots to undermine the policies of the duly elected commander-in-chief because they personally dislike them, has no business drawing a taxpayer paycheck inside the Department of War.
I have seen this mindset before.
Careerists who treat the Pentagon as their permanent fiefdom rather than an institution that serves the American people and the warfighters who put their lives on the line.
They wrap their resistance in the language of “institutional knowledge” or “continuity,” but the reality is often personal ideology and self-preservation.
They stay, they slow-walk, they leak and they wait for the next administration that better matches their preferences.
Meanwhile, readiness suffers, lethality is diluted and the troops pay the price.
Civilian control of the military is not optional. It is foundational. Government employees, whether uniformed or civilian, do not get a veto over the voters. They execute lawful orders or they leave. Period.
The idea that a GS-15 or SES can sit in the Pentagon for 16 years and openly scheme to reverse the policies of an elected administration is corrosive.
It destroys trust, invites more of the same, and signals to our adversaries that America’s defense establishment is divided against itself.
Secretary Hegseth and the Trump administration have made clear they intend to restore warfighting focus, cut bureaucratic bloat, and hold people accountable.
That mission cannot succeed if the building is still full of people who view those changes as temporary inconveniences to be undone the moment the political calendar turns.
Root them out. Use the tools already available, and strengthen them if necessary, to ensure loyalty to the Constitution and the chain of command, not to personal agendas or Beltway orthodoxy.
I spent more than three decades in uniform because I believed in the mission and the country. Most of the men and women still serving feel the same way.
They deserve leaders and civilian counterparts who share that commitment, not careerists waiting for their chance to “undo” the will of the American people.
Fire them. Replace them with people who understand that service means executing the policies of the elected government, not subverting them.
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Yes, I know, you read the title of this missive and said to yourself, “Which one?”
Yes, the entire basis of Marxism is deeply rooted in hypocrisy, but last week Martha MacCallum had it on full display. She was interviewing a young fella who was the co-director of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America chapter.
Ms. MacCallum had obviously done her research and led this helpless imbecile right into a textbook U-shaped ambush.
She asked him about his parents, who had immigrated to the United States from Peru. His response was that they did so to flee American imperialism and capitalism.
She then reminded him that they fled during the time of the rise of the Shining Path, a Maoist Communist insurgency movement. Her response to the young man was that he didn’t make sense. I would certainly agree.
If American imperialism and capitalism were something worth fleeing, then why not just stay in Peru and support the Shining Path? After all, they were a communist insurgency. Is that not what Marxists desire?
And to admit that his parents “supposedly” fled Peru to escape American imperialism and capitalism to come to America, home of the free-market, free-enterprise economic system that has benefited far more people than a socialist economic model, is delusional hypocrisy.
Therein lies the fundamental reason why it is hard to take these Marxist propagandists as intelligent.
I certainly do take them seriously because they are delusional enough to enact violence to force one to succumb to their insanity.
I remember as a young Army Lieutenant going behind the “Iron Curtain” and seeing for myself what this delusion is all about.
My first trip through Checkpoint Charlie to East Berlin was in 1985, and it was very eye-opening for this kid from the inner city of Atlanta.
All that which I had studied at the University of Tennessee about Marxism, socialism, and communism was staring me right in the face.
And we were well aware of the East German Stasi secret police following us. The poor condition of the roads, streets, streetcars, and buildings was apparent. The lack of “diversity” in automobile selection was startling. I saw what government “rent-controlled” housing looked like.
But what was most telling and unforgettable was the look of despair, despondency, and lack of joy on the faces of the people. It is truly as Sir Winston Churchill described it,
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Marxist ideology is indeed a creed of ignorance that believes it is their right, their objective, to make us all equal. It is a philosophy of governance that does not reward individual achievement or exceptionalism.
As Barack Obama once quipped, “If you own a business, you didn’t build that.” How utterly offensive and condescending to the indomitable American entrepreneurial spirit that made this nation the envy of the world, which was on full display to the world during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The world got to see and experience this nation, our America, and came to the realization that the Marxist leftist propaganda media had been lying to them.
Take, for example, the laudatory comments about Waffle House, founded in my home state of Georgia by two former World War II veterans, Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner. Imagine an America where their desire, their idea, their innovation would have been stymied by the likes of an Obama, worse, Mamdani.
I often ask, why don’t these delusional American Marxists just move to North Korea?
Certainly, after hearing the new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, speak, they should go there. Something tells me that it will not be long before the Brits are on their 8th PM in 10 years.
Cuba is collapsing. The Soviet Union collapsed. South America is rejecting Marxist governance. But here, we have a group of incompetents who are the pure definition of insanity and believe that they can do Marxism better, better than Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and the Sandinistas.
America is the longest consecutive-running Constitutional Republic that the world has known, but these Marxists seek to destroy it by completely decimating our Constitution. Heck, they do not even want an America at all, since they demand open borders.
Totalitarians are delusional, and their hypocrisy lies in the lies that they tell themselves.
Even the Chinese Communist Party recognized that the capitalist system could be leveraged in such a way to sustain their communist ideology, which is why we should seek to isolate and expel them from the world economy since their long-term objective is the triumph of communism; capitalism is just a means to that end.
America in 2026 is facing an ideological choice, not a political one.
And how interesting that this choice for our future would come in the year of our 250th anniversary of independence.
Truthfully, for the American Marxists, their hypocrisy is rooted in an acute inability to love their own country because of their own personal character failures and shortcomings.
There are many places where they, along with their Islamist cohorts, can go and live in their tyrannical utopia.
No, their joy will come in destroying the joy of those who love America and ushering in their definition of equity, the equality of outcomes that leads to the equality of misery.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Leftist-Laughable-Hypocrisy.jpg360640Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngStand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS)2026-08-08 12:44:012026-08-08 12:48:18The Leftist Laughable Hypocrisy
A young mathematics graduate who raised pigs to feed his wife and daughter taught himself — using a gifted camera — how to edit videos during the rare hours his city wasn’t suffering blackouts. Within weeks, he became one of the most influential independent political voices on an island that hasn’t held free elections in nearly 70 years.
The story might seem hard to follow, but it is real — and grim. The young man is Ernesto Ricardo Medina (“Tico”), co-founder (alongside Kamil Zayas) of the viral audiovisual project El4tico, where he blended his faith with criticism of the Cuban socialist tyranny. In August, he marks six months of imprisonment on charges of “propaganda against the constitutional order” and “incitement to commit a crime.”
The life he left behind on the morning of his arrest — February 6 — includes the significant presence he built on social media platforms like Facebook, where he had 137,000 followers. But even more importantly, he left behind his family: his 4-year-old daughter, Emma, and his wife, Doris Santiesteban.
Doris stood by him when he was a free man, and she stands by him now as one of the Castro regime’s more than 1,200 political prisoners. I am speaking today with Doris — who, despite her naturally private nature, posts videos and messages on social media every day calling for her husband’s freedom.
How did you and Ernesto meet?
I’ve known Tico for many years, but the truth is, we had never actually spoken to one another.
We only grew closer after I started working at a café in the city of Holguín — where we both live. From that moment on, we were together; that’s how we got to where we are now.
We’ve seen several family videos you’ve shared on Facebook alongside calls for Tico’s freedom. In one, he’s playing with Emma, who is laughing uproariously in her crib. What is Tico like as a father?
As a father, Tico was always there for Emma. He was her prince and protector — the strong one. Honestly, the saddest part of this whole bitter situation for him has been being kept away from watching his daughter grow up all this time.
What do you think drove him to start El4tico?
El4tico, as a media phenomenon, was something that just happened spontaneously.
A friend gave us the camera, and Tico started using it to record random things. Then one day, he invited some friends over to talk, and in the midst of venting, the topic of politics in this country came up.
He and Kamil just wanted to express what they’ve experienced as young Cubans today. I can also tell you that they wanted to raise awareness about the situation in Cuba and encourage critical thinking.
When that happened — and Tico started addressing issues more directly against the regime — were you or the family afraid? How did you react?
Yes, of course we were afraid; we knew this could happen.
I’m with him all the way; I support him in everything, and I still do. We continue to trust in God; He is the only one who has the final word and is in control.
On the other hand, the family reacted with fear. Some friends even stopped visiting the house out of fear of repression.
Was there a specific event or El4tico video that made you particularly worried?
I was always worried. But the pressure on Tico started to get worse and became more visible when the sector chief from the Revolutionary National Police (PNR) came to the house. I’d say that was the moment — September 17, 2025 — when this whole ordeal began for our family.
How has Emma reacted? She was 3 years old when the police took Tico away. How does she interact with you?
Emma’s reaction is something I sometimes don’t even know how to explain.
She witnessed everything that happened on the day of the arrest. Then she saw the lonely days that followed at home. She saw me sad, crying. Despite everything, she has been — well, she’s really surprised me. So loving and affectionate. She tells me that she’s always looking after Mom now because Dad isn’t here. To hear her say things like that, at such a young age…
It’s remarkable how social media has been flooded with shows of support — and how, back in early February, a pastor traveled all the way from Las Tunas to pray for you and bring an offering from the church in Cuba. Beyond instances like that, have you felt that sense of solidarity close at hand over these past few months?
Yes, of course.
So many people have reached out to offer everything from prayers to emotional support and companionship.
What is the latest news you’ve had about Ernesto?
I know he’s just surviving right now. The question is, for how long?
Yoe Suárez is The Washington Stand’s international affairs correspondent. He is an exiled journalist, writer, and producer who investigated in Havana about torture, political police, gangs, government black lists, and cybersurveillance. A graduate of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, he was a CBN correspondent, and has written for outlets like The Hill and Newsweek. He has appeared on Vox, Univision, and Deutsche Welle as an analyst on Cuba, security, and U.S. foreign policy.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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Lars Møller recently published a piece on three farsighted people — the late Oriana Fallaci, Mark Steyn, and Douglas Murray — who understood and have written about the mortal threat to Western civilization from “the sons of Allah,” tens of millions of whom are now living in our midst. More. on his tribute to the three (and he might have added the names of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Ibn Warraq to his list) and the alarm he now feels, because so few in the West have heeded them, can be found here:
The moral decline of the West is no longer a matter of speculation but a demographic, cultural, and spiritual fact, visible in collapsing birth rates, the erosion of civilizational confidence, and the supine accommodation of an ideology fundamentally hostile to the Enlightenment inheritance. Where once the West confronted Nazism and Bolshevism—two totalitarian waves that sought to remake humanity through terror and ideology—it now faces a third: Islamist totalitarianism, advancing not primarily through tanks or gulags, but through demographic momentum, elite cowardice, and the patient erosion of liberal norms.
In this darkening landscape, the voices of Oriana Fallaci, Mark Steyn, and Douglas Murray rate as lonely sentinels. Far from unreflective “Islamophobes,” as their detractors sneer, these thinkers form an intellectual continuum defending Western liberty against civilizational surrender. Their warnings, typically dismissed as “alarmist” in the complacent halls of Brussels or academia, grow more prescient with each passing year. To ignore them is to invite a future in which Europe—and by extension the West—becomes unrecognizable, its freedoms subordinated to a theocratic vision incompatible with individual rights.
Oriana Fallaci’s The Rage and the Pride (2001), written in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, remains a visceral cri de coeur. An accomplished journalist who had interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini, she possessed intimate knowledge of radical Islam’s face. She beheld in post-9/11 Europe not multicultural enrichment but a “reverse crusade”—a Muslim invasion facilitated by mass immigration, differential birth rates, and the craven multiculturalism of European elites. She adopted and popularized the term “Eurabia” from the writings of Bat Ye’or to describe the continent’s trajectory towards becoming an Islamic colony. For Fallaci, the threat was civilizational: Islam, in its political and expansionist form, sows “hatred in place of love,” subjugates women, stifles inquiry, and rejects the separation of mosque and state….
Mark Steyn, in America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (2006), provided the demographic and strategic depth to Fallaci’s passion. His thesis is stark: Europe is dying of self-inflicted wounds—sub-replacement fertility, cultural self-loathing, and a welfare state that imports dependents rather than nurturing its own children. Muslim populations, with higher birth rates and assertive religious identities, fill the vacuum. Steyn distinguishes, as do his peers, between individual Muslims and the political ideology of Islamism, yet he refuses the comforting delusion that the two can be neatly separated when scriptural sources and historical patterns urge otherwise. His prediction of “Islamization” warned of a “fearless Muslim advance” met by “weak-kneed European elites.” The endgame, he foresaw, would be either submission or civil war, perhaps yielding neo-nationalist strongmen as desperate backlash….
Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe (2017) synthesizes and updates these analyses with empirical rigor and moral clarity. He documents how mass migration, particularly from Muslim-majority countries, combined with elite refusal to insist on assimilation, has produced parallel societies, grooming scandals, no-go zones in practice if not in euphemistic language, and rising extremism. An atheist himself, he examined Islamic texts and found them incompatible with the secular, pluralistic order that Europe claims to cherish.
Murray’s controversial statements—that conditions for Muslims in Europe should be made “harder across the board” to discourage further settlement and failed integration — stem not from gratuitous cruelty but from observed reality: tolerance extended unilaterally becomes suicide. Jihadism, he insists, “comes from Islam,” drawing on theology, history, and contemporary events from Bataclan to Cologne. Like Fallaci and Steyn, he deplores the West’s loss of identity. Europe, he argues, no longer believes that its own story is worth defending. This spiritual exhaustion invites conquest by those who believe fervently in theirs.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? In the spirit of “Sursum Corda,” let’s consider the reasons for hope so as to dispel the gloom. In Europe, almost everywhere the anti-immigrant — or more exactly, anti-Muslim immigrant parties, are ahead in the polls. In Germany, Alice Weidel of the Alternative für Deutschland, in France, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally, and Bruno Retailleau of Les Républicains, in Italy, Giorgia Meloni of Fratelli d’Italia, while in the UK, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party, not even a year old, is rapidly gaining support from those who have found Nigel Farage’s Reform Party not sufficiently adamant on the subject of ending Muslim migration.
It is the next decade or two that will determine Europe’s fate. Will it continue to welcome Muslim migrants or call a halt to increasing their presence? Will European states limit welfare benefits so that, as Bruno Retailleau has suggested, for the first five years of their presence, immigrants will not be eligible for any benefits? Will the peoples of Europe inform themselves sufficiently about the texts and teachings of Islam to rouse themselves, as if after a long sleep? How many will educate themselves in time about this menace, which turns out to be more dangerous than even Nazism and Bolshevism, for it has already burrowed into our societies, affecting our political life, our media, our impressionable young?
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Islamic-Threat-to-the-West-GR.jpg360640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-08-08 06:07:402026-08-08 06:10:53The Islamic Threat to the West
Inspired by his service in the Prussian and Russian armies in the Napoleonic wars at the start of the 19th Century, Carl von Clausewitz has left us with many famous sayings from his unfinished treatise, On War, published after his death in 1830.
Among them was that the “fog of war” often obscures what is really happening on the battlefield. Another, which is my theme for today, is that “war is politics by other means.”
President Trump has been criticized in recent weeks by the left and the right for his repeated threats to launch yet another “massive” military strike on Iran, only to relent at the last minute in hopes of some last minute breakthrough in negotiations that would satisfy the two major U.S. goals in this war: the unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping, and the end of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
So far, each time it has happened, the Iranians have backed away from a negotiated settlement, either by new drone or missile strikes against ships in the Strait of Hormuz, or by instructing their proxies to carry out attacks against our Gulf allies. (In recent weeks, they have used Shiite militias in Iraq to attack civilian infrastructure in Kuwait, and the Houthis in Yemen to hit Saudi vessels in the Red Sea). And each time that happens, the United States responds by taking out IRGC assets in southern Iran.
The President has repeatedly expressed his reluctance to inflict massive damage on Iran’s infrastructure, all the while threatening to do so should the Iranian regime not agree to his conditions.
I believe he is trying to find the sweet spot of just enough military pressure to achieve his political goals, without inflicting what he sees as unnecessary and unfortunate damage.
But so far, he has failed to find that sweet spot. The regime — or whoever is calling the shots in Iran — responds with increased aggression: more missiles, more drones, and more irredentist demands.
The latest, on Thursday, was a claim by the Iranian parliament that the regime had reached an agreement with Oman over joint control of the Strait of Hormuz that would inflict a toll of between 5% to 7% on ships transiting the Strait that would bring in an estimated $385 million per day to the Revolutionary Guards to oppress the Iranian people, and to use to build more drones and missiles and to arm their proxies.
The alleged deal would also bar ships from the United States, Israel, and any other country opposing the “Axis of Resistance” from transiting the Strait. That designation would bar Saudi Arabian ships, since the Saudis have been at war with the Houthis for over a decade.
Clearly, such a deal is not just unacceptable: it is outrageous.
If you read the international media, you might forget the whole reason we are even negotiating over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. It’s because Iran mined the customary passageways in the middle of the Strait at the beginning of the war, and no one has yet removed those mines.
That’s why there is all this talk of the “northern route” transiting Iran’s territorial waters, and the “southern route” that uses Oman’s.
The historic passageway through the Strait transits through international waters. But Iran closed that passageway at the onset of the conflict, an act of war in violation of the UN Law of the Sea Treaty that should have triggered unanimous international action, spearheaded by the UN Security Council.
If it weren’t for the support that Russia and China have been providing Iran, the United States could have gone to the United Nations and invoked Chapter VII of the UN charter that authorizes member nations to use “all necessary measures” — including military action — to restore international peace and security, just as we did twice in wars against Saddam Hussein.
We actually tried that in May, with the predictable result that both the Chinese and the Russians threatened to veto any resolution against Iran.
Since then, both the Brits and the French have said they would join an international mine-sweeping force, and then promptly backed out when it became obvious that mines were not only still present in the Strait but that the IRGC was going to attack any ships trying to remove them.
So much for the international “order.” And so much for our allies.
That leaves President Trump with the course he has followed in recent weeks: apply just enough force to keep the IRGC on its heels, while not triggering a massive spike in oil prices or spooking international markets.
He has succeeded on all three counts, extremely significant accomplishments.
But the United States cannot just “walk away and go home” if our diplomacy fails, as Vice-president JD Vance suggested recently in his very unfortunate three-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan show.
There is that pesky second demand that Iran give up its nuclear ambitions. On Wednesday, reports from Israel resurfaced an earlier claim by the current IRGC Chief, Ahmad Vahidi, while he was Interior Minister, that Iran would continue to develop nuclear weapons as long as the United States and Israel possessed them. “If they disarm, we will disarm,” he reportedly said.
There has been some parsing of that quote in recent days. One Iranian commentator claimed that the correct quote was this: “As long as the United States and Israel possess nuclear weapons, activities related to national security will not cease.”
Sorry, but in IRGC-speak, that means exactly the same thing.
In the end, whether Vahidi made those public comments or not makes little difference. There is no other explanation for the massive expenditures on uranium enrichment, buried nuclear sites, the Iranian regime’s absolute refusal to discuss its nuclear programs or the recent revelations about Mount Kalang (aka “Pickaxe Mountain”).
The Iranian regime is developing nuclear weapons and thank God they don’t yet have them or they would have already used them on Israel or on us, either in direct attacks or in EMP mode to destroy our electric power grid and send us back to the 1880s, when the United States could support a population of between 80 to 90 million.
This is a regime that has already acted out its intentions to wipe Israel off the map, and has shown its willingness to destroy the entire civilian infrastructure of its Persian Gulf neighbors, including their destination plants.
If anyone has any doubts as to why President Trump is fighting this war, just think of what the IRGC would do if it actually had operational nuclear warheads.
I discuss this, as well as the latest reports of Chinese and Russian weapons shipments to Iran and Russian threats to NATO, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend. As always, you can listen live on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app.
Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue,can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here.
Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/trump-iran-nuclear-program.jpg360640Kenneth R. Timmermanhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKenneth R. Timmerman2026-08-08 05:52:502026-08-08 05:55:05Politics By Other Means
Radical judge rules that terrorist attacks aren’t “material support” for ISIS
By: Daniel Greenfield, Aug 02, 2026
On the morning of Dec 11, 2017, Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi Muslim and the nephew of a Diversity Lottery Visa winner, boarded the F Train near the ‘Little Bangladesh’ colony in Brooklyn. Wearing a hooded jacket and a backpack to cover the pipe bomb strapped to his body, Ullah switched to the A and headed for the crowded corridors of the Times Square station.
Christmas was coming and ISIS had promoted a poster of Santa next to a box of dynamite overlooking Times Square with the message: “We meet at Christmas in New York… soon.” Ullah had used Christmas tree lights as a trigger and detonated his bomb near a Christmas poster.
The meeting between Times Square and ISIS fizzled and only injured three people. Ullah unfortunately survived, with minor burns, and began his assault on our justice system.
9 years later, Ullah defeated the American legal system, with the aid of one of the most radical Biden judges, and his legal victory has serious implications for prosecuting ISIS terrorists.
The case against the Bangladeshi Muslim ‘Diversity Visa’ terrorist couldn’t have been any more straightforward. “I did it for the Islamic State,” Ullah declared. He had been consuming ISIS propaganda that told ISIS supporters to carry out attacks abroad if they couldn’t make it to Iraq and Syria. Ullah had used ISIS slogans and language, and told the court that he was angry because President Trump had been bombing Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.
Ullah’s taxpayer-funded public defender, Julia Gatto, who had previously represented another Muslim Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, only had one counterargument. She couldn’t deny that he had tried to bomb Times Square, but claimed that he wasn’t really a Muslim terrorist, but just a young man suffering from depression and in a “mental health fog” who was just trying to commit suicide and really hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone else in Times Square.
“Tooling around on the internet does not make you an ISIS member,” Gatto had argued.
A few months ago, a Biden judge on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit agreed and, in the process, she also dismantled the ability to prosecute ISIS terrorists as terrorists.
Even among the legion of terrible Biden appointees, Myrna Perez stood out as the voting rights director at the Brennan Center. The Brennan Center is the leading pro-crime organization in the country and has endless blood on its hands for championing criminals against victims. Sen. Ted Cruz had warned that of all the Biden circuit nominees, “Myrna Perez is the most dangerous. She has been a radical, and an activist for what effectively amounts for her to her entire career,”
The prediction has now come true with her ruling in United States of America v. Ullah.
The radical pro-crime judge wrongly ruled for the ISIS terrorist, arguing incorrectly that “the evidence was insufficient to show that Defendant provided material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization” because carrying out an attack in support of ISIS does not count as “material support” to ISIS.
Judge Myrna Perez admitted that Ullah had been reading ISIS material, that he used ISIS slogans and that he had carried out the attack “on behalf of the Islamic State” and “for Allah.”
What she argues instead is that volunteering to kill yourself and others in support of ISIS is not “material support” because the ISIS terrorist hadn’t been formally “coordinating” with ISIS. The communication had all been one way, from ISIS to Ullah, rather than from Ullah to ISIS.
Perez wrongly contends that following the orders of ISIS does not count as being “work under that terrorist organization’s direction” and means that he was acting “entirely independently.”
There’s nothing “entirely” about following an ISIS call to attack Times Square at Christmas
Never mind that the entire strategy of crowd-sourced terrorism from Al Qaeda and ISIS depends on reaching aspiring Muslim terrorists and providing them with general directions, rather than specifically directing individual terrorist attacks by the terrorists. By following these general instructions to commit attacks, a terrorist, even if he is unable to communicate with the terrorist group due to fear of being caught, is acting at its direction. And the Christmas attack in Times Square clearly picked up on one ISIS call for a Christmas attack in Times Square.
According to Judge Perez’s pettifoggery, Ullah “chose” to carry out the ISIS attack, which means he wasn’t really under the direction of ISIS and that means it’s not providing material support. Had Ullah shipped some charging cables to ISIS, that would be ‘material support’, but killing and dying for it isn’t considered material support. Neither, she argued, did Ullah “provide a ‘service ‘to a foreign terrorist organization’” by independently carrying out his attack” because “‘to’ requires some ‘connection’ between the service provider and the organization.”
And so because of the definition of “to”, the ISIS terrorist wasn’t providing a service to ISIS.
Judge Steven Menashi, whose grandfather was a Jewish refugee from Iraq, and who was appointed by President Trump, correctly noted that Perez had decided to overrule the jury in the case and completely rewrite the law, that there was no basis for her decision to exclude ISIS propaganda as a form of direction or to define terrorist attacks in response to it as ‘entirely independent’, and that “direction” and “control” are not the same things.
Judge Menashi’s arguments are correct, but he was in the minority, with Perez and Judge Jed Rakoff, a showboating Clinton appointee, who had unilaterally decided that 18-year-olds, like a thug who shot up a Bronx block party, hitting a pregnant woman, were not really criminally culpable, and who had illegally ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
The Perez-Rakoff decision has minimal impact on Ullah, who is already behind bars on other charges, but effectively dismantles the prosecution of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists.
The majority of Al Qaeda and ISIS attacks in America have involved ‘lone wolves’ who came around to supporting these Islamic terrorist groups based on consuming online propaganda. Some directly communicated with the group, but instead often reached FBI personnel, others pledged oaths of obedience, while others simply carried out attacks for the terrorist group.
Judge Perez knowingly set out to dismantle a key tool for prosecuting them as she wrote in her ruling, “the resolution of that question will not affect the Defendant’s punishment, but it may make a difference in future cases, and it is our unflagging duty to say what the law is, in cases within our jurisdiction.” Perez was admitting that her ruling is irrelevant to the case, which is why she should not have made it, but will be relevant to other cases of future ISIS terrorists.
Unless it’s overturned, the ruling will make it impossible to prosecute ISIS terrorists for providing “material support” to a terrorist organization unless it can be demonstrated that they were following specific orders from the Islamic terrorist group. Since that rarely happens, Perez has effectively legalized ISIS terrorist attacks in America as long as there’s no direct ‘control’.
This may have limited impact in cases where the terrorists successfully carry out an attack, but it will cripple the ability to prosecute early plots where an attack had not been carried out. It means that some of these terrorists will walk away, as they routinely do in Europe, to carry out future terrorist attacks, some of which will be successful, leading to more dead Americans.
Judge Perez has also given ISIS terrorists a new template for their attacks and told them what they need to do to avoid being tried on ‘material support’ charges. That’s steering rather close to providing ‘material support’ to terrorists… whether it’s intentional or unintentional.
If this disastrous verdict isn’t overturned by the Supreme Court, Americans will die because a pro-crime judge was placed in a key position by extremist leftist judges who twist the law to champion criminals and terrorists at the expense of the United States of America.
The Perez ruling for ISIS shows how radical and disastrous the judges being chosen by Democrats have become and how they threaten the security, safety and lives of Americans.
The photos started circulating last Wednesday, and many people assumed that they must be a joke: a female Muslim lawyer in Nigeria who wears the niqab published photos of herself wearing that Islamic garment, which conceals everything except the eyes. These photos, however, had a twist. On top of her head, the lawyer, Rodiyah Omotoyosi Mikail wore the eighteenth-century-style court wig that lawyers and judges in Britain and some of its former colonies often sport.
It was an emblematic photo for our absurd age. The wig sat atop not Rodiyah Omotoyosi Mikail’s natural hair, but her Islamic head covering. The whole effect epitomized the Islamization of the West: a woman wearing a garment that was never seen in the Western world until recently perched a quaint artifact of a dying legal system on top of her head, giving the world the visual effect of a hollow and desiccated Western tradition that has by this point retained only its outer shell, while everything in the photo that is living and animated is Islamic.
Yes, the photos are ludicrous, but many will point at the achievement of Rodiyah Omotoyosi Mikail as evidence that Islamic law doesn’t deny or impede the rights of women, and that women who wear the hijab, niqab, or even the burqa can be and are just as accomplished as anyone else. And while Rodiyah Omotoyosi Mikail’s achievement is undeniable, she is still proclaiming in her manner of dress that women are subjugated to men. She is wearing a garment that women have been brutalized, imprisoned and even killed for daring not to wear. Is that really an advance in women’s rights?
In the West, non-Muslim annually don the hijab on World Hijab Day, in order to show solidarity with the allegedly oppressed Muslim women who are supposedly persecuted for wearing the hijab. The actual oppression related to the hijab, however, is not linked to wearing it, but to not wearing it. Actual incidents of Muslim women being harassed or discriminated against for wearing the hijab in the U.S., meanwhile, are extraordinarily hard to find. It’s much easier to find examples of Muslim women in America who falsely claimed that they were being harassed or discriminated against in order to score points on the left’s insane scale of victimhood worship.
Back on Sept. 16, 2022, in Tehran, the Iranian morality police arrested Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, for not wearing her hijab properly. Amini later died in a hospital in Tehran, and numerous Iranians charged that she had been tortured to death while in custody. All over the country, protesters took to the streets to protest not against the hijab laws, but against the repressive and brutal Islamic Republic itself.
Other women, and male protesters as well, were killed as the Iranian regime ruthlessly applied the Qur’anic injunction to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (8:60). The protests went on for months until the regime began summarily executing protesters, and even then, some indomitably courageous Iranians continued to take to the streets to demand their freedom.
innumerable women in Iran today, the hijab is the most visible sign of their second-class status, and of the brutality of the regime that will imprison them for years or even kill them outright for daring to venture out in public without wearing it.
The Iranian authorities call their morality police the “Guidance Patrol,” an Orwellian name that makes them sound as if they’re a bunch of benign, avuncular individuals selflessly dedicated to helping young Iranians avoid moral pitfalls and stay on the straight and narrow. A more accurate name, however, would be the Terror Patrol, for the morality that these officials enforce is not the virtuous person’s free choice of the good, but the enforced obedience of those who are frightened into submission.
The hijab allows others to see the wearer’s face. The niqab does not. The idea behind both is the same: Women must cover themselves to avoid tempting men. If they tempt them anyway, it’s the woman’s fault. If a woman chooses not to wear it, she could be beaten, imprisoned, or killed. That is the legal system for which Rodiyah Omotoyosi Mikail stands. Her photos may be absurd, but Sharia itself is no laughing matter.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Rodiyah-Omotoyosi-Mikail.jpg360640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-08-07 07:26:202026-08-07 07:31:54Female Muslim Becomes Nigerian First Lawyer to Wear a Niqab
Abdul El-Sayed is the Democrat Party’s candidate for the United States Senate from the state of Michigan, and he is just the latest on an ever-growing list of Democrat candidates who would deride Uncle Joe Stalin as a reactionary capitalist roader. The Democrat establishment is feeling the heat, but one of El-Sayed’s most fervent and prominent boosters, the fiendishly anti-American and antisemitic social media star Hasan Piker, is in no mood for reconciliation.
On the contrary: flush with El-Sayed’s victory, Piker is ready to move in for the kill and take over the Democrat Party, which is already a hollowed-out shell, for the authoritarians and oligarchs who claim they’re the champions of the common people. Piker insists that there will be no “mending bridges” with the establishment Democrats. Like Stalin rooting out the “rightists” (including many of the Bolsheviks who helped establish the Soviet Union and even some who helped Stalin gain absolute power) and sending them to their deaths, Piker wants the Democrat Old Guard to leave the arena, giving up the hollowed-out shell that is today’s Democrat Party and allowing the Marxists to gain full and official control.
Dearborn, Michigan – “Down with AIPAC,” the crowd chanted at a campaign rally for Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed in a suburb of Detroit.
AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — has become the main topic of conversation in the Democratic primary in Michigan, which analysts say could affect the party’s approach to Israel for years to come.
Michigan state legislator Alabas Farhat vowed at the rally in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn on Friday that voters would make the pro-Israel group “burn” millions of dollars by electing El-Sayed to the US Senate.
“The status quo has told us for a long time that we don’t have money for modern schools; we don’t have money for clean water to drink, for health care, for affordable housing,” Farhat told the rally.
“But when we call up money to go and bomb children in Gaza, to do an ethnic cleansing campaign in South Lebanon – this administration seems to find that money.”
Several speakers, including Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, also took to the stage but the name of El-Sayed’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, was hardly mentioned.
Instead, AIPAC – which is breaking records in campaign spending to defeat candidates critical of Israeli policies, such as El-Sayed — was repeatedly brought up, booed and denounced.
El-Sayed, a progressive epidemiologist and former public health official, is running against Stevens, a four-term Congress member, to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. The winner will face former Congressman Mike Rogers, the likely Republican nominee, in November.
Michigan state legislator Alabas Farhat vowed at the rally in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn on Friday that voters would make the pro-Israel group “burn” millions of dollars by electing El-Sayed to the US Senate.
“The status quo has told us for a long time that we don’t have money for modern schools; we don’t have money for clean water to drink, for health care, for affordable housing,” Farhat told the rally.
“But when we call up money to go and bomb children in Gaza, to do an ethnic cleansing campaign in South Lebanon – this administration seems to find that money.”
Several speakers, including Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, also took to the stage but the name of El-Sayed’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, was hardly mentioned.
Instead, AIPAC — which is breaking records in campaign spending to defeat candidates critical of Israeli policies, such as El-Sayed — was repeatedly brought up, booed and denounced.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
I am happy to be able to offer you a 5% discount on becoming a VIP member at PJ Media. Just enter the code SPENCER when you sign up here.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Hasan-Piker-speaking-at-a-rally-in-2026.jpg374640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2026-08-07 06:17:052026-08-07 10:32:01The Revolution Is On, Comrades: Hasan Piker Says No Reconciliation With Dem Establishment
Kyle Shideler, our Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
His testimony focused on one of the most significant intelligence breakthroughs in modern U.S. counterterrorism: the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Evidence introduced in that case showed that the Muslim Brotherhood has operated in the United States since the 1960s and created an extensive network of Hamas support organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).
Shideler told Senator Cruz and the Subcommittee that the United States achieved an unparalleled intelligence coup, but then largely failed to act on what it had uncovered. He compared it to breaking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code, gaining access to enemy communications, and then never decoding another message.
Kyle then turned to a separate question: whether the Muslim Brotherhood has fundamentally changed since that evidence was uncovered. He concluded: “Those who claim that the Muslim Brotherhood has changed its spots should be required to prove it. The U.S. government has already proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, what the Brotherhood is.”
Thank you for following, sharing, and supporting the Center for Security Policy’s work. Your engagement helps us bring critical national security analysis to policymakers and the American people.
Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Center for Security Policy
August 5, 2026
Before the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights, Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Whitehouse, Distinguished Senators:
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify today on this important topic.
Because our court system is built on certain fundamental principles—including trial by jury, the government’s burden of proof in criminal matters, and the right to confront one’s accusers—courts both civil and criminal have been at the center of revelations of great consequences to our republic and its national security.
Examples include the Chamber-Hiss case and its famous “Pumpkin Papers” exposing the role of the Communist Party of the United States in Soviet espionage, or the trials surrounding the 1957 Apalachin, New York raid, which convinced federal law enforcement of the existence of the American Mafia. To these we must add United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, prosecuted almost two decades ago, which exposed the existence and extensive reach of the Muslim Brotherhood in America since its arrival in 1962.1
The evidence submitted during that trial demonstrated that not only was the Muslim Brotherhood operating in America, but that the Brotherhood played a singularly important role in providing indoctrination, financing, and political protection for jihadist terror.
Founded in Egypt by Hassan Al-Banna in 1928, from its very beginning the Muslim Brotherhood operated as a clandestine organization, which engaged in the creation of public front groups, cultivated agents of influence, sought control over religious institutions, engaged in acts of political subversion, and created deniable sub-organizations devoted to terrorism, in pursuit of its ultimate goal, the overthrow of governments and the reestablishment of a worldwide caliphate operating under Islamic law, known as Sharia.2
It is worth recalling that the government demonstrated that the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, like all Brotherhood branches worldwide, created and funded Hamas support networks—known as Palestine Committees—at the direction of the International Muslim Brotherhood beginning in 1983.3
In 2018, the U.S. government designated the Hasm Movement and Revolution Brigade (Liwa Al-Thawra), two Brotherhood-created terror groups founded to fight the Egyptian government. So this policy of forming and spinning off terror groups has remained fundamental to who the Brotherhood is to the present day.
The most infamous Palestine Committee organization in the United States is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).4So significant was CAIR’s formation as an organ for political and media relations, its creation and bylaws received explicit approval by the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt.5
HLF documents, and related cases, reveal that at one time one in every four American mosques were under the influence of the Hamas-linked North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).vi Muslim Brotherhood members—including some later convicted of terrorism charges such as Sami Al-Arian7 and Abduraham Alamoudi8—regularly attempted to influence leaders of both American political parties. Organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood recruited and trained chaplains for American prisons and the American military.9 Brotherhood organizations operated on nearly every college campus in the United States, regularly recruiting young American Muslims and leading them to commit terrorist violence.10
The Brotherhood ran camps where individual members were trained to wage Jihad, and organized “special work,” the preferred Brotherhood euphemism for violence.11
In short, the issue of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood was and is not merely a counterterrorism issue, but also a systemic counterintelligence challenge, and even more broadly, a challenge to the fabric of the United States and its ability to seek assimilation and social cohesion.
The United States Government achieved an unparalleled intelligence coup, yet almost none of this information was put to substantive further use. HLF would be the last domestic Muslim Brotherhood charity designated by the U.S. Treasury Department.12
There were no further prosecutions for material support against American Muslim Brotherhood figures. It was the equivalent of cracking the Enigma code in 1939 and then never decoding another Nazi message.
In 2008, the U.S. government had in its possession the name and rank of most leading Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States.13I would encourage the senators to demand, in an appropriate classified setting, that U.S. intelligence deliver the same levels of insight into U.S. Brotherhood operations today.
Since 2009, the federal government’s disinterest in the challenge of the Muslim Brotherhood has largely been answered by private efforts. These have included educational efforts but also legislative and judicial responses. More than half a dozen state legislatures have passed resolutions condemning CAIR’s links to terrorism. Two states, Florida and Texas, have publicly declared the group as a terrorist organization. Some state attorneys general are currently pursuing investigations into Muslim Brotherhood-linked entities.
There have been efforts in federal court to enforce federal court judgments against elements of the Palestine Committee (Boim v. IAP, Boim v. AMP), as well as lawsuits seeking to expose the role of foreign funding in supporting CAIR (Saroya v. CAIR).
Unfortunately, in multiple examples, these Brotherhood-linked affiliates have successfully utilized a variety of lawfare tactics, including in some cases refusal to comply with legal discovery, in order to avoid exposure.
I would be remiss if I did not add the positive decision by the U.S. Treasury and U.S. State Department to designate the Lebanese, Egyptian, Jordanian, and Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood branches. The recent decision to designate the deputy secretary of the International Muslim Brotherhood is also a welcome development.
I will note, however, that an approach which treats Muslim Brotherhood branches as fundamentally independent is one based on expediency and runs counter to the available public evidence, both as presented in the HLF case and also as written in the Brotherhood’s by-laws openly stated as recently as 2011.14
Critics will claim that the data derived from the HLF case and related cases are decades old. This is true, but misleading. When studying clandestine networks, one must realize that they are established over many decades, as trained cadre move through positions of trust in the network’s various fronts. Such individuals are not easily replaced, and regularly reappear.15 A historic snapshot of such a network and the players in it, far from being irrelevant, is a crucial piece of the puzzle, prized by both intelligence practitioners and historians.
Consider, for example, Gaddour Saidi, who served on the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Executive Office in 1992, and served as Vice President of the American Libyan Council at the time that organization lobbied for U.S. intervention in the Libyan Civil War in 2011. Or Talal Sunbulli, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Shura Council member in 1992, served as president of the Syrian American Council, which played an outsized role in U.S. policy as it related to supporting the Syrian rebels. Or Hani Saqr, listed as Masul (chief) of East America, who served as president of the Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in 2013.
And while some Muslim Brotherhood leaders have passed on, their roles may be taken up by their children or grandchildren, as in the case of late seminal Brotherhood figures Muhammad Al-Hanooti,16 Jamal Barzinji17and Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, and the front organizations they built and developed continue to operate.18
In conclusion, those who insist that the Brotherhood is a leopard that has somehow changed its spots are the ones who should be required to meet the burden of proof.
Because the U.S. government has already proved what the Muslim Brotherhood is, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Footnotes
1 While individual Muslim Brothers operating in the United States prior to this date, in the 1960s a North American Brotherhood structure was developed, centered around the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood Association (MSA), which served as a front for Muslim Brotherhood organizing and recruited cadre from which future Brotherhood fronts would be created. Zeid Al-Noman, “Ikhwan in America,” n.d., pp. 2–4, entered into evidence as Government Exhibit “Elbarasse Search 2,” U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al., accessed from Ikhwan in America: The Oral History of the Muslim Brotherhood in its own words (Center for Security Policy Press, 2016), https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ikhwan_in_America_20160418.pdf
2 For more on the early formation of the Muslim Brotherhood, see Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Oxford University Press, 1969). Particularly worthy of note is the formation of the “secret apparatus” in 1942 (p. 30), and its participation in organizing its “Battalions” to fight against Israel in the Palestine War in 1948 (p. 57).
3 “With the growth of the blessed Intifada and the spread of the spirit of Jihad amidst the children of Palestine and the nation, it became incumbent upon the remainder of the Ikhwan branches to play a role in attributing this Intifada and this Islamic action to Palestine. Therefore, a resolution was issued by the Guidance Office and the Shura Council of the International Movement to form ‘Palestine Committees’ in all the Arab, the Islamic and the Western nations whose job is to make the Palestinian cause victorious and to support it with what it needs of media, money, men and all of that.” Islamic Action for Palestine: An Internal Memo (October 1992), p. 11, entered into evidence as Government Exhibit “Elbarasse Search 5,” U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al.
4 “Meeting Agenda of the Palestine Committee 7/30/1994” pg. 1, Entered into evidence as Government Exhibit “Elbarasse Search 19” U.S. V. HLF et al.
5 FD-302 Interview with [Redacted] under Pro er agreement,” January 6th, 2005, pg. 6 accessed at Investigative Project on Terrorism, https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/847.pdf#page=6
6 Stephen Schwartz, “Wahhabism and Islam in the United States” (testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, June 26, 2003), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Schwartz%20Testimony%20062603.pdf
7 U.S. Department of Justice, “Sami Al-Arian Sentenced to 57 Months in Prison for Assisting Terrorist Group” (press release, May 1, 2006), https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2006/May/06_crm_260.html
8 U.S. Department of Justice, “Abdurahman Alamoudi Sentenced to Jail in Terrorism Financing Case” (press release, October 15, 2004), https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_698.htm
9 J. Michael Waller, “Testimony” (Testimony before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, October 14, 2003), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/waller_testimony_10_14_03.pdf
10 Patrick Poole, “The Muslim Student Association’s Terror Problem,” PJ Media, August 10, 2010, https://pjmedia.com/patrick-poole/2010/08/20/the-muslim-student-associations-terror-problem-n12923
11 “The Brotherhood has always supported its members in fighting legitimate jihad in their home countries but would never support that activity after it became illegal in the United States. [Redacted] denied that he trained or had interest in explosives. When shown Exhibit 4B, [Redacted] admitted that it was a Brotherhood document that listed him having an interest in explosives, but [Redacted] does not know who wrote it or why.” FD-302 Interview with [Redacted] under Proffer Agreement. See also Ikhwan in America: The Oral History of the Muslim Brotherhood in its own words (Center for Security Policy Press, 2016), pp. 11–12, https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp content/uploads/2016/04/Ikhwan_in_America_20160418.pdf
12 Eli Lake, “U.S. Stopped Blacklisting Domestic Terror Charities Under Obama,” Bloomberg News, May 12, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-12/u-s-stopped-blacklisting-domestic-terror-charities-under-obama
13 See “1991 Phone Directory,” entered into evidence as Government Exhibit 003-003479, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al.; Attached as Appendix 1 and “1992 Phone Directory,” entered into evidence as Government Exhibit 003-0079, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al. Attached as Appendix 2.
14 See also “By-laws of the International Muslim Brotherhood,” Article 50. Attached as Appendix 3.
15 As Palestine Committee member and CAIR founder Omar Ahmad said, “Registering an organization is easy. I can register 100 organizations in I00 cities in one day… go-ahead start a new organization but you won’t be able to find new faces. Do we have hidden faces we now bring up to light? We have what we have.” From Government Exhibit Philly Meeting 7, U.S. V. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al.
16 Kyle Shideler, “Major U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Leader Mohammed Al-Hanooti Dies,” Center for Security Policy, June 5, 2015, https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/major-u-s-muslim-brotherhood-leader-mohammed-al-hanooti-dies
17 Kyle Shideler, “Major U.S. MB Leader Jamal Barzinji Passes Away,” Center for Security Policy, September 28, 2015, https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/major-u-s-mb-leader-jamal-barzinji-passes-away/
18 Kyle Shideler, “Influential Muslim Brotherhood Leader Taha Jabir Al-Alwani Passes Away,” Center for Security Policy, March 8, 2016, https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/influential-muslim-brotherhood-leader-taha-jabir-al-alwani-passes-away/
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Kyle-Shideler.jpg385640Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2026-08-06 13:29:362026-08-06 13:29:36The Muslim Brotherhood in America: Center For Security Policy Testifies Before the Senate
The FBI should have been investigating Comey. Instead, it carried on his treason – proof of just how deeply and irretrievably broken the agency had become.
Comey’s was indicted on two federal counts of making false statements and obstructing Congress regarding his 2020 testimony on media leaks. He “willfully and knowingly” lied during a September 30, 2020, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing by stating he never authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source for news reports about sensitive investigations.
Furthermore, he knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States:
He knowingly and willfully did transmit in interstate and foreign commerce a communication that contained a threat to kill the President, Donald J. Trump
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday made it clear during a presser: “You are not allowed to threaten the President of the United States of America.”
As part of its Russia collusion hoax lawfare attacks on President Donald Trump, the FBI opened a “subcomponent investigation” of Crossfire Hurricane, treating Trump as a criminal subject based on already-debunked information linking him to Russia, according to a Trump administration official.
The sub-investigation, known as “Oxferd Comma” was predicated on the idea that Trump, “the newly elected president, was acting as a Russian asset when he fired James Comey on May 9, 2017,” the administration official said. The case was marked as a “‘sensitive investigative matter,’ which was generally to keep it off the books from other agents to be able to see.”
The case was opened despite the fact that “almost everything in the FBI’s possession at that point had debunked or ruled out that Trump or his campaign was colluding with Russia at that time,” the official continued.
The FBI launched the investigation on May 16, 2017, one day before Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate the Russia collusion as though it were legitimate, despite the fact that the Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier had already been debunked. Oxferd Comma was then absorbed into the Mueller investigation.
Well prior to May 2017, according to the admin official, FBI Special Agent William Barnett (who worked with Russia hoaxer and disgraced former Special Agent Peter Strzok on Crossfire Hurricane) gave a “lengthy interview” where he said the FBI concluded that there was no evidence of Russia collusion with Trump, or his former advisers Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos.
“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on the articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” a May 16, 2017, document released by the White House on Wednesday shows. “The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes. In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump or others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”
Documents declassified by the White House Government Transparency Task Force show the investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – was launched in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s May 9, 2017 firing and was predicated on allegations that the bureau’s own agents had mostly dismissed by that time.
The FBI opened a criminal probe specifically targeting Donald Trump in May 2017, alleging the newly elected president may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired then-Director James Comey even though the bureau’s own evidence overwhelmingly showed at the time there was no collusion with the Kremlin.
Internal memos newly declassified by the White House show the investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – was launched in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s May 9, 2017, firing and was predicated on an allegation that previously released memos show the bureau’s own agents had mostly dismissed.
“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” the electronic communication opening the probe on May 16, 2017, stated.
Goal of the investigation was to determine if Trump was directed by or controlled by the Russian Federation
“The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes,” it added. “In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspiracy to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”
The memo, written by the FBI’s counterintelligence division and approved by then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and then-Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap, made clear the concerns about Russian influence and obstruction included Comey’s firing, in part because of the public explanations Trump gave for the termination.
“This alternative explanation can be reasonably read to imply that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was a factor in President Trump’s decision to terminate Comey,” the memo stated.
Both the Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were advised that the probe had been launched, the memos show.
The FBI marked the investigation as a “sensitive investigative matter” and declared it was “the least intrusive method to address the serious national security risk posed by the activities alleged.”
But that decision proved anything but nonintrusive: it prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller by Rosenstein and a nearly two-year probe that hampered the start of the Trump presidency even though Mueller’s team, like the FBI before it, was unable to substantiate any collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election.
A subsequent investigation by Special Counsel John Durham – released by the Biden Justice Department in 2023 – concluded there was no basis for the FBI to even open the original Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
The newly declassified Oxferd Comma memos show the case was closed on April 9, 2019, a few weeks after Mueller’s probe was sunset with a final report and no charges against Trump.
“The Special Counsel provided the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining his prosecution and declination decisions,” the closing memo noted.
The memos are being released as federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Fla., reportedly investigate whether the FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Trump and his supporters through repeated criminal investigations that lacked evidence of wrongdoing.
It was well known that the FBI wanted to investigate Comey’s firing by Trump as an act of obstruction and that such concerns led to Mueller’s special counsel appointment.
Records would later show Comey was fired on the merits because the DOJ believed he mishandled the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the department’s own independent inspector general would later conclude that Comey “violated long-standing department practice and protocol” with his conduct in the Clinton case.
The new FBI memos, identified and declassified by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, reveal for the first time that the FBI predicated the obstruction case against Trump – and gave it a codename — on the concern the then-president may have been an asset of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
But previously released FBI and DOJ records show the notion of Trump being a Russian asset had already been widely dismissed by agents and analysts working for months beforehand on the Crossfire Hurricane case that examined Russia-Trump collusion.
In fact, the lead agent in the Crossfire Hurricane case texted his colleague the same week that Oxferd Comma was opened suggesting he did not believe the allegations were substantiated.
“I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there,” then-Deputy Assistant Director Pete Strzok wrote FBI special counsel Lisa Page on May 19, 2017.
Strzok’s text sentiments were confirmed by another key colleague working on the case, Special Agent William Barnett, who would later tell the Justice Department that by early 2017 the FBI had mostly ruled out that the Trump campaign and its various players like retired Gen. Mike Flynn or advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos had colluded with the Kremlin, according to an FBI interview report of Barnett released in 2020.
“BARNETT still did not see any evidence of collusion between the TRUMP Campaign and the Russian Government,” the summary of the agent’s interview revealed.
By the time the FBI tried to portray Trump as under Putin’s grip to justify the opening of the Oxferd Comma investigation, it had also learned that the original allegations of collusion came from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and were funneled to the FBI in a dossier written by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, who was paid by the Clinton campaign’s law firm, and that the Steele dossier’s contents had mostly been uncorroborated or debunked and were part of a political dirty trick.
The first warning signs of those concerns actually emerged in late summer 2016 when CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and the FBI that U.S. intelligence had intercepted Clinton’s plan on or about July 26, 2016, to manufacture a scandal alleging Trump was conspiring with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.
“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan notes of his conversation with Obama stated. “CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”
The intelligence made clear Clinton’s plan was to “smear” Trump, and it was shared directly with the FBI, including Comey at an Aug. 3, 2016 briefing, according to a classified annex to a DOJ report made public last year. That briefing occurred just four days after the Crossfire Hurricane probe was launched into alleged Russia collusion.
“On August 3, 2016, during a meeting at the White House, CIA Director Brennan briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, DNI Clapper, FBI Director Comey, and other U.S. officials regarding Russian interference efforts as well as the T1 intelligence received concerning the referenced plan by the Clinton campaign,” the annex noted.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/FBI-SHOCKER.jpg318640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-08-06 06:06:552026-08-06 06:11:15FBI SHOCKER: Bureau Secretly Probed Trump as a Russian Asset for Firing Comey
Former public health official Abdul El-Sayed defeated Democratic Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary Tuesday, dealing another blow to establishment Democrats and the pro-Israel lobby.
El-Sayed beat Stevens in a 48.5% to 47.5% vote after receiving endorsements from independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other far-left Democrats, results from The Associated Press showed. While establishment Democrats supported Stevens, the pro-Israel lobby spent millions to help Stevens win.
Stevens has served in the House since 2019, flipping her seat from red to blue. In the Senate race, she supported reforming rather than abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, implementing a public option over Medicare for All and expressing strong support for Israel.
El-Sayed campaigned on supporting Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, codifying abortion into law and permitting so-called “gender-affirming care,” according to his campaign website. He rejected the socialist label, stating that he is a “capitalist” who wanted to regulate monopolies and oligopolies.
“I’m not a socialist. I’m just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works,” El-Sayed said. “I think government ought to be there to regulate monopolies and oligopolies so that everybody can actually participate in the economy without having to be forced to pay more or get paid less.”
Sanders said in a campaign advertisement that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and further-left candidates are “taking on the establishment.”
“We are taking on the establishment all over this country. All over the country, ordinary people, unionists, young people, people of color [are] getting involved in the political process and they’re saying wait a minute, maybe the Democratic Party should belong to us and not just wealthy campaign contributors. And then in the midst of this comes Dr. Abdul El-Sayed,” Sanders said.
The Michigan Senate primary is a fight as to whether billionaires and their super PACs will continue to control American politics, or whether we can have a government that represents working families.
Stevens received the establishment’s backing, including from Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn and Delaware Sen. Chris Coons. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer quietly supported Stevens behind the scenes and asked party donors to support her, according to The New York Times. He said in June that Stevens had the “best chance of winning,” to Punchbowl News.
Former Republican Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, the presumptive GOP nominee in the race, led El-Sayed by 10 points in a hypothetical matchup, according to a Michigan Education survey from July 28. The poll showed that Rogers was almost tied with Stevens, as Stevens narrowly led him 46% to 45%.
About $80 million had been spent on the Michigan Senate race, making it one of the most expensive races in the U.S., according to CBS News. Around $60 million had been spent on Stevens’ behalf, much of it coming from the pro-Israel lobby.
About 31% of donors who gave at least $200 to Stevens’ Senate campaign also donated to AIPAC since the start of 2025, The Detroit News reported in May. An AIPAC affiliate spent more than $5 million between campaign donations and independent expenditures in 2022, the last time Stevens ran in a House primary.
During a July 28 debate, El-Sayed attacked Stevens for receiving money from the pro-Israel lobby. Stevens doubled down on her support for Israel, arguing that she supported a two-state solution and “long-term peace.”
El-Sayed accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza and criticized U.S. aid to the country. U.S. support for Israel has become a divisive issue within the Democratic Party, as 103 Democratic members of Congress voted for Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s amendment to slash $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel.
Stevens faced mockery for her bizarre campaign pep talk in mid-July.
“I am gonna be telling the stories on our behalf. And you better believe I’m gonna be doing it with a little bit of joy, a little bit of enthusiasm, a little bit of energy and a little bit of stick it to ‘em. Because that’s the Michigan way,” Stevens said.
A campaign speech that’s got everyone scratching their head.
Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens is facing a wave of online mockery after an “awkward” campaign pep talk urging supporters to “stick it to them” went viral, with critics zeroing in on her delivery and style. pic.twitter.com/0JyBJXNNlP
El-Sayed led Stevens by a 15-point margin as of Thursday, according to an Emerson College Polling/WLNS/WOODTV survey.
Further-left Democrats and DSA candidates defeated longtime incumbents and establishment-backed candidates in the New York and Colorado races. DSA candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated five-term incumbent Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th district in June, while socialist Melat Kiros beat incumbent Democratic Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, who served 29 years in Congress.
