Trump ties $4bn Israel aid cutoff to El-Sayed, who welcomes the move
Abdul El-Sayed will take his seat in January as the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, after a vitriolic campaign that cast him as the central villain of the president and his party. El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, said he did not expect to be “a main character of this midterms”, but by October he told the Associated Press he was “not shying away” from the fixation on his faith, answering “What are you implying?” when a town hall attendee asked whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood — a now-viral exchange.
Michigan voters elected El-Sayed over Republican Mike Rogers on Tuesday by about seven points, 52.5% to 45.5%. “My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” he said at the beginning of his victory speech in downtown Detroit on Tuesday night, as the crowd erupted in cheers. He then thanked the state’s voters for taking a “chance on the unlikeliest of candidates”.
The attacks on his faith ran through the campaign’s final weeks. At a rally in Port Huron on 25 October, Trump baselessly called El-Sayed a jihadist and a Muslim Brotherhood member, said he was “on the side of the terrorists”, and claimed he would “have to go through a metal detector” before entering the Senate. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said El-Sayed “sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey”, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called him a “jihadist leprechaun”, and Vice-President JD Vance called him “evil”.
Outside groups joined in. Campaign mailers paid for by the Senate Leadership Fund, a prominent Republican super PAC, linked El-Sayed with Sharia law, with text saying his specific views “dictates how women dress”, “requires women have a guardian” and “prohibits women from divorcing”. El-Sayed dismissed the attacks, quipping that he supported “shawarma law”.
The coalition that carried him held despite it all. El-Sayed won with majorities among Black voters and Jewish early voters, and took a larger share of the vote than Kamala Harris or Senator Elissa Slotkin in 2024 in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. He reached the same parity with Black voters as Slotkin’s 2024 Senate win, taking about 86% of that vote to her 85%, according to an NBC exit poll.
Exit polls and preliminary analyses showed a majority of Michigan Jews voted for El-Sayed, though his margins in heavily Jewish communities trailed other Democrats in the state, such as governor-elect Jocelyn Benson. In West Bloomfield, where a synagogue attack took place in March, Rogers’s share of the vote rose to 46% from 42% two years earlier, when he ran against Slotkin. Amy Sapeika, the American Jewish Committee’s Detroit community director, said El-Sayed’s rhetoric, including his victory speech, made many in the community “feel excluded as Jews and as people who support Israel”.
For many Arab and Muslim Americans, the result was vindication. Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, called voters’ rejection of the attacks “tremendous” for “every little boy named Abdul, every little girl named Zainab”, arguing that the question at stake was whether the country supports an inclusive democracy. Dearborn’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, said on election night that voters chose El-Sayed “regardless of the direction in which he prays”, calling it “a beautifully American story”.
Analysts said the victory makes El-Sayed a high-profile freshman. Matt Grossmann, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, said “he is a charismatic, social media-savvy politician” who “will come to DC with a lot more initial interest than most freshman politicians”. Grossmann said El-Sayed “won’t be able to say he had some sort of unique vision that worked above all others”, but “will be able to say people said he couldn’t win in a swing state, and he did. I think that will matter.”
Shekar Narasimhan, founder and chair of the AAPI Victory Fund, a super PAC focused on Asian American and Pacific Islander political power, said the onus on El-Sayed is “less about being the first Muslim senator” and “more about how he represents Michigan given the $165m that was thrown at him in both the primary and the general election”. Narasimhan said El-Sayed has to carry an agenda, and predicted the caucus will give him “some leadership position” to carry it out.
On Israel, El-Sayed has not changed his position since being elected. On election day morning, Trump said on Fox & Friends that roughly $4bn in annual US military aid to Israel would be “cut off at the end of the year”, citing “lunatics like an El-Sayed”. El-Sayed, who campaigned on ending the aid, welcomed the announcement and called for an end to arms sales as well. While Congress appropriates the aid, Grossmann said Trump had “basically credited Abdul with changing his position on aid to Israel”, giving him an early win. Narasimhan called the announcement “a good starting point” and said efforts by Bernie Sanders and other Democrats to restrict offensive weapons were “as far as he’s going to get in this environment on Israel”.
Asked on CNN on Thursday about working with Trump and Vance, El-Sayed made clear he was not softening his tone. He said he would “take every opportunity” to “differentiate between what JD Vance says and what JD Vance does”, and said he finds the pair “odious” in how they behave outside their official roles. He also pledged cooperation: “I’ll work with anybody to serve the people of the state of Michigan,” he said. “If they’re serious about doing that, let’s get some stuff done.”