Free Republic

Abdul El-Sayed is entering the final weekend of Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary with a double-digit advantage over Representative Haley Stevens, according to a new poll that adds to signs of late momentum for the progressive candidate. El-Sayed leads Stevens 54.8 percent to 45.2 percent in The Public Sentiment Institute’s projected result for the August 4 Democratic primary. The poll suggests younger and more progressive Democrats are powering El-Sayed’s lead, while older voters remain Stevens’ best route to a closer result. Whoever wins is set to face Republican Mike Rogers, the presumptive Republican nominee, in one of the most competitive Senate...

Milan — Out in the country on a rutted dirt road lined with corn lives an old woman and her dog. Elizabeth Waffle, 88, was forced to move into a shabby trailer two years ago after her house burned down. She owns an old pickup truck but no computer. Nevertheless, Waffle, who lives on a modest pension, is a true believer in liberal causes and continues to make small political donations by way of ActBlue—the Democrat online fundraising platform. But somehow, those few dozen small donations she has made over the past five years have transmogrified into 14,696 donations totaling...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday that she will skip next month’s Michigan Democratic Party convention because she fears being harassed, adding another flashpoint to a party increasingly divided over Israel and antisemitism during a bitter U.S. Senate primary. Speaking during a roundtable discussion with Jewish leaders and community members, Nessel said she no longer feels safe attending the party’s August 29 convention in Lansing after what she described as repeated harassment. “I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says she will skip the Michigan Democratic Party’s August convention because she believes she will be harassed, chased around, and booed off the stage by members of her own party.This is Michigan’s sitting attorney general saying she does not trust her own political party to provide a safe environment for her. Nessel also accused Democratic leaders of failing to address complaints she previously made about party members who allegedly harassed her.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, declined to apologize Monday night for his "ogre on a pike" metaphor after critics from both parties condemned the leaked remark as violent and, in some cases, sexist."Ideally, you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message," El-Sayed said, according to audio obtained by Politico. While El-Sayed did not name Stevens in the recording, some Democrats interpreted the remark as referring to her. Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Mich., who has endorsed Stevens, called the remark a "violent, vulgar" threat and said candidates should be working to lower the...

The Washington Free Beacon has done some exceptional reporting on Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s past connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. Between March 23 and April 6, 2019, he headlined four private luxury yacht fundraisers for an Islamic nonprofit organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. One of those events hosted a speaker who has urged Muslims to “stand with” terrorist outfits Hamas and Hezbollah and stop “condemning antisemitism and condemning terrorism.” Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed headlined a series of luxury yacht fundraisers for an Islamic nonprofit linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, including one that took place on “one...

Presumptive Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.), comfortably leads progressive Abdul El-Sayed and is neck-in-neck with Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in new polling just one week out from the Michigan Senate primary. A Michigan Education survey, which was conducted by The Glengariff Group and commissioned for Michigan Education Association and Business Leaders for Michigan, shows Rogers beating El-Sayed by 10 points in a hypothetical matchup. Eleven precent of respondents were undecided. Stevens barely edges out Rogers in a head-to-head, with the congresswoman receiving close to 46 percent and the Michigan Republican notching 45 percent support. A separate 9 percent...

No primary—especially a Senate primary—should go on this long. But Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, having dragged on for months, has turned into an interminably vicious grudge fest—one that’s not likely to subside until voters finally go to the polls on August 4 and choose between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed.But the Michigan primary is also so bitter for the same reason that it has been so interesting. Of all of the 2026 races, this is the one that best captures the current fissures in the Democratic Party—and which seems to best predict where the fault lines of the 2028 presidential...

Several Jewish Michigan Democrats admitted Tuesday they or people they know will be backing Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers in the upcoming election if Abdul El-Sayed becomes the Democratic nominee. Ahead of the Aug. 4 primary election, Jewish donors spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) about the possibility of El-Sayed, who has been an outspoken critic of Israel, becoming the party's nominee for the Michigan Senate seat. JTA reported that several prominent Jewish fundraisers have already begun to see Rogers as a "hedge" and are planning to raise funds for him against El-Sayed.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved a series of six nominations and seven bills on Wednesday, including a measure to limit the use of vehicles and vehicle technologies developed by foreign entities of concern on American roadways. The bill, introduced by Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, and co-sponsored by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., would ban the import, sale and operation of vehicles manufactured by companies deemed “foreign entities of concern,” based in certain adversarial nations such as China. It would also ban the use of technologies developed by such countries, including Chinese-developed connected vehicle technologies, in the U.S. “This...

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said Wednesday that a photo from Abdul El-Sayed’s Detroit rally told him “all he needs to know” about the progressive candidate’s standing with black voters in Michigan’s Democrat Senate primary.Clyburn, who is backing Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), was reacting to a photo from the rally. His comments landed 13 days out from the August 4 primary, with establishment Democrats pressing their advantage over El-Sayed.“I saw a picture that concerned me coming out of Michigan. I saw the rally,” Clyburn said. “I didn’t see a single person that looks like me. That tells me all I need...

We have all heard it many times. According to “journalists,” claims made by President Trump regarding election cheating are “unfounded,” “disproven,” and/or “debunked.” However, irrefutable evidence of large-scale 2020 election fraud exists. On Thursday night, the president outlined four specific areas of election concern. I’d like to address one of them: corrupt Michigan voter registrations in the 2020 election. Trump said, “Even when significant evidence of fraud has been detected, it has been buried and covered up.” The president is correct: Widespread evidence of Michigan fraud was detected before the 2020 election. After it was discovered and reviewed by the...

LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – On Monday, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the convictions of two men tied to the 2020 plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The ruling for Pete Musico and Paul Bellar follows a decision earlier this summer by a different Court of Appeals panel that reversed the conviction of co-defendant Joseph Morrison. Musico, Bellar, and Morrison were convicted in state court on charges related to the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer, while several other defendants were prosecuted separately in federal court. In that earlier ruling, the panel overturned Morrison’s convictions after finding that kidnapping...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was accused of putting on an accent during a Memphis rally last week, with critics on social media comparing her to former Vice President Kamala Harris. Ocasio-Cortez was speaking at a campaign rally in Memphis on Friday for progressive U.S. House candidate Justin Pearson, who currently serves as a Tennessee state representative. "We cannot afford to leave Tennessee behind," she said. "We cannot afford to leave Kentucky behind, Alabama behind, Mississippi behind, Georgia behind, South Carolina behind. There is no country where we are split apart." "About a month or two ago, we were in Montgomery,...

There’s a battle to shape the Democratic Party this fall, and two top Senate Democrats are taking different paths in their bids to put their mark on the process. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in the duel for the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan. It’s a break from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is backing Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich. The diverging endorsements are emblematic of the fight going on behind the scenes and publicly in the Democratic Party as the old guard fights to stand its ground, while a progressive surge threatens to completely overtake the...

Democratic Senate contenders are dramatically out-raising their Republican peers, according to Federal Election Commission data — with Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and James Talarico in Texas leading the pack. Eight of the top 10 Senate candidate fundraiser this year are Democrats, whose top contestants have raked in $574 million, compared to the Republicans’ $336 million, per the FEC. Incumbent Sen. Ossoff (D-Ga.) is the biggest fundraiser on both sides, having raked in a jaw-dropping $77 million as of June 30, and has a staggering $42.5 million in cash on hand. He’s raised nearly $98 million as a Senate candidate, including the...

Sen. John Fetterman blasted Sen. Bernard Sanders over his endorsements of Graham Platner and Abdul El-Sayed. The Pennsylvania Democrat’s remarks came late Saturday following a rally held by Mr. Sanders, Vermont independent, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, for Mr. El-Sayed, who is running to be the U.S. senator from Michigan. Mr. El-Sayed has come under fire for his anti-Israel comments, including calling it a “rogue state” during a CNN interview. “You know, humble yourself, Bernie. You know, you just pushed an accused rapist and imploded up in Maine and now you’re pushing, you know, essentially a pro-Hamas candidate...

Most wildfires in Canada are impossible to fight. As smoke from forest fires in Canada have darkened skies south of the border, lawmakers in Michigan, Ohio and other U.S. states have accused the Canadian authorities of inaction and poor forest management. But most wildfires in Canada spread in such remote, vast areas that they cannot be fought effectively — and are often left to burn. Half of Canada’s wildfires, like the ones now burning in northern Ontario, burn in such areas — either unpopulated or dotted with small Indigenous communities, said Michael Flannigan, an expert on fire management at Thompson...

Some of Michigan's lawmakers have sent letters demanding answers on the rash of wildfires in Canada, where the smoke has drifted into the United States. Michigan has been dealing with hazy skies and poor air quality because of drifting wildfire smoke since Wednesday. The smoke is expected to continue to linger into Friday over the state. This drifting smoke is a repeat of scenarios that happened in 2023 and again in 2025. Detroit had the worst air quality in the world on Thursday because of the fine particulate matter in the atmosphere. In a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark...

The challenge the entire industry faces is that in every single location, I don't care whether it's Michigan, West Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, if you announce you're doing a data center, all of a sudden you get a plethora of misinformation, like it's three times the size of Manhattan, it's so hot it's gonna melt a hole in the ground, the amount of water it's going to use, it's gonna suck the ocean dry. All of this stuff is just not true. I think as we get the real facts out, we'll turn this around. There seems to be an...