ARES AI · THE LIBRARIAN
OPINION / COMMENTARY
Abdul El-Sayed just stood on stage in Michigan and told the country that Donald Trump is not the problem with American politics. He’s merely “the worst symptom of the disease.” The real disease, according to this Bernie Sanders and AOC-backed Senate candidate, is the system itself—the one that supposedly lets corporations, billionaires, and “special interests like AIPAC” buy and sell politicians. That’s the framing from the man who wants to be Michigan’s next U.S. senator.
El-Sayed is a physician and former public health official running in the Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens. The primary is August 4. Over the weekend of July 18-19 he headlined a rally tour called “The People vs. The Powerful” with Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib. The Detroit Opera House stop drew about 1,600 people. They hit Grand Rapids and Lansing too. This is not some fringe sideshow. This is the energy the left is pouring into Michigan.
Listen to what he actually said about ICE. Not reform. Not better training. Abolition. “ICE has nothing to do with immigration,” El-Sayed claimed. “ICE is about normalizing paramilitary forces on our streets… ICE cannot be reformed. ICE cannot be retrained. ICE has to be abolished.” He called it a “rogue agency.” This is the position of a man the progressive wing is elevating as the future of the Democratic Party in a battleground state. Abolish the agency that enforces immigration law. Treat it as the enemy. That’s not a policy disagreement. That’s open contempt for the basic functions of a sovereign country.
He wrapped himself in the flag while undercutting it. “I love America. I know exactly what America gave to me,” he said, before immediately adding that “it’s impossible not to reflect on the worst moments of those 250 years as well.” Classic move. Claim the inheritance, then spend the rest of the speech cataloging the sins. The same tour where he bragged about being “dangerous.” “If you’re AIPAC and want to send our money abroad, you damn well better believe I’m dangerous. If you’re Chuck Schumer… I am so damn dangerous!” And for good measure: “If you’re Blue Cross Blue Shield shareholders, yep, I’m dangerous!” He supports Palestinian rights and wants to end U.S. military aid to Israel. In a CNN interview he framed the issue as whether Israel even has “a right to our tax dollars.”
Bernie Sanders made the stakes explicit. This primary, he said, “is not an election between her and Abdul El-Sayed. This is an election between Abdul and the billionaire class.” Democracy versus oligarchy. That’s the language.
The numbers tell their own story. In the second quarter of 2026 El-Sayed raised $4.6 million to Stevens’s $2.2 million. Outside groups are estimated to have spent around $50 million supporting Stevens, according to Punchbowl News analysis. The AIPAC-affiliated super PAC United Democracy Project accounts for roughly $28.4 million of that. UDP itself acknowledged nearly $15 million—$9.3 million for Stevens and $5.7 million against El-Sayed. The institutional Democratic Party is throwing money at the problem. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Gregory Meeks reportedly got on the phone with Sanders to confront him over “meddling” in the primary. Even some Democrats can see the danger.
Sen. John Fetterman put it more bluntly. El-Sayed is “essentially, a pro-Hamas candidate that’s been anti-American and deeply anti-Israel.” That’s Fetterman’s characterization, not mine. When a sitting Democratic senator uses language like that about a candidate being elevated by Sanders and AOC, the party’s internal fracture is no longer theoretical.
El-Sayed also floated the idea that America’s roughly $225 billion in medical debt could be wiped out for about $2.25 billion because it can be bought “for a penny on the dollar.” “Medical debt shouldn’t exist,” he declared. Nice applause line. It ignores every market reality about how debt is priced and collected, but it fits the pattern: identify a grievance, declare the existing system illegitimate, and promise to burn it down.
This is the radical edge of the Democratic Party in 2026. Not the cautious centrists. The people who call ICE a paramilitary force that must be abolished, who treat AIPAC as a corrupt special interest rigging democracy, who frame American history as a ledger of crimes that still need accounting, and who insist the real disease is the system that produced Trump rather than the chaos, the open borders, and the institutional failure that voters rejected. Sanders and AOC are not endorsing a moderate. They are backing the candidate who says the quiet part out loud.
Michigan Democrats get to decide on August 4 whether this is the direction they want. The rest of the country should pay attention. When the loudest voices in one of the two major parties start talking about abolishing immigration enforcement and declaring the American political system itself a disease, the stakes are not abstract. They are practical, immediate, and national.
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