Michigan's next senator overcame a tidal wave of racism and money—and made history.
c(Sarah Rice / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Tuesday night, Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate—delivering the most direct and profound of the many rebukes that Republican President Donald Trump suffered as the American people thunderously transformed the country’s electoral and political landscape.
Yes, voters handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, creating a vital check on Trump’s presidency that substantially disempowers him in the last two years of his second term.
Yes, Republicans experienced substantial setbacks in states such as Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, South Carolina and Texas, where Trump won with ease just two years ago—confirming the American public’s fundamental break with an historically unpopular, and now unmistakably lame-duck, president.
Yes, unprecedented wins in gubernatorial and legislative races have given Democrats the ability to turn states into laboratories of democracy that counter Trump’s pro-corporate agenda on everything from AI regulation to monopoly power, labor rights, and access to health care.
But the election of El-Sayed—a progressive, pro-labor, anti-racist doctor who advocated for Medicare for All, boldly called out genocide in Gaza and Trump’s war in Iran, and proudly defended his Muslim faith—struck a blow in the heart of the relentless Islamophobia that has long been a core part of the president’s political identity.
Trump did everything in his power to defeat the American-born son of immigrants from Egypt. He labeled El-Sayed a “jihadist” and “a Muslim Brotherhood guy,” and claimed that the Democrat “would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”
“We’ll have a hundred senators, and most of them will go directly [into the chamber],” said Trump, who at an October rally invited Republicans to laugh along with his bigotry. “We’re gonna have to get a special metal detector for Abdul.”
El-Sayed’s winning campaign against Republican Mike Rogers countered Trump’s hateful rhetoric with the most inspiring and reconciling statement of the midterms—a digital ad where El-Sayed spoke of his faith, saying:
My name is Abdul, it means servant.
I pray every day.
I reflect on my role in this life, on this earth.
Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
How we leave it better than we found it.
To serve God.
To serve our neighbors.
All across Michigan, families pray.
They feel hopeless.
Faith is a thing there’s just too little of in Washington.
We don’t have faith in our future.
We don’t have faith that we can actually fix things.
So yeah, we need a few more people of faith in Washington.
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I’m Abdul El Sayed, Man of faith, that’s a good thing, and I approve this message.
Michiganders heard the worst of Donald Trump’s Islamophobic hatemongering. And they heard the best of Abdul El-Sayed’s faith-based hope. They chose hope, and sent a Muslim man of faith to the United States Senate.
So it was, early on Wednesday morning, that Abdul El-Sayed finished his campaign by saying, “to all the parents who struggled to explain to their kids why the president openly mocks someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost.”
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.