It’s primary day in Michigan, and left-wing insurgent Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate bid is getting a last-minute boost from a radical imam whom even Bernie Sanders has accused of “spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.” The imam, Hassan Qazwini of Dearborn Heights, urged his congregants to “deal the Zionist a bigger blow” by turning out to vote for El-Sayed, the Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross reports. In a July 24 sermon, he called El-Sayed’s opponent, congresswoman Haley Stevens, a “puppet” of Israel and invoked tropes about Jewish influence and money, saying U.S. lawmakers support the Jewish state because “the pro-Israeli lobby” is “a cash cow.” He also framed a vote for El-Sayed as a “moral responsibility” and a “religious duty.”
“Beware of the plot being schemed by the pro-Israeli lobby for you. They don’t care about you, Michiganders,” Qazwini said. “The way to deal the Zionist a bigger blow is to go and cast your vote on Tuesday, and don’t allow the Zionist candidate to win,” he said a week later. “You have to choose between people, clean people, who are running to serve your community, your state, and people who are there to serve the interest of Israel.”
Qazwini formally endorsed El-Sayed last week, and the support is mutual. El-Sayed headlined the grand opening of Qazwini’s Islamic Institute of America on June 6, offering “hearty congratulations” to Qazwini and praising his “incredible masjid,” a 67,000-square-foot facility that features five golden domes. But Sanders, one of El-Sayed’s top supporters, has sparred with Qazwini in the past, denouncing his “antisemitic conspiracy theories” and “toxic” comments in 2020 after Qazwini claimed that Israel funds ISIS, that the terrorist group was “playing the role of the arm of the Zionist in the Muslim world,” and that Sanders was an honorable man “even though he is a Jew.” In 2024, Qazwini said U.S. lawmakers who supported the antisemitism awareness act should be “indicted and convicted of treason.”
“While Qazwini’s support could help El-Sayed in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, the backing from an extremist cleric could prove a liability for El-Sayed in the general election,” writes Ross. “Republicans have cast El-Sayed as ‘radical’ and are certain to highlight his connections to anti-Israel clerics and activists. El-Sayed has campaigned with the far left-influencer Hasan Piker, who said that ‘America deserved 9/11,’ and with New Jersey House candidate Adam Hamawy, who testified on behalf of the ‘Blind Sheikh,’ the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”
Brown University president Christina Paxson, who arrested anti-Israel protesters and settled with the Trump administration as other Ivies like Harvard waged costly legal campaigns, announced she is stepping down voluntarily at the end of the academic year. The Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll assesses her accomplishments:
She brought Air Force and Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps programs back to Brown in 2016 through partnerships with Holy Cross and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
She was an ally and participant in efforts to build a thriving Jewish community at Brown. In 2017, she spoke at an event marking the expansion of the Providence eruv, a legal boundary that allows Orthodox Jews to carry objects or to push strollers—actions otherwise prohibited—on shabbat. In November and December of 2023, Brown called in police to arrest dozens of anti-Israel protesters and charge them with trespassing. After a thorough process, the Brown Corporation voted in 2024 to reject a student proposal to divest from companies students claimed were facilitating “the Israeli occupation.”
She parted from the worst COVID-19 alarmists, advocating in April 2020 for in-person reopening.
She quickly reached a settlement agreement with the government in July 2025. Among the provisions of the settlement was that “in Brown Athletics facilities, the University will provide female student-athletes with intimate facilities such as locker rooms and bathrooms strictly separated on the basis of sex,” and that Brown would abide by the definitions of “male” and “female” in Trump’s executive orders.
“Brown certainly isn’t perfect,” Stoll writes. “A campus shooting in December 2025 killed two students and exposed security shortcomings. There’s still at least one professor, Omer Bartov, going around publicly accusing Israel of genocide in a way that has been memorably discredited by other scholars including Jeffrey Herf and Benny Morris. Yet, thanks in part to Paxson’s leadership, it’s years ahead of many of its Ivy League peers, and it’s in much stronger shape than when she took over.”
READ MORE: President Paxson, Who Made Brown an Ivy Bright Spot, Says She Will Leave
Journalists love congratulating Democrats for making history, like when they lauded Pete Buttigieg for being “the first openly gay Cabinet member in U.S. history to be confirmed by the Senate” but ignored Scott Bessent when he eclipsed Mayor Pete as the nation’s highest-ranking gay government official. “Democrats are still making history in 2026, but the categories have become increasingly niche and unimpressive,” our Andrew Stiles writes. “Let’s take a look at some of the trailblazing candidates and their achievements.”
Graham Platner (Maine)
Platner was the first prep-school washout with a Nazi tattoo to win a major party’s nomination for U.S. Senate. Several weeks later, he made history again as the first U.S. Senate nominee with a Nazi tattoo to begrudgingly end his campaign after he was credibly accused of rape. As far as we know, Platner is also the first major party nominee who has ever expressed a desire to punish home intruders by raping them.
Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan)
If he defeats Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, El-Sayed will make history on several fronts. He would be the first anti-capitalist candidate who is also an international landlord to win a statewide election after being endorsed by the lesbian granddaughter of a Nazi soldier. El-Sayed would also be the first candidate to win a U.S. Senate primary after appearing on stage with Hasan Piker, the U.S.-based anti-American influencer known for defending Hamas and praising Mao Zedong.
James Talarico (Texas)
He’s trying to become the first U.S. senator who still shares a checking account with his mom. Talarico, 37, is also the first Senate candidate since Cory Booker in 2013 to come out as heterosexual during the campaign.
Adam Hamawy (New Jersey)
The Egypt-born plastic surgeon has already won the Democratic congressional primary in New Jersey’s 12th district. The general election is not expected to be competitive, so Hamawy is poised to become the first U.S. congressman in history who has 1) testified as a character witness for the Islamic terrorist who inspired the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 2) performed a Brazilian butt lift, the trendy cosmetic procedure better known as a BBL.
READ MORE: Democrats Make History, But Not in a Good Way
Elsewhere:
It was never going to be easy, but Columbia Journalism School, housed in Pulitzer Hall, found a way to become even more insufferable: The school announced Monday it has hired former 60 Minutes correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Scott Pelley as “journalists-in-residence” for the upcoming academic year. The school’s dean, Jelani Cobb, who is on the Pulitzer Prize board and has shoveled awards to anti-Israel writers, called Alfonsi and Pelley “two prime journalists.” Alfonsi is best known for spearheading an “intentionally false“ hit piece on Ron DeSantis that even Democrats acknowledged was wrong. In his temper tantrum of a farewell, Pelley described his decorated career “in combat in Afghanistan.”
With prospective Democratic presidential candidates jockeying for position ahead of 2028, Kamala Harris is doing what she does best: contemplating. A “person familiar with Harris’ thinking who was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations” told Politico that Harris “hasn’t decided, and she hasn’t ruled it out.” No, she’s “studying artificial intelligence and strategizing with civil rights leaders on voting rights” while “exploring philanthropic work to cement her legacy.”
Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin is “avoiding media appearances,” “monitoring his critics’ social media posts,” and growing “extremely distrustful of others, even some people on his own team, as calls for his resignation grow louder,” the Associated Press reported. In one case, a Martin staffer called a former member of the DNC’s finance committee “urging her to delete a social media post that was critical of Martin. Such calls have become common occurrences in recent months.”
Martin is the man who oversaw the botched release of the DNC’s 2024 election autopsy. He is now accused of withholding a chapter of the report titled “What Happened in 2024,” which questioned Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection, “analyzed the party’s loss of support among Hispanic, Black, Asian American and Native American voters,” and “raised the concern that most senior Democratic strategists in 2024 were ‘financially secure’ and thus removed from the challenges facing many Americans,” the New York Times reported.
Check out our full Tuesday lineup below.
Not only Michigan but America better wake up and stop this crap!
I guess Thomas Jefferson said it best: "The Tree of Liberty Must Be Refreshed from Time to Time with The Blood of Patriots and Tyrants"! Is this where we are headed?
https://substack.com/@thinktorah/note/c-307522616
If Abdul Abdul El-Sayed, a radical antisemite, wins the Democratic primary for Michigan Senate and advances the DSA insurgency in the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders will be the first to blame.