El-Sayed Wins Michigan Democratic Senate Primary in Blow to AIPAC

Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Michigan, narrowly defeating Representative Haley Stevens in a close contest.

Decision Desk called the race for El-Sayed Tuesday morning, projecting him as the winner with 48.52 percent of the vote to Stevens’s 47.47 percent.

El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and the former Wayne County health director, edged out Stevens despite her receiving heavy financial backing from groups aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. El-Sayed now moves on to the general election, where he’ll face Republican Representative Mike Rogers in November and have a shot at becoming the first Muslim U.S. senator. 

Stevens received $62 million in advertising from outside groups, with $31.9 million of that coming from the United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC. It wasn’t enough to help her in the end, and El-Sayed called out the massive spending in their final debate last week, pointing out that Stevens had just voted for a pro-Israel resolution. 

“That is the pro quo that comes with the quid,” El-Sayed said in the beginning of the debate. “It really comes down to how you are funded.”

On the campaign trail, El-Sayed emphasized a message of supporting affordability and opposing inequality (issues that he has written about for The New Republic), touting his support for Medicare for All and even offering a comprehensive AI regulation plan.  Down the stretch, Stevens was accused of Islamophobia for some of her campaign ads, including those paid for by the United Democracy Project, and insinuating that El-Sayed was an antisemite.

This story has been updated.

North Carolina Representative Chuck Edwards has called it quits on his reelection race.

“After much prayer and reflection, I’ve decided to withdraw from my reelection campaign,” Edwards wrote on X early Wednesday morning. “I will complete my current term.”

The congressman’s sudden exit came after the House Ethics Committee recommended that he be censured for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.”

In a 25-page report published Monday, the committee listed out numerous occasions on which the married Republican had seemingly violated House rules relating to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces, revealing in detail how he made the women in his employ feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

The list included “intimate” and expensive dinners, casino dates, strip club visits, expensive gifts, massages, and an insistence on personally handling the women’s yardwork or Christmas tree decorating—which Edwards skipped House votes to make time for.

Edwards even wrote and performed poetry for one of his female staffers, hired a singer to perform Ed Sheeran’s “Hills of Aberfeldy” at one of their birthday parties, planned full-day excursions with them, and wrote personal notes expressing his “effusive affection.”

The committee report also noted that many messages were missing from Edwards’s phone, including a photograph that depicted 30 different types of ice cream that he had delivered to one of his staffers’ houses, and her subsequent response that “this seems a bit excessive.”

The report found no evidence that Edwards had engaged in sexual activity or “explicitly propositioned” the women, but found plentiful evidence that he had repeatedly made his staff feel scared and uncomfortable with his behavior.

Yet Edwards’s exit from the race comes months after the legal deadline to do so (the deadline to withdraw was back in December). As a result, his name will most likely remain on the ballot come November, and any votes he receives will still be counted toward him, as explained by the state Board of Elections.

Despite campaigning to bring back free speech, President Trump has been a serial violator of the First Amendment to the Constitution, according to a new report. 

A Reuters investigation found 75 rulings from federal judges that Trump infringed on constitutional freedoms such as religion, freedom, and the press. Many had to do with the Trump administration’s attacks on pro-Palestine advocacy, and the rulings came from judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents. In September, for example, a Reagan-appointed federal judge found that the administration illegally revoked visas and deported foreign faculty and students over their stance on Palestine and Israel.

“The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech,” U.S. District Judge William Young wrote in his ruling.

Other judicial rebukes had to do with Trump’s attacks on law firms, his termination of grants for universities that seemingly go against his ideological agenda, and use of excessive force against protesters. 

Trump has attacked federal judges who rule against him, leveling insults and accusing them of being “activists.” While most of the president’s legal losses came from judges appointed by Democratic presidents, 10 of them came from Republican appointees. Many of the lawsuits filed against Trump came from media outlets or organizations that ideologically oppose Trump, Reuters found.  

Oftentimes, the lawsuits challenged Trump executive orders, which have sought to take revenge against Trump’s enemies or target ideological viewpoints that the president opposes. Trump has attacked everything from diversity, equity and ⁠inclusion to gender ideology with executive orders, with only federal courts standing in the way thanks to an unwilling Republican-controlled Congress. All of this goes to show that Trump may be the most anti-free speech president ever.

President Trump’s Justice Department lost yet another attempt to access a state’s unredacted voter rolls, bringing their record to 0 for 20.

U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer on Monday delivered the Trump administration its twentieth straight loss, ruling that the Justice Department could not offer a legitimate reason for the executive branch to be granted access to Colorado’s voter rolls. The lawsuit was filed against Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, Jena Griswold.

Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee, dismissed the case with prejudice, as he could not identify a legitimate reason for the executive branch to be granted access to something that has never been under its constitutional jurisdiction.

“In cases where the United States has sought [statewide voter registration list] pursuant to § 20703, courts have found that ‘a voter registration list is not a record subject to retention and preservation under § 20701,’” Brimmer wrote. “Title III’s commands therefore pertain to records and papers that election officials receive from prospective voters to support the exercise of the suffrage by the prospective voters, not lists or other tools created by election officials for the purpose of preserving the information provided by voters and ensuring that persons appearing to vote are registered.”

“The attorney general is simply not entitled to the NYSVoter List under Title III,” he continued. “This conclusion is supported by six recent district court decisions which have determined that voter registration lists are not records subject to retention and preservation.”

Colorado’s loss likely won’t be the administration’s last. U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson on Tuesday appeared to reject the DOJ’s argument using Title III of the Civil Rights Act (which states that all voting records should be retained and preserved “for a period of twenty-two months”) to justify gaining access to the Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and birthdates of American citizens.

“By my count, this is the twentieth court to address this exact issue,” Evanson said. “Is there any meaningful basis on which to distinguish this case from the many other district courts and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals across the country that have dismissed the government’s complaints or denied their motion to compel?”

“No, your Honor,” DOJ attorney Raymond Yang admitted. “Relevant facts are similar to all the other cases.”

It’s abundantly clear that this is not a winning strategy in Trump’s greater mission of purging voter rolls to exert his executive will upon elections that are already free and fair.

“Rather than addressing any real problem, these lawsuits seek private voter information that is protected under state law,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said. “The DOJ’s demands for complete voter rolls are another example of federal overreach and an attempt to exert control over our elections. My office will continue defending Washington voters’ private information while ensuring the integrity of our voter roll remains secure, accurate, and trustworthy.”

While Evanson is a Biden appointee, Brimmer and 11 other judges who rejected the Trump administration’s voter suppression efforts were appointed by Republican presidents—with eight being appointed by Trump himself. The DOJ has now sued in 30 total states and the District of Columbia: California, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts, Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, Arizona, Virginia, Idaho, and Washington—all unsuccessfully.

Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn each reneged on their promises to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein, with Tillis even leaving them waiting in his office for 45 minutes before they gave up.

A group of Epstein survivors on Tuesday accused Blanche and Cornyn of going back on their word, as the senators prepared to vote in favor of Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general after he provided a weak promise in writing to kill President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

“The treatment we received from senators throughout this process was just as revealing. Senator Tillis publicly invited us, on camera, to come to his office and promised to meet with us. We did. We waited for 45 minutes in his lobby, only to be told by a staffer he would not meet with us after all,” the survivors wrote in a joint statement.

“Senator Cornyn also refused to hear directly from survivors before casting his vote. Senators Tillis and Cornyn were not willing to sit across from us and answer for the vote they were preparing to cast. If they believed they were doing the right thing, they should have had the courage to look survivors in the eye and tell us why. The message was unmistakable: They wanted us to go away. We are not going away.”

Tillis’s snubbing is particularly nasty given that he made a big fuss about not voting for Blanche’s confirmation unless he met with Epstein survivors. Blanche did eventually meet with survivors, but it did not go well, as survivors reported he told them to “get to the point” and to talk to the FBI instead. Survivor Danielle Bensky called the meeting “a box-checking exercise to secure Tillis’ vote,” and noted he “offered no meaningful explanation for how the redaction failures happened, who approved the release, or what steps he would take to prevent survivors from being exposed again.”

Before Tillis ghosted the survivors, he promised on camera to invite them to his office.

“I wanna meet—not with the attorneys, but with the survivors. And have a discussion about that stuff,” Tillis said. “I wanna see specific action items. And some of that could even have to do with investigations. My office is right around the corner.... I gotta rush … but I wanna have that meeting. I don’t want suits in the room. I want victims, and me.”

Tillis and Cornyn are both outgoing senators who would have lost nothing for being genuine and transparent. Instead of actually acting upon any of their own stated principles, they opted to play political theatre with the emotions of these survivors, unable to even offer them the basic decency of coming to a meeting they said they’d be at. We’re talking about women who survived abuse from perhaps the most infamous predator of the century.