That's What She Sayed

Haley Stevens, Schumer, and Gillibrand instantly support Abdul El-Sayed for Senate

Aug. 6: Bitter Michigan primary divisions already over as Democratic leaders instantly normalize El-Sayed … Senate Republicans to vote on contempt charges against Fauci who is absolutely guilty of contempt for them … Vote could add some hot meals to SNAP benefits, in a tiny step toward us not being monsters … ICE detainees reportedly force fed, in giant step toward us still being monsters …

TFN stuff: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Support: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), in a July 16, 2026 campaign video. (Screengrab / Stevens campaign video.)

Almost immediately after Wednesday’s TFN went out, with news of the Michigan primary victory of Abdul El-Sayed, I got a call from a Jewish friend dismayed by the left’s embrace of El-Sayed and silence about shitty things El-Sayed’s said about Israel and/or Jewish people.

My friend is not a hysterical person. They had real examples from their life of growing antisemitism in the world. Their world. Our country.

Nor are they a defender of Israel, let alone Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I won’t bore you with everything I said to him. Just some of it.

Namely, I said, primary victories have a way of moderating shrillness and extremes. It’s the classic pivot, from firing up your party’s zealots to winning over skeptical or disengaged voters.

By the time we hung up, several things had happened.

El-Sayed said this:

“To all of my sisters and brothers of the Jewish faith — or any faith at all, or no faith at all — I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety, is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters. Because if there is one question of a political philosophy that ought to animate us all it’s, ‘What would we do if we treated all of our kids like they were all of our kids?’”

And the Democratic Party leadership stepped up, effectively assuring voters that, no, El-Sayed was not the antisemitic terrorist they’d been introduced to by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that opposes El-Sayed.

There was Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), to her credit, neither flinching nor hesitating nor winking: Endorsing El-Sayed directly without a trace of mealy in her mouth.

Stevens posted a statement on her website. (Which, ahem, still has all the stuff about how former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) will win if El-Sayed is the nominee. C’mon, Stevens digital team, put some pep in it!)

Anyway, here’s some of what Stevens’s Wednesday statement said:

“I want to congratulate Abdul El-Sayed on winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He is a doctor, a community health official, a Rhodes Scholar, and a dedicated Michigander. I am proud to offer my support as he takes on Mike Rogers in the general election…

“Donald Trump and Mike Rogers want us to come out of this primary tired and divided, so their billionaire backers can come in and let multimillionaire Mike Rogers walk away with this Senate seat…

“We need to win this Senate seat, because [Sen.] Elissa Slotkin [D-MI] deserves a partner like Abdul in the U.S. Senate.”

Almost as quickly, there were the party’s Senate Democratic leaders picking up the El-Sayed mantle they had fought so hard to pretend they weren’t fighting so hard to defeat.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), our government’s highest-ranking Jewish person in history, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), our government’s highest-ranking right-wing Christian Democrat and chair of the Democratic Party’s Senate fundraising committee, issued a joint statement in which you’d be pressed to find a whiff of their lingering resentments.

This is not what they did when Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral primary. You can cynically argue that Schumer and Gillibrand need El-Sayed to win, the way they didn’t need Mamdani, if they want Democrats to have the Senate majority and Schumer and Gillibrand to have all the cushiness that goes with the majority. And you’d be cynically right!

But self-interest is a feature of our politics, not a bug. So here’s what Schumer and Gillibrand said about their new antisemitic Muslim terrorist BFF inshallah:

“Abdul El-Sayed has run an energetic campaign that inspired thousands of Michiganders across the state, with a clear focus on lowering costs and standing up for working families [and Palestinians, sshhh!]…

“We look forward to working with Abdul and Democrats across Michigan to win this seat in November…

“Michigan voters already rejected Rogers ... They’ll reject him again in November and send Abdul El-Sayed to the United States Senate.”

See? Was that Zo hard?

Here’s what former Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive 2028 frontrunner (sorry, Newsfuckers and Pete Buttigieg) had to say in an email:

“We have to do everything in our power to make sure Abdul wins this race for Michigan and the entire country.”

Retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who endorsed Stevens before Wednesday, endorsed El-Sayed on Wednesday:

“…it’s time to come together as a party and rally around our nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, to make sure Mike Rogers never sees the floor of the US Senate.”

Here’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), who also endorsed Stevens until that failed:

“Congratulations to [gubernatorial nominee] Jocelyn Benson, Abdul El-Sayed, and every Democrat who won up and down the ballot in this primary. They’ve got my support as we fight like hell together to win in November.”

Even Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) reportedly are already at work helping El-Sayed unify his voters with Stevens’s. Good for you, establishment Dems! Blue No Matter El-Who, after all!

And notice how no one’s talking about Israel, anymore? Well, El-Sayed, too, is moving on from an issue that helped him win the primary to issues that can help him win the general election.

His first fundraising email didn’t mention Israel or Palestinians. Now the reason to support him is that “it shouldn’t be this hard, in the richest country in the world, to see a doctor, or pay your bills, or believe your kids will have it better than you did.”

Even El-Sayed’s biggest enemy, AIPAC, looks like it’ll be helping El-Sayed. Kinda…

AIPAC UP YOUR TROUBLES The organization that supports Netanyahu and the illegal arming of Israel by the U.S. spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed.

Ironically, that money appears to have have triggered The Streisand Effect, the dynamic, named after the iconic Jewish star, in which one’s attempt to squelch something just draws more attention to it. El-Sayed successfully turned AIPAC’s spending into proof of his independence from pro-Netanyahu money. (I’m trying not to reflexively say “pro-Israel,” because is supporting Netanyahu pro-Isreal? Really?)

And now, the New York Times reports, AIPAC is considering helping Rogers in the general election. An AIPAC spokesperson said, “Our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November.”

As the Times notes, spending money in the general election would represent a big shift. Historically, AIPAC has pretended to be non-partisan, spending only in primary races with only one previous exception.

And this is not the first primary, the Times says, in which AIPAC has shot itself in the foot with U.S.-supplied arms while aiming at Palestinian supporters.

AIPAC groups spent $4.4 million in a House primary in Illinois, trying to beat Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who is Jewish but said he opposes current U.S. policy of helping Israel kill Palestinians and steal land. Biss made AIPAC’s support for his opponent a staple of his stump speech and won.

El-Sayed anticipated the possibility of AIPAC helping Rogers and said toward the end of the primary, “AIPAC, if you’re listening, burn your money, come back and burn it again in the general.”

GOP Hard-On for Fauci Lasting More than Four Hours

Nothing a death cult hates more than a guy who saves lives!

Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the Senate Homeland (sic) Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today is expected to vote to hold Dr. Tony Fauci in contempt of Congress for exercising his Fifth Amendment right against Paul-incrimination during his testimony last week.

The committee would then refer Paul to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, already underwater with Pres. Donald Trump for letting science undermine another prosecution, the Gang That Couldn’t Pool-Vandalize Straight.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche could direct Pirro to do whatever Trump tells them to do. Which actually puts Trump in the tricky spot, three months before the midterms, of reminding everyone about his own COVID performance, and the fact that Fauci worked for Trump at the time.

Pres. Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for … whatever bullshit Republicans might come up with. But Senate Republicans argue that that doesn’t include contempt of Congress, which honestly we’re all guilty of, and that Biden’s pardon only included acts up through January 2025. C’mon, man.

Meanwhile, pervy Senate Republicans weren’t content with peeking at Fauci’s diary. These upskirt, child-genital-inspecting (and/or publishing) lookie-loons also got a peek at Fauci’s phone.

Reportedly, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) got a digital recreation of the contents of Fauci’s government phone on Wednesday, thanks to the helpful folks over at Secretary Robert Flip-phone Kennedy, Jr.’s Department of Health (sic) and Human Services (HHS), which has free time to creep on Fauci’s shit due to no longer being burdened by fighting measles or explosive diarrhea.

Johnson will presumably start releasing embarrassing specifics as soon as he figures out how non-rotary phones work.

Republicans in Disarray

Unserious commentators on Wednesday allowed themselves to be distracted by Pres. Donald Trump’s apparent new partner on the campaign trail, flown in on Hair Force One to top the head of the ticket:

Let others indulge in such superficial distractions. TFN won’t take part. It’s beneath me. There’s so much more consequential campaign news to comb over through.

Oh, and I can’t vouch for the veracity of Trump’s remarks there. He might have just been doing The Weave. It also appears to be the first time he’s provided cover sending reinforcements to the front lines.

Anyway, speaking of Trump’s vanishing allies…

PULLING THE RUG OUT Michigan Republican voters on Tuesday chose a congressional nominee who not only wasn’t the candidate Trump endorsed, but had already pulled the plugs on his own campaign.

Retired engineer Tom Smith dropped out in mid-July. Trump had endorsed Amir Hassan, a retired cop and Navy veteran, apparently not realizing he was asking Republican voters to support someone named Amir Hassan. Ask Vivek Ramaswamy how that’s working out in Ohio.

Anyway, Hassan lost, so now Smith’s the nominee even though he wasn’t even running anymore. Trump must be pulling his hair out.

PARTING WAYS Trump’s thinning support is increasingly visible even in Florida.

Two House Republicans — Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Mike Haridopolos (R-FL) — on Wednesday endorsed Ryan Elijah in the primary for the 7th congressional district. It was a bald-faced rejection of Trump’s endorsement in the race, for incumbent Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), one of the lesser-known Republican miscreants.

Mills is under a restraining order after he allegedly failed to restrain himself from threatening to distribute sexually explicit videos of a former girlfriend, whose reputation could be destroyed if people knew she had had sex with him.

That’s the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, along with Mills’s suspected campaign-finance violations, all of which makes Mills a perfect Trump candidate.

Luna and Haridopolos better hope Trump doesn’t find out, though, or he’s gonna flip his wig and there’ll be hell to pay.

HUSTED, WE HAVE A PROBLEM In TFNs past, I’ve told you Newsfuckers about Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), who’s on the ballot this year, declining to call for Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) to end his re-election race in the wake of credible abuse allegations.

Husted said he doesn’t need to weigh in, because magic will take care of it. “The political ramifications, I think, will work themselves out.”

Well, at least one ramification appears to have worked itself out with some help from Husted’s campaign team, because Miller’s endorsement of Husted went from working itself onto Husted’s list of endorsements to working itself out of Husted’s list of endorsements as of this morning.

Husted is running against former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), whose campaign website is here.

Miller has until Saturday to drop out if he wants to give the county parties in his district enough time to replace him on the ballot by their 4pm deadline on Monday. Miller says he won’t drop out, and it’s not like he’d lie about something that didn’t involve breaking his daughter’s collarbone or posting her genitals online.

Come to think of it, Miller’s getting a lot of pressure to drop out, so if you’d like him to stay in, maybe give his office a call and let him know? Maybe volunteer? Hell, tell him AIPAC has his back. We love you, buddy!

Miller has raised more than $2 million, compared to $603,000 raised by Democratic rival Brian Poindexter, whose campaign website is here.

Four Quickies

‘Tis the season for campaign politics, but you long-time Newsfuckers know TFN’s all about the substance, so I don’t wanna give short shrift to actual policy, the stuff of which all this politics will determine the future of.

• The Senate Agriculture Committee today will vote on whether Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits should include rotisserie chicken. A sentence that makes me wanna vomit an entire rotisserie chicken. Hurray for the bipartisan support for this. But SNAP benefits currently literally don’t include hot meals, except the ones history’s puritanical Calvinistic legislators will eat for eternity in Hell at “Satan’s Spicy Hot Rotisserie and Olde-Fashioned Congress Grille.”

• Pres. Donald Trump’s nominee for personal attorney general, Todd Blanche, needs just one more vote to win confirmation and on Wednesday met with the two Republican holdouts. Afterward, Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) didn’t spoil the surprise like the ending of a pro-wrestling match. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on Tuesday said she’s a no, perhaps the clearest sign Blanche will get confirmed, as Collins likely wouldn’t have been allowed to vote no if they needed her vote. And Collins desperately needed to vote no after federal immigration cops voted for shooting a guy dead in Maine and Blanche said he’ll vote for ending abortion rights everywhere.

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been force-feeding people in custody to end their hunger strikes. The Guardian reports that ICE is using coercive, involuntary medical procedures against people in custody. At least three victims were protesting the conditions of their detention. Force-feeding is considered torture by most human-rights groups, even if it doesn’t involve a rotisserie chicken.

• The Pentagon is denying a Washington Post report that Pres. Donald Trump was pissed at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for shooting Trump’s long-range and interceptor wads in and at Iran. Trump reportedly pressed Hegseth about how Trump possibly could have been misled about the state of America’s missile inventory by someone who used to be a weekend Fox host.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN If you want to be part of making TFN happen, and you can afford it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. TFN is still growing, but between normal attrition and American Express canceling subscriptions, the number of paid subscriptions is falling.

Thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

If you wanna support TFN but not Substack, you can do so via cash apps: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal.

Go get ‘em, kids! It turns out mainstream Democratic leaders are just fine with Abdul El-Sayed when they need him to reclaim the Senate majority!

---

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks. He is a member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation advisory board.