Abdul El-Sayed’s Ideology Is Fundamentally Incompatible with America’s Founding Principles — He Should Never Serve in the United States Senate

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat running in Michigan’s U.S. Senate primary, advances an ideology that is antithetical to those principles. His platform and record reveal a worldview that expands federal power dramatically, undermines sovereignty, treats a key democratic ally as a pariah, and prioritizes progressive internationalism over the concrete national interest. For those reasons, he should never hold a seat in the United States Senate.

Limited Government vs. the Expansive Administrative State

The Founders designed a government of limited, enumerated powers precisely because they understood that concentrated power threatens liberty. El-Sayed’s signature domestic agenda — Medicare for All with automatic enrollment, aggressive regulation of industry and AI, wealth-focused taxation rhetoric, and hostility to corporate influence — moves in the opposite direction. It treats the federal government as the primary instrument for guaranteeing outcomes in healthcare, housing, and the economy. That is not the constitutional design. It is the progressive administrative state that conservatives have spent decades trying to restrain.

When a candidate frames every problem as requiring more federal spending, more bureaucracy, and more centralized control, he is not conserving the American experiment. He is seeking to remake it.

Sovereignty and the Rule of Law

A nation that cannot control its borders is not a sovereign nation. El-Sayed has called for abolishing ICE, describing the agency as “corrupted” and beyond reform. He has also supported “defund the police” language in the past (later walking back the slogan while maintaining the underlying reallocation logic). These are not technical policy disagreements. They reflect a fundamental skepticism toward the state’s core duty to enforce laws, secure territory, and maintain order.

The Constitution grants Congress authority over naturalization and the power to protect the nation’s borders. Treating the primary federal immigration enforcement agency as illegitimate is not reform — it is an attack on the practical sovereignty the Founders assumed any free republic must possess.

National Interest and Alliances vs. Progressive Internationalism

The Senate’s most solemn responsibilities include advice and consent on treaties, funding the military, and shaping foreign policy. El-Sayed’s positions on Israel are not mere differences of emphasis; they represent a rejection of strategic realism and of solidarity with a fellow democracy facing existential threats.

He has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide,” labeled Israel a “rogue state” engaging in apartheid, stated that both Hamas and the Israeli government are “evil,” and questioned the legitimacy of an explicit Jewish state as inherently “illiberal.” He has made clear he would end unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel (while also opposing aid to several other regional partners). He frames American tax dollars spent on a key ally as money stolen from Michigan schools and healthcare.

This is not “America First” in any serious sense. It is progressive foreign policy that elevates ideological condemnation of a U.S. partner above the concrete security interests of the United States and the stability of a critical region. The Founders were not isolationists, but they understood that alliances should serve the republic’s interests, not serve as vehicles for moral preening or Third Worldist solidarity. Treating Israel as a pariah while remaining relatively quiet about actual authoritarian regimes that threaten American interests is a profound inversion of priorities.

His association with streamer Hasan Piker — who previously stated that “America deserved 9/11” — compounds the problem. Even if one accepts Piker’s later attempts to contextualize the remark as foreign-policy criticism, the willingness to campaign alongside a figure known for that rhetoric signals a comfort with radical progressive currents that view America itself as the problem rather than a nation worth defending on its own terms.

Civic Nationalism vs. Transformative Ideology

El-Sayed is a U.S.-born citizen with an impressive personal résumé: Rhodes Scholar, physician, public-health administrator who ran Wayne County’s health and veterans services department. He speaks of the American Dream and Michigan roots. Personal biography, however, does not override ideology. Many progressive politicians claim to love America while pursuing policies that would fundamentally alter its constitutional character, dilute its sovereignty, and reorient its alliances. The test is not sentiment. The test is the governing program.

A Senator takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. A candidate whose platform expands federal power far beyond the original design, weakens the institutions that enforce sovereignty, and subordinates U.S. strategic partnerships to progressive orthodoxy on the Middle East is asking voters to trust that he will use the powers of the office to preserve the republic rather than transform it. Conservatives are under no obligation to grant that trust.

The Stakes

Michigan’s Senate seat is not a municipal post. It carries influence over military funding, foreign aid, intelligence, and the confirmation of judges and executive officials. Placing someone with El-Sayed’s ideological commitments in that role would advance a vision of America as a platform for progressive redistribution and international moralism rather than a sovereign constitutional republic dedicated to the liberty and security of its own citizens.

The same pattern is visible in the rise of figures such as Zohran Mamdani in New York. This is not isolated. It is a coherent ideological project that treats the American founding settlement as a starting point to be overcome rather than a framework to be conserved.

Abdul El-Sayed is free to hold and advocate these views. Voters are equally free — and, from a conservative and patriotic perspective, obligated — to reject them at the ballot box. The United States Senate is not the place for an ideology that expands the state, weakens sovereignty, and treats a critical ally as a moral outcast. He should not serve there.