Politics
Dearborn’s Arab Americans feel vindicated by Harris’ loss
DEARBORN, Michigan — Arab American leaders for months warned Vice President Kamala Harris that she needed to separate herself from President Joe Biden’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza — or face an electoral backlash from this influential community in a key battleground.
But those pleas went largely ignored.
Instead, Harris made strategic errors that deeply insulted Arab American voters reeling from intense grief as the death toll in the Middle East climbed. She refused to host a Palestinian American onstage at the Democratic National Convention. She curtly shut down protesters at campaign rallies who criticized her solidarity with Biden over the conflict. She dispatched pro-Israel surrogates to Michigan.
Now, many Arab American residents in Dearborn “feel like they’ve been redeemed,” said Michael Sareini, Dearborn city council president. “They wanted to send a message and they did.”
“This stance on endless wars and killing of innocent women and children has got to end,” he said.
In the initial days after the election, as Democrats despaired over the results, Dearborn residents felt unsurprised by President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding win, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Arab American leaders in this densely populated Muslim city just outside Detroit. Adding to their sense that they were right, their protest vote was not limited solely to Arab Americans, who make up a fraction of the U.S. population. Their furor toward the Biden administration over Gaza spilled out onto college campuses across the nation and among progressives of all ages, amounting to the most significant anti-war protest in a generation.
“While we dealt with that grief, we became much more politically mature,” said Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American activist.
Unofficial results show Trump received the most votes in Dearborn, with 42 percent, while Harris earned 36 percent — a 33 percentage point drop from when Biden won Dearborn in 2020. Green party candidate Jill Stein collected 18 percent.
Zoom into Arab American neighborhoods and you’ll find an even more dramatic crumbling for the vice president. Trump showed up big throughout the Eastern and Southern parts of Dearborn, where a high concentration of the community lives. In one of those precincts, Harris earned only 13 percent while Trump got 51 percent.
Multiple Dearborn leaders said that Trump’s social conservatism and isolationist “America First” foreign policy made Arabs more comfortable with backing a Republican after the community fled from the GOP in the aftermath of 9/11. And, for a population that often feels targeted by the justice system, many identified with Trump’s legal woes.
But those leaders emphasized that the dramatic move toward Trump does not mark a permanent realignment with the Republican party for this demographic historically part of the Democratic base but rather an explicit rejection of Biden and Harris. The top of the ticket was the exception: Democrats won Dearborn at every other level of the ballot, from U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib down to state lawmakers and school board members.
“They didn’t vote for Trump because they believe Trump is the best candidate,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News. “No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”
‘I am speaking now’
When Harris took Biden’s place as the Democratic nominee in July, Arab Americans were hopeful. She had given some indications of a softer stance in the Middle East, and Dearborn residents were optimistic that she may be the president who would stand up against Israel. By that point, the war in Gaza had endured for nine months — and Biden repeatedly refused to order an arms embargo against Israel, despite pleas from the community for an end to the bombardment that according to Gaza health officials has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
But when Palestinian Americans were denied a speaking slot at the DNC convention a few weeks later, residents in Dearborn started to feel disgruntled. That resentment grew when Harris in August told a pro-Palestinan protester “I am speaking now” — a line that Arab Americans now point to as a difficult moment for Harris to overcome.
As the deaths increased in the Middle East — and images of dead bodies were shared widely on social media — the Arab community felt even more pushed aside by the Biden administration. It started to feel, they said, like a betrayal from Harris herself.
When Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon in October, which they stated was in response to military attacks by Hezbollah, Arab Americans’ rage over the response by the U.S. reached its peak.
Opposition to Harris “built up slowly but surely,” as the war continued on, said Abed Hammoud, founder of the Arab American Political Action Committee. A large share of Dearborn’s population comes from South Lebanon, which has been devastated by the military action. Some Michigan residents have seen their entire families overseas killed.
“I wake up in the morning, I turn on the news just to see which village was leveled to the ground and who was killed,” said Sam Baydoun, Wayne County commissioner, who emigrated to America from Lebanon when he was 15. “This is the daily routine we have here in Michigan.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, the Harris campaign dispatched surrogates to Michigan who deeply offended the Arab community. Bill Clinton, speaking at a rally in late October, said Israelis were in the Holy Land “first.” Residents also grumbled about appearances by New York Rep. Richie Torres, a staunch Israel proponent.
Adding to insult, the campaign touted the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the war in Iraq. His daughter, Liz Cheney, who was the former No. 3 Republican in the House and a staunch Trump critic, was featured as part of Harris’ closing message.
By that point, Harris’ repeated statements that she wanted to end the war in Gaza and return hostages felt hollow to this community. She had lost them.
An opening for Trump
The Trump campaign viewed the Arab community’s disdain toward Harris in the waning weeks before the election as an opportunity. Residents were inundated with anti-Harris texts and mailers, which “played big” among voters, said Ali Jawad, founder of the Lebanese American Heritage Club.
Then Trump paid a visit to Dearborn four days before the election. He stood in a restaurant surrounded by a crowd of Arab Americans and declared that under his presidency, “we’re going to have peace in the Middle East — but not with the clowns that you have running the U.S. right now.”
Harris never personally visited Dearborn. Campaign staff and surrogates went in her place instead.
“The Democrats did this,” Zahr said. “They created a situation where Donald Trump was walking around our city, putting his feet up, shaking hands, kissing babies and Harris didn’t even enter our community. She was afraid.”
Arabs in Dearborn were united in anguish but deeply divided on how to express it politically. Factions emerged. Conversations among themselves grew tense. The main PAC representing Arab American interests not only declined to make a presidential endorsement but urged residents not to vote for Harris or Trump. Some residents decided to skip voting in the presidential race entirely.
There was a split among the area’s mayors. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud emerged as a strong ally of the uncommitted movement, the Michigan-born coalition that galvanized antiwar sentiment on college campuses. Election results revealed that some big liberal college counties seemed to underperform for the Democratic ticket by at least a point.
Hammoud refused to meet with Trump when he was in Dearborn, based on his disagreement with the former president’s enactment of the Muslim ban and arming of Saudi Arabia. But he also declined to endorse Harris.
The mayors in two neighboring cities with similarly large Arab populations, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, stumped for Trump throughout Michigan. Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi even appeared at Trump’s final campaign rally held in Grand Rapids in the hours before Election Day.
But Trump’s record — like the Muslim ban and his promises to deport millions of immigrants — was enough for some to push aside their misgivings for Harris, like for political organizer Ismael Ahmed, who said he “held my nose and voted for her.”
Yet in the end, Trump “was able to say some things that made them think maybe he’s really on our side,” Ahmed said. “Or maybe he’ll fix the economy in a way that no one else will. And it worked.”
Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
Construction crews could begin the excavation process for what will be President Donald Trump’s massive 250-foot-tall arch in as soon as the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced on Thursday.
The monument — which will be erected in a traffic circle at the head of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River, coming between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery — has generated controversy as concerns emerged about the design and traffic congestion during construction.
The arch would take two to three years to construct on the proposed schedule, according to documents released in June.
“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck,” Burgum said in a social media post.
The 250-foot-tall arch will be among Trump’s most visible projects, as the administration continues its attempts to remake Washington. Critics, however, have voiced fears that the structure may be too large, and overshadow other monuments, like the Lincoln Memorial on the other side of the Potomac River.
The proposed arch will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in size. It is unclear at this time how much construction will cost; the National Endowment for the Humanities earmarked $15 million for the monument.
“This will be one the the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington National Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum said.
The monument will be constructed on land overseen by the National Park Service, and critics have argued Trump’s latest project requires explicit congressional approval. However, the Interior secretary continues to rebut these claims.
Instead, Burgum echoed previous statements and said historically “Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island,” the traffic circle where the monument is planned to be constructed.
“Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value,” he said.
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