Trump says his bill would ‘guarantee the midterms.’ House Republicans are moving on.

Published

8 months ago

March 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump says his bill would ‘guarantee the midterms.’ House Republicans are moving on.

GOP leaders are not leaping to take immediate action on a new version of the SAVE America Act…
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Moderates put the left on notice

Published

37 minutes ago

October 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Moderates put the left on notice

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Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks dominate Michigan’s election homestretch

Published

2 hours ago

October 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

DEARBORN, MICHIGAN — “A threat to America.” “Radical ideology.” “A jihadist.”

President Donald Trump and Republicans are ratcheting up their efforts to brand Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Muslim whose parents emigrated from Egypt, as an “extremist” in the final days of the state’s critical Senate race.

It has sparked concern among some El-Sayed supporters, who fear the deluge of attacks could break through to some undecided voters. It has infuriated some of the president’s one-time Muslim and Arab allies in the state with the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, who view the comments as Islamophobic and racist. And it has caused some of them to lose hope in Republicans.

“You turned off a lot of people. Even people that were working to get Trump elected and get people to vote Republican here have flipped. We did all this work for them to turn around and use us as enemies, to be able just to win an election,” said Hassan Nehme, a GOP statehouse candidate and former Michigan Republican Party vice chair who helped lead Arab American outreach for the GOP in 2024. He is undecided in how he’ll vote in this year’s Senate race. “It’s to the point [where] I’m like, why am I even fighting to be in this party?”

Republicans’ increasingly incendiary rhetoric in the crucial Senate race is overshadowing the close of an already polarizing election.

“Michigan is a battleground. That’s the truth. And racism is real,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, a Democrat in an Arab-majority city who is backing El-Sayed, said in an interview at his office Tuesday. “If you have folks who refuse to vote for somebody because of the direction in which they pray, it most certainly has an impact.”

Hammoud believes most voters will see past it. But Republicans are bearing down.

Trump, who has repeatedly mocked and mispronounced El-Sayed’s name, labeled him a “jihadist” during a rally for GOP nominee Mike Rogers in Port Huron this past Sunday and said he would “be unable to get a seat on an airplane.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a campaign event with Rogers in Grand Rapids on Monday, claimed the world’s 500 million Arabs no longer produce award-winning science or literature and instead create “stagnant societies that do two things — hatred and war and victimization.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), while campaigning for Rogers in Michigan on Wednesday, called El-Sayed a “jihadist leprechaun.”

Ads from Rogers’ campaign and allied GOP groups attacking El-Sayed in this vein run in rotation across Michigan television. Senate Leadership Fund, the top GOP Senate super PAC, says El-Sayed gets “dirty money” from an “Islamic extremist group” that is “tied to Hamas.” Rogers, in a direct-to-camera clip, calls El-Sayed “a threat to America.”

Bishara Bahbah, an Arizona resident who founded Arab Americans for Trump and helped facilitate Trump’s 2024 outreach to Michigan’s Arab community, said Trump’s Sunday comments cross “a red line.”

“The only consequence that I can see from these comments is a complete reversal of the support in Michigan and other states where Arabs and Muslims vote, toward the Democratic Party.”

Rogers has been more specific in how he’s gone after his opponent. He has attacked El-Sayed for taking campaign donations from donors affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, which Republicans have long attacked as a terrorist group even though the U.S. government has not designated it as such. He’s alleged ties between El-Sayed’s family and the Muslim Brotherhood, in part through El-Sayed’s father-in-law’s involvement with CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America, another Muslim group. El-Sayed’s campaign referred to past statements from both CAIR and ISNA denying affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Rogers has also referenced El-Sayed’s mother’s work for a charity that the Bush administration classified as a supporter of terrorist groups, as reported by The New York Times.

El-Sayed has disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood and said his family has “no” ties to it. El-Sayed’s parents separated when he was three years old, and he says he was raised by his father and stepmother. His campaign responded to Trump’s rally in a statement saying while Trump and Rogers “lie and resort to desperate, bad faith attacks, Abdul remains laser focused on his plans to bring down costs and stand up to the chaos and corruption in Washington.”

“I’m not worried,” El-Sayed told reporters at a Detroit union hall on Monday, “because just like I did 18 months ago when I kicked off this campaign, I am taking a bet on the bigness of Michiganders.”

And President Barack Obama, in a rally with El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, said: “This stuff didn’t work on me, not in Michigan. It’s not going to work on Abdul.”

But some of El-Sayed’s allies are concerned.

James Tate, president of the Detroit City Council noted that El-Sayed “can’t defend himself in every household.”

El-Sayed’s campaign and his allies are fighting back by knocking on doors and hitting the airwaves, a sign they’re cognizant the attacks could have an impact. One El-Sayed ad features his white step-grandparents responding to some of Trump’s attacks. “Communist? We’re Presbyterian!” his grandparents say in the spot.

El-Sayed cut another ad featuring images of a menorah and of him praying with Black parishioners.

“His faith — I think that scares some people,” said Dana Harris, the director of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, who was doorknocking for El-Sayed across northwest Detroit last Saturday. “But at the end of the day. he’s a human being like the rest of us. And he wants change.”

Rogers and his allies say questioning ties to extremist organizations doesn’t equate to Islamophobia. Rogers’ campaign referred Blue Light News to comments he made ahead of Trump and Kennedy’s events.

“This is not about Islam. It’s not about how he prays,” Rogers said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning. “It is about his adherence to this radical Islamic agenda.”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump “will continue to unapologetically fight for American greatness and call out extremists like Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed without apology.”

Politics

Billionaire taxes, trans rights, abortion, voting rights: This year’s biggest state votes

Published

21 hours ago

October 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Statewide ballot measures are flying under the national radar — but some are drawing big spending.

At least $400 million has been spent on TV ads for ballot initiatives, according to data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The 145 ballot measures across 39 states include fights attracting the attention of future presidential candidates and millions from dark-money groups on both sides of the aisle.

The focus of this year’s ballot measures reflect broader shifts in the political discourse. The number of abortion-related initiatives has dropped precipitously since 2022 as states have had time to determine their individual laws following the repeal of Roe v. Wade. At the same time, voters in five states will weigh in on ballot measures focusing on transgender issues, the most in history.

Here are the most consequential ballot initiatives facing voters in November:

California’s wealth tax

By far the most expensive and most aggressively targeted ballot measure in November is California’s Prop 40, which if passed would levy a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires. An eye-watering $92 million has been spent on TV ads debating the issue, mostly on the “No” side, although that pales in comparison to what the Silicon Valley tycoons opposing the initiative like tech investor Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin would be forced to pay should it pass.

Leading progressive figures including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna are backing the “Yes” side. Caught in the middle is Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, who’s opposed the measure even as he’s tried to claim some populist credibility by proposing a national tax hike on billionaires. A Citrin-POLITICO poll earlier this month found the measure receiving 46% support, short of the majority needed to pass.

Newsom and Brin are both backing another ballot measure, Prop 42, a separate question that would cancel out the Prop 40 wealth tax if it passes. If both pass, Prop 42 could still cancel out Prop 40 if it receives more votes.

Redistricting wars continue

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is making himself the face of a constitutional amendment that, if it passes, would pave the way for the state legislature to draw new lines turning the state’s lone GOP House seat solidly blue. Moore, a potential presidential candidate in 2028, is taking a cue from Newsom, who passed a redistricting referendum last year that is likely to swing five House seats in favor of Democrats. Former President Barack Obama cut an adfor the “Yes” campaign this week.

Missouri Democrats recently won a contentious legal battle that barred the GOP from using a new gerrymander to erase a Kansas City-area Democratic seat held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and allowed voters a referendum on whether that gerrymander will be used in future elections.. Now, voters get to choose what the state does going forward. The campaign pushing “No” on the referendum reported raising $6 million earlier this month, with big help from Democratic megadonors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

Transgender rights restrictions hit the ballot

This year marks the first time multiple states have taken up ballot initiatives focusing on transgender issues.

The six initiatives across Colorado, Missouri, Washington, Arizona and Nebraska help make up the most LGBTQ-related ballot measures in a year since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. Each of the measures asks voters to either ban transgender surgeries for minors or restrict access to girls sports for transgender girls.

Abortion access measures in four states

Measures in Nevada and Virginia would enshrine abortion access in those states’ constitutions, similar to measures that have passed over the last few years in Ohio, Michigan, Montana and other states.

A measure in Idaho, which would override the state’s near-total ban, is a statutory change rather than a constitutional one, meaning the GOP-dominated state legislature could (and is expected to) vote to override it if it passes.

Missouri has a social conservative combo: a proposition to overturn the abortion-rights constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2024 and reinstate a near-total ban on the procedure that would also prohibit gender transition surgeries for minors. Advocacy groups on both sides are pouring millions into the initiatives, with abortion rights groups spending $22.5 million and anti-abortion groups spending $8.7 million on TV ads, with most of that money being spent in Missouri.

Voting on voting

Over a dozen ballot measures will weigh election administration rules for future elections. In seven states,voters could approve requirements for valid ID to vote. Six states will give voters the chance to explicitly codify in state law that only U.S. citizens can vote in the state. Massachusetts voters will weigh in on whether to establish a top-two nonpartisan primary system, like California has, while Alaska voters will decide if the state will end its top-four primary and ranked-choice voting laws in favor of traditional party primaries and first-past-the-post vote counting.