As the sun set in Dearborn, Michigan — a city on Detroit’s western border that is often called the “capital of Arab America” — the sense of urgency to elect Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate was becoming palpable on an unseasonably warm November election day. The lines of hijab-wearing women and curly-haired young men at the polling stations on November 3 kept growing longer.
Source
As the tide recedes on the Democrats’ “Blue tsunami” this past Tuesday, before the votes were even tallied, the internecine fight over The Narrative among the US center-left began in earnest. Centrist ideological curators, as is their function, came out strongly to paint the historic drubbing of Republicans as evidence that centrists are more electable than progressives. And progressives, likewise, have made the opposite argument, buoyed by the 7-point swing state victory of progressive and strong Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
This piece won’t litigate the empirical question as such (though pollster G. Elliot Morris does an excellent job debunking the “centrists overperformed” conventional wisdom), but will highlight instead how many of the “El-Sayed is toxic and can’t win middle America” narratives completely evaporated Tuesday night, and how those pushing them will, of course, never be held to account nor asked to explain why so many outright lies were advanced about the Democratic nominee. El-Sayed won by roughly 340,000 votes despite being subject to nonstop intra-party, intra-liberal attacks emanating from everyone from the president of the most influential liberal think tank in the US, to key Democrats in Congress such as House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to influential liberal media outlets The Atlantic magazine and The New York Times, to his largely Republican-funded primary opponent Hayley Stevens, who––unlike the others––at least had the courtesy to break kayfabe and come out in support of Republican Mike Rogers explicitly. Unlike genetic white media darlings Roy Cooper and James Talarico who, the centrist wonk expects insists, Covered The Spread, El-Sayed was subject to one of the most
On Nov. 5, 2024, I sat in the back of a ballroom at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Houston, covering Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory speech. Results from the majority-Hispanic Rio Grande Valley caused a political earthquake, as these ancestrally Democratic counties along the border with Mexico shifted hard right to Donald Trump.
Cruz, ever the sports fan, could not help but spike the football six years after he nearly lost to Beto O’Rourke.
“Tonight, we are witnessing incredible results, especially with Hispanics, across the state of Texas,” Cruz said.
Ever since Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats had dreamed of a blue Texas; Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley were the linchpin in this strategy.
What a difference two years makes. The Democratic blue wave that swept over the country Tuesday would not have been as tall without the backlash from Latino voters against President Trump. Between his draconian immigration regime (crafted by Stephen Miller), his tariffs making daily goods more expensive and his Iran war driving up the price of gas, Hispanic voters had enough. Nowhere did that buoy Democrats more than in Texas, where Hispanics in the state moved 32 points to the left.
That swing didn’t just send James Talarico to the Senate and Gina Hinojosa to the governor’s mansion. It powered Democrats to win every top statewide office, flip the four state Supreme Court seats on the ballot this year and capture the Statehouse. And it decimated Texan and national Republicans’ plans to shore up the GOP majority in the House of Representatives by creating five Republican-leaning seats in Congress in heavily Hispanic parts of the state.
Play
Latino voters boost Dems in Texas
After receiving a resounding mandate to act on America’s cost-of-living crisis, Democrats are considering bringing corporate executives before Congress in January. The Washington Sun reported Thursday that House Democrats on the Judiciary and Oversight committees are examining a 181-page dossier created by Groundwork Collaborative, a consumer advocacy group that has chronicled “price gouging”…
Source
In September 2025, President Donald Trump signed the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, a classified document that directs powerful federal agencies to counter “Domestic Terrorism,”, a loosely defined term with no specific federal criminal charge. Still, the Trump Administration has taken steps to use it as a pretext for targeting and punishing people and organizations who are standing for marginalized communities.
This summer, nine protesters were convicted on terrorism charges with sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years for a noise demonstration occurring on July 4th, 2025, outside the Prairieland ICE facility in Texas that resulted in the shooting of a federal officer.
The charges include a 50-year sentence for protester Autumn Hill, who said she left before the officer was injured, and a 30-year sentence for Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada, who was not even present at the site of the shooting and was convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents for moving a box of magazines and pamphlets of “Anti-fascist literature.” Benjamin Song, the shooter, also received 100 years in prison.
Credits:
Reported and Produced by Ryan Johnson
Filmed by Vanessa Donovan
Edited by Evan Stice
Transcript
A transcript will provided when ready