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gary peters
Ready to 'Fight for the Working Class': Sanders Endorses Abdul El-Sayed for US Senate
"We need candidates who will stand up to Trump's authoritarianism and protect our democratic way of life."
Apr 17, 2025
Within hours of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed confirming his candidacy for U.S. Senate on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders affirmed his support for the Michigan Democrat, who recently resigned as Wayne County public health director to prepare for a run in 2026.
"This is an unprecedented moment in American history. We need an unprecedented response," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "We need candidates who are prepared to stand up for the working class of this country and take on the oligarchy."
El-Sayed, a longtime ally of Sanders, joined him last month for a Michigan stop on his nationwide Fighting Oligarchy Tour, which is pushing back against the agenda of Republican President Donald Trump and his collection of billionaires.
"We need candidates who will stand up to Trump's authoritarianism and protect our democratic way of life," the senator declared Thursday. "It is my strong view that Abdul El-Sayed is the kind of leader who will do just that. Abdul is a physician who understands that our current healthcare system is broken and wildly expensive. He understands that healthcare is a human right, which is why he supports Medicare for All."
Sanders also highlighted El-Sayed's commitment to "vigorously fight" against the country's "corrupt campaign finance system" by overturning the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, as well as his dedication to raising the minimum wage and making it easier to join unions because "he understands that too many workers in America are earning starvation wages."
"In other words, as a United States senator, he will take on powerful special interests and create a government and economy that work for all of us, not just the few," he concluded. "I am very proud to support Abdul to become the next senator from the great state of Michigan."
Other progressives across the country have joined Sanders in expressing support for El-Sayed on social media. Among them are Democratic Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman and Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the latter of whom said Thursday that the Michigander "is a friend and a strong champion of Medicare for All and standing up for the human rights and self-determination of Palestinians. He has always stood on principle, and I am excited he is running."
Prior to his Wayne County position, El-Sayed ran for governor of Michigan in 2018 after previously leading the Detroit Health Department. He also authored the 2020 book Healing Politics: A Doctor's Journey Into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic and co-authored the 2021 book Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide, which features a foreword by Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Building "a healthier America" is a top priority for El-Sayed. The candidate's other focuses, according to his campaign website, are an economy for working people, clean air and water, more and better education, sensible foreign policy, and solving the housing crisis.
"As I've spoken to Michiganders, one thing's become clear: It's just too hard to get by," Abdul said in a Thursday statement. "But it doesn't have to be. And to fix it, we need to break the chokehold that billionaires and oligarchs like Donald Trump and Elon Musk have on our politics and economy."
"It's not just about what we're fighting against—it's about what we fight for," he asserted. "Michiganders deserve an economy that works for them, guaranteed healthcare, clean air and water, and affordable housing. Just as I have in Detroit and Wayne County, I'm running to deliver government services that work for the rest of us."
El-Sayed hopes to fill the seat of Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who announced in January that he wouldn't seek a third term in 2026.
As the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday:
El-Sayed... joins state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, of Royal Oak, as the only announced candidates in a Democratic primary race for what is expected to be a hotly contested seat...
Other Democrats looking at the race include U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, of Birmingham, and former state House Speaker Joe Tate, of Detroit, and pundits have speculated state Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is term-limited in that job, could run as well.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary may face former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, of White Lake, who narrowly lost to Democratic U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin last year.
However, as the Free Press noted, "U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, of Holland Township, and Tudor Dixon, the 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee who lost to Whitmer, are weighing bids. Two lesser-known candidates, Dr. Kent Benham, a dentist in the Deerfield area, and Fred Heurtebise, of Luther, whose website describes him as a welder and engineer, have also filed in the Republican primary."
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'Good for Democracy': Ex-Lawmakers Urge Senate Vote on Banning Stock Trades
More than 40 former members of Congress said the ETHICS Act is sorely needed because it "addresses pressing issues, especially low levels of trust in Congress and the appearance of insider trading."
Sep 16, 2024
A bipartisan group of more than 40 former federal lawmakers on Monday urged the U.S. Senate to vote on proposed legislation that would ban sitting members of Congress from buying or selling stocks and other financial holdings.
"We, the undersigned bipartisan former public officials, many of whom served in Congress, write to urge Senate leadership to bring the amended Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act to a floor vote before it is set to sunset at the end of the 118th Congress," the letter's signers wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Signatories include former Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) along with Reps. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), and Leon Panetta (D-Calif.).
"Notably," the ex-lawmakers said, "we propose attaching this crucial legislation to any 'must-pass' package. This legislation merits inclusion in such a package because it addresses pressing issues, especially low levels of trust in Congress and the appearance of insider trading."
The letter continues:
As you are both aware, the discussion of how elected officials trade stocks has been intensifying both inside and outside the Congress for years. In 2022, members of Congress made more than 12,700 individual trades, with dozens of members making above-average gains. A 2022 New York Times investigation reported that a fifth of all lawmakers were trading in companies directly related to their work on a congressional committee.
Critics have long decried existing legislation—including the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and the Stop Trading Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, which require annual financial disclosures by members of Congress—as largely toothless window dressing. Advocates of measures like the ETHICS Act have pushed for more stringent safeguards against self-dealing by members of Congress.
The ETHICS Act—which was introduced in July by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—would ban members of Congress, the president, and vice president from buying and selling securities, commodities, futures, options, trusts, and other holdings. It would also prohibit their spouses and dependent children from divesting covered assets starting in 2027. The bill contains robust enforcement mechanisms and noncompliance penalties.
Calls for a vote on the ETHICS Act mounted after last week's revelation that more than 50 U.S. lawmakers held stocks in companies related to the military-industrial complex—even as those same firms received hundreds of billions of dollars in annual business via congressional legislation.
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Senate Probe Finds DHS, FBI Ignored 'Massive' Amount of Intel Before Jan. 6 Insurrection
"At a fundamental level, the agencies failed to fulfill their mission and connect the public and nonpublic information they received."
Jun 27, 2023
The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation "failed to fulfill their mission" by dismissing or downplaying ominous intelligence in the weeks and days leading up to the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to a Senate investigation published Tuesday.
The report—entitled Planned in Plain Sight: A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of January 6, 2021—was published by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and calls the Capitol attack "an unprecedented effort to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election and our nation's long history of peaceful transitions of power" that "followed months of repeated and false claims by former President Donald Trump, his lawyers, and certain elected officials, that the presidential election was stolen."
"What was shocking is that this attack was essentially planned in plain sight in social media. And yet it seemed as if our intelligence agencies completely dropped the ball."
"During the violent attack, individuals dragged a police officer into the crowd and beat him, struck another officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag, hit another police officer with a fire extinguisher, and damaged the Capitol building," the report continued. "Rioters committed hundreds of assaults on law enforcement officers, temporarily delayed the joint session of Congress, and contributed to the deaths of at least nine individuals."
"This attack on our democracy came in the wake of years of increasing domestic terrorism in this country—which top federal law enforcement and national security agencies had previously identified as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland," the publication added.
According to the report:
The intelligence failures in the lead-up to January 6th were not failures to obtain intelligence indicating the potential for violence. On the contrary, the two primary domestic intelligence agencies—the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A)—obtained multiple tips from numerous sources in the days and weeks leading up to the attack that should have raised alarms. Rather, those agencies failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable those partners to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred on January 6th. At a fundamental level, the agencies failed to fulfill their mission and connect the public and nonpublic information they received.
This information included:
- A December 2020 tip that members of the Proud Boys, a violent neofascist group, planned to travel to Washington, D.C. and "literally kill people";
- The December 2020 identification by I&A analysts of "comments referencing using weapons and targeting law enforcement and the U.S. Capitol building";
- January 2021 social media posts including a TikTok video of a gun-toting man calling on Trump supporters to "storm the Capitol on January 6th" and to "bring food and guns; if they don't listen to our words, they can feel our lead";
- A January 2, 2021 social media post forwarded to the FBI that said "this is not a rally and it's no longer a protest, this is a final stand where we are drawing the red line at Capitol Hill… don't be surprised if we take the #capital building"; and
- "Multiple concerning posts" noted on January 4, 2021 by high-ranking Justice Department officials including "calls to occupy federal buildings" and chats about "invading the Capitol."
Yet on the morning of January 6, a senior watch officer at DHS' National Operations Center wrote that "there is no indication of civil disobedience."
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) told NBC News that "what was shocking is that this attack was essentially planned in plain sight in social media."
"And yet it seemed as if our intelligence agencies completely dropped the ball," he added.
In a separate Associated Press interview, Peters said the agencies' failure to act on the "massive" amount of intelligence they received "defies an easy explanation."
Peters said the Senate probe "in a lot of ways echoes the findings of the September 11 commission, which identified similar failures to take warnings seriously" ahead of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Similarities between 9/11 and January 6 also include a lack of effective interagency communication and coordination, which resulted in "pretty constant finger-pointing" by intelligence agency officials following the Capitol attack, Peters said.
"Everybody should be accountable," the senator asserted, "because everybody failed."
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