Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said US military aid to Egypt helps tighten a “military dictatorship’s” grip on Egyptians, rejecting any distinction between that assistance and US military support for Israel. His remarks came a day after he won the Democratic primary despite record spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies to support his rival, Haley Stevens.
The result marked a major setback for AIPAC in one of the most expensive Senate primaries of the election cycle and propelled El-Sayed, an Egyptian American physician and epidemiologist, into a Nov. 3 general election against Trump-backed Republican Mike Rogers. His victory also put a spotlight on his opposition to US military aid for both Israel and Egypt.
According to AP, AIPAC and its affiliates spent nearly $30 million supporting Stevens, the group’s largest investment in a single race. The agency later reported that groups backing Stevens spent more than $60 million in total.
After the result was announced, AIPAC said in a statement posted Thursday that its members “remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November.” It pledged to continue working to elect pro-Israel candidates and defeat those it considers anti-Israel.
El-Sayed responded to AIPAC’s pledge to defeat him in November with a mocking challenge: “You want more pain?” AP reported.
Against US aid to Egypt
In an interview conducted by the Detroit Free Press on June 9 and published Aug. 2, the day he won the primary, El-Sayed said, “I don’t want to see my tax dollars being used to put a chokehold on the Egyptian people by a military dictatorship,” adding that this is what happens in Egypt.
He said he does not view US funding for Israel differently from funding for Egypt. “I don’t think we should be sending money to either. Egypt is the second biggest recipient of foreign military aid. If you’d like to start there, we can start there.”
Egypt has received an estimated $1.3 billion annually through the US Foreign Military Financing program since the 1978 Camp David Accords and the signing of the peace treaty with Israel, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The aid is used to purchase weapons and military services from US defense companies.
El-Sayed called for international law to guide military aid decisions, saying tax dollars should be spent on schools and health care in Michigan, “not on supporting apartheid and genocide in Israel or military rule in Egypt.”
This was not the first time El-Sayed linked US aid to political repression in Egypt. In an interview with the Krystal Kyle & Friends podcast published Oct. 14, 2025, he said his father used to send him to spend summers with family in Egypt so he would understand the difference between his life in Michigan and the life his father had lived in Egypt.
El-Sayed recalled that when he was 13, in 1998, his grandmother warned him not to discuss politics. Despite her warning, he went outside and spoke loudly about then-President Hosni Mubarak.
Plainclothes police officers arrived at the family home that evening asking for “the boy,” he said. His grandfather, a vegetable seller at the market, showed them El-Sayed’s US passport and told them he was American and could not be touched. The officers left. “My American passport protected my freedom of speech in Egypt,” El-Sayed said.
He said his father later encouraged him to run for the Senate because he had spent 20 years in Egypt unable to speak freely, then lived for 50 years in the US, where he could say what he wanted without fear. El-Sayed warned during the interview that his two daughters would not live in a world that protected that right unless people acted to defend it, referring to efforts by the American right to restrict freedoms.
El-Sayed has also faced criticism from conservative media since his primary victory. Fox News reported that his campaign received more than $115,000 from people employed by or holding leadership positions in the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), according to the network’s review of Federal Election Commission records.
The report cited longstanding allegations by conservative and pro-Israel US groups that CAIR has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, claims the organization denies.
Responding to the network’s request for comment, CAIR referred to previous statements denying any ties to terrorism and condemning “all acts of terrorism.” The Fox News report did not include a response from El-Sayed’s campaign.
