I Watched the Michigan Senate Debate—Here's What Haley Stevens Doesn't Want You to Know
Abdul El-Sayed critiqued her policies. Stevens attacked his character—and lied while doing it. The receipts tell the real story.
Michigan just had its first Democratic Senate primary debate between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Congresswoman Haley Stevens. And if you watched it hoping to see a substantive clash of ideas about healthcare, ICE, the genocide in Gaza, and the direction of the Democratic Party—you got half of what you came for.
Abdul delivered the substantive debate. Stevens delivered the character attacks and the lies. Let me show you exactly what I mean—because the receipts matter, and the voters of Michigan deserve to see all of them. Let’s Address This.
On July 21, I turn 44! As a thank you for all of your support and trust, until July 21, an annual paid subscription to our independent media platform is 44% off.
The Money: Who Stevens Actually Works For
Before we get to what was said on that debate stage, let us understand who paid for the candidates standing on it.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is 100% people-funded. Not a dollar from corporate PACs. Not a dollar from AIPAC. Not a dollar from energy companies or ICE contractors or big pharma. His donors are the people he intends to represent. The FEC lists his funding in full. It is transparent. It is clean. It is exactly what campaign finance reform looks like in practice.
Haley Stevens is drowning in corporate money. From DTE Energy—the Michigan utility company that has spent years exploiting Michigan ratepayers while posting record profits. From ICE contractors—the companies that profit from the detention and deportation of immigrants, including the ones violating our Constitution in communities across Michigan right now. From at least $40 million from AIPAC—the same lobbying organization funding Republican Mike Rogers, incidentally—pouring money into her campaign because she has voted, repeatedly and consistently, to arm Israel even as it commits genocide in Gaza.
And then there is Portugal.
The Intercept reported that someone flew Stevens and her mother to Portugal—to a conference funded by big pharma and big oil, centered on cryptocurrency. Stevens has not explained who paid for that trip or why. She has not offered transparency on what was discussed or what was expected in return.
But she had the audacity to stand on a debate stage and accuse Abdul of lacking transparency about his funding. His funding—which is publicly listed, entirely from people, and contains zero corporate donations.
This is the Haley Stevens playbook: accuse your opponent of the thing you are most guilty of, and hope voters do not check the receipts. Well, we are checking them, and there’s a whole lot more below that voters need to see.
ICE: A Vote She Cannot Explain—And a Lie She Cannot Stop Telling
On June 9, 2025, Haley Stevens voted for a House resolution that expressed “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.”
She voted to thank Trump’s ICE. On the record. The vote is documented. All while ICE was killing a record number of Americans in 2025.
On the debate stage, Stevens offered the same explanation she has been peddling for months: “she allegedly had no choice.” The resolution also condemned a horrific antisemitic attack, she says, and voting against it would have meant opposing that condemnation. She was trapped.
Only, that’s simply not true. And it was called out as a lie by many, including by Mallory McMorrow, months ago.
Here is what Stevens hopes voters miss: Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse introduced a separate resolution—H. Res. 476—that condemned the exact same antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado, without the provision thanking ICE. A clean resolution. A straightforward condemnation of antisemitism with no poison pill attached.
Haley Stevens refused to cosponsor it. She refused to vote for it. Stevens deliberately chose the resolution that thanked ICE over the one that did not. That is not being trapped. That is making a choice. And then lying about it on live television—twice—to voters who deserve the truth.
But the ICE vote is only the beginning of Stevens’ record on immigration enforcement.
After voting to thank ICE, she accepted contributions from Axon Enterprise—the company that manufactures TASERs and cameras for ICE, with $13 million in ICE contracts in federal fiscal year 2025 alone. She visited a Michigan ICE detention facility where a man named Nenko Gantchev had died in custody—and her takeaway was to praise the “kindness of the women guards.” A reporter at her own press conference pushed back, noting that families of detainees reported guards turning their badges around to avoid identification and cutting phone calls when inmates tried to describe the conditions.
Stevens’ response to all of this on the debate stage was not to defend her record. It was to call for “strongly worded statements”—the Chuck Schumer special. The same brand of performative outrage that has failed working people and immigrant communities for decades. And while up to 97.4% of the people ICE is rounding up and arresting have no criminal record whatsoever, Haley Stevens thanked them. This is indefensible.
Abdul El-Sayed has been unequivocal since day one: abolish ICE. Not reform it. Not issue statements about it. Abolish an agency that is killing Americans, rounding up immigrants in violation of our Constitution, and operating with the impunity of an institution that has never been held meaningfully accountable. And replace it with a justice based organization actually committed to upholding our Constitution and due process rights. Abdul has traveled across the country to stand in physical solidarity with the communities ICE is targeting. He has put his body where his words are.
This is the difference between a fighter and a performer.
Israel, Gaza, and the War Hawk Record Stevens Tried to Hide
Next, Stevens tried to distance herself from Netanyahu. Do not be fooled.
$40 million from AIPAC does not buy distance from Netanyahu. It buys votes for Netanyahu’s agenda. And the receipts—documented by journalist Prem Thakker at Zeteo—are extensive.
Haley Stevens voted to:
Stop the Lebanon War Powers Resolution—a bill that would have asserted congressional authority over the illegal expansion of American military involvement in Lebanon.
Send Israel $26 billion more in military aid after it had already killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. Then, send Israel another $17.6 billion in additional aid—a bill that even President Biden would have vetoed.
Ban the State Department from citing Gaza Ministry of Health death tolls—even after the State Department and the Israeli military itself admitted those death tolls were accurate and likely an undercount. Stevens voted to prevent her own government from acknowledging the scale of the death she voted to fund. This isn’t transparency, it is an attempt to cover up the genocide you enabled.
Next, Stevens voted to sanction ICC officials as they pursued war crimes charges against Israeli leadership. Let me be precise about what this means: Stevens voted to punish the international court seeking justice for genocide. How is that different from Trump’s attacks on the prosecutors investigating his insurrection? It is not. It is the identical impulse—protect the powerful from accountability—wearing a different flag. And it is arguably a far worse impact because it seeks to deny and whitewash genocide.
As a human rights lawyer I can remind you that the 10th and final stage of genocide is denial. Haley Stevens is using her awesome power in Congress to deny genocide and sanction the very authority established to hold accountable those who commit genocide. If her moral compass cannot even protect genocide victims, how can she be trusted to protect democracy?
But Stevens’ injustices yet continue.
She voted to express “disgust” at South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ—calling the case “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without basis in fact whatsoever.” At the time, Israel had already killed more than 25,000 Palestinians. The UN, the ICC, the ICJ, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, and Israeli genocide scholars had all reached the same conclusion. Haley Stevens called the case “meritless.”
Here at home, Stevens forced through the TikTok sale or ban—which ultimately resulted in the platform being handed to Larry Ellison, a staunch Trump ally and billionaire. Stevens voted for an outcome that handed a major social media platform to a Trump donor. The “national security” justification dissolved into billionaire consolidation. The result speaks for itself.
Stevens kept saying on the debate stage that she “has the receipts.” She never showed a single one. We just showed you the actual receipts she hopes voters don’t see.
Abdul El-Sayed was on the opposite side of every single one of these votes. He has been consistent, clear, and unequivocal: stop bombing children in Palestine. Start building schools for children in Michigan. The ICC, the ICJ, the UN, Amnesty International, and Israeli human rights organizations have confirmed genocide. Abdul agrees—because the evidence demands agreement.
The Lie About Kamala Harris: Racism Dressed as a Political Attack
Here is the moment in the debate that I find most bizarre—but critical because it serves as a microcosm of who Haley Stevens is.
Stevens alleged on live television that Abdul El-Sayed was opposed to Kamala Harris’s presidential run, and that he did not support her.
This is a lie. A documented, timestamped, easily verifiable lie. Yet Stevens made it loudly and proudly as if the Internet doesn’t exist.
Joe Biden stepped down on July 21, 2024. Abdul issued a public statement on July 22, 2024—the very next day—throwing his full support behind Kamala Harris. If anything, once could argue he endorsed her ‘too quickly,’ before a robust primary process could unfold. But he endorsed her immediately, enthusiastically, and activated his entire network to support her campaign with 107 days until the election. Why? Because he recognized the dangers of Republicans and Trump, and he was not about to waste any of the little time that remained.
Stevens made this accusation knowing full well—as everyone in Michigan politics knows—that Arab and Muslim Americans have been scapegoated for Harris’s 2024 loss by people looking for someone to blame other than the corporate Democratic establishment whose failures produced the conditions for that loss.
And by the way, here is the actual data, which Stevens also will not share: according to a joint AP/Fox exit poll survey of more than 100,000 voters, Muslim Americans voted for Harris over Trump by a larger margin (+30%) in 2024 than they voted for Biden over Trump (+29%) in 2020. Muslim Americans did not cost Democrats the 2024 election. The corporate Democratic establishment’s failure to fight for working people cost them the 2024 election.
To lie about Abdul’s support for Harris, on a debate stage, in the context of a campaign against a Muslim Arab American candidate, is not just factually wrong. It is a racist dog whistle. It is the deliberate activation of the same xenophobic narrative that has been used to scapegoat Muslim and Arab Americans for every Democratic failure while those same Democrats take their votes for granted.
Stevens chose to lie about Abdul’s record and activate anti-Muslim racism rather than defend her own policy record. The reason is simple: she cannot defend it.
What the Debate Actually Revealed
The debate boiled down to two different strategies and two very different visions for the future.
Abdul spent the debate doing what a candidate should do: exposing the flaws in his opponent’s policies, and sharing his vision of what he is fighting for—money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All. Abdul pointed out Stevens’ cruel opposition to universal healthcare. Her support for AIPAC and arms to Israel during a genocide. Her pro-war voting record. Her drowning in corporate money. Her ICE gratitude vote and the lie she has told about it ever since.
Stevens, meanwhile, spent the debate doing what a candidate does when they have lost the policy argument: attacking her opponent’s character. She lied about his medical credentials—a racist attack I have already addressed in detail in a previous piece. She lied about his alleged lack of support for Kamala Harris. She bizarrely said he looks like Mike Rogers. (Yes, seriously). She never once engaged with a single policy position Abdul actually holds.
Why not? Because she knows the answer—attacking his policies is the same as attacking what working Michiganders want. Universal healthcare, abolishing ICE, ending genocide, money out of politics—these are not fringe positions. They are the positions of the majority of Democrats, the majority of independents, and a significant number of Republicans.
And for those concerned with “electability”—poll after poll shows Abdul beating Stevens in the primary and beating Mike Rogers by a larger margin in the general. Abdul is the more electable candidate. Every one of the last four polls confirms it.
And speaking of polls, the WoodTV poll (who hosted the debate) afterwards shows viewers overwhelmingly supported Abdul over Stevens by an 83-17 margin.
Conclusion
The Chuck Schumer brand of politics—corporate money, strongly worded statements, AIPAC checks, and war hawk votes—got us into this mess. It will not get us out. Michigan has a chance to send a generational candidate to the United States Senate—someone who has never taken a corporate dollar, who fights for universal healthcare as a human right, who names genocide as genocide, and who has the moral consistency to be trusted with the power Michiganders would give him.
That candidate is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. And Michigan should vote accordingly on or before the August 4 primary election day. You can also sign up for my voter guide at Sway.co and get my recommendations on which working families candidate to cast your ballot for this midterm election.
P.S. For those who already voted for Mallory McMorrow in the primary: you can cure your ballot and switch your vote to Abdul. Here’s how.
Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the people-powered politics that corporate media ignores. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.
As an alternative to a paid subscription, by popular demand, you can now make a one-time contribution to support our human rights platform.
Great summary. I’m a Michigander and Abdul supporter, so I checked out the Michigan subreddit for people’s responses to the debate. Overwhelmingly, they found Abdul El-Sayed to be the stronger and more honest candidate. Let’s hope that translates to a strong primary win. I have filled out my mail in ballot, and I plan to drop it off in person tomorrow at my polling station as I no longer trust the USPS. 🫤
Thank you for your summary.