Posted on by rjonakait

Michigan Midterm

The Republicans best chance of flipping a Senate seat is in Michigan.

The incumbent Michigan Senator Democrat Gary Peters is not seeking a third term.

Michigan is a swing state. Biden won in 2020 by 2.8%. Trump won in 2024 by 1.9%.

The Democratic nominee for Senate is Abdul El-Sayed. His parents are immigrants from Egypt, but he was born and raised in Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he earned a doctorate in public health. He has a medical degree from Columbia where he taught. He was Director of Public Health for Wayne County (Detroit) Michigan, resigning last year to run for the Senate. If elected, he would be the first Muslim member of the Senate.

Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, was born, raised, and educated in Michigan, graduating from Adrian College, a small, Methodist-affiliated college. He was in the army and then in the FBI. After serving in the Michigan legislature, he was elected to the House of Representatives seven times. He ran for the Senate in 2024 and narrowly lost. He has been characterized as a moderate Republican.

This campaign has issues that can be found elsewhere—affordability, healthcare, housing, and tariffs, especially those on Canadian goods. El-Sayed tries to tie Rogers to Trump and as a candidate bought and paid for by corporate donors. El-Sayed, who is not a Democratic Socialist but espouses policies similar to the DSA, supports Medicare for all and other progressive measures that Rogers says will exacerbate affordability issues.

El-Sayed attacks the war in Iran. Rogers defends it. They differ on immigration enforcement, with El-Sayed calling for the elimination of ICE.

Of all the Senate candidates nationwide, El-Sayed has been the most vocal critic of Israel, calling the country a rogue state. He says that Israel should be a secular nation. He seeks to end United States military aid for Israel. Rogers defends Israel although he has tried to distance himself from AIPAC, the powerful Jewish-American lobbying group. Two percent of Michigan voters are Jewish.

This is the only race that has a focus on the Muslim Brotherhood. The day after El-Sayed won the Democratic primary on August 4, Rogers said that El-Sayed had “pledged his support to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a pan-Islamist movement opposing British colonial rule and promoting social, economic, and political development with the goal of establishing a caliphate, or Islamic State under sharia law. After the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood won parliamentary elections in Egypt. Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Brotherhood, became Egyptian president. In 2012, El-Sayed signed an open letter from Egyptian Americans supporting the “revolutionary decisions taken” by Morsi.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a decentralized movement. It spans dozens of countries, and different branches vary widely in the way they operate, including in their use of violence. The Tunisian Brotherhood, for example, has been nonviolent and has peacefully won elections. On the other hand, Hamas has been seen as a Brotherhood offshoot and several countries including Egypt and Jordan have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Brotherhood’s views on social issues, including opposition to gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, are seen by many as “highly problematic” and inconsistent with universal human rights.

In addition to El-Sayed’s own comments fifteen years ago in support of the Brotherhood, claims have been made that his biological mother and half-sister have supported the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed’s parents divorced when he was three, and he was raised by his father and stepmother. His mother worked for a charity that the U.S. government said supported terrorist groups. The charity closed in 2004. The mother was a low-ranking member of the charity’s staff. She says she worked there to support orphans, which the charity did. However, the executive director of the charity went to jail for sending money to Iraq in violation of sanctions. The half-sister, born to El-Sayed’s mother after the divorce, made statements in support of the Muslim Brotherhood a decade ago.

Mike Rogers, during a recent debate, also said that el-Sayed’s “biggest funders are from a group that supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He gets money from people who support openly Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda.” The claim is based on donations El-Sayed has accepted from individuals affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, and the Islamic Society of North America, which provides a number of programs and services to North American Muslim communities in North America. The two organization were named as unindicted co-conspirators in a 2007 terrorism financing case against Hamas. The organizations were not charged, deny wrongdoing, and deny allegations they are terrorist groups or are affiliated with terrorist groups.

The Republican governors of Texas and Florida have designated CAIR a terrorist organization. The federal government has not. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed federal lawsuits challenging the designations.

On the other hand, with all the focus on the Muslim Brotherhood, it is seldom mentioned that when El-Sayed made those statements in support, back in 2012, no Muslim Brotherhood organization had been designated a terrorist organization by our government. That did not even happen in Trump’s first term, but only in November of last year when the Brotherhoods of Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, but not from other countries, were so designated.

As we have seen elsewhere, when estranged mothers are brought into it, campaigns are ugly. Increasirngly, opponents avoid talking about Trumpian policies and actions, and instead ask whether El-Sayed is a loyal American. Rogers has asked, “Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” Trump refers to el-Sayed by his middle name, Muhamad. El-Sayed responds, “My name is not the reason you can’t afford gas.” Instead, he proudly claims that he is a person of faith, prays daily (suggesting some politicians do not), and suggests that Congress needs more people of faith. Trump has gone further and said that if El-Sayed wins, he will “invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have Christmas.” Trump has labeled the Democratic nominee “a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member” and praised Rogers as “apple pie.”

But the attacks may be working. El-Sayed narrowly leads in the poll averages, but that advantage may be shrinking. Michigan is rated a tossup by the Cook political reports.

Posted on by rjonakait

The PHG

It was not the promised unconditional surrender. Instead, we placed some (minor) conditions on our capitulation. Once again, we should realize that no matter how strong our military, we are limited in what we can accomplish through such might. Richard Nixon found that out.

Nixon, like the current president, promised to easily end wars. Nixon’s presidential campaign said that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. Apparently that meant that two years later he would have the United States secretly invade Cambodia. When this became public knowledge, a huge backlash emerged. Perhaps surprising to the modern observer, outrage came from both sides of the congressional aisle. Congress then still performed some of its checks-and-balance function, and the invasion became a catalyst for the War Powers Resolution, which has been ignored by our present legislature.

Nixon addressed the nation on April 30, 1970, to justify the new or broader war and said that the United States would become a “pitiful, helpless giant” if it failed to use its military might abroad in furtherance of freedom: “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

Nixon missed the point. If we were a PHG, it was not because we refrained from the use of our power. We had a half million troops in Vietnam, and we had bombed the bejesus out of that country and were now going for Cambodia. We had bombed Laos even more and even longer, but these actions had not, and did not, produce the desired results. If we were a pitiful, helpless giant, it was because our widespread use of military force could not defeat our foes. When his physical strength does not cow his target, the bully becomes helpless. We were helpless in Nixon’s time not because of military restraint but because we knew nothing but military force and did not understand its limits.

That lesson has not carried over to today. Our military might has been overwhelming in Iran, but reliance on such force without an understanding of our target has again made us seem like a pitiful, helpless giant. More bombs are not always the answer.

Posted on by rjonakait

In Spite of the People

Texas is seeking to further gerrymander its congressional districts in favor of Republicans. Two-thirds of Texas House seats are currently held by the GOP even though the statewide vote for Trump in 2024 was only fifty-six percent. The Texans are now seeking to ensure that eighty percent of the seats are filled by Republicans. Texas Republican votes will in essence be weighted more heavily than Democratic ones. Slightly more than half the voters will pick four out of five Representatives while slightly less than half will pick twenty percent of the seats.

The United States Supreme Court faced a similar situation in the second half of the twentieth century. At that time some states did not require periodic redistricting of their state legislatures. With population growth and shifts, legislative districts that once may have held equal populations became unequal, but each was still entitled to the same representation in the state capital. For example, in Tennessee, two-thirds of the state representatives were elected by one-third of the state’s voters. One Alabama district had a population of 634,864 and another had 15,000, and each had one state senator. Within each district, votes were equal, but when the state was looked at as a whole, votes were unequal.

This only changed because the United States Supreme Court adopted what now is called the one-person, one-vote doctrine. The constitutional guarantee of equal protection, the Court recognized, requires that each vote within a state be equal to all the other votes in the state, and therefore legislative districts must have comparable populations.

The Court actions comported with a constitutional theory about the Court’s role in our government. In 1938, the Supreme Court said that courts must have a strong presumption that our laws are constitutional. Under our system, the elected legislatures and executives (the political branches) adopt our laws. If a law is perceived as bad or unreasonable or unwise, it is up to those elected branches to change it. It is not for the federal courts to determine the wisdom of a law. However, the Supreme Court also outlined three exceptions to that strong presumption of constitutionality. First, constitutionality cannot be assumed for a law or action that appears on its face to violate a provision of the US Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. The Court also said that it would scrutinize closely laws that discriminate against “discrete and insular” minorities, especially racial, religious, and national minorities, particularly those who lack sufficient numbers or power to seek redress through the political process. Finally, the Court should not grant a presumption of constitutionality to laws and practices that restrict the political process. The Court, in other words, should have a more active role when laws and practices prevent the political process from mirroring the will of the people.The political process in Tennessee and Alabama was not likely to change the inequality of voting districts. Representatives from small districts were not willingly going to give up their disproportionate power. The system that gave some voters more power than others stayed in place until the Supreme Court acted. The Court furthered political democracy by doing so.

Partisan gerrymandering is akin to those unequal districts the Supreme Court confronted in the twentieth century. The political process will not remove anti-democratic congressional boundaries when the line-drawing party perennially controls the state legislature. Although the minority party is not what the Supreme Court meant by a “discrete and insular minority,” it is very much like one since the political process cannot prevent discrimination against it. And if a party has gerrymandered congressional districts, it almost always also has gerrymandered state legislative districts. When that is the case, and it is true throughout this country, a mere majority in the state does not change the control of the legislature. Thus, a controlling party can distort the political process to continue its control. Gerrymandered state legislatures have drawn lines so that one party will have more state representatives than is warranted by the statewide popular vote. To change the legislature, the out-of-power party must not only retain its majority in the districts where it now wins but must also get majorities in the districts that are stacked against them. In reality, one party will need a supermajority of votes to get the governmental reins while the party that gerrymandered can retrain control with a minority of the vote.

The Supreme Court has recognized that “partisan gerrymandering” may be “incompatible with democratic principles.” Even so, the 5-4 2019 decision Rucho v. Common Cause, written by Chief Justice Roberts, said that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts [Emphasis added].” If gerrymandering is a “political question” as the Court stated, you might think that there would be a political process to address its abuses, but the Court, for the good reason that there is none, did not suggest any. It is as if the umpires turned their backs and walked off the field saying that while it does not seem right, the home team can call balls and strikes. And, thus, due to the Court’s inaction, the constitutional rights to equal protection and due process do not govern partisan gerrymandering.

With the abdication of the United States Supreme Court, some who seek better, more democratic government have gone to state courts contending that partisan gerrymandering violates state constitutions. The results have been mixed. Some state supreme courts have adopted the U.S. Supreme Court reasoning and will not consider partisan gerrymandering cases, while a minority of state courts have held that partisan gerrymandering does violate their state constitutions.*

In some ways, however, this just compounds the problem. Many states can freely gerrymander while a few states cannot. As a result, the political parties of the gerrymandering states have even more power than if all states gerrymander. They get the unwarranted number of representatives from their states and still get the deserved number from the other states.

Gerrymandering not only makes votes unequal. It also increases uncompromising partisanship. In a “safe” district, a candidate does not have to appeal to the other side — or even to the center — to get elected. The candidate merely must win the party’s primary. The candidate does not ever have to appeal to the majority of the electorate, but only to the partisans voting in the primary. And when elected, members from a gerrymandered district can indulge their partisan ideology without political retribution. We become a more polarized country as a result.

It also affects the mindset of elected officials. In the early days of the country, the electoral franchise was limited. Property requirements prevented some people from voting, and, of course, women could not vote. They, however, were not unrepresented. The elected official represented everyone in the district because everyone in the district was counted whether they could vote or not.** We see that today in a modified form. Children cannot vote, but the elected official represents them. The representative theoretically represents everyone in the district. But with gerrymandering that is not how many elected officials operate.

Recent raucous town halls should remind us of that. Conservative commentators point out that calls went out for Democrats to attend the town halls, and therefore the town halls should be discounted. In essence, the commentators are saying that critics should be disregarded. After all, those critics do not vote in the only election that matters in a gerrymandered district—the primary. When elected officials feel that they do not have to listen to people in their districts, they no longer feel that they have to represent them. But gerrymandering encourages our elected officials to act as if they represent only those who will vote in a primary.

The next midterms will raise important issues. The Republicans worked hard to pass that Big, Beautiful Bill. They claim it is good for the country. The tax cuts will increase prosperity. The changes to Medicaid will improve the program. Those who voted for or support the law should be willing to explain and defend the BBB. Those who voted against or oppose it should also be willing to tell their constituents why. And, of course, there are other important issues. Increasingly, however, the next and future elections will not be decided by the issues but will be decided instead by which side can gerrymander more and better.

It was funny, and ludicrous, when Pat Paulsen, the comedian a generation or so ago, who “ran” for President, said, “I want to be elected by the people, for the people, and in spite of the people.” We now live in a world where “in spite of the people” is, alas, a dominant political strategy.

_________________________________________________________________

*Civics courses have taught that the lower houses of the national and state legislatures are the most democratic and representative of our governmental institutions because the fewest number of voters select these representatives in frequent elections. With gerrymandering, however, these bodies have become increasingly unrepresentative of the people. However, officials elected in statewide elections are not gerrymandered into office.

Civics courses have often concluded that the courts are the least democratic of our institutions since they are the most removed from the electorate. But when state supreme court judges are elected in statewide elections, not in gerrymandered districts, the state supreme courts are more democratically selected than gerrymandered legislatures.

** Trump has now suggested that not everyone within a district should be counted for the census. Undocumented people, e.g., have heretofore been included in the census count, and hence should have been represented by the elected representatives of their district. Trump wants to exclude those people from the census. Will he exclude children next?