Ladies and Gentlemen of the RedState readership, I wanted to let you know that over the next week, things are going to be pretty hot up here in the Great Lake State. The weather people who never lie say we are going to top 100 degrees this week, and they say it with a straight face.
Totally believable, right?
Weather people NEVER get the forecast wrong.
Never.
Thankfully, the Democratic Senate primary is heating up as well. The timing is almost too perfect.
Just so happens that I came across a column I'd somehow missed last week by Nolan Finley — whom I met many moons ago — and it caught my attention immediately. He wrote an opinion piece on one of the folks running for the Michigan Democrats, Abdul El-Sayed.
He is running against Mallory McMorrow and Congressperson Haley Stevens (MI-11) in the August 2026 Democratic primary to take on Republican Mike Rogers for the Michigan Senate seat that Gary Peters (D) is vacating. Having now covered the basics of what these people are doing, let's get to the crux of the issue here.
Nolan decided to offer his critique of Abdul El-Sayed, and I was a tad bit stunned that he actually did that.
In an article that I read right HERE at the local paper, Finley opines in an Op-Ed with the title The First Amendment is not a shield for violence, and I have to admit I was a bit shocked.
The Democratic candidate for Michigan's open Senate seat is selling the idea that the First Amendment covers violence and vandalism, if done in the name of a political cause.
I'm a free speech absolutist. I don't think hate speech should be recognized as its own category of expression. Americans should be free to say the most awful things without legal consequence.
ALSO SEE: The 2026 Battle for the Senate Is Still Likely Republican
Americans ALL THE TIME say stupid things, and I wholeheartedly agree with him on that. We should be allowed to sound as stupid as we choose to, and there should not be any crime in that.
But...
But El-Sayed, in defending the University of Michigan pro-Palestinian activists named in a federal indictment for crimes committed to protest support for Israel's war in Gaza, is arguing the defendants are being prosecuted for their views rather than their acts.
Spray painting messages across a private home, as the protesters did to the houses of UM officials, is not free speech; it's vandalism.
Your words, within reason, should not be an automatic ticket to getting arrested. I think people wiser than moi have opined that it constitutes a thought crime, which is still not a crime at all. Yet if words lead to action, or if there are no words and just action, that absolutely should be punishable.
That is a bit tricky to maneuver around. Sayed has not been charged in any of these incidents, but he is also not, from what I've seen, reprimanding the people who've done things such as this.
The ice would be getting thin for most folks, I believe.
However, in some of the latest polling on the race between Republican Mike Rogers and the (leading) Democratic challenger Abdul El-Sayed, the race is neck and neck. This actually is a race which will not be decided until November of this year, and it is looking like it might be too close to call this far out.
El-Sayed is still running against two ladies, both of whom are currently elected officials, and he is going to have to survive that challenge before he moves on to November. Republican Mike Rogers has already secured the endorsement of Donald Trump, and he is not running against anybody who is strong enough to challenge him, so the Democratic challengers in their primaries move forward, and we move on to the fall.
Michigan has not had a Republican United States Senator since Spence Abraham in 2000. Now I know I went to public schools, but if the math is correct, that means it's been well over a quarter-century since we sent a member of the GOP to the upper chamber in Washington.
I’m going to just sit and hope.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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