The Blue Wave—II

Rozina Ali • Olivia Paschal • Lily Geismer • David Treuer‘Are You for America?’Rozina AliIn the fiery lead-up to the midterm election in Michigan, mailers arrived at voters’ homes bearing the gray-toned images of a woman in a burqa and Abdul El-Sayed’s face. The leaflet, sent by a Republican-aligned super PAC, warned that the Democratic candidate’s “Sharia-compliant way” would restrict women’s rights and freedoms. Grotesque as it was, it was a small drop in the deluge of tirades about El-Sayed’s ethnicity and faith, from right-wing commentators and sitting politicians alike.His Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, excoriated him for connections to the Muslim Brotherhood—an Islamist political group in Egypt that his mother once allegedly supported in the 1970s. Vice President JD Vance claimed that El-Sayed had “zero attachment” to the United States, though he was born and raised in Michigan. At a campaign event outside Detroit, Texas Senator Ted Cruz warned that if El-Sayed was elected and put on the Senate intelligence committee “there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result.” The dog whistles about how the first Muslim senator would threaten the Western way of life we...