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Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, has long been a vocal ally to transgender people. In the 2026 midterms, he has not wavered in that support, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in attack ads, much of which has been focused on transgender people, that have poured into this year’s elections from the Republican Party and, even at times, from the Democratic Party as well. Rather than capitulate to those ads, as some Democrats have done, El-Sayed has defended transgender people outright, on sports, on education and on health care. That was certainly true in his 60 Minutes interview released Sunday, in which Ross Douthat, the conservative columnist Bari Weiss brought to the program this summer, pressed him multiple times on his support for transgender people.
Douthat, the interviewer, started with a question as to whether El-Sayed’s faith puts him in conflict with “a very socially liberal and culturally liberal party,” listing “abortion, same-sex marriage, transgenderism [sic]” as issues on which “a lot of Muslims, like a lot of Christians,” hold conservative positions. Notably, “transgenderism” is a far-right term used to frame transgender people as an ideology rather than a class of people. In doing so, those who use it seek to paint transgender people’s existence as a matter of faith or belief rather than a fundamental characteristic of a person. In its most extreme form, the claim is that gender itself does not exist.
El-Sayed then rejected the premise that his faith puts him in conflict with the values of a secular liberal society, pointing instead to the importance of standing for all people’s rights: “I believe in rights. And even though somebody might use rights that you don’t understand, you never mean to use yourself, you still got to show up and fight for those rights. And that’s the thing about this moment. I think it is a responsibility for us to stand up against the risk of government making incursions on any of our rights, to build the kind of continuum, the kind of coalition where any of us and all of us who have our rights at risk are standing up and fighting for all of our rights. And I think this is an important responsibility. So in conversations with folks in the Muslim community, conversations with folks in the LGBTQ community, the point I always make is to say, listen, I don’t care whether or not you will ever use a right that you were fighting for, understand that a failure to show up and fight for that right is a failure to show up and fight for your own.”
Douthat attempted to pin El-Sayed down on transgender people, asking: “What about the rights of parents to control over their children’s education? Because a lot of places where there’s tension between Islam and Muslim voters and what I’m calling cultural liberalism are around issues like what is taught in school, what happens with transgender kids on sports teams, and so on, right? Like these are places where rights are in conflict, right? What do you think happens there?”
El-Sayed forcefully rejected it, pointing out that it is unrealistic to expect that kids will not learn about transgender people in the age of the internet: “The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school, is so profoundly outdated, because of course you have all the information and they have all the information. So here’s the thing about it. I think it’s really important for us to recognize that the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing. It’s really important, and the most important thing you can do is not try to protect a person from seeing a thing. It’s about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world, that you are engaging with them and saying, here’s what I believe, here’s what you may see in the world, you get to make your choices about who you’re going to be in the world.”
He then pivoted, as many other Democrats have, to the argument that Republicans are trying to make the issue into a cultural flash point to distract voters from the cost of gas, groceries and medical care.
Watch the entire exchange here (Start at 41:16):
This is far from the only time that El-Sayed has stood up for transgender people. In August, Fox News’ Jesse Watters asked El-Sayed whether he supported “sex changes for minors,” and he responded that “the government shouldn’t tell you what kind of health care you should have, and if you’re a minor, that’s between you and your doctor and your parents.” Then, a few weeks later, a Michigan State student asked his position on gender-affirming care, and he replied, “I don’t think the government gets to have a say about what health care is provided in what circumstances and why.” Despite running in a state like Michigan, which voted for Trump in 2024, El-Sayed has refused to sacrifice transgender people in his attempt to win a Senate seat for Democrats, and it appears to be working: El-Sayed is surging ahead in the polls, with the New York Times/Siena poll released Sunday finding him ahead of Republican Mike Rogers, 53 percent to 42 percent.
El-Sayed’s answer has set off a firestorm on the right. Katie Pavlich of NewsNation posted on X that El-Sayed wants your child to see photos of male genitalia. Nancy Mace, whose claim to fame is her push to ban the first transgender member of Congress from the Capitol’s bathrooms, simply posted “OH MY GOD!” Riley Gaines went on Fox News to denounce El-Sayed, and Rogers himself posted the clip. None of it has led El-Sayed to retract his answers or soften his support for transgender people.
El-Sayed’s race will be one of the most important to watch on election night. If he can win a highly contested seat despite the anti-transgender Republican money spent against him and the attacks from the right-leaning wing of his own party, it will be a clear case that embracing anti-trans views is not required to win swing states and swing districts across the United States. His approach stands in sharp contrast to that of Josh Turek in Iowa, who has called for a federal funding ban on gender-affirming care, or Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, who said in an ad that she “voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools.” EITM will be tracking every race with transgender implications on election night, and you can follow our election guide here.
This piece was republished with permission from Erin In The Morning.
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