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Dem Senate primary erupts in key state as candidate teams up with radical streamer: ‘America deserved 9/11’
A Democratic candidate in a crucial Senate battleground showdown is taking plenty of incoming fire from his primary rivals as well as the Republican contender in the race as he prepares to team up on Tuesday with a controversial far-left online streamer.
Abdul El-Sayed, the 2018 Michigan Democratic gubernatorial runner-up who is backed by progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., as he seeks his party’s 2026 Senate nomination, is scheduled to hold campus rallies at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University with Hasan Piker, as well as with progressive Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania.
Piker, a potent progressive influencer, could help boost El-Sayed in a competitive and combustible Democratic Senate nomination race thanks to his millions of younger, progressive social media followers on YouTube, Instagram and X.
But the appearance at the campus rallies by Piker — who once said “America deserved 9/11,” and who critics argue is antisemitic due to his sharp criticism of the Israeli government and the downplaying of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel — is alarming to many Democrats.
BERNIE-BACKED DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE IN KEY RACE TAKES INCOMING POLITICAL FIRE
El-Sayed’s top two rivals for the nomination have blasted his scheduled appearance with Piker, which was announced less than two weeks after a man rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue, wounding a guard in what authorities said was a targeted act of domestic terrorism against the Jewish community.
“It is unacceptable for a candidate wanting to represent all Michiganders to campaign with Hasan Piker, a person who is unapologetic about a career of making hurtful and anti-Semitic comments,” Rep. Haley Stevens said in a statement. “With all that’s at stake in this election, we should be focused on the challenges Michiganders are facing and how to fight for them.”
And State Senator Mallory McMorrow, in an interview with the Jewish Insider, called Piker “somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks.”
SANDERS-ENDORSED SENATE CANDIDATE KNOCKED FOR ALLEGED FLIP-FLOP TO ‘HAVE IT BOTH WAYS’ ON KEY ISSUE
“That is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state,” McMorrow added. “You don’t fan the flames and stoke division just to get attention.”
El-Sayed, Stevens, and McMorrow will face off in an early August primary.
It’s not just El Sayed’s Democratic nomination rivals who are criticizing his decision to team up with Piker.
Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and the Anti-Defamation League have charged Piker is antisemitic and Matt Bennett, a leader of the well-known moderate Democratic group the Third Way, slammed El-Sayed as a “disgrace to the Democratic Party.”
Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who’s on a glidepath to the GOP Senate nomination in Michigan for a second straight cycle, told Fox News Digital in a statement, “If you would have told me a few years ago that Democrat frontrunners would campaign with known antisemites, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But one thing Abdul continues to prove, there’s no limit to how far left Democrats will go.”
“From calling to defund the police and make Michigan a sanctuary state, to attempting to abolish private healthcare, and now campaigning with an antisemite who claimed ‘America deserved 9/11,’ one thing that’s for certain: Abdul and the Democrats are too radical for Michigan,” Rogers argued.
In the wake of the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack that incited Israel’s war with Gaza, Piker described Hamas, a terrorist organization, as the “lesser of two evils” in the conflict.
Once, when asked if he supported terrorism, Piker answered by saying, “No, I don’t. I don’t support the state of Israel, and I don’t support the state of the United States of America.”
He also faced backlash for praising the “brave” “mujahideen” who injured Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, who lost an eye in Afghanistan.
“What the f— is wrong with this dude? Didn’t he go to war and like literally lose his eye because some mujahideen—a brave f—ing soldier—f—ed his eye hole with their d—?” Piker said.
El-Sayed has repeatedly stood his ground in defending his appearances with Piker. The candidate noted that Piker was allowed by Democrats to stream at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“It’s about speaking to a broader audience,” El-Sayed said last week in an appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
El-Sayed emphasized that “just because you invite somebody to campaign with you or you’re engaging with them does not mean that you agree with them….Every day, 30,000 people and counting tune in to Hassan’s stream. A lot of folks who don’t watch Fox News, they don’t watch CNN, they don’t watch MSNBC.”
The Senate race in Michigan is one of a handful in this year’s midterm elections that will determine if the Republicans hold their 53-47 majority in the chamber. Michigan, where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring, is one of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC) top targets as they try to not only hold onto their seats, but also possibly expand their majority.
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Michigan woman arrested for allegedly starving, torturing disabled sister-in-law she locked in basement
A Michigan woman was arrested and hit with felony charges after she allegedly kept her disabled sister-in-law locked in a basement for two years, where she nearly starved the victim to death and blasted a radio non-stop.
Tasha Beamon, 48, was charged with vulnerable adult abuse and unlawful imprisonment.
The victim managed to escape the basement and broke a neighbor’s window on March 15 as she sought to enter the home, alert police and flee captivity, according to MLive.
The neighbor called 911 and the victim told police that Beamon, the wife of the 58-year-old victim’s late brother, was holding her captive in the Saginaw home’s basement for two years before she found a way to free herself.
TWO ARRESTED IN NC AFTER POLICE FIND 13-YEAR-OLD KEPT IN DOG KENNEL, 5 OTHER KIDS IN ‘FILTHY’ HOME
“She told officers she was not fed very often and that she didn’t have any access to water,” Saginaw Police Detective Sgt. Jeff Doud told the outlet.
The victim said Beamon had kept her on an old mattress since March 2024 with a nearby radio constantly blaring.
Police went to Beamon’s house and observed a lock on the basement door, a mattress on the floor and a radio playing loudly. Police also said there was a 5-gallon bucket of urine in the basement.
“Usually, somebody was there. She didn’t believe anyone was home at the time, so she was able to force a door open and escape,” Doud said.
Emergency responders transported the woman to a hospital, where she was treated for severe malnourishment. Hospital staff told police the woman would likely die if she were discharged.
The neighbor told ABC 12 that he was shocked to find the victim suddenly in his living room with a metal pipe “almost as big as she is.”
“I don’t even know how she had the power to even break the window,” the man said. “I thought she was like 78. She was tall, skin and bones.”
“She asks me to call the cops at first, which was weird. But that was the first thing she said to me: Call the cops,” he added.
Beamon later admitted to police that she kept the woman in her house without allowing her to leave. She also made 40 calls to the hospital where her sister-in-law was staying.
Investigators suspect that Beamon was keeping the woman captive to collect her disability payments, Doud said.
Beamon was arrested on April 2 and booked into the Saginaw County Jail on $100,000 bond, the amount ordered after prosecutors described her as a danger to the public.
She will appear for a preliminary examination on April 20.
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Trump’s last-minute delay: Why he was never going to obliterate Iran in the first place
I’ve been telling anyone who would listen – yes. I can get rather tiresome – that President Donald Trump would not bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages.
Even after he said he would destroy Iran’s civilization and it would never recover, I knew that he would never go through with it. That was the last thing he wanted to do.
So I was confident he would find some kind of last-minute off-ramp.
And, of course, he didn’t want to be seen as backing off his increasingly dire threats.
WHY TRUMP’S WAR SPEECH FAILED: DECLARING VICTORY BUT STILL BOMBING IRAN BACK TO THE ‘STONE AGES’
I got the White House email at 6:32 Tuesday night. There it was, another delay, after a series of earlier delays. He would give the Iranians two more weeks.
I started posting like crazy, beating television by a couple of minutes, and newspapers by more. But that’s just because my phone happened to be right there. If I’d gone to the fridge for a moment, I would have come back to my laptop and discovered that the world had changed.
I knew in my gut, having covered Trump for 35 years, that he did not want to go down in history as the man who wiped out an ancient civilization. His heart was never in that. It was bluster as a negotiating tactic.
TRUMP FIGHTING FIERCE BATTLES, AT HOME AND ABROAD: WHY HE CASUALLY DISMISSES THE CONSEQUENCES
Still, he had boxed himself into a corner. Former allies in conservative media were denouncing him. “This is a brazen pre-admission of genocide against the Iranian people, which would obviously be a war crime. Madness,” Piers Morgan declared..
Some Republican lawmakers said he had gone too far. Even the U.S. Catholic Bishops said “the threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”
No American president had ever uttered such words.
So I figured the only card that Trump had left to play was delay. And that’s precisely what he did. At the request of Pakistan, which has been the intermediary in the so-called talks, the president agreed to a pause in the hostilities.
That is, according to the statement I received, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives…”
It’s a shaky cease-fire, to be sure, with Iran launching missiles at Israel minutes after it was announced, and Israel saying its ground invasion of Lebanon, after rocket fire from Iranian proxy Hezbollah, isn’t covered.
WHY TRUMP, IRAN SEEM LIGHT-YEARS APART ON ANY POSSIBLE DEAL TO END THE WAR
By yesterday, in fact, as The AP confirmed, Iran’s state media said it had closed Hormuz again, citing the Israeli attacks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a posting that the Trump administration “must choose between a ceasefire or continued war via Israel, and “it cannot have both.”
We learned from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that Bibi Netanyahu talked Trump into the war by saying it would be quick and topple the regime. Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman, called that “farcical.” Marco Rubio said it was BS. JD Vance was against the war.
And that’s a fascinating sidebar. Trump has been insulting Haberman, who published a biography of him in 2022, for no apparent reason. Yet he granted an hourlong Oval Office interview for their forthcoming book, “Regime Change,” from which the Times piece was excerpted.
As for the president’s current stance, well, he isn’t being held back by murky details. He told Sky News this was a “complete victory,” not just in military terms but “in every other sense as well.”
Trump was on the phone with Fox opinion host Laura Ingraham shortly before she came on the air, and she quoted him as being “cautiously optimistic,” saying: “It sure looks like Iran blinked.”
What, peering through the fog of war, did Trump actually accomplish, other than sending the markets soaring by nearly 3 percent?
On yesterday’s “Fox & Friends,” usually a Trump-friendly show, co-host Lawrence Jones said “we have not reached any of these objectives.”
Dismantling nuclear facilities (“that has not happened”), ending uranium enrichment (“they are still enriching”), transferring uranium stockpiles out of Iran (“that hasn’t happened”), accepting international inspections (“they are still not willing to do it”), and suspending the ballistic missile program (“they’re still firing them off”). Jones also criticized Iran for proposals that would never be accepted by the U.S. side.
WHY TRUMP FACES AN AGONIZING DECISION ON OBLITERATING IRAN’S OIL SUPPLY IF HE CAN’T GET A DEAL
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner said yesterday, “this is the least ceasefire-like ceasefire I think that anybody might have anticipated.” Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, said, “the Iranians don’t appear very serious about this ceasefire agreement.”
And therein lies the rub. The two countries remain far apart. This business about a strategic framework just papers that over in a devil’s-in-the-details sense. Iran is never going to agree to give up its nuclear program, regardless of any presidential pronouncements or Mission Accomplished banners.
The Iranian pitch, apparently not the one seen by Trump, says the U.S. must leave the region, give Iran sole control of the strait, and recognize its right to nuclear enrichment.
Don’t take my word for it. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters yesterday that Iran’s 10-point plan was “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded.”
Look, if this somehow all works out, what most people will remember is that Trump made harsh threats that led to a deal in which the Iranian blockade – “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy b——s” – was lifted. In other words, his Madman routine worked against the world’s leading terror state, which has been killing Americans, Arabs and its own people for 47 years.
But things could always fall apart faster than a speeding drone. It’s the Middle East.
No matter what you think of Trump, his war of choice, his apocalyptic rhetoric or his entire presidency, he’s not crazy. He followed a similar path in his tariff crusade, threatening draconian levies before reaching 11th-hour compromises. As he himself says, he’s a dealmaker. That’s what he does.
SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE’S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF ON THE DAY’S HOTTEST STORIES
Most media accounts are portraying Trump as caving in or backing down. That’s fair commentary.
But what really happened is that Trump found a way to avoid doing what he was never actually going to do in the first place.
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South Carolina pastor, wife arrested after alleged sexual, physical abuse of foster children
A South Carolina pastor and his wife were arrested after a foster child reported being a victim of sexual abuse, according to officials.
Rodney Gibson and Kawiana Young, both 50, were charged with unlawful conduct with a minor, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department said, according to WIS News 10.
Gibson is also facing charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor, unlawful conduct toward a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
TWO ARRESTED IN NC AFTER POLICE FIND 13-YEAR-OLD KEPT IN DOG KENNEL, 5 OTHER KIDS IN ‘FILTHY’ HOME
A victim came forward last month to report alleged sexual abuse endured while in foster care at the couple’s home, deputies said, according to the report.
Gibson is accused of sexually assaulting the victim on several occasions, starting at age 15 until they aged out of the foster care system.
Investigators learned that a minor was living with Gibson and Young.
The child told investigators they had been sexually abused by Gibson and physically abused by Young. The minor was then moved to emergency protective custody.
YOUNG BROTHERS FIND HUMAN SKULL NEAR CREEK; DOZENS MORE BONES DISCOVERED IN DEADLY MYSTERY
During an emergency protective custody hearing on March 20, a family court judge ordered the minor to be returned to Gibson and Young’s home.
After investigators conducted subsequent interviews and obtained additional evidence, arrest warrants were obtained. Gibson and Young were arrested on April 1 and the minor was placed back into emergency protective custody.
Gibson and Young were released on bond on April 2.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services said in a statement that Young was a licensed foster parent from June 2021 until June 2025, adding that she fostered six children in her home, but voluntarily relinquished her foster parent license.
The agency said Young failed to mention that Gibson was living at the home, and his name was not on the license. The agency said Young never reported that she was married and said she was not in a relationship.
The agency said it was cooperating in the investigation.
Authorities believe there may be more victims and are asking anyone with information to come forward.
Gibson is a pastor at Pathway 2 Hope Ministries, while Young owns and operates DreamCatcher Child Development Center.
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