The 2026 midterms sent the first Muslim senator and a surgeon who worked in Gaza to Washington, as loyalty attacks intensified and AIPAC’s millions fell short in Michigan

Arab and Muslim voices in the U.S. Congress are no longer a passing exception. The November 2026 midterms added new names and confirmed others, at a moment of mounting debate in the United States over military support for Israel and its war on Gaza. What matters more than the numbers is the message: some of these lawmakers do not simply represent their communities, but place an end to arming Israel at the heart of their platforms. That goes a long way towards explaining the ferocity of the campaigns waged against them, from the White House to pro-Israel political action committees.

Michigan: the $30 million battle

The clearest case is Abdulrahman El-Sayed, known as “Abdul”. The son of Egyptian immigrants, born in 1984 in south-east Michigan, he combined medicine, public health and politics: an honours degree in biology and political science from the University of Michigan, a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in public health, and then medical studies at Columbia University under the National Institutes of Health’s Medical Scientist Training Program.

El-Sayed ran in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor and came second with more than 340,000 votes. On 17 April 2025 he announced his bid for the Senate, and in August 2026 he defeated Representative Haley Stevens in the primary. In that race, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), through its super PAC United Democracy Project, spent some $30.6 million backing Stevens against him, according to Federal Election Commission data, the most the group has ever spent on a single race. The effort did not end with that defeat: in October the same super PAC resumed spending against him in the general election.

On 4 November 2026, El-Sayed declared victory over Republican Mike Rogers, becoming the first Muslim elected to the Senate.

Trump: “jihadist” and a “metal detector”

The fight was not only about money. In the closing weeks of the campaign, President Donald Trump focused on El-Sayed’s religion and name. At a rally in Port Huron on 25 October, he called him a “jihadist” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and said he would have to pass through a metal detector before entering the Senate, according to the Associated Press, which noted there is no evidence of any affiliation with the group. Trump repeatedly called him by his middle name, “Mohamed”. In their final debate, Rogers asked whether he was “for America” or “for these terrorist groups overseas”; El-Sayed called the question “shameful”.

In his victory speech, El-Sayed answered the campaign head-on. Addressing parents who had struggled to explain to their children why the president mocks someone for their name or the way they pray, he told them to let their children know “the bad guys lost”, as reported by Al Jazeera English.

From Gaza to Capitol Hill

The second figure who embodies this fight is Adam Hamawy, an Egyptian-born surgeon who moved to the United States with his family as an infant and grew up in New Jersey. He served in the U.S. Army from 2003 until retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2011, worked as a military surgeon in Iraq in 2004, and took part in humanitarian missions to Bosnia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and Haiti.

Gaza was the turning point. On two medical missions in 2024 and 2025, he treated the wounded during the war of genocide on the Strip, including children who had lost limbs. He worked at the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis, where he and his team faced shortages of supplies and struggled to leave after the Rafah crossing closed. On his return he took his testimony to officials and members of Congress, then went into politics, criticising U.S. military support for Israel, calling for it to stop and for limits on arms exports to countries involved in human rights violations.

Hamawy won the June 2026 primary with the backing of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Tammy Duckworth, then defeated Republican Gregg Mele with about 74.8% of the vote according to preliminary results, becoming the first Muslim to represent New Jersey in the House when his term begins in January 2027. He too faced accusations: Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer voiced “deep concerns” over his alleged “associations” with terrorist organisations, prompting Hamawy to dismiss him as an “AIPAC bot”.

Tlaib and Omar: the old guard holds

Alongside the newcomers, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar held their seats in 2026. Tlaib, born in Detroit in 1976 to a father from Beit Hanina and a mother from Beit Ur al-Fouqa, became the first Palestinian-American Muslim woman in Congress in 2019, taking the oath in a traditional Palestinian thobe on a 1734 copy of the Quran. In November 2023 the House voted 234 to 122 to censure her over her comments on the war in Gaza, accusing her of spreading misinformation and embracing the slogan “Free Palestine from the river to the sea”. Her voters returned her to office once again.

Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who spent four years in a camp in Kenya before reaching the United States in 1995, won a new term in Minnesota’s 5th district. She too was targeted by Trump at the same rally where he went after El-Sayed.

Not a single bloc

Yet the picture is not one-dimensional. The Arab presence in Congress also includes Republicans who stand on the other side of the debate. Abraham “Abe” Hamadeh, born in Chicago in 1991 to Syrian parents, a former Army Reserve intelligence officer and former Maricopa County prosecutor, entered politics with Trump’s endorsement and is known for his outspoken support for Israel. Darin LaHood, of Lebanese descent, who has represented Illinois since 2015, is a former prosecutor who headed the terrorism prosecution unit in Las Vegas and holds influential positions on the Ways and Means Committee.

That contrast shows that the alarm on the other side is not about Arab origins as such, but about the rise of a generation that ties its Arab and Muslim identity to an explicit stance on arming Israel and on what is happening in Gaza.

Why the alarm is growing

Three factors explain the intensity of the confrontation:

• Money has lost its aura: the largest sum AIPAC has ever spent on a single race failed to stop El-Sayed from winning the nomination and then the seat. According to estimates cited by The New Arab, the success rate of AIPAC-backed candidates, around 98% in 2022, is expected to fall to between 60 and 70% in 2026.
• The message has moved from the margins to the mainstream: rejecting the use of taxpayers’ money to fund killing and genocide, as El-Sayed put it in his victory speech, is no longer a slogan of lawmakers confined to safe districts, but the position of a senator who won a swing state.
• An organised electoral base: Michigan’s large Arab and Muslim community, allied with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, forms a bloc capable of tipping the balance in battleground states.

The other side of the argument

The critics of these lawmakers make a different case. Republicans and pro-Israel groups say their objections concern positions, associations and statements, not religion, pointing to the censure of Tlaib and to some of these figures’ links with controversial personalities. Military aid to Israel also continues to enjoy broad support in Congress, meaning these voices, for all their rise, remain a minority in both chambers. At the same time, some Republicans, such as Senator Bill Cassidy, condemned statements targeting Muslim candidates, a sign that anti-Muslim rhetoric does not command consensus even within the party.

Sources: Al Jazeera, U.S. press