The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
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He called prisons racist and pushed ‘de-jailing.’ Now El-Sayed has a shot at the U.S. Senate

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BS BULLETIN:

  • Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed previously called for large-scale “decarceration,” “de-jailing” and eliminating cash bail.
  • El-Sayed argued America’s criminal-justice system was structurally racist and once described prisons as a potential “weapon” against radical social change.
  • The old remarks are resurfacing as El-Sayed battles Republican Mike Rogers in one of the country’s most consequential Senate races.

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed already has Republicans digging through his old comments on policing.

Now they’ve hit another mother lode.

El-Sayed spent years advocating for dramatically reducing America’s jail and prison population, describing the country as a “carceral state” and arguing that racism is deeply embedded in the criminal-justice system, according to comments and writings uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon.

And some of the rhetoric went considerably further than the usual debate over sentencing reform.

During a 2020 appearance on the Decarceration Nation podcast, El-Sayed argued that America needed to consider decarceration “at scale.”

That same year, he participated in a webinar centered on prison decarceration and abolition and said policymakers should pursue efforts to get people out of jails and prisons — adding that the push shouldn’t end with the COVID pandemic.

In a 2021 Substack post, El-Sayed advocated “de-jailing the criminal legal system” and eliminating cash bail, arguing that the existing system disproportionately harms black Americans in what he called a “structurally racist society.”

Then came an even more striking argument.

On his podcast in 2024, El-Sayed asked listeners to consider whether prisons were designed not simply to protect society from criminals but as a form of state power used against radical political change.

“What if we understood prisons weren’t meant to protect people from ‘evil-doers,’” El-Sayed said, before describing them as potential “counterinsurgent warfare” and a “weapon” against radical social transformation.

The comments are particularly combustible now because El-Sayed isn’t an activist running an obscure podcast.

He’s the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan.

El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary and is now facing Republican Mike Rogers for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.

The contest is expected to play an important role in determining control of the Senate.

And crime has already become one of the Republican Party’s favorite lines of attack against El-Sayed.

His past support for the “defund the police” movement resurfaced during the Democratic primary. El-Sayed has since distanced himself from the slogan.

But the newly resurfaced prison remarks give Republicans another avenue. They aren’t simply campaign ads describing El-Sayed’s ideology. They’re El-Sayed’s own words.

And with less than two months until Election Day, Mike Rogers and national Republicans now have plenty of them to work with.

MY QUICK TAKE

Democrats spent the last few years trying to bury “Defund the Police” somewhere Jimmy Hoffa couldn’t find it.

Then along comes Abdul El-Sayed’s archive. “De-jailing.” Decarceration “at scale.” Prisons as a “weapon.”

This isn’t Mike Rogers sitting in a campaign office inventing scary adjectives. These are positions and arguments El-Sayed himself made before he became the Democratic nominee for one of the most important Senate seats in America.

People can debate criminal-justice reform all day long. There are legitimate arguments about sentencing, bail and incarceration.

But when you’re trying to convince Michigan swing voters to send you to Washington, explaining what you meant when you talked about getting people out of prisons at scale is probably not where you want to spend September.

Republicans don’t need to write the attack ad. El-Sayed already recorded it.

DBS WIRE SOURCES

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