Saturday, November 14, 2026
‘I Dare Him’: El-Sayed Is Done Playing Nice with Trump; Now He’s Coming for the President with a Golden Opportunity He Knows He Can’t Refuse
‘I Dare Him’: El-Sayed Is Done Playing Nice with Trump; Now He’s Coming for the President with a Golden Opportunity He Knows He Can’t Refuse
Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed is challenging President Trump by offering to name a universal health care bill “Trumpcare-For-All.” El-Sayed dares Trump to veto it, asserting that standing up to a bully is necessary. He also noted the irony of JD Vance swearing him in.
AI Generated
Abdul El-Sayed is dangling an offer aimed straight at Trump’s ego — and daring the president to explain himself if he turns it down.
Michigan’s new Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed isn’t wasting any time. He’s been making the rounds on Capitol Hill and talking with media outlets since his hard-fought election victory in the midterms.
He’s also apparently ready to start treating President Donald Trump like the bully he is, escalating a growing war of words between himself and Trump.
The Rhodes scholar and former Detroit Health Department executive director is suggesting a possible way to pass universal health care or Medicare for all and get Trump on board with it or at least force a veto.
During an interview with NPR on Wednesday, El-Sayed appealed to Trump’s vanity, suggesting a bill to provide health care to all Americans could be named after the president himself.
“Put his name on it,” the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Senate told NPR’s Leila Fadel on the video podcast “Newsmakers.”
“He’ll probably pass it. I’m not above doing that. I don’t care what it’s called,” a serious El-Sayed said.
Then he went a step further.
“I dare Donald Trump to veto. I dare him,” the Michigan Democrat challenged, “because if you want to make the argument that Democrats want to deliver for you, do that. Make him veto it.”
He doubled down on the offer, too, in a social media post directed squarely at the president.
“This is a message for @realDonaldTrump Donald, this is on the table. Guarantee healthcare for every American, from cradle to grave,” El-Sayed baited Trump in a caption over an image showing a gold “TRUMPCARE” card.
The post had almost 4 million views by noon on Thursday.
A day before his NPR interview, El-Sayed told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins the same thing about naming universal health insurance “Trumpcare-For-All.”
“Donald, if you’re watching, we can put your name on it. I know you like to put your name on stuff. You can finally meet the unmet promise in America to guarantee everybody health care. So, it’s on the table if you want to do it,” he offered.
In the same interview with NPR, the incoming U.S. senator threw caution to the wind and repeated what he said about Trump on the campaign trail.
“You recently called President Trump the dumbest effing guy who ever was president,” Fadel said.
El-Sayed agreed. “True.”
Fadel continued, “You’ve also said Democrats should drop the decorum and treat the president as the unserious fool that he is.”
Again, El-Sayed agreed. “True.”
“Why are you taking that approach?” Fadel asked him.
El-Sayed didn’t hold back, explaining how to handle a “bully.”
“Because he’s a bully alongside being a narcissist. And the only way you deal with bullies is to stand up to them. Bullies don’t bully you because they necessarily care for the thing you have. They bully you because they like to bully you because it makes them feel strong,” the Democrat stated.
“And the way you take on a bully is to bully back because then they learn that this does not make them feel strong. It makes them feel weak, and they don’t like to feel weak. So they back off,” he continued.
He also said you can’t let a “bully” get away with it because then they just continue the behavior.
“So, I think it’s important for us to stand up to him.”
Trump and his mini-me JD Vance spent the months leading up to the Nov. 3 midterms calling El-Sayed the worst names possible, from Jihadist and terrorist to a member of the political Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump also accused El-Sayed of being a “jihadist lunatic” who was “on the side of terrorists,” NPR reported.
Unfortunately for Vance, he will be tasked with swearing in all the new senators in January, including El-Sayed.
“I hope he doesn’t make it awkward,” he told NPR. “There is, as I said, a delicious irony in the fact that he is constitutionally obligated to swear me in.”
Social media is fully backing El-Sayed.
“Finally, someone who can meet the moment we are in,” an X user proclaimed.
Author Joyce Carol Oates agreed, commenting “spoken like a true leader,” above a clip of the El-Sayed’s NPR interview.
Another poster may have said it best about El-Sayed comments on Trump’s bullying and how to handle a bully: “Perfect answer.”
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What to Know About Friday’s Nationwide Ground Stop
What to Know About Friday’s Nationwide Ground Stop
“An F.A.A. nationwide ground stop occurred after overloaded, antiquated equipment caused radar failures, stranding passengers. Transportation Secretary Duffy blamed legacy systems, demanding $50 billion from Congress for upgrades. Recovery may take until Thanksgiving, prioritizing commercial flights.
AI Generated
The air traffic control system’s overloaded, antiquated telecommunications equipment sustained its latest widespread failure, prompting a call for more money to fuel faster upgrades.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a rare nationwide ground stop Friday afternoon, after outdated air traffic communications equipment became overloaded with data and began to fail, officials said.
The outage stranded thousands of passengers and caused widespread delays from which airlines and airports are still struggling to recover. It also highlighted persistent vulnerabilities in the aging U.S. air traffic infrastructure and a funding fight, as administration officials demanded lawmakers approve tens of billions of dollars more to accelerate systemwide upgrades.
Here’s what to know.
What caused the problem?
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, told reporters at the White House Friday night that the radar and other air traffic communications started to falter at 3:36 p.m. when old routers became overloaded with data. While the failures were not universal, they were pervasive enough to prompt officials to issue the unusual nationwide moratorium on takeoffs, Mr. Duffy said.
Appearing alongside him at the White House, Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, stressed that there was no evidence that nefarious activity had triggered the technology failures.
“We’ve seen zero evidence that this was a cyberattack,” Mr. Mullin said, suggesting that new equipment and new technology the Mr. Duffy’s department had added to the old infrastructure was what had overwhelmed it.
Mr. Duffy insisted that the failure was caused by the antiquated, legacy communications equipment, not recent upgrades to the system.
“What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system,” Mr. Duffy said, predicting that until significant upgrades are made, “it’s going to continue to fail.”
How long will it take to get things back to normal?
Mr. Duffy warned that it would take “some time” for air travel nationwide to recover from the ground stop, predicting flight schedules would be fully back to normal by the time the Thanksgiving travel season begins.
“I believe that it’s going to take us some time to get back to capacity,” he said, adding: “We’re going to have some makeup to do.”
Mr. Duffy said that the F.A.A. would prioritize larger commercial flights ahead of private and charter flights, to get previously grounded flights off the ground.
What does the administration say needs to be done?
Mr. Duffy has long been pushing for a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. air traffic infrastructure, routinely complaining that controllers have been hampered by the country’s failure to upgrade outdated equipment.
“We have old, old switches, old routers — we use 1980s little copper lines,” he said to reporters Friday. Only last week, the F.A.A. announced that it had begun to phase out the use of floppy disks.
Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion to fund upgrades to the country’s aging air traffic facilities and networks, some of which has been directed toward communications system upgrades. Mr. Duffy noted Friday that air traffic facilities that had been upgraded to digital systems did not experience the same overloading issues that prompted the F.A.A. to issue the ground stop order.
But he stressed that having an air traffic control system dependent on a “patchwork” of upgrades and fixes was untenable, calling on Congress to spend tens of billions more to allow for more upgrades.
Why did Duffy blame Congress?
For months, Mr. Duffy has been calling on the Republican-controlled Congress to give his department another $30 billion to accelerate efforts to upgrade air traffic control systems. On Friday night, he upped the ante, telling reporters he wanted $50 billion — and that he wanted it before the end of the year.
“This is an emergency, I want Congress to give us emergency funding,” he said, adding: “How many more times does this have to happen for Congress to give the money to fix it?”
But it is unclear whether Republicans will prioritize such a sum before the end of the year, after which control of Congress shifts to the Democrats, who are expected to scrutinize how the F.A.A. has utilized air traffic funding they have received so far. Republican lawmakers have filed bills in the House and Senate to authorize $30 billion in air traffic upgrades, but neither piece of legislation has cosponsors.
Later on Friday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House’s top-ranking Democrat, appeared to reject Mr. Duffy’s accusing tone and shifted the blame back to the Trump administration.
“Today’s unprecedented breakdown is the latest in a series of unacceptable air travel incidents under the Trump administration’s failed leadership,” he said in a statement, adding that “American travelers deserve timely answers from the Trump administration about how and why this happened and assurances that steps are being taken to ensure that our air travel system remains safe and functional.”
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.“
Friday, November 13, 2026
Democrats fumbled the Hegseth impeachment. That could be a blessing in disguise | Claire Finkelstein
Democrats fumbled the Hegseth impeachment. That could be a blessing in disguise | Claire Finkelstein
“House Republicans scuttled Massie’s impeachment articles against Hegseth, but Democrats may refocus charges. Potential bipartisan articles include mishandling classified communications, Caribbean and Pacific boat strikes, and retribution against Mark Kelly. Impeachment could also investigate Pentagon lawyers and strengthen congressional oversight.
AI Generated
A traffic jam, combined with disorganization on the part of Democrats, enabled House Republicans to scuttle the representative Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth on Wednesday.
While recriminations are now flying among Democrats, the fumble may have been a blessing in disguise. Democrats can now refocus the articles against the defense secretary, possibly to better effect.
The first four of Massie’s articles of impeachment addressed the Iran war, asserting that the Department of Defense overstepped presidential war powers authority. The first three accused Hegseth of failing to respect congressional authority and the War Powers Resolution. And the fourth claimed that that the Pentagon failed to mitigate harm to civilians in its operations, resulting in the tragedy of the US strike on the girls’ school in Minab, Iran.
Inclusion of the first four articles of impeachment, however, might ultimately have backfired in the Senate, and maybe even in the House in the final vote.
The US has a long history of presidents ignoring Congress’s role in decisions to engage in military force. From Nixon’s invasion of Laos and Cambodia, to US-led Nato intervention in Kosovo and Serbia under Bill Clinton, to US military intervention in Libya under Barack Obama, among others, presidents and their secretaries of defense have flouted Congress’s role in authorizing military operations for years.
The same can be said about harm to civilians in US operations. It was mistaken strikes against civilians during the Obama years that inspired Secretary Mattis, followed by Secretary Austin, to establish the now-shuttered Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program. Dismantling the program was a Hegseth initiative and one of Massie’s concerns.
A more targeted set of articles in the new Congress might stand a better chance of success.
Three causes for impeachment stand out as most likely to garner bipartisan support. The first is one that did not even appear in Massie’s articles: Hegseth’s egregious handling of classified communications in the infamous Signal chat conversation regarding a planned military operation in Yemen, when the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently included on the thread.
“Signalgate”, as it has been called, identifies one of the worst cases of mishandling classified information ever to occur by a higher-level official in the defense department. A Pentagon report itself suggests that Hegseth put troops in danger in this incident.
Hegseth and other members of the administration continued to exchangeclassified information on Signal even after the initial revelation by the Atlantic. Hegseth then embarked on extensive internal investigations, using polygraph testing to search for leakers, and ultimately firing Lt Gen Brett Sylvia, a member of the joint staff. Yet the secretary himself, or at least his lax practices, may well have been the source of some of the very leaks he is investigating.
Second, boat strikes directed against civilian vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific stand on a different footing from the articles relating to the Iran war. This use of US military force has been virtually unanimously condemned by legal experts as an indisputable violation of the laws of war, or, more accurately, as murder.
Third, an article of impeachment addressing the vindictive campaign of retribution against the senator Mark Kelly for a controversial video he made with five other members of Congress could well garner support from Republicans, some of whom may rise to the occasion to defend their colleague.
As I made clear in a brief in support of Mark Kelly, the video, which reminded troops they may refuse to follow illegal orders, merely restated textbook training to servicemembers regarding the law of superior orders. The attack on Kelly was not popular with either Democratic or Republican members of Congress.
As I recently wrote about possible impeachment charges against Trump, Congress’s heightened investigatory powers during an impeachment inquiry provide a critical benefit of the process.
A Hegseth impeachment could force release of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo justifying the boat strikes. OLC lawyers should be called on to testify – presumably behind closed doors – to explain the process by which they came to support the strikes.
An investigation of the OLC is long overdue in any event, and a more general inquiry should be conducted by the House and Senate judiciary committees.
Hegseth’s attack on Pentagon lawyers should also be investigated and should possibly form a fourth article in newly refocused impeachment charges against him.
Starting with the firing of the top Judge Advocate Generals and moving on to incursions into the role played by rank-and-file Jags, Hegseth has sought to undermine fidelity to the rule of law and the role of lawyers in reviewing military operations.
While Congress has heard some testimony on these matters, such as that of Adm Frank Bradley, who took the hit himself for certain of the boat strikes in a likely attempt to protect Hegseth, many questions remain unanswered.
Most critically, impeachment proceedings against Hegseth will provide an opportunity for Congress to strengthen its oversight authority.
Hegseth will likely invoke either presidential “testimonial immunity” or “deliberative privilege”, doctrines made up by the executive branch over time that have rarely been tested in article III courts.
While it is true that presidents need to be able to consult with members of their cabinets confidentially without fear of public revelation, these doctrines have served more to interfere with congressional oversight and block transparency than to further sound presidential decision-making. Congress must work to cut these outsized claims of presidential authority down to size.
There will also likely be assertions that information cannot be shared with Congress due to classification concerns.
Here, too, Congress must stand firm and focus on rebuilding its oversight authority. Members of the two armed services committees have robust classification privileges that make sharing information with Congress behind closed doors entirely legal and appropriate.
Leaders of the 120th Congress will have the opportunity to lead critical impeachment inquiries as well as conduct extensive oversight in the new year, but they must play their cards carefully and keep their eyes on the prize – long-term restoration of democratic norms and the strengthening of checks and balances in the federal government.
Claire Finkelstein, a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian, is the Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder and faculty director of Penn’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL). She is a fellow in residence at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University during the 2026-27 academic year“
The Worst Thing Democrats Could Do Right Now
The Worst Thing Democrats Could Do Right Now
“Following a historic reckoning, Democrats must avoid reverting to insider politics and instead sustain populist energy. New leaders should govern visibly, combat corruption, conduct off-site oversight, and pass popular legislation addressing affordability and power concentrations.
AI Generated
By Ben Rhodes
Mr. Rhodes is a contributing Opinion writer. For this essay, he spoke with dozens of Democratic politicians, operatives and strategists.
These are not normal times, and that was not a normal midterm election. For two years, President Trump has ruled the United States like a personal fief while his would-be subjects have endured war, rising prices and political chaos. Now that Americans have delivered a historic reckoning for Republicans, Democrats must show that they can lead a political realignment.
The opportunity is generational. After decades of polarization, the dam broke in Republican strongholds. From state legislatures to the U.S. Senate, many Democrats who swept into office are younger and come from unconventional political backgrounds. From the center to the left, they didn’t just promise competent governance; they directly challenged a corrupt system and obscene concentrations of power, and they promised to make that system work for the people. For the first time in the Trump decade, the Democrats were the populists. If they can sustain that energy, our Gilded Age can be followed by a progressive era.
The danger is that once in power, Democrats will revert to business as usual. Top-down leadership from party insiders. News conferences at the Capitol with canned talking points. Budget fights that play out in leaks to the political press. Stop-and-start government shutdowns. Petty quarreling between centrists and the left. Performative oversight of Mr. Trump’s renovation projects that feels disconnected from the pain Americans are feeling.
In short, Democratic power in the waning days of the Trump era must look, feel and be different from past incarnations. Governance must be visible, participatory and consequential. If it isn’t, the blue tsunami will recede.
There are blueprints for how to do this. After she was elected to her Phoenix district two years ago at the age of 32, Yassamin Ansari was chosen to be president of the House Democrats freshman class. Instead of following a conventional playbook, she met the energy of the times.
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement started deporting people to El Salvador, she traveled there at a time when many institutions were bending the knee to Mr. Trump or ducking immigration. She has since made over a dozen visits to ICE detention centers in the United States, telling her constituents’ stories and highlighting the moral corruption of for-profit prisons benefiting from the mass incarceration of immigrants. After Republicans blocked the release of the Epstein files, she sat for hours at a table outside of Speaker Mike Johnson’s office under a sign that read: “Mike Johnson is starving families and gutting health care to cover up the Epstein files. Change my mind.”
“People want you to show up directly at the places where the issues are happening,” she told me after last week’s election. That allows you to get attention and connect the dots between a rigged system and the outcomes that have left voters demanding change. “People really want to see you showing, not just telling.”
In New York, Zohran Mamdani was the first Democrat after the second Trump election to model this kind of everything-everywhere-all-at-once playbook. He ran a campaign focused on affordability, showing up in all parts of the city to humanize the cost-of-living crisis. Once in office, he continued this frenetic pace, searching for every lever he could pull to restore confidence that government could, in fact, do something — going after bad landlords, funding child care and even giving parents a night off. His favorability rating in New York City has risen to nearly 70 percent.
Morris Katz, Mr. Mamdani’s 27-year-old chief political strategist, described the transition from campaigning to the mayoralty: “You have to govern at the speed of the modern attention span.” Heeding that lesson is fundamental to not allowing the air to slowly trickle out of the balloon once the Democrats take power.
Mr. Katz’s firm helped Gina Hinojosa break the Republican grip on the Texas governorship. Her campaign cultivated a populist message against the flood of data centers and Flock cameras into Texas, building a coalition that encompassed leftists and libertarians and everyone in between. The worst thing that Democrats could do is trade that newfound populist energy for a familiar insider ethos. “We need to remember that we don’t have the White House,” Mr. Katz warned. “They are the establishment. We are still the outsiders running against them.”
History provides cautionary tales for the incoming Democratic majorities, including the two midterm elections that led most directly to the two Trump presidencies.
In 2010, Republicans rode a populist red wave to a large House majority amid the hangover from the financial crisis and a right-wing backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency. Almost immediately, there was a split between the populist Tea Party and the Republican establishment, which veered between making promises it couldn’t keep about repealing the Obama agenda and negotiating a grand bargain for fiscal reform with the president.
Neither succeeded. Mr. Obama was handily re-elected, and by 2016, establishment Republicans had lost control of their voters, who abandoned them for Mr. Trump.
Fast-forward to 2022. Democrats held a narrow Senate majority despite political headwinds. This owed much to Republicans nominating extremist candidates such as Herschel Walker and Blake Masters, who lost to the Democratic stars Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly. Yet President Joe Biden chose to interpret the results as a mandate for him, at 80 years old, to run for re-election despite an approval rating in the low 40s. The rest is the history we’re living.
After the 2024 election, one thing most Democrats agreed upon was the need for generational change. The party needed newer, younger faces out front and should no longer defer to establishment figures just because they’d built up a reservoir of good will.
That lesson should apply to the Senate today. Chuck Schumer has been a powerful and effective force in Democratic politics, but it is time for a new leader of the party in the Senate. It is not a rebuke of his tenure to conclude that voters want to see different faces leading a regenerated Democratic Party — people who can communicate outside of Washington, challenge special interests and make Congress more accessible.
Chris Van Hollen, who just announced a bid for majority leader, can certainly make a credible case as a progressive voice who traveled to El Salvador to oppose mass deportations at the beginning of the Trump administration, bucked Democratic leadership on Gaza and promises to take on a corrupt system that has caused Americans to lose faith in their government.
Many of the newly elected Senate Democrats are fresh faces in Washington — people like Annie Andrews in South Carolina, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, Troy Jackson in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. It is no coincidence that they all said the party needed new leadership. It would only breed cynicism to force them — and other newly elected Democrats who distanced themselves from party leadership — to reverse that stance as soon as they get to Washington.
The Democratic Party has an opportunity to show that it has evolved into something different. Why not take it?
How can these new Democratic majorities govern in a manner that meets the moment? Extreme times demand unusual tactics.
First, show at the outset that you’re serious about combating corruption. Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, who co-chaired candidate recruitment for the Democrats, sketched out that kind of agenda for me. Ban members and staff from trading stocks or using prediction markets. Don’t take money from corporate PACs. Ban the pop-up PACs that emerge during the final weeks of an election.
Second, conduct oversight that tells a story about how power enriches the few while prices keep rising. It is necessary, but not sufficient, to spotlight the grift of Mr. Trump and his oligarchs. Connect that corruption to the sectors of our economy that they have exploited to enrich themselves: crypto, defense technologies, prediction markets and artificial intelligence, to name a few.
What did those big law firms, tech companies and media organizations promise or provide in return for Mr. Trump’s favor? How much are people paying for pardons? What is the scale of foreign investment in Mr. Trump’s inner circle? Why are some people getting so rich while so many people can’t afford gas and groceries?
Set up special committees on issues such as corruption and A.I. and use those platforms to elevate the party’s younger and best messengers. As Ms. Ansari did, get out in the country. Go to ICE facilities to expose abuse and to rural communities hit hard by the war in Iran and tariffs. Haul tech oligarchs in front of Congress, but don’t do it in Washington. “If you’re going to do something on A.I.,” Mr. Katz told me, “go in front of a data center and subpoena the tech guys to be there.”
Third, pass popular legislation that responds directly to what Americans care about. With a healthy Senate majority, Democrats should abolish the filibuster so that every bill does not require an excruciating process to reach 60 votes. That would allow a pace of action that meets the enormous needs of the times.
Take direct aim at the affordability crisis. Reverse Medicaid cuts. Raise the minimum wage. Defund the war on Iran. Rescind costly tariffs. Regulate A.I. to prevent job displacement and insist upon safety testing for models. If Mr. Trump vetoes these bills, pass them again and force Republicans to choose between forming veto-proof majorities and siding with a historically unpopular president.
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of a presidential campaign, design more ambitious legislation that demonstrates what Democrats would do with full control of the government. To appropriately tax wealth to reduce inequality and fund public education and health care. To truly get money out of politics and make the kind of corruption we’ve seen illegal. To secure the border without targeting immigrants in our communities. To prohibit a president from going to war without first getting approval from Congress.
The more ambitious the program, the more the party will have to negotiate its own differences between progressives and the center. But the common thread holding this coalition together should be populist. The crisis in America today owes much to the increasing concentration of power in fewer hands: Big Tech, private equity, consolidated media and a coterie of political megadonors. Democrats must show — through their messengers, words and deeds — that they are the party committed to breaking up these concentrations of power and returning it to the people who just voted for it in staggering numbers.
Opportunities for a genuine political realignment don’t come along often. After a decade of Donald Trump, Americans are desperate for change. Democrats must show that they are ready to carry that energy into government, or else the pendulum will swing in a different direction.“
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