‘We do need to defund the police’: 2020 interviews undermine Abdul El-Sayed’s claim he never advocated for unpopular movement

2026-07-07T17:09:56.105Z / CNN

Michigan Democratic Senate front-runner Abdul El-Sayed has faced criticism for previous comments he made about defunding the police. In recent interviews, El-Sayed has insisted he “never, never called for defunding” the police. Last week in an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, he said he deleted old tweets supporting the movement because they were taken “out of context,” calling them “clickbait in DC.”

But interviews from 2020 show El-Sayed repeatedly endorsed defunding the police, according to a CNN KFile review of his media appearances. “We do need to defund the police,” El-Sayed said in a 2020 radio interview while specifically discussing how the slogan could undermine criminal justice reform efforts.

El-Sayed’s interviews from 2020 and 2021 show him embracing the “defund the police” movement — not just uttering the phrase but supporting the key principle of reinvesting funds from the police into other public-sector spaces such as mental health and anti-poverty efforts.

His comments came during the height of the defund movement’s popularity following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. While the movement gained traction among progressives, it remained politically unpopular with the broader public.

“We are in a moment where a lot of our public conversation gets chewed down into 280 characters or less,” El-Sayed said in June 2020 on Detroit Public Radio, arguing it was better to explain what needed to be done than hedging “behind a hashtag.”El-Sayed at the time was a public health advocate, podcast host and Detroit’s former public health director.

“I believe that we do need to defund the police in so far as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,” he added. “And in investing more in the means of educating and empowering, engaging communities with the means of being able to take on systemic poverty, that we’ve allowed systematic racism to allow to fester in too many communities.”

El-Sayed added it meant investing less money in police.

“What if we were to invest in social services? What if we were to invest in public schools? What if we were to invest in public libraries? What would the world look like there? And I think that has to be the way we go. And that means both investing more in these services, and it also means investing less in police,” he said.

Roxie Richner, a spokesperson for his campaign, pointed to El-Sayed’s public health experience working with local law enforcement in Wayne County, Michigan, and told CNN in a statement that “his perspective has become more nuanced.”

“One simple word has never been enough to fully explain the reforms we need for a challenge as complex as our criminal legal system,” Richner said.

“Just as he did in Wayne County in 2023, Abdul believes we need to improve law enforcement recruitment, retention, and retirement funding so that law enforcement officers come from the communities they serve. He also believes we must reject militarized policing, pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and opt for community violence intervention, behavioral health response, and improvements in public health to reduce violence and protect the lives of communities and law enforcement alike.”

El-Sayed has emerged as the Democratic front-runner ahead of Michigan’s August 4 primary in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races. He will face US Rep. Haley Stevens after state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out Sunday.

El-Sayed and Stevens are scheduled to face off Tuesday night in a statewide televised debate.

The winner of the Democratic primary is expected to face Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in November. In a battleground state carried by President Donald Trump in two of the last three elections, including 2024, Michigan Republicans are likely to scrutinize Democrats’ past positions on crime and policing.

El-Sayed, a 41-year-old progressive activist, served as the lead public health official for the Detroit Health Department and later as the head of Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services. He also hosted a podcast, “America Dissected,” and served as a CNN contributor.

Even in 2020, polling repeatedly showed policies advocating to “defund the police” were extremely unpopular. A Fox News poll from July 2020 showed that 82% of surveyed Michigan registered voters had a favorable view of their local police. A 2021 Axios/Ipsos poll found that just 27% of respondents supported the “defund the police” movement as of April 2021, with 70% opposed to it.

When asked last week by CNN’s Kasie Hunt on whether he still supported defunding the police, El-Sayed did not directly answer but said his tweets were taken out of context.

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed on what democrats can learn from proressive candidates

10:43 • Source: CNN

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed on what democrats can learn from proressive candidates

10:43

“I deleted all the tweets because I didn’t want them to be taken out of context like this so that you could distract from the actual conversation that Michiganders really want to have about what they want their leadership to actually fight for them to do,” El-Sayed said.

Pressed twice by Hunt on whether he still supports defunding the police, El-Sayed did not directly answer. Instead, he said voters should judge him by his record running Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services, saying he “funded the system because it needed to be funded.”

“I think this debate about 2020 and the ways that tweets are going to play are really nice on CNN if you want to get clicks,” he added. “They’re not that effective, and nobody really asks me about them on the streets or in communities in Michigan. So, if you want to talk about housing or health care or corporate dominance in our politics, I think those are a lot more legitimate questions that people are actually asking me about what they want their next senator to do in the state of Michigan, rather than for clickbait in DC.”

The interview came after El-Sayed previously sought to distance himself from the slogan after CNN reported on his deleted tweets in November 2025.

In an interview with the Detroit News shortly after the article was published, he said, “I want to be clear, I actually never, never called for defunding. My goal in that conversation was to help everybody to understand what we were talking about.”

But the deleted tweets CNN reported show El-Sayed repeatedly embraced the substance of the defund movement, even when he framed it as “refunding” other public services. CNN tallied thousands of deleted tweets, including about a dozen in support of the “defund the police” movement.

“Most major US cities spend WAY TOO MUCH on police departments to police poverty & WAY TOO LITTLE on public schools, health departments, recreation departments, & housing to eliminate poverty. Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about,” El-Sayed wrote in a since-deleted post from June 2020.

“The police have become standing armies we deploy against our own people,” he added in another June 2020 post.

El-Sayed’s deleted tweets were not his only public expressions of support for defunding the police.

Throughout 2020, he repeatedly endorsed some of the movement’s goals in interviews, speeches and writings, often describing them as shifting government resources away from policing and incarceration and toward public health, education and anti-poverty programs.

“The question becomes, where are the places that we as a society ought to invest? Should we be investing in militarized police — police that have military materiel — or should we be investing in mental health services, poverty reduction, food, walkability, higher-quality air and better access to water?” he said in November 2020 when speaking to a college group, according to the Manistee News Advocate, a local newspaper.

And in May 2021, El-Sayed wrote on his Substack that instead of having productive conversations to combat rising crime, the discussion “will likely reduce back to the debate about policing.”

“The irony of this is that those advocating for reductions in police budgets aren’t doing so in a vacuum: they’re advocating for those dollars to be invested in taking on exactly the same causes of insecurity that the pandemic exacerbated that underlie so many of its consequences, like crime,” he wrote. “Smaller police budgets mean more investment in housing, childcare, food assistance, and income support.”

An epidemiologist, El-Sayed often framed “systemic racism and police brutality” as a public health issue. In the summer of 2020, El-Sayed was a contributor in an online University of Michigan seminar on police brutality in America.

“So we have to ask ourselves, do police departments really need tanks and weapons of war and the materiel that’s coming back as hand-me-downs from the military abroad? Do police really need to use guns? Do we need as much of a police force?” he said at the seminar.

He continued, “When we talk about the question of quote-un-quote ‘defunding the police,’ it’s a question of asking, how do we right-size government away from the racist ideologies that have led us to investing in war materiel for policing rather than public health for children?”

“Defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets and investing more in the means of educating and empowering engaging communities,” El-Sayed said in another 2020 local press interview.

Nigel Farage, U.K. far-right leader and former Trump ally, resigns amid finance scandal in high-risk gamble

2026-07-07 12:27:18 EDT / CBS News

By

London — British politician Nigel Farage, a one-time ally of President Trump who has led a surging far-right, populist movement in the U.K., resigned on Tuesday as a lawmaker to trigger a special election. It’s a high-risk political gamble to renew his mandate from voters as he faces mounting pressure over a financial scandal.

Farage has been accused of violating British parliamentary law for failing to disclose financial gifts — including from a 32-year-old convicted criminal who calls him “Daddy,” according to The Sunday Times newspaper.

The Reform U.K. Party leader said he would stand in the by-election for his vacated seat, which is likely to take place in the early fall.

Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage announces his resignation as a member of parliament, July 7, 2026, in London, England. Getty

“I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions,” Farage said in a televised address Tuesday, referring to the southeast England constituency he’s represented in parliament for two years.

“This will be a people versus the establishment by-election,” he declared, calling it “a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment to frankly tell them where to go.”

His resignation means that two parliamentary investigations into donations from two wealthy individuals will be suspended.

Farage reiterated his stance on Tuesday that he had “done nothing wrong.”

Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage announces his resignation as a member of parliament, July 7, 2026, in London, England. Dan Kitwood/Getty

BBC New’s chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman called the move an attempt “to appeal to a higher political authority than the parliamentary standards committee,” the body that has been investigating Farage’s financial declarations as a lawmaker.

Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, however, called it a “desperate stunt,” saying Farage had made the decision because he is “up to his neck in sleaze.”

Farage’s party, Reform U.K., which supports the mass deportation of people in the country without legal documentation and the scrapping of national climate goals, has been topping public opinion polls for at least a year.

The party’s ascent — and its success in recent local elections in particular — was part of the reason the ruling Labour Party forced Starmer to tender his own resignation last month.

Starmer is almost certain to be replaced by his Labour colleague Andy Burnham within a few weeks, taking the reigns of both the party and the prime minister’s office.

Farage, if he wins his seat back, could become Burnham’s most serious challenger in the next national elections. If he isn’t reelected to the parliament, however, he cannot become prime minister.

Farage is a divisive figure in U.K. politics. He’s seen as the architect of Britain’s “Brexit” from the European Union, which recent polling shows a majority of voters now believe was a mistake, and he has faced multiple allegations of historic racism.

He has, in the past, appeared keen to show himself as a close ally of President Trump, particularly ahead of the 2016 U.S. election when Mr. Trump won his first term in office. In 2024, he offered to act as a “bridge” between Mr. Trump and Britain’s newly-elected Labour Party.

“I might be useful as an interlocutor, unofficially, behind the scenes, to try and help mend some of those fences,” he said at the time.

In March, however, after Farage visited Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida but didn’t end up meeting with the president, sources close to the British politician told the Financial Times the relationship between the two men had cooled.

Farage had stated before the trip that he would be “dining at Mar-a-Lago.”

A representative said after the trip that he had never planned to meet Mr. Trump in Florida.

See Trump’s shifting blame game on the Russia-Ukraine war

2026-07-07 3:00 PM ET / CNN

By Kevin Liptak, Amy O’Kruk

30 min ago

PUBLISHED Jul 7, 2026, 3:00 PM ET

Photo Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN/Getty Images

Donald Trump Russia War in Ukraine

President Donald Trump’s inability to find peace in Ukraine — a war he once claimed would be over the day he took office — has caused him enormous frustration. But the focus of his ire has zig-zagged throughout his second term in office.

At moments, Trump has flashed anger toward Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, casting him as ungrateful and unwilling to compromise.

Other times, he has vented about Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he once hoped would agree to a peace deal because of their close relationship.

Tracking the back-and-forth has become a pastime for European officials, who have worked to keep Trump on Ukraine’s side, even as he sometimes parrots Russian talking points.

Who Trump appears to favor often reflects who he spoke with last. Trump will have a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday.

But he also spent more than an hour on the telephone this weekend with Putin.

Data sources: CNN reporting, NBC News, Truth Social (@realDonaldTrump), Rev transcripts, Roll Call transcripts.

Photo credits: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images; Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images; Donald Trump/Truth Social; Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images; Aaron Schwartz/AFP via Getty Images.

Rahm Emanuel expected to say Israel needs “significant changes and a new direction” in Tel Aviv speech

2026-07-07 12:59:00 / CBS News via AP

Rahm Emanuel, a potential Democratic presidential candidate and longtime defender of Israel, will denounce Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv this week and deliver a bracing message that the country’s relationship with the United States is “at a crossroads.”

“It cannot stand or survive as it has been,” Emanuel will say at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday, according to remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “To maintain the strength of our ties, we need significant changes and a new direction.”

In an interview with the AP ahead of his speech, Emanuel said Israel’s continued military response to Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, has been “reckless and careless in the treatment of Palestinian life — not only the military campaign but using food and medicine as an instrument of your military goals.”

Asked whether Israel had committed genocide, an accusation leveled by some human rights organizations and rejected by the Israeli and U.S. governments, Emanuel said the question should not be considered in isolation without also examining conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan.

“I’m ready to have that discussion,” he said, “but I don’t think it should be politicized, and then dilute the power of what genocide means.”

Taken together, the interview and upcoming speech from a stalwart of Democrats’ centrist wing are another demonstration of how far the party has shifted away from its historic support of Israel almost three years after the war in Gaza began.

About 58% of Democrats say the U.S. is “too supportive” of the Israelis, according to a new survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, up from 45% in January 2024. Roughly half of Democrats believe that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the war with Hamas.

Emanuel’s proposals will include sanctions on Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and property, along with companies and banks that support settlements considered illegal by most of the international community. He also wants to end U.S. subsidies to Israel’s defense budget, arguing the country “should be able to buy American arms under the same financial terms, the same restrictions, and the same requirements as every other trusted ally that abides by our laws.”

In addition, Emanuel will blame Netanyahu for driving Israel to a “dead end,” emboldened by poor decisions from American leaders.

“For too long, American policy toward Israel operated under the assumption that the best thing Washington could do for Jerusalem was to blindly and silently stand behind your government, without conditions, without demands, and without consequences when we disagreed,” he will say. “That has been our mistake. Unconditional support has produced a prime minister who has presumed that his strategic interests would incur no cost if he ignored America’s concerns.”

There’s little precedent for an American with presidential ambitions to travel to another country, much less one as fraught as Israel, to deliver such a stinging rebuke of its political leadership. Centrist figures like Emanuel have been more reluctant than Democrats’ progressive base to question longtime U.S. support for Israel in recent years.

President Trump, once a staunch ally of Netanyahu’s, has recently expressed frustration with him during the war with Iran, as U.S. and Israeli goals diverged. Last month, Mr. Trump told a reporter that Netanyahu has “no f*g judgment” after Israel launched an attack against Iran-backed militants in Beirut.

“Why did Bibi have to do a f*g attack?” Mr. Trump said to Axios. “I was so pissed off. I let him know.”

Those comments came after Vice President JD Vance said Netanyahu had “gotten some things wrong.”

How will Netanyahu react?

Emanuel’s remarks could prompt a fiery response from Netanyahu, who famously once called Emanuel, who harbored ambitions of being the first Jewish speaker of the House, a “self-hating Jew.” Netanyahu faces his own battle for reelection in October, and the veteran leader may try to use a confrontation with Emanuel for political gain by appearing to stand strong in the face of international criticism.

Emanuel, who arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday ahead of the Wednesday speech, told the AP that he’s intentionally avoiding interactions with Israeli elected officials during his visit to avoid interfering with the country’s upcoming elections. Instead, his agenda includes visiting a hospital that serves Israelis and Palestinians and meeting with the family of an Oct. 7 hostage.

For possible Democratic presidential contenders gauging how to address the fallout from Israel’s war in Gaza and Netanyahu’s perceived tilt toward the Republican Party, led by Mr. Trump, the speech represents an especially frontal strategy. The war has disrupted political coalitions in both major political parties in the U.S., with younger voters recoiling at Israel’s approach to the conflict pressing American leaders to take a tougher stand. The issue has roiled some Democratic congressional primaries this year and could continue to be a dividing line in the contest for the party’s presidential nomination in 2028.

Castigating Netanyahu for doing little to advance diplomatic efforts to end the war, Emanuel will note that “support for Israel is plummeting around the world.”

“You’ve lost Europe,” he will say. “Your scientists face exclusion from international research networks. Your artists and academics are shut out of exhibits and conferences.”

Support for Israel has waned

While Netanyahu has forged generally strong ties with Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, Israel’s support among Democrats has slipped in recent years. But in portraying Israel as increasingly isolated, Emanuel’s comments have echoes of recent remarks from Vance, a sign of how criticism of the country is taking hold in both parties. Speaking recently from the White House briefing room as the U.S. worked to close a deal to end the war with Iran, Vance said Mr. Trump was “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”

For all his tough words, Emanuel, who is Jewish and whose father was born in Jerusalem, will offer notes of sympathy and understanding. He acknowledged the toll of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in which Hamas-led militants launched air and ground strikes on Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. He noted disappointments from previous rounds of peace talks with Palestinian leaders.

“But even while acknowledging that history, the path forward cannot be held hostage to a past defined exclusively by recriminations,” he will say.

He will call the two-state solution “discredited” and instead push for a “23-state solution” that includes Israel, the Palestinians and the 21 other members of the Arab League in a peace deal.

“The 21 Arab nations that have exploited Palestinian rights as a slogan for decades now need to roll up their sleeves and stand up a governing authority capable of accepting the historic Jewish connection to this land,” he will say.

While no prominent Democrat has formally entered the 2028 contest, that could change soon after the November midterms with a field that could ultimately swell into the dozens. Few have been as open about their intentions as Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff, congressman, Chicago mayor and U.S. ambassador who has spent much of the past three decades holding one public office or another. Absent such a post now, he’s gained attention by releasing a string of policy proposals, biking through the early voting state of New Hampshire, appearing on podcasts and stepping up his social media presence.

Sen. Bernie Sanders says he encouraged Graham Platner to step aside

July 7, 2026 1:18 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Tuesday that he spoke with Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner and recommended that he exit the Senate race after a bombshell report Monday accusing Platner of sexual assault. Platner denied the allegation.

“I have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine,” Sanders said in a statement. “In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”

On Monday, Politico reported that a Maine woman, Jenny Racicot, said Platner entered her home without permission in late 2021 when he was drunk and forced himself on her. Racicot said she and Platner met on a dating app in 2019 and had consensual relations before the night of the alleged sexual assault.

Platner called the allegation “categorically false,” but he indicated Monday that he was reflecting on “the best path forward.”

Sanders’ statement marks a key development, after a series of Democrats who had previously supported Platner withdrew their endorsements Monday or urged him to withdraw from the race. But the opinion of the Vermont independent, who has been one of Platner’s key supporters, carries significant weight.

The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm has already said it would not invest in the race if Platner remained on the ballot, and the Senate Majority PAC said it was redirecting resources away from the Maine Senate race after the allegation, severely limiting his campaign’s ability to continue through the November election.

Platner won the Democratic primary to take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins last month. But under Maine election law, candidates may be replaced if they withdraw by 5 p.m. on the second Monday in July. After that, the state political party has two weeks to select a new nominee.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/democrats-call-for-graham-platner-to-abandon-senate-race-after-sexual-assault-accusation/

Exclusive: Netanyahu tells CNN he opposes US sale of F-35 jets to Turkey as he downplays divisions with Trump

2026-07-07T17:08:41.628Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/07/politics/netanyahu-opposes-sale-f35-jets

Just hours after President Donald Trump said he’s considering selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to Turkey, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke against the potential move, even as he downplayed divisions between the two world leaders.

In an interview with CNN, Netanyahu warned that the sale of America’s most advanced fighter aircraft “doesn’t make Turkey a friendly state to the United States.” In part of an escalating dispute with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Netanyahu described Ankara as “a regime that’s infected with the Muslim Brotherhood, which hates the United States.”

“He’s not exactly a model ally of the United States,” Netanyahu told CNN’s Dana Bash. “He threatens to destroy my country, the one and only Jewish state.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in an interview with CNN Turk last week that Israel has “become a burden that humanity can no longer bear,” prompting Israel’s foreign minister to condemn the remarks as “textbook incitement to genocide.”

“This is not a force for peace and stability. When you give them that power, you’re going to see aggression in its wake,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu said he’d urged Trump directly not to sell the jets to Turkey, saying Tuesday that doing so would “destroy the power balance in the Middle East.”

But Trump, who is in Turkey as part of the NATO summit, has indicated he is willing to overturn a ban on the sale of the jet to Ankara that he put in place during his first term. He described Turkey as an “extraordinary” ally of the United States.

Netanyahu downplayed any divisions with Trump, saying the two see “eye-to-eye” on major issues, even after Trump said over the weekend that the Israeli leader “knows who the boss is.”

“He’s the President of the United States. He does what is good for the United States,” said Netanyahu. “I’m the Prime Minister of Israel, I do what is what is important for Israel, and most of the time these things are identical.”

Netanyahu, who publicly railed against the Iran nuclear deal under former President Barack Obama, has so far held back from condemning the current ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran. The agreement ended a war that Netanyahu was pushing to continue and lifted longstanding sanctions on Iran’s ability to sell its oil in exchange for opening the critical Strait of Hormuz. The pact also floats the possibility for hundreds of billions of dollars in additional sanctions relief should the two sides reach a permanent truce.

https://www.cnn.com/

Crucially, the agreement fails to address any of the major issues the US and Israel set out at the start of the war in late-February, including Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile production, its support for proxies or the stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Asked about the ceasefire agreement, Netanyahu reserved his judgement.

“It’s too early to say what will happen,” he said. “The president believes that he can stop Iran’s nuclear program, and he believes he can do it through negotiations. I have my doubts, but I think he should be given the chance, and he’s trying to achieve that.”

Netanyahu took a far harsher attitude toward Democratic lawmakers over the party’s declining support for Israel, at one point singling out New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his previous comments that while he supports Israel “as a state with equal rights,” he could not back “any state that privileges one religion over the other.”

“It’s ridiculous, it’s absurd,” Netanyahu said, adding that while Israel is an “imperfect democracy,” it is still “100 times better than these dictatorships and these horrible, horrible tyrannies that Mamdani and his supporters support.”

He also criticized Rep. Haley Stevens, a Jewish Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, over her comments that his actions as Israeli prime minister had made American Jews less safe.

“It’s made her uncomfortable because she can’t stand up for the truth,” he said. “She’s trying to probably excuse antisemitism.”

Pressed on whether he bore any personal responsibility for the deteriorating support in the US for Israel, Netanyahu dismissed the suggestion, arguing instead that social media was driving the rising opposition.

Netanyahu also addressed an ongoing surge in settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Describing the perpetrators as a group of 150 “juvenile delinquents,” he acknowledged the issue has “blown up beyond belief.” He said the police and military “take actions,” but the courts in Israel “are very lenient” against those convicted of settler violence. “Our citizens cannot practice violence against anyone,” he said.

Despite Netanyahu’s statements, the West Bank has seen a surge of settler violence – some with instances of Israeli soldiers standing idly by – in conjunction with the Israeli government rapidly expanding settlements throughout the territory. In a one-month period earlier this year, Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said there were 305 incidents of settler violence, including attacks on people and property and land seizures.

What Graham Platner’s rise and unraveling reveal about the politics of 2026

2026-07-07 12:40 p.m. EDT / The Washington Post

In their rush to find a strong candidate to run against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Democrats should have more thoroughly vetted their party’s nominee.

Graham Platner won the Democratic primary in Maine by a wide margin. (Sophie Park/Getty Images)

Analysis by Karen Tumulty

The fatal miscalculation by the liberal activists who fueled the rise of an unknown 41-year-old Maine oyster farmer and combat veteran was not that they failed to vet Graham Platner.

It was that, in today’s win-at-all-costs political environment, they didn’t think they needed to.

Dems uphill climb for Senate majority just got a lot steeper with latest Platner allegation

2026-07-07 15:08 EDT / Fox News

Republicans say the Platner implosion complicates the Democratic path to flipping Maine and recapturing the Senate

By Paul Steinhauser Fox News

Published July 7, 2026 3:08pm EDT

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner accused of sexual assault, denies claims

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner is embroiled in controversy after a woman publicly accused him of sexual assault from five years ago. Platner vehemently denies the allegations, calling them false and politically motivated. Democrats are now pressuring him to drop out of the race as the story gains traction.

Democrats have a narrow path to win back the Senate majority from the Republicans in this year’s midterm elections.

And part of their playbook is flipping Maine — a historically moderate state that votes blue in presidential elections but whose two senators are a Republican and an Independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Graham Platner’s candidacy is cratering as he faces calls from top Democrats in Maine and across the country to quit his Senate bid a day after Monday’s explosive rape allegation emerged against him. And the latest controversy decreases the party’s odds of recapturing the Senate in November.

“The forced implosion of Graham Platner does not make life any easier” for Democrats, a Republican strategist who works on Senate races told Fox News Digital.

DEMOCRATS ABANDON PLATNER AFTER BOMBSHELL ALLEGATIONS

Graham Platner, Democratic US Senate candidate for Maine, during a primary election night event at the Blue Hill YMCA in Blue Hill, Maine, US, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. Progressive Democrat Graham Platner won the party’s Senate primary in Maine after a bruising campaign which became as much about his accusations of past misbehavior as it was voters’ top concerns.(Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Platner, a military combat veteran turned oyster farmer who was, until Monday, backed by top progressives, is the party’s nominee in the race against longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in blue-leaning Maine.

The showdown is a high-profile, combustible and expensive ballot box battle, and one of a handful that will determine if the GOP holds onto its slim Senate majority in the midterms.

If Platner suspends his campaign before 5 p.m. next Monday, July 13, the Maine Democratic Party will be able to replace him on the general election ballot with another candidate from the party, whom they would need to select by July 27.

Beating Collins, who is seeking a sixth six-year term in the Senate, won’t be easy.

Six years ago, public opinion polls indicated the senator was headed to defeat, but Collins defied expectations and won re-election by defeating then-Democratic state House Speaker Sara Gideon by nine points.

FOUR MONTHS TILL MIDTERMS: THE 12 RACES THAT WILL DETERMINE THE SENATE MAJORITY

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, departs the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, on July 24, 2025.(J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

Fast-forward to present day and the 73-year-old Collins should be vulnerable, with her party facing a rough political climate fueled in part by persistent inflation and President Donald Trump’s approval ratings hovering well into negative territory.

But the Platner implosion is a gift to Collins and her party. Republicans quickly took aim at other Democrats on the 2026 ballot and attacked them for previously backing Platner.

A veteran Democratic strategist told Fox News Digital the path to take back the majority isn’t any easier due to the drama in Maine, but added, “it depends on who replaces Platner.”

The bombshell in Maine came a day after a political grenade exploded in the Democratic Senate primary in battleground Michigan, when state Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow on Sunday suspended her campaign the the Democratic Senate nomination in the Great Lakes battleground state.(Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

McMorrow, who has seen her national profile expand in recent years and was running as a progressive in an ideological space between left-wing candidate Abdul El-Sayed and establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens, suspended her campaign amid faltering poll numbers and fundraising that weren’t keeping pace with her two main rivals.

The Aug. 4 primary showdown between El-Sayed, endorsed by progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Stevens, who is backed by Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is seen as the biggest battle yet between the far-left and establishment for the future of the Democratic Party.

Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan, right, and former Wayne County Health Department Director Abdul El-Sayed are facing off in the August 4, 2026 Democratic Senate primary in the Great Lakes battleground state.(Evan Cobb for The Washington Post via Getty Images; Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The winner will face off in the midterm elections in November against former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who is on a glide path to the GOP nomination. The winner will succeed retiring Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat.

The seat is a top Republican target and is a must-hold for the Democrats as they aim to win back the Senate majority from the GOP.

Schumer and the party establishment, which are spending big bucks to back Stevens, view her as more electable than El-Sayed, who has sparked controversy with his past comments. They worry that El-Sayed as the party’s nominee would jeopardize the Democrat-controlled Senate seat by pushing the party too far to the left in a state that Trump carried two years ago by just over one percentage point.

With the race in Maine, the only state that then-Vice President Kamala Harris carried in the 2024 presidential election that Senate Republicans are aiming to hold, looking more problematic for the Democrats, the stakes in Michigan also just got a lot higher.

Republicans currently control the Senate 53-47, which means the Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the midterms.

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https://www.foxnews.com/video/6400436949112
Bill McGurn discusses Maine Democrat Graham Platner’s mounting controversies

The Democrats’ playbook relies on flipping Maine and battleground of North Carolina, plus flipping two more seats in red-leaning states like Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, or Texas.

At the same time, Democrats need to hold their open seats in Michigan and New Hampshire, and Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff needs to win re-election in the critical red-leaning swing state of Georgia.

Besides providing the GOP more political ammunition, the mess in Maine is further inflaming tensions between the far-left and the Democratic establishment.

Moderate Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Monday night took aim at Sanders, whose early endorsement of Platner last September helped boost the populist Senate candidate.

FETTERMAN DEMANDS SANDERS APOLOGIZE FOR BACKING ‘PREDATOR’ PLATNER

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6400437875112
Graham Platner faces mounting calls to exit Maine Senate race after latest allegation

“I would really call Bernie Sanders to apologize for pushing this kind of predator more than anyone,” Fetterman said Monday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

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The Republican strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, said the Democrats’ intra-party sniping “is just further complicating their path to the majority.”

Paul Steinhauser covers the national campaign trail from coast to coast for Fox News

Bernie Sanders calls on Graham Platner to drop Senate bid

July 7, 2026 at 12:45 p.m. EDT / The Washington Post

The senator from Vermont has been a key backer of the insurgent Democratic candidate in Maine.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner in May in Orono, Maine. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By Alexei Koseff

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a key backer of Graham Platner’s insurgent Senate campaign in Maine, said Tuesday that Platner should step aside following an accusation of sexual assault.

“I have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine,” Sanders said in a statement. “In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”

Democrats began withdrawing their endorsements of Platner on Monday, after a woman who used to date Platner told Politico, CNN and The Washington Post that he entered her home uninvited in late 2021 and forced himself on her while he was intoxicated.

But Sanders, who has been one of Platner’s most vocal supporters in his challenge against five-term Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), remained silent for nearly a day, ignoring inquiries about the sexual assault claim.

Platner has not yet said whether he plans to drop out of the race. He has until Monday to remove his name from the ballot and allow the state Democratic Party to choose a replacement.

Exclusive: US commanders bypassed warnings about outdated intelligence ahead of strike that hit school in Iran, sources say

2026-07-07T18:25:25.601Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/07/politics/us-commanders-intelligence-iran-school

Senior US military commanders bypassed warnings in critical databases that intelligence about potential targets in Iran was severely out of date and approved some strikes — including one that hit a school, killing nearly 200 hundred children and adults, according to three sources familiar with the decision-making process.

Messages indicating the intelligence was based on years-old intelligence that needed to be re-vetted were embedded in a system used for developing targets and required a senior officer to approve adding a site to the strike list, according to the sources.

The decision by senior commanders to ignore the warnings was made for “expediency,” two of the sources said, in a rush to provide targets at the start of the war. But it also directly contributed to the accidental strike on the school, the sources added.

The strike killed at least 168 children and 14 teachers, according to Iranian state media. Those numbers would make the strike one of the worst civilian casualty incidents in recent US military history. The US military launched an investigation in the days after the strike.

US military officials “knew within days (of the strike on the school) how the mistake happened,” one of the sources said. “It was obviously old info.”

Months later, the Pentagon has not released its investigation into the incident.

A White House official told CNN that “this investigation is ongoing.”

“As we have said, the United States does not target civilians,” the official added.

Details about why the old information was ultimately used, which have not been previously reported, shed new light on how the prewar push for targets contributed to the accidental strike on a school.

The Pentagon directed questions about the targeting process to US Central Command. CENTCOM declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

While US strikes against targets in Iran have largely abated as American and Iranian officials discuss a potential deal, President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to return to a large-scale bombing campaign.

The February 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyiba school in Minab occurred while the US military was attacking a neighboring Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility, CNN has reported an initial military investigation found.

Satellite imagery from 2013 showed that the school and the IRGC base were once part of the same compound. But images from 2016 show that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and that a separate entrance to the school had been built. In December 2025, imagery showed dozens of people apparently playing in the school’s courtyard.

The strike occurred on the first day of US operations against Iran, as US military officials and intelligence analysts scrambled to update targeting information for thousands of sites after Trump decided to launch combat operations. Analysts did not refresh all of the relevant records in the Pentagon’s databases before strikes began, the sources said.

As a result, the intelligence for many targets added to the strike list was over 10 years old, including the information about the IRGC facility next to the elementary school.

Given the expedited timeline, military officials and intelligence analysts rushed to first update records for what were considered “upper-tier” targets — the ones most likely to be hit first, two sources told CNN.

“Upper-tier” targets largely consisted of mobile targets and sites that were believed to pose the highest threat to US forces, the sources explained, noting military officials were able to largely update those records before the first bombs were dropped.

“It was how (military officials) were re-validating targets rapidly by prioritizing what we thought was the most dangerous to US forces and the mission — like missile sites and aircraft,” the first source said.

Fixed sites — like the target that ended up being a school — were generally considered to be lower tier because they don’t move, the second source explained, noting analysts were unable to update many of those records before the war’s start.

The targeting databases — known as the Modernized Integrated Database, or MIDB, and the Machine-Assisted Analytic Rapid-Repository System, or MARS — clearly indicated that the information related to Iranian targets needed to be updated before use, two of the sources said.

MIDB is the Pentagon’s older targeting system, built in the 1980s. It largely relies on manual input from analysts.

MARS is the department’s newer, artificial intelligence-powered digital platform that was put into operational use earlier this year and is intended to replace MIDB.

Both systems are being used, but the effort to shift entirely to MARS is years behind schedule, and authoritative targeting data still relies on MIDB, according to a source familiar with recently revised Pentagon guidance.

An analyst had previously noted changes at the site in a separate digital intelligence tool, but that tool was not linked to the official intelligence database used to develop strike targets, the first source told CNN. And that information was never conveyed to military commanders.

The analyst’s warning and how existing gaps within the Pentagon’s intelligence database may have contributed to the accidental strike on a school are among the issues that have been examined as part of the ongoing investigation, the same source added.

Major questions loom four months after deadly strike on Iran elementary school

4:41 • Source: CNN

Major questions loom four months after deadly strike on Iran elementary school

4:41

In the immediate aftermath of the strike, Trump suggested that Iran might be to blame for the strike, and subsequently said that responsibility may never be determined. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the strike will be “thoroughly” investigated, adding the US has “attempted in every way possible to avoid civilian casualties.”

Multiple sources told CNN that senior Pentagon leaders were pressing military officials to rapidly provide targets in the immediate lead-up to the war and that demand persisted throughout the weekslong conflict — putting a strain on CENTCOM and intelligence analysts tasked with identifying viable sites to strike.

“The Pentagon is pressing everyone to move faster,” one of the sources told CNN about the decision to override warnings about the old intelligence. “A lot of former hedge-fund people and made-for-TV personalities in the mix. But leadership at CENTCOM did not push back either.”

Another factor that increased the risk of a mistake, according to two sources familiar with the decision-making process, was that Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response teams at CENTCOM and other combatant commands were already short-staffed due to Hegseth’s decision to cut the program earlier in his tenure.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense did not respond to a request for comment about Hegseth’s changes to civilian casualty mitigation.

Hegesth has repeatedly described his desire to allow commanders in the field to move faster by removing constraints, something he’s summarized as “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”

Before the Iran war, Hegseth made deep cuts to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response programs and slashed CHMR staff at military commands by more than 90%. That included removing civilian harm specialists from target development strike teams and reducing the team of 10 at Central Command to only one full-time staffer, sources told CNN.

“I know the CHMR team at CENTCOM was still trying to do the best possible work, they were just not staffed and resourced like they needed to be because of Hegseth,” one of the sources said.