MRC Original: If there’s one thing that stands out whenever Abdul El-Sayed is pressed about his radical positions, it’s his smile. His nearly perfect teeth, neatly trimmed beard and laid-back black hair rarely seem out of place, no matter how hard-hitting the question.
As it turns out, El-Sayed has plenty to smile about: he is leading in the polls for the Democratic Party primary for a Senate seat in Michigan, all while largely avoiding scrutiny over his mounting controversies and radical policy positions, thanks in part to the coverage blackout by Apple News and Google News.
The consequence of Apple and Google’s news blackout is no small matter. Millions of Americans, including many Michigan voters, rely on Apple News and Google News for information. When digital news gatekeepers conceal critical information about a candidate, they leave voters without a complete picture of the person seeking their vote, a pattern the Media Research Center found in Apple News and Google News's treatment of Abdul El-Sayed.
MRC’s Findings:
- Despite widely reported controversies, Apple News and Google News featured zero negatively framed headlines about Abdul El-Sayed since Feb. 10 (when an Impact Research poll showed the primary had effectively become a two-person race) and continued that blackout as El-Sayed emerged as the frontrunner.
- At the time, El-Sayed had already generated extensive critical coverage from numerous news outlets, with reports dating as far back as November 2025 to as recent as July 13, 2026. His controversies included questions about his self-identification as a physician; ties to anti-Semitic figures; deleted social media posts; criminal record and support for abolishing ICE, defunding the police and “Medicare for All.”
- The blackout of negative coverage occurred as El-Sayed began to take a lead over Democratic Party primary opponent Rep. Haley Stevens, potentially helping preserve his polling advantage by shielding voters from arguably unfavorable information.
- From Nov. 1, 2025, through July 21, 2026, Apple News and Google News effectively shielded El-Sayed from his mounting controversies by keeping at least 104 stories from right-leaning outlets off of their top 20 morning feeds.
- Even left-leaning news outlets published stories addressing controversies surrounding El-Sayed, with MRC identifying at least 13 articles that Apple News and Google News could have promoted but did not.
In response to these findings, Media Research Center President David Bozell raised concerns about the potential impact of news aggregators on competitive races.
“Most Americans don’t search dozens of news websites every day,” he said. “They open Apple News or Google News and read what’s presented to them. That makes editorial decisions about which stories are featured enormously consequential, especially when those decisions consistently favor one candidate over another.”
Apple and Google Did It Again: Effectively Shielding Graham Platner; Now, Abdul El-Sayed
Last week, the MRC declared that no other politician has benefited more from Apple News and Google News than Graham Platner, the disgraced former socialist candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine. New data reviewed by MRC show that Abdul El-Sayed may rival that record.
El-Sayed is currently running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Much like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the former Detroit and Wayne County health official is a well-known progressive whose policies closely align with democratic socialism.
As El-Sayed emerged as the progressive standard-bearer in the Michigan Senate race, an Impact Research poll in March showed the Democratic Party primary had effectively narrowed to a two-person contest between him and Haley Stevens, a sitting congresswoman. Subsequent polling has shown El-Sayed leading the race, though some surveys have placed Stevens ahead.
But behind El-Sayed’s comfortable lead is a growing list of controversies that have received little attention from headlines on Apple News and Google News. The digital news gatekeepers each featured just one story about the Michigan Senate race, but neither promoted a headline focused on El-Sayed’s scandals.
Apple News did not feature a single story about the race until July 6, when it promoted a Detroit Free Press article focused primarily on State Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s exit from the race. Although the Free Press story mentioned El-Sayed, his radical “Medicare for All” position and his controversial decision to campaign with Hasan Piker, the headline — “Mallory McMorrow drops out of Michigan's US Senate race” — omitted any reference to the controversies surrounding his candidacy.
Google News has similarly promoted just one story (from CNN) about the Michigan Senate race, but still produced zero negative headlines about El-Sayed. While the article itself touched on Democratic infighting surrounding the race and El-Sayed’s controversies, its headline, “How a must-win Michigan Senate race turned messy for Democrats,” did not mention any of El-Sayed’s controversies.
The controversies surrounding El-Sayed have followed his campaign for months, dating back to at least November. Some of the controversies Apple News and Google News have chosen to ignore include El-Sayed’s disputed description of his credentials. The candidate has faced accusations of misrepresenting his professional credentials. Although he holds a Ph.D., he often refers to himself as a "physician," despite not possessing the medical license typically required for that title.
He has also faced criticism over his close relationship with Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who has been accused of being an anti-Semite and having made anti-American statements. El-Sayed defended campaigning alongside Piker, rejecting accusations of guilt by association while attempting to shift attention to President Donald Trump and the Republican Senate nominee.
El-Sayed also welcomed the endorsement from Arab-American PAC leader Osama Siblani, who has a long history of flagrant anti-Semitism and defending Hezbollah and Hamas.
The former health official has also compared Oklahoma’s ban on Sharia law to the “Trail of Tears,” calling both examples of white supremacy. After the attack on Temple Israel, El-Sayed came under fire for appearing to rationalize the alleged attacker’s actions, suggesting Ayman Ghazali may have been motivated by grievances tied to Israeli strikes in Lebanon.
El-Sayed has highlighted his 2018 misdemeanor disorderly conduct sentence in connection with his role in a minimum wage protest, seemingly to bolster his left-wing credentials. He later bragged about the incident, claiming he did “time” in connection with the charges.
El-Sayed has used violent rhetoric against his political opponents, remixing former First Lady Michelle Obama’s “when they go low” speech to say, “when they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out.”
And his policy agenda places him firmly on the far left: Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, defunding police departments and repeated accusations that Israel is committing genocide in its war against Hamas.
El-Sayed also faced criticism after refusing to comment on the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claiming that “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.”
Yet despite the lengthy record of controversies, Apple News and Google News have featured no negative coverage of El-Sayed in the headlines of their top 20 morning feeds, shielding users of two of the nation’s most influential news aggregators from stories that could shape their view of the candidate.
The blackout also coincided with El-Sayed’s quiet rise in the polls. El-Sayed led in the polls by an average of about five percentage points in June, according to RealClearPolling. The New York Times’ poll tracker tells a similar story, with El-Sayed leading virtually all polls released in June and a majority of the polls in July, including Tulchin Research and Data for Progress that had El-Sayed leading by +16 and +13 percentage points, respectively.
A previous MRC study found that Apple News and Google News’s apparent protection of Graham Platner ended only after his political fortunes began to unravel. After a Fox News poll showed Platner losing a hypothetical matchup against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the two platforms suddenly flooded users with negative coverage of his campaign. Will the same pattern repeat with El-Sayed? Only time will tell.
What Stories Apple and Google Erased from Their Feeds
The controversies surrounding El-Sayed were not difficult to find. While Apple News and Google News largely overlooked these issues, right-leaning outlets extensively covered the questions surrounding his record, statements and policy positions.
The absence of this coverage is especially notable given the stakes of the race. El-Sayed is running for one of the most powerful positions in government: a seat in the U.S. Senate. If elected, he would help decide whether the military is funded, whether presidential nominees, including Supreme Court justices, are confirmed and whether foreign aid is sent to U.S. allies.
MRC identified no less than 104 stories that Apple News and Google News could have featured, but didn’t, when MRC began tracking their feeds. Some examples include:
- “Michigan Senate Candidate Deletes Anti-Border Patrol X Post,” by Newsmax.
- “Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Compared an Oklahoma Ban on Sharia Law to the Trail of Tears,” by The Washington Free Beacon.
- “Michigan’s El-Sayed Said He Did 'Time' After His Arrest at a Minimum Wage Protest. He Got a Ticket, Records Show,” by The Washington Free Beacon.
- “Leaked audio reveals Michigan Dem urged silence on Khamenei’s death — to avoid upsetting ‘sad’ voters,” by New York Post.
- “Yet Another Bernie-Backed Senate Candidate Has a Past That's Catching Up With Him,” by RedState.
- “Sanders-endorsed Senate candidate knocked for alleged flip-flop to 'have it both ways' on key issue,” by Fox News.
- “This Is Who the Democrats Are: Abdul El-Sayed Just Refused to Condemn Hasan Piker's Hateful Rhetoric,” by Townhall.
- “This Week in Jew-Hate: The Two Faces of Abdul El-Sayed,” by The Free Press.
- “‘Hoodies 'n' Hijabs’: Michigan’s El-Sayed pushed viral Muslim hate crime hoax in critique of America,” by Just the News.
- “‘I Am Honored’: Abdul El-Sayed Accepts Endorsement From Arab-American PAC Led by Hamas Cheerleader Who’s Called for Israeli Jews To Be Sent 'Back to Poland’” by The Washington Free Beacon.
- “Not Even Hiding It: Muslim Democratic Candidate Loops One Quote His Opponent Made About Israel to Build Anti-Semitic Website,” by The Western Journal.
- “Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed’s unapologetic embrace of Hasan Piker,” by the Washington Examiner.
- “MI Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Won’t Apologize for Vile Remarks on JD Vance’s Wife & Children: I Did It ‘out of Love,’” by Breitbart.
Even left-leaning, center and other outlets, such as The Detroit News, Jewish Insider, CNN, Mediaite and Detroit Metro Times, published stories covering controversies surrounding El-Sayed. In total, MRC identified at least 16 stories from left-leaning, center and other outlets that Apple News and Google News could have promoted to users.
MRC Free Speech America Interns Abel Jones and Katharine Reyes conducted the research for this special report.
Methodology: The Media Research Center tracked the top 20 stories on Google News each morning from Nov. 1, 2025, through July 21, 2026, and Apple News from Nov. 3, 2025, through July 21, 2026, analyzing the headlines of stories related to Abdul El-Sayed. MRC researchers searched using the terms “Michigan,” “Abdul” and “El-Sayed” and then used sentiment analysis to rate the El-Sayed-focused headlines across both news aggregators as negative, neutral or positive.
