Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed touts US President Donald Trump’s Tuesday announcement that the US will cease providing military aid to Israel at the end of this year.
“A broken clock is right twice a day. I think the president is actually right on this policy. I’d also like to see us stop selling weaponry that gets used to do the worst things, including genocide and apartheid to Israel. We have a responsibility to keep that money here to invest in the things that we need here,” El-Sayed tells NPR in an interview.
Most US aid to Israel is required to be spent on American-produced weapons.
Trump claimed that he had agreed with Netanyahu to wrap up US aid to Israel by the end of 2026, even though the premier has talked about winding it down gradually over a ten-year period. The current aid package for Israel isn’t supposed to expire until the end of 2028.
Trump said he was moving to halt US aid at the behest of Netanyahu, insisting that Israel no longer needs it, while arguing that the shift would rob “lunatics” like El-Sayed of the ability to call out the US for providing more military aid to Israel than any other country.
Fresh off his Tuesday victory over Republican Mike Rogers, El-Sayed reiterates his support for “dignifying the idea of equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for Palestinian and Jewish Israelis alike.”
“What we’ve often done is trick ourselves by saying the phrase two-state solution, while we subsidize and aid, arm and abet the very people who are trying to foreclose on the possibility of a Palestinian state,” he adds.
He goes on to express his support for probes into Israel at the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, which the Trump administration has worked aggressively to halt.
“I think we should be being objective about the way that we treat Israel, just like we treat any other country,” El-Sayed adds.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic senator-elect from Michigan, declines to say in multiple interviews whether he’ll support keeping Chuck Schumer as the party’s Senate leader.
Because Democrats won the Senate in yesterday’s midterm elections, Schumer is set to become the chamber’s majority leader, a position he last held in 2024.
Schumer, a moderate, has been a longtime pro-Israel stalwart in Washington, though he has been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in 2024 called on him to step down. El-Sayed, a progressive who routinely accuses Israel of genocide, is set to become one of its harshest critics in the Senate.
Speaking to The Associated Press, El-Sayed declines to commit to supporting Schumer for another term as Democratic leader, saying he does not yet know who else might run.
“I do believe we need new leadership and I think people are hungry for it,” El-Sayed adds.
Answering the same question in an interview on NBC, El-Sayed says, “We need action, we need leadership toward that action, and I’m interested to see, working with the rest of our caucus, what options we’ve got.”
Because the Democrats will hold at least 54 seats in the Senate, El-Sayed’s vote on the leadership will not be decisive. Schumer is expected to retain the leadership position.
Schumer supported El-Sayed’s Senate race. When Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who was backed by Schumer but lost to El-Sayed in the primary, endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Schumer said in a statement, “This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens. Senate Democrats are united in our support for Abdul El-Sayed, because we know he will fight for the economic interests of working families in Michigan.”
A senior official in the Transportation Ministry’s security division was questioned today by the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit over suspected conflicts of interest related to the foiled terror attack on flydubai Flight 1073, Channel 13 reports.
The report, which does not name the official or elaborate on the allegations they face, says the interrogation is related to a probe into conflicts of interest in the Transportation Ministry, which was responsible for screening flight crews coming into Israel.
On the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, the Omani copilot attacked the Indian captain and attempted to crash the plane, but was stopped by the captain and several Israeli passengers.
The conflict of interest investigation concerns whether ministry staff who did private sector work related to their jobs received the necessary permissions from the government, according to the report.
Saudi Arabia and Syria signed a cooperation agreement between the two countries’ defense ministries today, Saudi state news agency SPA reports, as Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis continue their missile and drone attacks on the kingdom.
The agreement was signed during a visit by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Riyadh, where he met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It was their second meeting in Saudi Arabia in less than a month.
No details were provided on what the agreement entails. Reuters reported last month that Syria was carefully weighing providing military assistance to Saudi Arabia amid the kingdom’s escalating war against the Houthis in Yemen.
A Syrian diplomat said at the time that any request for military cooperation or exchange of expertise “would take place exclusively through official channels and within the framework of the bilateral agreements governing relations between our two brotherly countries.”
The two countries also signed several other agreements during Sharaa’s visit to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has been providing financial assistance to Syria and has played a key role in re-establishing Damascus’ ties with world powers after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in late 2024.
The Saudi Fund for Development signed six agreements with Syria’s Finance Ministry today for the provision of concessional development loans worth over $403 million to support development and service sectors in Syria, the Syrian ministry says.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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