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Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D.), appearing alongside a convicted murderer and a registered sex offender in a webinar with a prison abolition group, endorsed “any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons” and said locking up criminals was akin to “robbing” them of their freedom.
El-Sayed was the featured guest on a webinar hosted by the Carceral State Project and the American Friends Service Committee in August 2020 regarding their report “I Don’t Want to Die in Prison.” The American Friends Service Committee advertised the show—using the hashtags #FreeThemAll and #AbolishPrison—as a platform to “discuss the report findings and the road to decarceration and abolition with Abdul El-Sayed.”
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El-Sayed, who thanked his webinar hosts for “hosting such a critical conversation,” endorsed “decarceration,” a policy to release prisoners en masse and adopt non-prison penalties for criminals, while casting prisoners as victims of an unjust criminal justice system.
“Not only are we taking people’s rights from them, but also we have failed to provide them the basic means of a dignified life,” said El-Sayed. “Every choice we make about incarcerating somebody is about robbing that somebody from the people who love them and the people who need them.”
“Any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in,” El-Sayed, who is leading in most polls against his more moderate Democratic rivals Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow ahead of the August 4 Democratic Senate primary, went on.
While El-Sayed’s message may not hurt his standing with Democratic voters, it could prove a political liability in November’s general election for the open seat, which is considered a toss-up. Republicans have cast El-Sayed, who ran for Michigan governor in 2018, as “dangerous” and “extreme,” citing his dalliance with socialists like Hasan Piker, the left-wing influencer who said that “America deserved 9/11” and that Israel is “much worse” than Hamas. El-Sayed campaigned with Amir Makled, a candidate for the University of Michigan Board of Regents who called slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr.”
El-Sayed was joined on the webinar by former prisoners Martin Vargas, a registered sex offender convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl, and LaWanda Hollister, who served 34 years in prison for second-degree murder. Months earlier, El-Sayed appeared as a podcast guest of Joshua Hoe, a former University of Michigan debate coach who pleaded guilty to soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex. El-Sayed urged Hoe, a registered sex offender, and other ex-cons to run for political office, saying their “voice is needed,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Clockwise from top left: Martin Vargas, Abdul El-Sayed, Danny Jones, LaWanda Hollister (YouTube screenshot)
El-Sayed and the other panelists urged “compassionate” release, due to the coronavirus pandemic, for older Michigan prisoners and those considered at low risk of recidivism. Thousands of prisoners were granted compassionate release, including many serving time for violent offenses and others who went on to commit new crimes after their release.
Ronald Segers, released from a Michigan prison in June 2020 because of the pandemic, shot his fiancée and her mother during an incident in December 2020. In February 2021, a Detroit judge ordered the release of John Bass, a drug kingpin who was serving two life sentences for multiple murders. Bass had ordered a hit on his brother-in-law and then murdered the hitman by setting him on fire.
In April 2021, a federal judge in Detroit ordered the release of Roger Sweet, who was serving time for murdering his first wife and raping a 16-year-old girl with learning disabilities. Sweet was also suspected of killing his second wife, according to reports.
El-Sayed endorsed other soft-on-crime policies during the COVID-19 era. He has deleted social media posts from 2020 in which he endorsed the movement to “defund” police departments. He served on the board of Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group that has called to “abolish” police departments and referred to police officers as “fascist pigs,” the Free Beacon reported.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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The Biden administration’s special envoy for “LGBTQI+ Persons,” gender activist Jessica Stern, had a mandate to put gay and transgender issues at the forefront of American foreign policy, according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The trove of emails reveals just how far the Democrats went to impose fringe views about gender and sexuality on American diplomats and allied countries across the globe.
The internal emails, along with records of speeches and conference calls, span Stern’s tenure as the second ever “U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Persons.” They document how Stern performed, as she put it in an email, “the hard work of integrating LGBTQI rights into everything we do” in American diplomacy.
“People do not always fit within a male or a female designation,” she said on a conference call about passports in 2022.
Stern, a gender activist who’d never worked in government, was appointed to the special envoy role—a position created by the Obama administration that went unfilled during the first Trump term—in June 2021. She had sweeping ambitions. The materials cited in this report were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center to Advance Security (CASA) in America and provided exclusively to the Free Beacon.
“As I mentioned, the Task Force is something we relaunched after I joined State,” Stern wrote to a colleague about her LGBTQI Task Force.
“The idea is to convene a space for LGBTQI points of contact across State to regularly exchange information, receive training, and generally feel supported,” wrote Stern, who signed her emails with a note that she uses “all pronouns.”
Stern goes on to ask then-deputy assistant secretary Sarah Cross if Cross would be willing to speak about “the problems for LGTQI migrants generally” in her role at the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). Cross, Stern recommended, could help “explain the challenges PRM has experienced in addressing their needs, and emphasize the creative new initiatives you’re exploring.” Those initiatives included taxpayer-funding for LGBTQI nonprofits, similarly framed programs in Afghanistan, and a “roundtable series for LBTQI migrants.”
In the fall of 2021, Stern was trumpeting the State Department’s controversial introduction of passports that allowed an “X” gender marker in addition to the standard male and female options. This allowed individuals “who identify as intersex, non-binary or gender non-conforming” to select a “gender-neutral gender marker for their passports,” the Washington Blade reported at the time.
“Offering a third gender marker is a significant step towards ensuring that our administrative systems account for the diversity of gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics,” Stern said on a conference with reporters.
Stern subsequently sought to push this policy on other countries, urging Taiwan, in a 2022 speech delivered remotely to a Taiwanese government-sponsored event in Taipei, to permit “an option for a third gender marker on legal identity documents.” In that same speech, Stern made clear to senior Taiwanese officials that “trans women are women, trans men are men.”
She added that “I also hope that the Taiwan authorities will act soon to ensure that procedures for changing gender markers are compliant with best practices globally and recent court decisions that have struck down requirements for surgery and other medical interventions.”
Taiwan, she said, was “our beacon of hope” in East Asia.
The newly uncovered emails reveal that Stern also saw a plump target in Germany, with which she wanted to partner to push the Biden administration’s gospel of what she called “inclusive democracy” on smaller, less wealthy countries.
In another set of emails from April 2023, someone in Stern’s office asks the State Department’s ethics attorney if Stern—who in 2022 had made an official visit to Germany, where she joined a panel discussion with the “German Federal Government Commissioner for the Acceptance of Sexual and Gender Diversity”—would be permitted to deliver a special presentation before the German parliament on “the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”
“We see significant benefit to the Special Envoy presenting to the German Parliament on the human rights of LGTBQI+ persons,” the unnamed staffer wrote—”Germany is our number one priority country in terms of supporting an increase of development assistance and political contributions to LGBTQI+ rights internationally.”
Stern’s office goes on to ask the ethics attorney if she is “allowed to accept the payment of travel and lodging from the German Parliament—we understand that we would need to get specific approval, just wondering if there is a blanket prohibition on accepting travel from other governments’ institutions.”
There is no record of Stern addressing the Bundestag, the German parliament, in 2023 or later.
James Fitzpatrick, the director of CASA, said Germany didn’t need American help pushing gay and trans issues across the world.
Germany, he said, is “a country that is sufficiently capable of doing that on their own if they choose without the help of American taxpayers,” Fitzpatrick said.
In another instance, Stern’s office sought a contact at the U.S. embassy in London so that she could “discuss serious concerns the Office has with some of the UKs positions on LGBTQI rights, in particular, transgender persons and their human rights,” according to a February 2022 email chain.
Stern’s office, the emails show, also worked to evade public scrutiny for her work from “anti-gender movements,” a cover-all term for those who oppose governmental support for transgender ideology and transgender movement priorities.
“Our bureau has highlighted that we need to be careful around discussion of ‘anti-gender movements’ as we recently have received very strong negative attention in response to the Department’s release of a Plan to promote our work to advance equity,” a senior adviser in Stern’s office wrote in a March 2024 note about an interview the envoy had given on the topic.
Stern is likely referring to backlash the Biden State Department received for its 2023 “Equity Action Plan,” which was savaged by conservative groups for pushing far-left gender ideology and junk science on the rest of the world.
Stern had been operating with increasing caution, as the heady days of Biden’s first months in office—when the president signed two executive orders mandating racial and gender “equity” measures across the federal government—gave way to warfare between far-left activists embedded in the Biden administration and more moderate and conservative interest groups.
In November 2023, Stern again sought “clearance” to attend a private workshop at Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) centered “on LGBTQI+ rights internationally,” and this time, she wanted to assure her minders that her remarks would remain confidential. The event, her email noted, “will be closed to the press and open only to the SIPA community.” Stern intended to deliver “primarily pre-cleared remarks about her mandate, the state of LGBTQI+ rights internationally, and why LGBTQI+ rights are a US foreign policy priority.”
Other emails detail Stern’s taxpayer-funded travel to remote nations for pride celebrations and other receptions.
In a June 2024 email between Stern and Icelandic diplomat Ragnhildur Erna Arnórsdóttir, the State Department envoy recalls with glee how “Saturday’s Nordic reception in honor of LGBTQI+ rights was wonderful, as ever.”
“I’m glad,” Stern adds, “we both wore our crowns and got our annual photo together!”
During an October 2023 trip to Rome, Stern attended a lunch with American diplomats at the separate U.S. embassy serving the Vatican, whose policies were greatly at odds with those of the Biden administration on issues of gender and sexuality. While in Rome, Stern also publicly participated in a “panel with LGBTQI+ Activists.”
She also roamed the developing world, spreading the gospel. State Department personnel had difficulty reaching Stern in May 2023 when she was “virtually without wifi all week” for “meetings with LGBTQI+ activists across” Botswana. Stern noted to the State Department when she was back online that “we’re excited about opportunities in Mauritius and have decided to accept an invitation to travel there for a regional LGBTIQ+ African conference July 31-August 4.”
CASA’s Fitzpatrick said the “madness” detailed in the document production “is emblematic of a broader theme throughout the Biden Administration—that DEI and LGBTQI issues were paramount.”
“They were frequently the foundation for attempts at global diplomacy, even to the point of fracturing longstanding relationships around the world,” Fitzpatrick said.
The Biden-era State Department also went to great lengths to champion gender pronouns internally, resulting in a May 2023 “pronoun glitch” in which its internal email system temporarily assigned random and often incorrect gender pronouns to employees. The State Department subsequently offered counseling to any employee felt “hurt or upset” by the mixup.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told the Free Beacon that the Trump administration—through efforts like dismantling the United States Agency for International Development and eradicating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs—has brought the State Department back into the business of diplomacy.
“Under President Trump, we are focused on advancing the national interests of the American people,” Pigott said. “The standard given by Secretary Rubio from day one is clear: does it make America safer, stronger, or more prosperous? We strive every day to meet that standard.”
Stern, who is now affiliated with prestigious programs at Harvard and Columbia, did not immediately respond to a request for comments at her Columbia address.
The Trump State Department has barred passport applicants from choosing a gender other than male or female. The restriction is being challenged in court by the ACLU.
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