Muskets, Sharia, and the DSA: Why Is Martin Heinrich Bankrolling Michigan’s Most Radical Candidate?

When U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury traveled out of state to stump for far-left Florida insurgent Angie Nixon, New Mexicans got a clear warning about where the state’s Congressional delegation was headed. Now, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has escalated that trend—moving from campaign speeches to hard cash to bail out one of the most radical, anti-American U.S. Senate candidates in modern history.

Buried inside a late-October New York Times report is a financial receipt that New Mexico voters were never meant to notice. On October 21, after moderate pro-Israel Democrats and AIPAC launched a $9 million effort to stop Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped $1 million into the race and rallied roughly a dozen left-wing senators—including Martin Heinrich—to pledge a combined $300,000 to rescue El-Sayed’s campaign.

In politics, nobody writes a check without buying into the outcome. Even inside Michigan, traditional Democrats are fleeing El-Sayed's ticket. Former Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lon Johnson and prominent Democratic fundraiser David Kramer—former campaign chair for Rep. Haley Stevens—have publicly urged Democrats to either leave the Senate line blank or vote for Republican Mike Rogers. Former DNC spokesman Jose Aristimuño bluntly stated on the record: "I want him to lose."

Yet New Mexico’s senior senator stepped up to bankroll him. If Heinrich is investing in El-Sayed’s movement nationally, New Mexicans deserve to know if this is the blueprint Heinrich wants to import back home.

The DSA Agenda: Erasing the Constitution and the Senate

El-Sayed’s political rise is inseparable from Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Between 2017 and 2020, El-Sayed spoke at six DSA events, headlined a $10,000 Detroit DSA fundraiser, and was celebrated by the organization as a "comrade."

Just this summer, the national DSA unveiled its updated "Workers Deserve More" platform and confirmed on national television that its goals include drafting a new U.S. Constitution, abolishing the U.S. Senate, abolishing the Electoral College, dismantling prisons and national borders, and seizing private corporations for government ownership.

For a state of 2.1 million people like New Mexico, the U.S. Senate is the only constitutional safeguard guaranteeing equal footing with massive states like California and New York. Yet Heinrich is helping fund a DSA-aligned movement that wants to strip away private property rights, eliminate private health insurance, and abolish the very chamber Heinrich sits in.

Muskets and Open Borders

El-Sayed’s individual platform is a direct assault on New Mexico’s ranching, hunting, and border communities:

• Gutting the Second Amendment: On October 20, El-Sayed was caught on video mocking modern gun rights, telling supporters: "When they promised the right to bear arms, they had muskets. So, yeah, everyone should have equal rights to a musket." Even worse, in an April 2023 video that he quietly scrubbed from public view before launching his Senate run, El-Sayed floated repealing gun rights altogether, asking: "What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the Second Amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have healthcare?" He also campaigns on abolishing the Senate filibuster and overhauling the Supreme Court so the left can ram through gun bans on a simple majority vote.
• Abolishing ICE: While New Mexico families deal daily with cartel trafficking and fentanyl across the southern border, El-Sayed campaigns to completely abolish ICE as an "irredeemable" agency. In a resurfaced 2018 interview, he declared that America owes it to the world to "open our doors" and pledged never to spend a dime of state taxpayer money enforcing federal immigration law.

Sharia Compliance, 9/11, and Terror Ties

Over 63% of New Mexicans are traditional Catholic and Evangelical Christian voters who value faith, family, and American patriotism. Contrast New Mexico’s values with the record of the candidate Heinrich just helped fund:

• Sharia and Anti-Assimilation: As a 24-year-old medical student, El-Sayed stated on camera that he wanted to live in a "sharia-compliant way." At Columbia University, he co-authored academic papers arguing that assimilating into American neighborhoods is dangerous to Arab Americans' health and that Arab women who have children with non-Arab men suffer higher rates of premature birth. Meanwhile, on the trail, he avoids even using the words "pregnant woman," calling mothers "adult, or sometimes even juvenile humans."
• Muslim Brotherhood and Terror-Charity Family Ties: In 2012 social media posts, El-Sayed’s half-sister admitted that "my family has long been MB [Muslim Brotherhood]" and praised their mother’s Brotherhood activism in Egypt. That same mother worked in Missouri for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), a charity shut down by federal authorities in 2004 for funneling money to al-Qaeda and other terror groups, where 13 of her financial letters became federal trial exhibits. Additionally, El-Sayed’s father-in-law—who has poured over $300,000 into backing his race—led CAIR-Michigan and served on the founders' committee of ISNA, both named by federal prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation Hamas-funding trial.
• 9/11 and Synagogue Attack Excuses: In a 2022 op-ed, El-Sayed criticized the U.S. drone strike that killed 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri as "troubling" and a political "fig leaf." This year, he campaigned in Michigan alongside left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who infamously declared "America deserved 9/11." And after an attacker rammed a pickup truck full of gas and fireworks into Michigan's Temple Israel synagogue and preschool in March 2026, El-Sayed rationalized the terrorist’s motive by blaming an Israeli strike in Lebanon ("hurt people hurt people"). When his campaign posted the transcript of his video statement on his official website, right after the sentence saying the irony "could never justify what happened at Temple Israel," the website text added: "it was and he should have done it." During an October 9 debate, he even refused to say whether Iran poses a bigger threat to America than Israel.

Five Questions Martin Heinrich Owes Answers to

Nobody writes a political check without expecting a return on investment. Since Sen. Heinrich joined Bernie Sanders to bankroll Abdul El-Sayed on October 21, he owes New Mexico families direct answers to five questions:

1. Does Sen. Heinrich support the DSA platform that El-Sayed helped fundraise for—including stripping private property rights, eliminating private health insurance, and rewriting the U.S. Constitution?
2. Does Heinrich agree with El-Sayed that the Second Amendment only protects 18th-century "muskets" and should be replaced with a constitutional right to government healthcare?
3. Why is a border-state senator funding a candidate who wants to completely abolish ICE and open America’s doors without enforcing federal immigration law?
4. Did Heinrich vet El-Sayed’s family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and an al-Qaeda-linked charity, his "sharia-compliant" remarks, and his studies claiming American assimilation is hazardous to your health?
5. Why is Heinrich siding with Bernie Sanders and a candidate who campaigned with Hasan Piker ("America deserved 9/11") over mainstream Michigan Democrats who are begging voters to reject El-Sayed at the ballot box?

Until Martin Heinrich answers those questions, New Mexicans have every right to assume that what he is buying in Michigan is exactly what he wants for New Mexico.