The Communists Are Coming! The Communists Are Coming! No, this isn’t an anniversary tribute to the 1966 Cold War comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming. It’s actually the best Red Scare McCarthyism addled 80-year-old Donald Trump could imagine to demonize his enemies.
But even young people celebrating WorldPride 2026 in Amsterdam can spot the fatal flaw in Trump’s latest Big Whine: Trump loves Russian Communist Vladimir Putin!
Nonetheless, the MAGA faithful are parroting Trump’s prattle. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz flaunted his ignorance with Fox News host Jesse Watters, dissecting Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. Progressive candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed consistently led moderate establishment candidate Rep. Haley Stevens in an intensely competitive race to challenge Trump-endorsed Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers for a critical open Senate seat in the Nov. midterm elections.
Fox News host Jesse Watters with Sen. Ted Cruz on the Michigan Democratic primary. (Screengrab from Fox News)
“Is that where the energy is at? They want to cancel Thanksgiving?” Watters asked Cruz.
Cruz nodded. “They’re crazy enough, yes. They want to cancel Thanksgiving; they want to cancel Christmas. Look, these communists hate America; they hate capitalism,” he said.
“You see the green-red convergence,” Cruz said, “where the communists and the Islamists – they want Sharia Law. They hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate capitalism, they hate America. All of this is coming together in a way that is really a toxic stew.”
El-Sayed, 41, an epidemiologist and former health director for Detroit who won LGBTQ+ support last Oct., is a Michigan-born son of Egyptian immigrants who identifies as a capitalist, not a socialist, though he holds similar positions as the Democratic Socialists of America, such as Medicare for All, getting money out of politics, having a democracy powered by the people and abolishing an unaccountable ICE.
But the Michigan race – which could also determine control of the Senate and thus confirm Supreme Court nominees – is also brightly illuminating the role money plays in politics.
“Abdul’s victory was, in my opinion, the most extraordinary victory that I can think of in modern American politics,” Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an early El-Sayed supporter, said after El-Sayed’s incredibly narrow victory.
Sanders predicted that the race would “show the nation whether AIPAC and other billionaire-funded Super PACs can buy a U.S. Senate seat or whether the people of Michigan can prevail.”
Abdul El-Sayed with voters (Photo via El-Sayed for Senate)
“Money out of politics/money in your pockets” became a central tenet of El-Sayed’s campaign.
“What we’re doing is building a movement of the many against the money,” El-Sayed said on the campaign trail. He overcame more than $60 million in outside spending for his opponent – much from establishment Democrats plus $32 million from the ardently pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which has now pledged to fund Rogers, who already holds $45 million in reserves for the midterms.
After the UN-backed International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and a former Hamas commander, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip and Israel after Oct. 7, lawmakers started backing away from AIPAC.
“The victory in Michigan is a political earthquake,” said Beth Miller, Political Director at Jewish Voice for Peace Action. “Voters in one of the most consequential states for the 2028 Presidential race have just sent a clear message: they want candidates who will fight for working families at home while unapologetically speaking out for Palestinian freedom. This cycle, AIPAC is being relegated to the dustbin of history.”
“AIPAC never runs on AIPAC. They never even talk about Israel and Palestine,” former Rep. Andy Levin told AP. AIPAC spent millions opposing Levin, who is Jewish. “If you’re just a voter and you see a million ads, you don’t know who paid for it.”
Some of AIPAC’s money went specifically into disinformation ads and mailers asserting that El-Sayed is disrespectful to women.
Sarah Jukaku, El-Sayed’s wife, suggested that he was being targeted because he is running to be the first Muslim in the Senate.
“There’s such a subtle way of otherizing someone. When you’re like a brown guy or Muslim guy, you know, the easiest thing to tack on to you is sexism, right?” Juaku told the Washington Post. “That’s not how he is…It feels so unfair.”
El-Sayed’s blunt critique of Israel deserves a second look, Jay Michaelson wrote Aug. 5 in the Jewish Independent outlet Forward.
“Yes, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, El-Sayed is a young, Muslim progressive. But his views are markedly different — and, to my mind, more sophisticated and more nuanced. In fact, I agree with them,” Michaelson wrote.
The columnist cites El-Sayed’s interview with New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick, who asked: “Does Israel have a right to exist?…[W]hat is your hope for a resolution in the Middle East?… What underlies your sense of the situation there?”
Michaelson was taken with El-Sayed’s response, “which, itself, should inspire confidence….After noting that in Michigan, ‘there are communities where the median income is fourteen thousand dollars a year. And those kids go without good schools, and those kids go without functional infrastructure,’ El-Sayed continued:
‘I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination, for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. And I believe that it is not my job as an American policymaker to decide what the ultimate peace should be. But it is my job to make sure that our resources are stewarded correctly for the people I’m responsible for: those kids going to those broken schools.’”
El-Sayed continued, noting the “kind of hypocrisy” of how the “very same people who tell you you have to believe in a two-state solution are constantly aiding, arming, and abetting an Israeli government that has been dead set on foreclosing on the possibility of a Palestinian state since we’ve been funding them.”
So, El-Sayed says, he’s “not going to play the cosplay thing, where I allow the money that should be spent taking care of our kids to be sent to a military that has done a genocide — at baseline, does apartheid, and is now attempting the annexation of southern Lebanon — to foreclose on the possibility of Palestinian self-determination.”
El-Sayed’s job now is to unify Democrats to defeat Rogers, who has already unleashed Islamophobic attack ads using El-Sayed’s whole name as if it was a slur.
“They want to use my whole name against me,” El-Sayed said in response. “Mike, listen, man. If you can’t say the name, it’s Abdulrahman; keep the name out your damn mouth.”
In response to Trump blasting him during a campaign stop in Las Vegas, El-Sayed told MS NOW: “My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids. We have a responsibility to take on antisemitism in all of its forms, wherever we see it. It’s the same responsibility we have to take on Islamophobia.”
Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow told MS NOW’s Nicole Wallace that El-Sayed called her immediately after she ended her campaign on July 5. They had a good, hard conversation and “found a shared ‘why’ in our daughters.” She endorsed him quickly, as did his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, who hugged El-Sayed at Wednesday morning’s Unity Breakfast.
Meanwhile, appearing onstage with Trump, Mike Rogers said the next senator must be “somebody who doesn’t obstruct the President’s agenda.”
“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” McMorrow said. “It’s Michigan vs MAGA. That’s it. That’s the fight we’re fighting.”
Abdul El-Sayed unity rally Aug. 6, 2026 (screenshot BBC)
She also noted that 1.5 million Democrats turned out to vote in the primary. “The only way we win is together,” said McMorrow, adding that Michigan Democrats are showing that unity “doesn’t have to be hard. We don’t have to tear each other down. We can lock arms, and we can take our country back.”
Amsterdam Pride Canal (Photo courtesy Michael Key/Washington Blade)
Meanwhile, almost 4,000 miles east of Detroit, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key covered WorldPride 2026 for the Washington Blade and the Los Angeles Blade. (See a compilation of photos here.)
Highlights included Queen Máxima, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and several drag queens participating in the World Pride opening ceremony on July 25 in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark.
But the ceremony happened on the same day as an “Islamist terrorist attack” on thousands attending the annual Christopher Street Day, a major Pride festival in Berlin, Germany, that is among the biggest in Europe. The attack left 1 dead and 29 injured. A memorial service and rally took place in Berlin on Sunday, Lavers reported, after the Pride festival was cancelled. The primary suspect was later killed in a confrontation with police.
Security measures were bolstered for WorldPride 2026, and dignitaries and activists expressed their anger.
“This is an attack on our society,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X early Sunday morning, the New York Times reported.
In an email, Lavers wrote that “the attack in Berlin was definitely on folks’ minds, but to our knowledge there were no security incidents. There were a lot of expressions of solidarity among folks in Amsterdam.”
Lavers also said he felt there was more solidarity towards Americans fighting for democracy.
“There was, IMHO, a definite feeling among folks at Amsterdam Pride that they are aware of what’s happening in the U.S. and are unhappy about it,” he said. “It’s important to note that things in Europe vary in terms of LGBTQ rights, depending upon the country. All that said, there was a real sense of celebration of diversity at Saturday’s parade (with Netherlands’ out gay Prime Minister Rob Jetten on one of the boats)…and joy at the Madonna set that I was fortunate enough to attend. I suppose that can equate to defiance.
Lavers also noted, “I have traveled to Europe several times with Trump in office, and not once did anyone treat me badly because I am an American. Folks definitely make the distinction between Americans and the government.”
Pink Pony at WorldPride 2026 (Photo by Michael Key/Washington Blade)
West Hollywood showed up for WorldPride, too. The Pink Pony Club sign is a reference to the popular song by Chappell Roan, says Michael Key. Roan says that “Pink Pony Club” was inspired by a “transformative” night at The Abbey in West Hollywood.
Madonna, who headlined World Pride Music Festival, appeared at The Abbey in April. Tristan Schukraft bought the famous spot from founder David Cooley for a reported $27 million in 2023. Since then he also developed MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, according to Lavers. MISTR has organized Madonna’s Club Confessions shows in the U.S. and the U.K.
“’Mother is here, and this is gay heaven,’ said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people,” Lavers reported. She was later joined by Kylie Minogue.
“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. With MISTR is “helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”
Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten speaks at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam on Aug. 5, 2026. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Among several history-making moments was Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten’s Aug. 5 remarks opening the World Pride Human Rights Conference
Jetten, who became the country’s first openly gay prime minister in February, acknowledged that the terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day “filled me with anger and sorrow,” Lavers reported. He noted that 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of marriage equality in the Netherlands, the first country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Last year marked Amsterdam Pride’s Canal Parade’s 30th year.
“More and more in recent years, we’ve seen hard-won progress being eroded,” Jetten said. “We’ve seen countries backsliding in equal rights legislation. We’ve seen homophobic hate speech becoming more overt and aggressive, and not only out in the real world, but online as well.”
Additionally, “online hatred is one of the biggest threats facing the LGBTQIA+ people today,” he said. “All around the world … misinformation and disinformation can be spread in the blink of an eye with a single mouse click, reaching much further and much faster than NGOs, youth workers and health organizations can.”
“This is always how hatred takes hold,” Jetten said, “First in the shadows, outside the spotlight of society, underestimated by everyone, until, having grown into a many-headed monster, it crawls out of the darkness.”
He announced a three-year investment of what amounts to US $8.64 million each year “in improving the safety of the queer community in our cities with an alliance of organizations committed to safety, both in the public space and in the workspace for LGBTQI+ people, and with a public information campaign to combat discrimination and disinformation.”
He also looked at LGBTQ+ rights globally. “Under the pretense of resisting so-called Western moral decadence, horrendous laws are enacted and promoted, laws that put the rights of free people under severe pressure,” Jetten said. “But in reality, many communities in these countries have a long history of diversity and freedom, and the laws that impose the restrictions were in fact put in place by the colonial powers.”
“No matter how hard those conservative forces try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, queer communities around the world know that equal rights are not a Western agenda,” added Jetten. “They are first and foremost a human agenda.” (See a complete transcript of Jetten’s remarks here.)
For Lavers, dancing to Madonna made him feel free: “For those few precious hours at AFAS Live, I did not think about the Trump-Vance administration and the myriad ways it is destroying the U.S. I did not think about the National Guard troops deployed to D.C. I did not think about the pointless wars that continue to ravage Ukraine and other countries around the world. I simply lost myself on the dance floor and celebrated an icon who has always stood with my community. Thank you, Madonna.”
Almost 4,000 miles between Amsterdam and Detroit – and yet the pain, loss, hope, joy, and promise of freedom feel like the dawning of a new counter-cultural movement.
Check out Karen Ocamb’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Podcast.
This is a cross-post from Karen’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.