In the midterms' last week, attacks reach El-Sayed's faith and Acton's family

Featured image: The tower at McMorran Place in Port Huron, Michigan, the arena complex where President Donald Trump held a rally for Republican candidates on October 25, 2026, photographed in August 2019. Photo by Oaktree b, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Abdul El-Sayed was born in Michigan and is the Democratic nominee for one of its Senate seats. On October 25 at McMorran Place in Port Huron, President Donald Trump told a rally he was there to keep "a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member" out of the Senate, CBS News Detroit reported. El-Sayed answered the next day. He called the attacks "deflections and deceptions based on no evidence" at a Detroit news conference, according to PolitiFact.

PolitiFact rated Trump's claim Pants on Fire on October 27. Its reporter, Caleb McCullough, found no evidence that El-Sayed is a jihadist or a Brotherhood member, and noted that he has disavowed the group. Asked for evidence, the White House did not respond.

Americans vote on Tuesday, November 3. In the campaign's final stretch, attacks on candidates' faith and families have drawn objections from members of both parties, The Washington Post and Politico reported. One came from an Indian American. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, is running an ad that a New York Times headline called the most ruthless of the midterms.

Its star is Donna Arthur, 82. She is estranged from her daughter, Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee. "Don't let her become your governor," Arthur says. Ramaswamy's campaign has bought more than $4 million of Ohio airtime for it, the Times reported.

Acton has said she was removed from her mother's custody at 12. Her stepfather was charged with raping her, and Mahoning County court records support her account, according to the Times. He pleaded not guilty, then fled the area. The case never went to trial, IANS reported, citing CBS News.

The ad split Ohio Republicans. Gov. Mike DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy, called it "just plain wrong," and Sen. Jon Husted said he would not have run it. Trump defended it. "All I can say is Vivek is great," he told reporters at the White House on October 22, according to the White House pool report as quoted by IANS.

Ramaswamy has said he has no regrets. "We ran an ad about lying," he said at a campaign stop in Strongsville, the Times reported.

Acton said she had hoped he "wouldn't sink this low," CBS News reported, as quoted by IANS. Her brother, Philip Stearns, fired back in her campaign's reply ad, the Post reported. "Shame on Vivek," he said.

Florida's turn came on Friday, October 30, at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach. Trump called Angie Nixon, the Democrat challenging Sen. Ashley Moody, "a very low IQ person," Newsweek reported. A rally transcript posted by the writer Tommy Christopher has him labelling David Jolly, the Democratic candidate for governor, "a freaking loser." Neither campaign's response was reported.

Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, said Trump would "call out extremists" like El-Sayed "without apology," Politico reported. PolitiFact examined a 2012 statement that El-Sayed signed with 45 other Egyptian Americans defending Egypt's then-president, Mohamed Morsi. Nathan Brown of George Washington University called it "certainly pro-Morsi and partisan." It was not an expression of support for the Brotherhood, he said.

Mike Rogers, El-Sayed's Republican opponent, has framed his case more narrowly. "It's not about how he prays," Rogers said on NBC's Meet the Press. The issue, he said, was El-Sayed's "adherence to this radical Islamic agenda," Politico reported. He had "never called him a terrorist," he added, according to Spectrum News.

Some of Trump's own allies objected. Bishara Bahbah, who founded Arab Americans for Trump, said the comments crossed "a red line," Politico reported. Hassan Nehme, a Republican statehouse candidate and a former vice chair of the Michigan Republican Party, was blunter. "You turned off a lot of people," he said.

Democrats have gone after families too, the Post found. In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek called Rep. Ashley Hinson's husband a "shadow lobbyist," a claim fact-checkers called misleading. "He's an insurance agent," Hinson replied. In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff attacked Republican Mike Collins over CNN reporting that his son-in-law shared Nazi imagery online.

Texas had its own fight in September, when the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, Bo French, posted a still from a video of University of Texas students, the Texas Tribune reported. Most were of South Asian descent, the Tribune said. French added, "The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined." Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, called him "an embarrassment to the Republican Party."

Some Indian American conservatives in Texas are reconsidering their loyalty, The American Bazaar reported. One is Vasant Bhatt. The 21-year-old University of Houston student once campaigned for Sen. Ted Cruz and now backs the Democratic Senate nominee, James Talarico. Thoughtful India covered French's post in September.

El-Sayed has said he is not worried. "I am taking a bet on the bigness of Michiganders," he told reporters in Detroit, Politico reported. As of PolitiFact's October 27 ruling, the White House had offered no evidence for the jihadist claim. Michigan votes on Tuesday.