Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed just handed his critics a gift they didn’t even have to unwrap. In an interview with Ross Douthat, El-Sayed was asked a pretty simple question about boys in girls’ sports and locker rooms. His answer was something else entirely.
Douthat asked what El-Sayed thinks should happen when transgender kids want to compete on sports teams, framing it as a situation where rights come into conflict. El-Sayed’s response was to reach into his pocket, metaphorically speaking, and pull out a smartphone lecture. Ross, you have an iPhone in your pocket, probably,” he said, before arguing that because kids have access to everything on the internet, parents worrying about their daughters sharing a locker room with a biological male is “so profoundly outdated.
He kept going. “The free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing,” El-Sayed said, telling parents that the best they can do is coach their kids through what they might see in the world and let them make their own choices. He wrapped it up by reminding everyone that “the Internet is a real thing.” Thanks, Abdul. Very helpful.
So to summarize the position of a man running for office in 2026: your daughter might see a naked man in her school locker room, but don’t worry because she could find worse stuff on her phone anyway. That’s not a policy argument. That’s a shrug emoji dressed up in complete sentences. Abdul El-Sayed locker room interview
Here’s what El-Sayed is deliberately dodging. Parents pushing back on biological males in girls’ sports are not trying to shield their daughters from the existence of transgender people. They want a fair competition, free from the physical advantages that come with male puberty. They want their daughters safe from injury in contact sports. And yes, they want their girls to have privacy while changing clothes at school, which is a perfectly normal thing to want.
The internet argument doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. Plenty of things exist online that we still don’t allow in public schools. The fact that a twelve-year-old could theoretically find something on a phone doesn’t mean schools are obligated to replicate it in the locker room. By El-Sayed’s logic, schools should probably stop locking up a lot of things. Consistency was never really the point, though.
El-Sayed is still running for office, so Michigan voters will get their chance to weigh in on the “free flow of information is a beautiful thing” platform soon enough. With midterms determining the future of President Trump’s America First agenda, Republicans are counting on Democrats like El-Sayed to keep talking. Keep it up, Abdul, you’re doing great if your goal was to become a radical leftist pervert.
