Vice President Kamala Harris further enflamed tensions with Muslim Americans after her campaign kicked a prominent doctor and former Democratic congressional candidate out of a Detroit-area event earlier this week.
On Monday afternoon, Dr. Ahmed Ghanim and approximately 200 other guests arrived at a Harris rally held at the Royal Oak Music Theatre in Royal Oak, Michigan, a trendy suburb located about 15 miles north of Detroit.
Ghanim, a 49-year-old native of Egypt who received an invitation to the event, claimed he entered the facility, passed through security, and arrived at his seat without a problem. About 10 minutes later, someone from the venue approached him and asked him to follow her.
"I followed her," Ghanim told FOX 2. "I thought they are changing my seat or doing something."
The venue was not changing his seat. Instead, the woman led Ghanim to the theater lobby, where members of the Royal Oak Police Department and U.S. Secret Service were standing. The group of officials then asked him to leave the premises or risk detention in the back of a cop car.
Ghanim filmed his conversation with venue staff and members of law enforcement. According to the footage he captured, one officer said, "I'm not kicking you out. The venue's kicked you out."
When Ghanim pressed further, demanding to know why they were removing him, a woman stated, "Unfortunately, this is no longer a conversation."
"This is my city," Ghanim explained to WXYZ. "So if this happens to me in my city where I should feel safe ... how do you think that is going to make me feel other than being an outcast?"
When FOX 2 asked whether he believed his Muslim faith played a role in the incident, Ghanim replied, "I think so."
"They kicked me out without providing [a reason]," he told the Detroit News. "I didn't have anything. There is no provocation. I didn't even have any, like, a Palestinian kaffiyeh, any signs, or a banner, nothing. None of that is allowed inside."
A spokesperson from ROPD confirmed to WXYZ that a representative from the theater issued the order to remove Ghanim. Secret Service confirmed to the outlet that none of the attendees, including Ghanim, were considered a security threat.
The Harris campaign, likely recognizing that someone had bungled the situation, immediately issued an apology.
"Our campaign regrets this action and its impact on Dr. Ghanim and the community, and he is welcome at future events," Naomi Savin, deputy communications director for the Harris team in Michigan, told FOX 2. "We value our relationship with the Muslim American community."
'If you were kicked out of her campaign, would you vote for her?'
Thus far, that apology has apparently done little to quell the anger in the Muslim community, which is still frustrated with the response from the Biden-Harris administration to the war in Gaza. Some feel affronted that no one spoke on behalf of Palestinians on the main stage at the Democratic convention in August.
"We have seen this repeated pattern of disregard and disrespect towards Muslim and Arab Americans unfold before," said Rex Nazarko, of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network, according to FOX 2.
Basim Elkarra, the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in another state, called for an investigation into the incident in Royal Oak.
In addition to his work in health care management, Dr. Ghanim also recently attempted to oust Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the 2024 Democratic primary. Stevens won overwhelmingly with 74% of the vote.
Ghanim, described by the Detroit News as a Democratic "activist," now says he will likely not vote for Harris in the 2024 presidential election. "If you were kicked out of her campaign, would you vote for her?" he asked FOX 2 rhetorically.
"I guess that’s how the Democratic Party deals with Muslims. They’re not important to them. ... Maybe the Democratic Party doesn't want people like me and my kind in the party," he added to the Detroit News.
Amer Ghalib, a fellow Muslim and the Democrat mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, has already endorsed former President Donald Trump, calling him "the right choice for this critical time."
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The Democratic mayor of the only American city entirely governed by Muslims has endorsed President Donald Trump, signaling possible trouble for Kamala Harris and highlighting the fragility of leftists' supposed intersectional coalition.
Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck in the swing state of Michigan, announced Sunday that he is backing the Republican candidate, stating, "I know [Trump] is a man of principles."
"Though it's looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States," wrote Ghalib, "but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time. I'll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I'm ready to face the consequences."
"Let the Caravan begin its journey. This is just the starting point," added Ghalib.
Days earlier, Ghalib — one of the many religious Americans who have taken issue in recent years with LGBT activists' cultural imperialism — briefly met with Trump in Flint, indicating on Facebook, "It's a new era."
Ghalib, who last year defended banning the display of LGBT flags on public buildings, told the Detroit Free Press, "It was a productive meeting," and indicated Trump had asked for his endorsement.
The Trump campaign appears keen to take advantage of the current administration's alienation of Muslim voters and Arab Americans over its Middle East policies and promotion of LGBT propaganda.
FiveThirtyEight's polling average presently shows Harris leading Trump in Michigan 48.6% to 45.9% — a state Biden allegedly won by 155,000 votes in 2020. According to NPR, there are roughly 240,000 Muslims in Michigan.
According to the Hamtramck Review, 61% of Hamtramck residents voted "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary election. Biden ultimately won with 32% of the vote.
Some Muslim Americans who previously supported Democrats may throw their weight behind Trump, as Ghalib indicated he will. Others may instead support the Green Party's Jill Stein.
Reuters noted that an August poll by the radical group Council on American-Islamic Relations indicated that 40% of Muslim respondents in Michigan signaled support for Stein, 18% for Trump, and 12% for Harris.
The Hamtramck mayor, a native of Yemen who has protested the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and demanded divestment from Israel, said that Trump "knew a lot about me prior to the meeting. We talked about various topics including the debates, the polls updates, the statistics of votes in Michigan and Wayne county, the Arab American concerns and the Yemeni Americans in particular."
Trump has made no secret of his contempt for Hamas, his opposition to radical Islam, and his affinity for Israel — having worked in office to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states as well as formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. However, his criticism of American interventionism and foreign entanglements apparently appeals to some disaffected Democrats.
Trump's criticism of Biden's missile strikes on Yemen earlier this year may, for instance, have resonated with Ghalib and other former Democrats in the Yemeni community.
'A lot of people are shifting to the right.'
In January, Biden ordered military strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen in response to their repeated targeting of Israel-linked ships transiting the Bab al-Mandeb strait. This was something of an about-face granted the Biden-Harris administration previously dropped the Houthis from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time of the strikes:
So, let me get this straight. We’re dropping bombs all over the Middle East, AGAIN (where I defeated ISIS!), and our Secretary of Defence, who just went missing for five days, is running the war from his laptop in a hospital room. Remember, this is the same gang that 'surrendered' in Afghanistan, where no one was held accountable or FIRED. It was the most embarrassing 'moment' in the history of the United States. Now we have wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Yemen, but no 'war' on our Southern Border. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Crooked Joe Biden is the worst President in the history of the United States!
"A lot of people are shifting to the right," Hassan Aoun — a Republican activist in Dearborn, Michigan, another Detroit-area city with a significant Muslim population — told the Free Press, adding that it is understood Trump will not support new wars.
Ghalib also appears to be one of many Muslims out of line with the Democratic Party's thinking on social issues, especially when it comes to the party's support for the mutilation and sterilization of children and its promotion of LGBT pornography in schools.
Last year, Ghalib reportedly hosted Trump's former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and discussed gender ideology, illegal immigration, critical race theory, and other social issues.
Bernadette Smith, ethnic vice chair of the Michigan GOP, called the meeting "historic."
"We must focus on those things that unite us and rise above those things that divide us," said Smith. "I do believe this is a history maker today. And we're going to give our God all the glory and honor right for this meeting tonight. ... We want to continue to build bridges. ... We don't want to see our children mutilated."
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Leaders of Hamtramck, Michigan — a Muslim-majority city located within the confines of Detroit — have allegedly been operating an election fraud scheme for decades, and according to a damning report from Project Veritas, Dana Nessel, Michigan's far-left attorney general, knows all about it but has done little to stop it.
Last week, Project Veritas released on social media a video containing elaborate statements from various people familiar with the municipal election processes in Hamtramck, including former Mayor Karen Majewski, former clerk of Hamtramck and current clerk of nearby Fraser August Gitschlag, and former city council candidate Lynn Blasey.
'Give it up, sign the envelope, give me the ballot.'
Gitschlag explained to the undercover Project Veritas reporter that many Hamtramck candidates "bully" and exploit local Bengali and Yemeni residents by harvesting their ballots or those of their relatives and threatening their livelihoods if they don't cooperate.
"Voter fraud happens in small ethnic communities where someone is more assimilated. They can run the show, intimidate," Gitschlag said.
That person can then say, "If you don't vote for me, your cousin has nowhere to live next year when he comes in. I'll shut it down,'" he continued.
After collecting absentee ballot applications and dropping them off at city hall, "harvesters" then return to each person's house and demand the absentee ballot and envelope, Gitschlag claimed. "They say, 'Give it up, sign the envelope, give me the ballot.'"
He claimed that the scheme is "easy" and previously played out in Ukrainian, Polish, and Bosnian immigrant communities.
Both Majewski and Blasey made similar remarks about the ethnic nature of the scheme.
"The Bangladeshi did it, started doing it," Majewski said. "Oh yeah, they started it before the Yemeni."
"They'll hire black people to go to black houses," Blasey said. "They hire Bangladeshi people to go to Bangladeshi houses."
"They strategically cheat," she continued. "... They target families that don't care or don't know the voting process. So, like, newer immigrants that just don't know."
Ballot harvesting is illegal in Michigan. State law strictly limits the people who may mail a completed absentee ballot to: the voter, a member of the voter's immediate family, a member of the voter's household, an election official from the voter's jurisdiction, and a mail carrier performing his or her official duties.
Not only do some Hamtramck officials appear to be harvesting ballots, but they may even be filling them out on behalf of voters.
"The absentee ballots are being filled out in people's dining rooms by the candidates," Majewski said.
"They sit around the kitchen table."
Blasey even alleged that some candidates participated in an event dubbed the "Midnight Meeting," where ballots are auctioned off. According to the Project Veritas journalist, she identified City Councilman Mohammed Hassan and Mayor Pro-Tempore Abu Musa as two of the worst offenders.
The reporter then spoke with Musa, who indicated he had heard that Hassan had once paid for 300 ballots but didn't have "proof." He also did not deny the Midnight Meeting allegations, Project Veritas noted.
Project Veritas also called Hassan and Musa separately and claimed to have some "blank" ballots available.
"This is a trap. We have to see the name, is it Muslim or not?" the person identified as Hassan replied. "If it is not signed – OK, give me the address. I’ll go there. If it’s everything good, we can drop to the city hall. City hall parking lot has the box, we can drop it to there."
The man identified as Musa told the caller: "You touched my heart, brother. Thank you very much. Listen, I’ll come up. I’ll meet you. How about this evening?"
'You need these people's votes, right? So, who's going to say brown-skinned people are, you know, doing voter fraud?'
On video, Blasey, Gitschlag, and Majewski also alleged that some candidates do not actually live in Hamtramck, which, according to Majewski, is also "illegal."
"They have a house homesteaded here," Gitschlag stated, "but they live in, like, Warren, where their kids go to school."
Majewski told Project Veritas that this has been an ongoing problem for 20 years, and Gitschlag claimed he turned some individuals in more than a decade ago, when he was still Hamtramck clerk, for mishandling absentee ballots.
"I'm a Democrat, and I've busted other Democrats," he said.
The Hamtramck Review confirmed that Gitschlag helped an investigation of illegal ballot harvesting that ultimately led to felony convictions for four Bangladeshi-Americans. However, the offenders paid a fine and never served jail time.
To this day, Majewski believes that ballot harvesting caused her to lose her 2021 re-election bid to Mayor Amer Ghalib, then a political neophyte, telling the Project Veritas reporter that she is "absolutely positive that that happened."
In 2020, Ghalib apparently admitted to engaging in voter fraud.
"There were 20 people around me planning to vote for Biden because they loved Obama," he said at the time, according to the Federalist. "I got them to vote for Sanders and did their families’ ballot cards myself."
Majewski also insisted that many law enforcement agencies and officials, both state and federal, know all about the voter fraud scandal but so far have done nothing about it.
"Nessel's involved, and I think the feds are involved," she said. "... Investigating voter fraud."
"You need these people's votes, right? So, who's going to say brown-skinned people are, you know, doing voter fraud?"
Gitschlag is more optimistic, assuring the Project Veritas reporter that news of an investigation into the issue would hit the papers "soon."
The Review and the Federalist spoke with Gitschlag and Blasey about the Project Veritas report. Both expressed frustration about unwittingly giving statements to an undercover reporter, but both stand by what they said.
"I am upset about the smarmy underhanded Project Veritas tactics to get information I have been telling people for a year," Gitschlag told the Review.
"I stand by what I said, because I have been saying it for years," he added to the Federalist. "I do stand by the content."
"I firmly stand by my words," Blasey told the Federalist.
In a statement to the Review, Majewski admitted that voter fraud in Hamtramck "has been common knowledge for years." She also slammed Project Veritas and other "right wing outlets" looking to "divide progressives while overlooking the real threats to election integrity coming from their own ideological supporters."
Ghalib and Nessel did not respond to a request for comment from the Federalist.
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The mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, is refusing to back down in the face of criticism from LGBT advocates who are angry that his city banned the display of pride flags on public buildings.
In June, the Hamtramck city council — believed to the first all-Muslim city council in the country — unanimously voted to prohibit the display of "religious, ethnic, racial, political or sexual orientation group flags" on public property, leading to criticism from LGBT advocates.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post gave that criticism new life. The newspaper published a story airing the grievances of LGBT advocates who claim the city council passed the rule to target them specifically.
"The sole purpose was absolutely to go after the gay pride flag," said one local LGBT advocate. Another told the Post the flag rule "has always been about being anti-queer."
Mayor Amer Ghalib (D) says those critics are far from the truth.
"The city council decided to stay neutral on such controversial issues. Public spaces and city properties are shared spaces among all residents and should not be used by special interest groups to promote their agenda," Ghalib told Fox News. "We just specified which flags to be allowed to fly on city properties: U.S. flag, state, city, and POW flags are allowed. Everything else is not.
"No other group complained except the LGBT, because everyone believes it's fair and just decision," he explained. "The city treats and serves everyone equally, no discrimination or preferential treatment."
Not only did Ghalib defend the city council's decision, but he went on the offense. He said LGBT advocates are "acting as victims" because Hamtramck's leaders are Muslim.
"I, as a mayor, as well as the city council don't represent all American Muslims, we just act on the best interest of our city and our residents," he said. "Muslims are diverse and hold different views about these issues, so why generalizing! I disagree with some Muslim elected officials in the same district or in neighboring cities.
"Acting as victims of American Muslims is an exaggerating response," he continued. "We feel that we are being disrespected in the only Muslim-majority city, where some political groups try to enforce their values on us and are not willing to compromise."
Glaib said the rule is also about "trying to close the door for other groups that could be extremist or racist." He called the rule "legal and constitutional" and clarified that the "vast majority" of Hamtramck's residents approve of it.
"Showing support using city resources and properties to one group and ignoring the rest of the community is just going to create more problems to our city government," he said.
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A judge was caught on video chewing out a 72-year-old cancer patient and saying he should be "ashamed" for failing to maintain the exterior of his property — a violation of a city ordinance in Hamtramck, which is near Detroit.
Burhan Chowdhury, struggling to breathe, explained in broken English during Monday's virtual hearing that he's a "cancer patient" and "very old" and "very weak" and hasn't been able to "look after" the overgrown exterior of his property, Insider reported.
But 31st District Judge Alexis G. Krot wasn't too sympathetic — or even cordial, telling Chowdhury he should be "ashamed." His offense was apparently so serious that Krot added, "If I could give you jail time on this I would."
The judge fined Chowdhury $100 for his "totally inappropriate" actions, which she ordered paid by Feb. 1.
But when the defendant's son spoke up and asked Krot if her fine is "forgivable" due to his father's health, the judge got even more fired up.
“Have you seen that photo?" Krot hollered.
"I am very sick, ma'am," Chowdhury replied.
"That is shameful! Shameful!" Krot yelled back. "The neighbors should not have to look at that! You should be ashamed of yourself!"
Check it out:
Judge Alexis G Krot loses her mind over cancer patient not being able to clear out brush around his house.pic.twitter.com/vUWu9zHwnx— Dallas (@Dallas) 1641987092
Chowdhury’s son, Shibbir, told WDIV-TV after the hearing that his father was diagnosed in 2019 with cancer of the lymph nodes and that his treatments have taken a toll on his father’s mobility. Shibbir Chowdhury added to the station that he and his mother have been trying to maintain the property.
“I usually take care of the stuff in the backyard and everything, but that time I was out of the country,” Shibbir Chowdhury noted to WDIV.
He acknowledged to the station that failure to maintain the exterior of the property did violate the city ordinance, but said that the judge didn't have to be rude.
“There was really mistakes; I should have taken care of that," Shibbir Chowdhury admitted to WDIV. "But, yeah, still, like she should have [spoken to] my father more politely."
The family told the station the overgrowth has been cleared and that they will pay the fine.
WDIV said that Krot — who was elected to the bench in 2018 — isn't permitted to comment on the story. The station added that the state court administrator's office declined to release a statement on the matter.
Hamtramck judge shames 72-year-old cancer patient for not keeping walkway clearyoutu.be
The media blackout of this Michigan mayor's racist and supremacist views is part of a larger societal trend.
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