Cruz calls a Senate candidate Brotherhood as the designation bills sit untouched for sixteen months
Ted Cruz told Fox News he believes Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is Muslim Brotherhood. The three bills that would make that an actual legal category — one of them his own — have not moved past introduction.
Speaking on Fox News on the night of 20 October, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he believes El-Sayed is Muslim Brotherhood and raised the prospect that, if elected, Chuck Schumer could place him on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The remarks were reported over 21–22 October by Mediaite, HuffPost, NewsBusters and JoeMyGod — four outlets spread across the political spectrum, which establishes that the words were said. Their transcriptions of them differ: JoeMyGod renders the line as “I believe Abdul El-Sayed is Muslim Brotherhood”; NewsBusters renders it “I believe this man is Muslim Brotherhood.” No outlet reports Cruz offering evidence. The Daily Wire, which is partisan and single-sourced on this point, quoted him saying committee access to classified material would create “an acute risk that U.S. service men and women will be killed,” and reported Republican “senators” in the plural; only Cruz is identifiable by name.
El-Sayed had already disavowed the Brotherhood. On 17 October, CNN reported him doing so at a town hall in Caro, Michigan, where he objected to the dual-loyalty implication of the question. The underlying accusation is older: Newsweek’s 5 October timeline records Fox host Martha MacCallum asking whether he would back a designation, and his answer that “terrorism is the act of political violence.” The Washington Times editorialised on 18 October that he signed a 2012 open letter supporting the Morsi government and wrote a Huffington Post column on Egypt’s transition. Those are retrievable primary documents. The Files has not retrieved them, and does not repeat the claim as fact.
Assessment: The gap to watch is between the word and the instrument. US law, under Executive Order 14362 of 24 November 2025, has designated four named entities: the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters on 13 January 2026, and the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood on 9 March. It has not designated a movement, and there is no legal status an American can hold called “Muslim Brotherhood.” Cruz’s own S.2293, which would create a blanket designation, was introduced on 15 July 2025 and referred to Senate Foreign Relations, where it remains — as do Mace’s H.R.3883 and Diaz-Balart’s H.R.4397. Three bills, sixteen months, zero floor action. A category that is useful in a campaign and inert in a committee is doing political work, not legal work.