Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan Democrat running for U.S. Senate, used a campus rally to defend sex change procedures for children by touting his medical training, credentials that come with a notable asterisk.
At a rally at Michigan State University, El-Sayed fielded a student's question about protecting access to sex change procedures and launched into a defense built on his own background as a physician. The candidate, who previously led Detroit's health department, told the crowd that doctors who perform these procedures earned their expertise through years of rigorous training, and that government has no business second-guessing their clinical decisions.
The problem for El-Sayed: Fox News Digital has reported that he has never held a medical license in Michigan or New York. His campaign says he earned a medical doctorate from Columbia University and a public health doctorate from Oxford University. But holding degrees and holding a license to practice medicine are different things, a distinction El-Sayed's rally rhetoric did not acknowledge.
El-Sayed's remarks leaned heavily on the authority of medical professionals. He told the crowd:
"I went to a whole a** medical school, everybody I graduated with also went to whole a** medical school. And then... they went to whole a** residency. Right? And some of them went to whole a** fellowship. They took whole a** exams to provide whole a** healthcare."
He then framed the issue as a matter of patient autonomy, arguing that treatment decisions belong to patients, their parents if the patient is a minor, and their doctors, full stop.
"I don't think the government gets to have a say about what healthcare is provided in what circumstances and why. And to me, that is the standard on which we decide how we make healthcare decisions."
El-Sayed went further, trying to turn conservative principles against the right. He invoked the Right to Try Act, federal legislation that allows terminally ill patients to access experimental drugs not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration after exhausting all other options. Conservatives championed that law. El-Sayed argued it proves the right already agrees that medical decisions should stay between a patient and a provider.
The comparison falls apart on inspection. Right to Try was designed for dying adults with no remaining options. Applying the same logic to elective hormone treatments and surgeries on minors, patients who cannot legally consent to a tattoo in most states, is a stretch that collapses the distinction between terminal illness and gender dysphoria.
El-Sayed's rally remarks landed against a backdrop of mounting institutional skepticism toward the very procedures he defended. The Federal Trade Commission and multiple states have filed a lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, known as WPATH, whose guidelines are used by leading medical groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The FTC's suit alleges that WPATH's guidelines misled parents about the "medical consensus and medical necessity, as well as the safety and effectiveness" of sex change procedures. Federal regulators accused WPATH of failing to disclose side effects tied to cross-sex hormones, including incontinence, erectile pain, mood disturbances, pelvic pain, and vaginal pain.
El-Sayed's campaign has drawn repeated scrutiny beyond this issue. He faced questions about an appearance at a controversial Islamic convention alongside speakers who raised red flags for voters across the political spectrum.
England's National Health Service paused cross-sex hormones for 16- and 17-year-olds in March after concluding the supporting research was "really weak." England already banned sex-change hormones for children under 16. When a country with a government-run healthcare system, the kind of system El-Sayed wants to bring to America through his Medicare-for-all proposal, decides the evidence does not support these treatments for minors, that is not a fringe conservative talking point. It is the medical establishment abroad pumping the brakes.
The Trump administration has moved to restrict minors' access to hormone therapy and surgeries. Earlier in the same week as El-Sayed's rally, the Justice Department announced that Mount Sinai had joined a growing list of hospitals agreeing to halt sex change procedures for children. Texas Children's Hospital, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Connecticut Children's Hospital had already reached similar agreements.
That is the direction the country is moving, away from the position El-Sayed staked out on that campus stage. Major hospitals are not defying the federal government to keep performing these procedures. They are standing down.
El-Sayed's broader pattern of controversial statements has not helped his cause. Resurfaced audio captured him downplaying a terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue, adding to a growing file of moments that raise questions about his judgment.
And this is not the first time his defense of transgender procedures for minors has created problems. During a live Fox News interview, El-Sayed responded to host Jesse Watters' question about parental consent for pediatric gender-reassignment surgery by asking, "Are you circumcised?" As the New York Post reported, the comparison risked alienating both Jewish and Muslim voters, for whom circumcision is a deeply held religious tradition with no medical parallel to gender-reassignment interventions. Columnist Bethany Mandel wrote that El-Sayed "was handed a choice between defending the social values of the religious community he so conspicuously courts and defending the most doctrinaire position of the progressive movement. He chose the progressives without hesitation."
El-Sayed has built his Senate campaign around his identity as a doctor. He pitches himself as a physician who would be the first doctor to serve as a Democratic senator in 50 years. His campaign pushes Medicare-for-all as its signature issue. His spokesperson, Roxie Richner, defended his credentials in a statement:
"Dr. El-Sayed earned a medical doctorate from Columbia University and a doctorate in public health from Oxford University. That's two doctorates, he has earned the right to be called 'doctor' twice over."
Richner also pointed to El-Sayed's public health work, including "the elimination of millions of dollars in medical debt, increased access to Narcan, and the creation of a state-of-the-art air quality monitoring network."
None of that addresses the licensing question. A medical degree from Columbia is a real accomplishment. So is a doctorate from Oxford. But campaigning as a physician while never having obtained a license to practice medicine in the state you want to represent, or in the state where you earned your degree, is a gap that voters deserve to understand clearly.
El-Sayed's campaign controversies extend well beyond healthcare. Fellow Democrat Haley Stevens publicly told him to cut ties with a controversial online figure as the Michigan Senate race tightened, a sign that even members of his own party see liabilities piling up.
At the rally, El-Sayed told the crowd there is "a lot of disinformation" around reproductive rights and healthcare for transgender individuals. He said the decisions that matter happen "in that clinical room between a patient and a provider."
But the FTC says the guidelines those providers rely on misled parents. England's government-run health system says the research is weak. Major American hospitals are voluntarily stopping these procedures on children. And the candidate telling voters to trust the doctors has never been licensed to be one.
El-Sayed is not the only Michigan candidate generating outside interest in the race. His Republican opponent asked AIPAC to pull an ad targeting El-Sayed, a move that reflected the complicated dynamics of a contest where both sides see vulnerabilities to exploit.
Meanwhile, questions about El-Sayed's associations continue to surface. A report revealed he planned a fundraiser co-hosted by a lawyer who honored a Nazi-era grandfather, adding yet another entry to a list of judgment calls that Michigan voters will weigh come Election Day.
When a candidate's strongest argument is "trust the experts", and the experts' own guidelines face a federal fraud lawsuit, the argument is not as strong as it sounds from a rally stage.