CARO, MICHIGAN, THE THUMB OF THE MITTEN (The Daily Whatever Press) — A young man named Tommy stood up at a town hall on Saturday to make a Muslim candidate prove he was a real American, and the Muslim candidate handed him a free semester of constitutional law instead.
Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. If he wins in 15 days, he’ll be the first Muslim ever to serve in the Senate. Tommy, who told the room he was a Christian, wanted to know whether El-Sayed would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Sure. Yeah, absolutely,” El-Sayed said.
On the spot. No hedging, no aide sprinting in from the wings.
And then he did the thing that made me want to stand up and slow-clap alone in my living room.
The perfect answer, in three moves
Move one: answer the question. Done.
Move two: ask why it was asked. “But what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?” Tommy said yes. So El-Sayed named it for the whole room: “You’re asking the question because implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right?”
Move three: hand the question back. El-Sayed said he’d swear an oath to the Constitution, which “guarantees us all the right to practice whatever faith we want to or no faith at all.” He brought up John F. Kennedy. “I’m not running to be a Muslim senator,” he said. “I’m running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim.” He told Tommy, “I want to protect your right to practice your faith as you choose as a Christian man.”
Then he asked: “Do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country?”
Tommy said, “No.”
Oh, Tommy.
“So I think it’s you who needs to understand the Constitution,” El-Sayed said. The Handbasket reports that Tommy left the room shortly after.
The Muslim in the room pledged himself to the Constitution. The Christian in the room declined.
I’m a Jew who has never once set foot in Israel, and I know that loyalty question by smell. Who are you really loyal to? Every version of it is an accusation with a question mark stapled to the end, and El-Sayed pulled the staple out with his teeth.
That is a perfect fucking answer, and I want it taught in every debate class in America.
Tommy, can you hear me?
Apparently not the part about the First Amendment. (Sorry. The Who made me do it.)
By Sunday, Marisa Kabas at The Handbasket had identified Tommy as Thomas Teepell of Detroit. Per LegiStorm records, he was operations director for Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri until February 2026. His father, Timmy Teepell, is the Republican strategist who ran Bobby Jindal’s 2015 presidential campaign and helped put Hawley in the Senate. Religion News Service has called the elder Teepell “arguably” the most powerful ally of Sean Feucht, the worship leader who has toured state capitols staging revivals.
Ew. Just…ewwww.
Nobody has shown that anyone paid Tommy or sent him. Teepell, Hawley’s office, and the El-Sayed campaign hadn’t commented when The Handbasket published.
So the guy who wanted a Muslim to promise he wouldn’t let religion run the government came out of a movement that wants religion to run the government, and when he was asked about it, he said so into a microphone.
His old boss already put it in writing
On July 8, 2024, Josh Hawley gave the keynote at the National Conservatism Conference, and his Senate office posted it under the title “The Christian Nationalism We Need.” I am not paraphrasing. That’s the goddamned press release.
“And some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation,” Hawley said. “And so I am.” Later in the speech: “Christian nationalism is not a threat to American democracy. Christian nationalism founded American democracy.”
Tommy’s “No” wasn’t a slip of the tongue. He was reciting his old office’s handbook.
And he has company. PRRI’s 2025 American Values Atlas found that 32% of Americans are Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers, including 56% of Republicans and 33% of Michiganders. One of the five statements PRRI used to measure it: “U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.”
That’s the exact thing Tommy refused to disavow, sitting right there as a survey item.
I grew up on Footloose, the 1984 movie about a town where one preacher’s grief became a city ordinance against dancing. That was supposed to be a cautionary tale, Senator Hawley, not a legislative agenda.
When a movement wants one religion’s doctrine written into everybody’s law, and its sons stand up at Senate town halls to demand loyalty oaths from Muslims, that movement is Christian nationalist fascism. They named the first two words themselves. I’m adding the third.
How we drag it into the light
El-Sayed handed us the playbook in under five minutes. Here’s my ask, for Election Day and long after:
Ask Tommy’s question back. Every Republican on every ballot gets it, word for word: “Do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country?” At town halls, at debates, in the replies under their campaign posts. Tommy said no. Make the rest of them pick a side on camera.
Look up the “concerned citizen.” Kabas had a viral heckler identified within a day, his Hawley job confirmed through LegiStorm. When someone with suspiciously good posture asks a suspiciously polished question, find out who they’ve worked for.
Quote them to their faces. Hawley’s office wrote its own headline. You don’t have to infer a damned thing; just read it out loud to anyone who still thinks “Christian nationalism” is a lefty slur.
Stand with every faith and with none. The Constitution El-Sayed promised to defend covers Tommy’s right to pray, my right to pray to nobody in particular, and a Muslim doctor’s right to run for the Senate. The dual-loyalty line has worked its way through Catholics and Jews and now Muslims, and it only dies if every one of us shows up when it’s someone else’s turn.
And vote. In Michigan, that means Abdul El-Sayed.
Abdul El-Sayed disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood without blinking and then promised to protect Tommy’s right to pray. Tommy wouldn’t promise to keep his prayers out of our laws.
That’s Christian nationalism. Josh Hawley put his name on the press release, and we beat it by making every one of them answer Tommy’s question out loud before they ever get near a ballot again.
Thanks for stopping by!
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My mom used to do this thing with my sister when we had to split the last piece of cake: one sibling cuts, the other chooses. This is my default response to anyone who suggests writing religious doctrine into U.S. laws ... one side gets to decide whether we do so or not, the other side gets to pick the religion. The only solution is already spelled out in the First Amendment.
He thought he was going to "Do you condemn Hamas?" him. Also goes to show how little this person knows about the MB in the context of Egypt, or alternatively, how little he thought the audience knew about it.