US Vice President JD Vance sharply criticised Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed over past remarks linking criticism of Sharia law to white supremacy, using the comments to argue that the Democratic Party has drifted away from working-class voters. Vance's intervention forms part of a broader Republican effort to paint the Democratic Party as increasingly dominated by its progressive wing ahead of the midterm elections, with the vice president framing the shift as a break from the party's traditional working-class base.

Vance described the modern Democratic Party as a "party of graduate students" and declared "that's not my grandpa's Democratic Party" while singling out El-Sayed's Sharia comments. In a related rapid-fire TikTok video, he also took aim at other prominent progressive and Democratic figures, including New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, as part of a wider critique of the party's leftward direction.