“Abdul El-Sayed supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.”

• El-Sayed is a self-described democratic socialist-aligned progressive (endorsed by Bernie Sanders in 2018 and again in his 2026 U.S. Senate run) whose public platform includes reallocating money from policing toward housing, mental health, addiction treatment and other public-health services — the core policy content of the 'defund' slogan.
• As a public health official and commentator during the 2020 George Floyd protests, El-Sayed publicly argued that policing should be treated as a public-health problem and that communities are over-invested in armed police and under-invested in social services; he has spoken and written sympathetically about the 'defund the police' movement rather than condemning it.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, El-Sayed — like many public-health officials and epidemiologists — supported decarceration measures (releasing medically vulnerable and low-level offenders from jails and prisons) to prevent outbreaks in congregate settings, statements that opponents have recycled as evidence he wants to 'empty prisons.'
• He has supported criminal-justice measures that shrink the incarcerated population: ending cash bail, ending mandatory minimums, decriminalizing drug possession and treating addiction as a health issue — a decarceral agenda that a critic could summarize, loosely, as 'emptying prisons.'

• 'Emptying prisons' is prison abolition; no verifiable El-Sayed statement calls for releasing all incarcerated people or abolishing prisons. His documented positions are reform/decarceration (bail reform, sentencing reform, drug decriminalization, reentry investment), which is categorically different.
• His published campaign platforms (2018 governor, 2026 Senate) do not contain a plank titled 'defund the police' or 'abolish prisons'; they emphasize investment in mental-health crisis response, violence interruption, community health workers and accountability/oversight — reallocation and reform framing, not elimination of police departments.
• El-Sayed has repeatedly framed the issue as 'invest in what actually keeps people safe' rather than zeroing out police budgets, and as a candidate he has pushed back on characterizations that he wants to abolish police departments.
• The claim is an unsourced compound assertion: it fuses a contested slogan-level position with a much more extreme second clause, so even if the first half is arguably defensible, the statement as written overstates his record.
• No mainstream fact-check (PolitiFact, Snopes, FactCheck.org) has verified either half of this claim as an accurate statement of his position; it circulates mainly as opposition messaging in the Michigan Senate primary/general race.

45/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Wikipediaother · 65 · Ballotpediaother · 78 · El-Sayed for Michigan (campaign)other · 45 · The Guardiannews · 80 · America Dissected (Crooked Media podcast hosted by El-Sayed)other · 50

• El-Sayed has publicly embraced the phrase/idea “defund the police” in 2020-era commentary/podcasting, framing it as shifting resources from policing toward public-health and community services rather than simply maintaining police budgets. Source: https://crooked.com/podcast/defund-the-police/
• El-Sayed’s criminal-justice positions have included decarceration-oriented reforms such as ending cash bail, reducing incarceration, and replacing punitive approaches with public-health/social-service approaches. That gives some basis for critics to characterize him as favoring fewer people in jail/prison. Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Abdul_El-Sayed

• The claim’s second half, “emptying prisons,” is materially stronger than the evidence I found. The available policy descriptions support reducing incarceration and changing sentencing/bail/drug policy, not literally emptying prisons or releasing all prisoners. Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Abdul_El-Sayed
• The statement also collapses an important distinction: “defund the police” as used by El-Sayed appears to mean reallocating some police funding to public-health/community services, not necessarily abolishing all policing. As written, the claim is therefore partly grounded but framed in a way likely to mislead readers toward a more extreme interpretation.

68/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Ballotpediaother · 72

• Abdul El-Sayed has publicly supported the principles behind the 'defund the police' movement, arguing that municipal budgets should reallocate funds from traditional law enforcement toward public health, mental health services, and community investment.
• As a public health expert, he is a strong advocate for 'decarceration' and ending mass incarceration, frequently arguing that the American prison system represents a profound public health crisis.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, El-Sayed vocally supported the strategic release of incarcerated individuals to prevent the rapid spread of the virus in confined, overcrowded facilities.
• His progressive 2018 Michigan gubernatorial platform prominently featured criminal justice reform, including proposals to eliminate cash bail and ban private prisons.

• The phrase 'emptying prisons' is a hyperbolic political exaggeration of his decarceration stance. Advocating for criminal justice reform, the end of mass incarceration, and the elimination of cash bail is not equivalent to unconditionally opening all prison doors or releasing violent offenders.
• El-Sayed's policy focus is on systemic public health reform—such as treating substance abuse and mental illness through healthcare avenues rather than the penal system—not the literal or unconditional abolition of all prisons.
• While he has defended the concept of defunding the police in the context of budget reallocation, political claims using this phrasing often intend to misleadingly imply a desire to completely abolish all law enforcement, which ignores his nuanced public health framing.

75/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Wikipediaother · 70

• In a June 2020 Detroit Public Radio interview, El-Sayed said, “We do need to defund the police,” explaining that he meant disinvesting in the means of incarcerating people or killing them in the streets and investing more in education, community empowerment, and anti-poverty programs. [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/07/politics/kfile-abdul-el-sayed-michigan-senate-defund-police-fact-check)
• CNN reported that El-Sayed repeatedly endorsed redirecting police funding toward social services and had deleted earlier social-media posts supporting the “defund” concept. [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/10/politics/kfile-abdul-el-sayed-deleted-tweets-defund-the-police)
• BridgeMichigan reported that El-Sayed repeatedly expressed support for defunding the police after George Floyd’s killing, including the same 2020 interview formulation. [BridgeMichigan](https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/fact-check-abdul-el-sayed-record-on-defund-the-police-republican-meddling/)

• The claim combines two separate propositions. Available reporting supports that El-Sayed used and endorsed a definition of “defund the police” involving reduced investment in policing and incarceration, but it does not establish that he advocated literally emptying prisons. [PolitiFact](https://politifact.com/factchecks/2026/sep/28/mike-rogers/mostly-false-mike-rogers-says-abdul-el-sayed-supports-defunding-police-and-emptying-prisons/)
• PolitiFact rated the broader statement “mostly false,” finding evidence for his past support of defunding or redirecting police resources but no evidence that he called for emptying or abolishing prisons. [PolitiFact](https://politifact.com/factchecks/2026/sep/28/mike-rogers/mostly-false-mike-rogers-says-abdul-el-sayed-supports-defunding-police-and-emptying-prisons/)
• El-Sayed later denied that he had called for defunding the police, saying his goal was to explain the movement’s meaning; this is inconsistent with his documented 2020 wording but is evidence against treating the statement as an unqualified description of his current position. [BridgeMichigan](https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/fact-check-abdul-el-sayed-record-on-defund-the-police-republican-meddling/)

91/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

PolitiFactfactcheck · 96 · CNNnews · 88 · CNNnews · 88 · BridgeMichigannews · 82

• El-Sayed is a progressive Democrat who aligned with 2020 racial-justice protests and has described policing and incarceration as public-health failures that require large-scale reallocation of resources away from traditional law enforcement.
• He has repeatedly called for shrinking mass incarceration, ending cash bail, and shifting money from prisons and police toward community services, language that overlaps with 'defund' rhetoric used by many on the left at the time.

• No primary statement, interview, or campaign document shows El-Sayed advocating that prisons be emptied or the prison system abolished; his criminal-justice positions are reformist (reduce population, end cash bail, treat addiction as health) rather than abolitionist.
• 'Defund the police' in his usage, when it appears, referred to budget reallocation and 'reimagining public safety,' not zeroing out police departments or eliminating law enforcement. The compound claim therefore overstates both halves.
• His public record and campaigns have centered on health care, environmental justice, and epidemiology, not a platform of police or prison abolition.

58/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Wikipediaother · 72 · Ballotpediaother · 78