Al-Qaeda's Defense Witness Is Now the Democratic Nominee in New Jersey. Wrap Your Head Around That.

Adam Hamawy just won the Democratic primary for New Jersey's 12th Congressional District. The headline writes itself. A doctor. An Army combat veteran. A candidate endorsed by some of the most powerful names in progressive politics.

But there's another part of this story. The part that matters.

Before Hamawy was a congressional candidate, he was a defense witness for Omar Abdel Rahman — the Blind Sheikh, the Egyptian cleric who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six Americans and left more than a thousand others injured. He also volunteered with an organization the federal government has linked to al-Qaeda.

That man is now the Democratic nominee for Congress in New Jersey.

And the people who made it happen? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ilhan Omar. Rashida Tlaib. The Squad.

Think about what that actually means.

Congressional primaries don't win themselves. You need organization. You need money. You need powerful people willing to put their name on the line. Hamawy had all three — because the most influential faction inside the modern Democratic Party looked at his record, looked at his associations, and decided he was worth their full support. They knew. They endorsed him anyway.

This is not a bug in the Democratic Party. It is a feature.

The Blind Sheikh didn't just have bad ideas. He issued a religious edict calling for the murder of Americans on American soil. His followers tried to carry it out. Six people died in February 1993 when his network detonated a bomb in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. The intent was to topple both towers into the Hudson River and kill tens of thousands. They didn't succeed. They killed six Americans and injured over a thousand instead.

Adam Hamawy went to court — voluntarily, as a witness — to defend that man.

Now the explanations will come. They always do. Supporters will invoke the sanctity of legal defense. They'll foreground his Army service — which is real. He served as a combat surgeon. They'll talk about the district's demographics, the grassroots energy, the coalition he built. They will give this story every frame except the honest one.

Nobody will say the obvious: the Democratic Party's most powerful voices deliberately chose to elevate a man with these associations to represent them in the United States Congress.

Ask yourself why.

The answer isn't complicated. The Squad has been clear about who they are. They have been clear about their views on American power, on our allies, on the institutions they believe are structurally corrupt. They have been clear about who they want at the table. They looked at Hamawy's record and thought: yes. This is our guy.

The establishment media will manage this story. They'll lead with the Army service. They'll provide "context." They'll bury the Blind Sheikh twenty paragraphs in, beneath careful qualifications, and call anyone who leads with it a fearmongerer.

Here's the thing about fearmongering. It requires fear to be irrational.

Six Americans died in 1993. A thousand were injured. A cleric sitting in New Jersey had issued a decree calling for their deaths, and his network tried to carry it out. That cleric is the man Adam Hamawy chose to defend in court — not as appointed counsel with a duty of representation, but as a voluntary witness. He then went on to volunteer with an al-Qaeda-linked organization.

He is now the Democratic nominee for Congress.

The parties tell you who they are through their nominees. When Republicans nominate someone, the press treats it as a statement of the party's character — analyzed, contextualized, held up as the definitive evidence of everything wrong with the American right. Fine. Apply the standard everywhere.

What does it tell you about today's Democratic Party that AOC and Ilhan Omar looked at this district and decided Hamawy was the right choice? That his associations with a convicted terror mastermind's defense team were not disqualifying — that they were, apparently, beside the point?

The answer is that for the Squad, they are beside the point. That's what this result tells you.

The Democratic Party that existed a generation ago has been replaced — at least in its activist core — by something that no longer shares the same basic premises about American security, American allies, or who our enemies actually are.

Hamawy won. He'll appear on the ballot in November. He'll be competitive. And the people who made this possible will campaign for him, raise money for him, and call anyone who raises these facts a bigot.

Write it down. Don't let them bury it.

The Blind Sheikh wanted to bring down the World Trade Center. Adam Hamawy went to court to defend him. The Squad endorsed Hamawy for Congress. Those facts belong in the same sentence.

They always will.