Every Democrat assigned to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee had a chance Wednesday to confront serious testimony about the Muslim Brotherhood’s alleged network inside the United States.
Not one of them showed up.
Sen. Ted Cruz opened the hearing by pointing to five empty Democratic chairs and asking why terrorism was not worth even a single member’s time.
The boycott was not accidental. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Alex Padilla and Peter Welch announced in advance that they would skip the hearing, branding it a political “creepshow.”
That left Cruz and the witnesses to put the evidence on the record without a single Democrat present to challenge it.
The official Senate-office account posted Cruz’s warning about the Muslim Brotherhood’s branches and the terrorism they have helped inspire:
The Muslim Brotherhood and its branches encourage, facilitate, and provide resources for conducting jihadist terrorism across the world.
They are committed to overthrowing the United States and the governments of our allies. I have been leading the fight in Congress to secure designations for my entire tenure in the Senate.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats are boycotting today’s hearing.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 5, 2026
Fox News reports that the hearing, titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America,” focused on testimony about terrorist financing, political alliances and the Brotherhood’s long-running influence operation in the United States.
Cruz called the empty Democratic side of the dais an embarrassment and a disservice to Americans harmed by Brotherhood-linked organizations. Democrats answered that the hearing scapegoated Muslim Americans and said their attention was on allegations of corruption against President Trump.
That response dodges the central distinction the hearing was built around.
Religious liberty protects peaceful Muslim Americans exactly as it protects Christians, Jews and every other American. It does not shield organizations that fund terrorism, support terrorist groups or organize revolutionary political activity.
Retired FBI Special Agent Lara Burns told the subcommittee that federal-court evidence documenting the network has been public for decades. She warned that terrorist organizations have been recast as “resistance movements” through narratives deliberately pushed into American public debate.
Burns helped investigate the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Muslim charity in the country. Five of its leaders were convicted in a Hamas-financing case after prosecutors laid out evidence about a U.S.-based Palestine Committee created to support Hamas.
The hearing also connected the national-security question to a political development that landed just hours earlier.
Michigan Democrats nominated Abdul El-Sayed for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. Cruz asked counterterrorism expert Kyle Shideler about El-Sayed’s political associations, Emgage, CAIR and family connections to organizations witnesses described as Brotherhood-linked.
Shideler then addressed what he called a “Red-Green Alliance” between Muslim Brotherhood-aligned organizations and the Democratic Socialists of America:
I asked counterterrorism expert Kyle Shideler whether the Muslim Brotherhood partners with the Democratic Socialists of America.
His answer: Yes.
I asked whether this “Red-Green Alliance” is united by hostility toward America.
His answer: Yes, and by a revolutionary objective of overthrowing the U.S. Constitution.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 5, 2026
El-Sayed has not been charged with a crime, and political or family associations alone are not evidence of a crime.
Senate testimony about organizations seeking influence inside America is precisely the kind of claim elected officials are supposed to test in public.
Democrats could have attended. They could have challenged the witnesses, disputed the evidence, defended the organizations named, or forced Cruz to support every allegation.
Instead, they left the chairs empty.
That decision became more glaring when Blumenthal acknowledged that the Muslim Brotherhood “appears to be a terrorist organization” while explaining why he would not attend. He said he intended to meet separately with Muslim community members concerned about the group.
So even one of the boycotting Democrats conceded that the organization at the center of the hearing presents a legitimate concern.
President Trump’s administration has already designated Muslim Brotherhood branches in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan as terrorist organizations. Cruz has pushed for broader action for years through repeated versions of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s office explains that President Trump’s strategy targets individual Brotherhood branches from the bottom up while federal officials evaluate additional organizations, beginning with branches in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan that the administration designated in January. Cruz has introduced versions of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act in 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2025, and his current bill has ten Senate cosponsors.
The designation process can freeze assets, restrict financial transactions and expose support networks without treating peaceful Muslim worship or political speech as a crime. Cruz says the objective is to disrupt financing, recruitment and material support for jihadist terrorism while preserving the constitutional line between protected belief and illegal conduct.
That is a serious policy debate. It involves evidence, constitutional protections and national security.
It deserved more than five empty chairs.
Cruz later summarized the testimony and the revolutionary objective witnesses said unites Islamist and communist organizations:
I held a hearing today in which experts established that the Muslim Brotherhood and DSA communists are united by a shared hatred of America, Israel, Western civilization, capitalism, and democracy, and a revolutionary objective to overthrow the U.S. Constitution.
That is why this issue is so critical. The Brotherhood’s American network has spent decades building influence inside our nonprofits, political organizations, universities, courts, and taxpayer-funded programs.
Here are my full remarks:
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 5, 2026
No political party should get to declare a national-security hearing illegitimate, refuse to participate, and then complain that only one side’s evidence was heard.
If Democrats believed the witnesses were wrong, the hearing room was the place to prove it.
They chose the hallway instead.
Americans can draw their own conclusion about why.
