The post said he's starting his own party. The filing registers a PAC for funding other Democrats.

Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's U.S. Senate race on November 3, 2026, beating Republican Mike Rogers by roughly seven points; he takes his seat in January as the first Muslim elected to the Senate. Two days later, a post on X began recasting the win as a betrayal. Viewed some 968,000 times by the time FactCheckRadar reviewed it on November 6 — with versions across X, Facebook and Reddit drawing millions of views between them, in MEAWW's count — the post said El-Sayed “is now saying he won't work with Democrats and is starting his own party.” Its text ran: “He ran as a Democrat, used the primary process, and accepted Democratic support to get elected. Now that he has the office, he's walking away from the party that put him there. He needed the Democratic machine to win; he no longer needs it to hold power.” The post's history is accurate as far as it goes: he did win an August Democratic primary, against Representative Haley Stevens, with backing from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the UAW. Its two assertions are the new part, and they are the parts with documents attached.

The claim's raw material is a real filing. On Thursday, November 5, 2026, a Statement of Organization was submitted to the Federal Election Commission registering a new committee: Habibi PAC. “Habibi” is Arabic for “my beloved” — a word from El-Sayed's own campaign, worn on supporters' “Habibi for Abdul” shirts. Al Jazeera's report on the filing describes what the form registers: “a leadership political action committee sponsored by El-Sayed,” separate from his own campaign committee. IB Times, reporting the same filing, gives its direction: the committee will allow him “to raise money to support other Democratic candidates and political allies,” and could help him “build influence within the Democratic Party.”

What a leadership PAC is, is defined by the FEC itself. The Commission's guidance describes a leadership PAC as a committee “directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled by a candidate or an individual holding federal office,” one that is “not an authorized committee of the candidate or officeholder,” set up “to support candidates for various federal and nonfederal offices.” The same guidance states the boundary the post's claim crosses: “Leadership PACs do not include political party committees.” By the form's own terms, the filing cannot be the founding document of a party — the category excludes party committees outright. Nor can the money it raises fund the sponsor's own campaign: IB Times notes the committee “is designed to support other candidates and political organizations, rather than finance their own campaigns.” A new party would leave different paper — a party committee registers as a party committee. No such filing is attached to the claim, and none is cited by it.

The filing was also the most routine move of the week. Three other newly elected Democrats registered leadership PACs in the same days, in the Washington Sun's roundup of the filings: Arizona Representative-elect Amish Shah's “PACStreet Boy,” Iowa Senator-elect Josh Turek's “WheelPAC” and North Carolina Senator-elect Roy Cooper's “One NC PAC.” Issue One's Michael Beckel shared the wider count with the Sun: 509 of the 533 members of Congress already have a leadership PAC, and only two senators do not. A form filed by nearly every member of the incoming Congress is the document the post read as a secession.

Against the post's first assertion — that he won't work with Democrats — the record holds his own words, spoken the same day the filing went in. On CNN on Thursday, November 5, El-Sayed was asked about working with President Trump and Vice President Vance, whose campaign had spent the fall attacking him. The transcript carries the friction and the answer together: he called the pair “odious” in how they behave outside their official roles, in FactCheckRadar's summary of the exchange, and then said: “In his role as Vice President, if he's interested in advancing things that are gonna get money out of politics, put money in pockets, pass Medicare for all, I'm looking forward to working together. He is the Vice President. Donald Trump is the President. I'll work with anybody to serve the people of the state of Michigan. If they're serious about doing that, let's get some stuff done.” The question was about Republicans. The answer was “anybody.”

What he did with the rest of that week points the same way. Reporting on November 6 describes him naming Brenda Abdelall, a former Kamala Harris campaign aide, to help lead his Senate transition. The Guardian's November 6 profile describes him heading to Washington as “one of the most visible Democrats to have emerged from this election cycle,” and quotes a Democratic-aligned outside group leader predicting the Senate caucus “is going to give him some leadership position.” And on the second assertion, the party itself, the searches come back empty. MEAWW's check states it flatly: there are “no recent announcements, official statements, interviews, press conferences, or social media posts from the newly elected Senator about starting his own party.” FactCheckRadar found “no credible reporting that he is founding a separate party.” What would settle the question is a document of the kind parties actually file, or a sentence from the man himself. Neither exists in the record. The only new paper is the PAC registration, whose category forbids the use the post assigns it.

So the file sorts the way this desk sorts every file. Documented: an FEC filing on November 5, 2026 registering Habibi PAC as a leadership PAC sponsored by the senator-elect; the FEC's own definition of that category — a committee for supporting other candidates, expressly not a political party committee; three fellow freshmen filing the same form the same week, in a Congress where 509 of 533 members already have one; and a CNN interview, the same day, in which El-Sayed committed to working with “anybody” to serve Michigan. Not in the record: any announcement, statement, filing or post in which El-Sayed refuses to work with Democrats or starts a party — two fact-check desks searched for one and reported none. Claimed: by the post alone, which took the week's most routine filing and read a break with the party into the one document that registers money for staying in it. The claim is scored in The Count, on the same documents listed below. Read the receipts. Decide for yourself.