Julian Epstein Defects to GOP to Support Mike Rogers

By Tammy-Jo Pritchett · August 9, 2026

Opinion

Let me tell you something. When a man who spent his entire career inside the Democratic machine, who was chief counsel for the House Judiciary Democrats, who ran the House Oversight Committee for them, when THAT man picks up his ball and goes home and writes a whole essay in the New York Post about why he’s voting Republican this fall, you don’t shrug and scroll past. You sit up and pay attention. Because Julian Epstein didn’t drift away from his party over a disagreement about tax rates. He ran out of the building like it was on fire.

And it is.

Michigan Democrats just nominated Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate. This is a man who wants to abolish ICE, end all unconditional military aid to Israel, and bring Medicare for All to your kitchen table. His campaign surrogate is a streamer named Hasan Piker who blamed America for 9/11, praised Hamas after October 7, and cites Mao Zedong as an inspiration. Mao. The man who starved and slaughtered millions of his own people. That’s who El-Sayed’s people are putting in front of cameras.

Epstein put it plainly. He said his party isn’t coddling “Scandinavian-style socialists” anymore. They’re climbing into bed with a nihilistic ideology that wants to eliminate prisons, policing, borders, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and free markets. A worldview, he wrote, that “aligns with genocidal jihadist movements like Hamas.”

Now, I’m a mom of four. I don’t have a law degree from Columbia. But I have eyes. And what I see is a major political party that looked at a man whose surrogate praises terrorists and said, “Yep, that’s our guy.” Epstein noted that El-Sayed won his primary with the backing of just 12.5% of Michigan’s registered voters, mostly white college graduates, while underperforming in Black, Brown, and working-class districts. So the radical professional class picked the nominee, and the regular people who have to live with the consequences got outvoted.

Sound familiar? It should. Because that’s exactly how it works in your school district too. A handful of people with too much time and too many degrees show up to the meetings, and suddenly your kid’s curriculum looks like it was designed in a faculty lounge.

Epstein saved his sharpest knife for Chuck Schumer. He called him “weak” and “timid,” hiding behind the phrase “we are a big-tent party” while abdicating every shred of moral responsibility. And he’s right. Schumer isn’t leading. He’s managing the decline and hoping nobody notices the smell.

Epstein made one exception: John Fetterman. He said Fetterman, along with Josh Gottheimer and James Carville, seems to understand what’s coming. A civil war inside the party. Mass defections in November. Democrats across the country forced to either distance themselves from El-Sayed or own him, and every time they open their mouths, another voter gets a permission slip to leave.

Here’s what I keep coming back to. Epstein said he gave his first-ever donation to a Republican this week. Mike Rogers, the GOP Senate nominee in Michigan. A former congressman. A man who, as Epstein tells it, will hang El-Sayed’s record around the Democratic Party’s neck like a millstone.

Epstein also pointed out something that every parent in America already feels in their bones. He said the more we spend on the welfare state, the worse the outcomes. He cited New York City spending over $40,000 per student in public schools where kids can’t read or do math. Forty thousand dollars. Per child. And the answer from the Democratic Socialists is always the same: spend more, do less, blame the system.

I’ve been doing my own research for years now. I’ve watched the school board meetings. I’ve read the curricula. I’ve talked to other moms in the group chat who are seeing the same things I am. And what Julian Epstein just did is what a lot of us figured out a long time ago. The party that used to claim it was for working families is now the party of open borders, no police, no prisons, and surrogates who think America had 9/11 coming.

Epstein quoted JFK: “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” Michigan Democrats just climbed on the tiger. And the rest of us are supposed to pretend we can’t see the teeth.

Well, I can see the teeth. And so can every mom I know.

Sources