It’s not just a story about the war in the Middle East. It goes beyond the desire to punish Biden and now Harris. It is about much more than the war.
In places like Dearborn or Hamtramck, it doesn’t take long to discover that a dynamic shift in views is taking place and that – as is so often the case – is about a perceived sense of abandonment but here with a particular twist.
Image: A flag depicting the attempted assassination of Trump at a Michigan home
My journey began at a local high school. Picture the place you’d imagine in the movies and that’s it.
Red brick outside, rows of lockers inside. The yellow buses, the Stars and Stripes and the pledge of allegiance.
It is the perfect reflection of America but with a diversity that defies the stereotypes, and views that may do too.
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The Frontier International Academy is in the heart of Hamtramck, the only Muslim-majority city in America and the students reflect the demographic.
In between the “recess” game of American Football, the first-time voters and second-generation immigrants talk politics.
“We don’t know what she is going to provide, we don’t know what she is going to do. So I think it’s just a safer bet to go for Donald Trump,” 18-year-old Jubran Ali tells me.
Image: Jubran Ali, 18, who thinks Trump is a ‘safer bet’ than Harris
“I’m actually asking people around me to see what they’re voting, and most people are voting for Donald Trump,” Edris Alhady, also 18, says.
Michigan is one of the seven swing states in this country where the White House will be won or lost.
Shifts to the left or the right among small margins of voters will determine which way the country goes.
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Have bookies decided on next US president?
In 2016, Trump was the first Republican to win Michigan since 1988. He beat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 11,000 votes.
Four years later, in 2020, Joe Biden won the state by only 154,188 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast – a 2.8% margin of victory.
Michigan has the highest number of Arab-Americans in America. They represent a key voting bloc – one which the Democratic Party may have taken for granted.
Amer Ghalib is the mayor of Hamtramck. He is member of the Democratic Party and his office reflects his political roots- a photo of him with President Joe Biden sits prominently on his desk.
But something profound has happened since that snap was taken.
On Friday Mayor Ghalib welcomed Donald Trump to the city – a visit which came weeks after he endorsed the former president.
Image: Mayor Amer Ghalib, a Democrat who has endorsed the former president
“Why Trump?” I asked.
“Well… it’s a combination of two things. Disappointment and hope. Disappointment that the current administration and how they are handling things locally or internationally, and hope that the new administration, led by Trump, will do something different.”
Our conversation was revealing in many ways. I’d come to this city expecting to hear anger about American policy in the Middle East. After all, the people here have deep existing ties to the region.
But only now was it obvious that the Arab-American shift right is also a consequence of the gradual leftward drift by the Democrats.
It’s about the real war in the Middle East, but it’s about culture wars too.
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Last year an attempt to fly a pride flag on city property was blocked by the mayor and his team.
“There is so much aggression and attempts to enforce certain values on the majority of this community,” Mayor Ghalib said, “…on schools, on public properties, city hall and the Democratic Party is not doing anything to prevent that shift in dynamics.”
I asked if anyone from Kamala Harris’s team had been in touch about his concerns before or since his endorsement of Trump.”No. No,” he said.
“Does that surprise you?”
“They think I’m a fake Democrat. All my life here I voted Democrat.”
Trump’s visit to the city is the culmination of groundwork by members of Team Trump for months, an indication of how important they see this state and this demographic.
So what about Trump’s pro-Israel stance? As he arrived in Detroit last week he praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anything worse than what’s happening now,” the mayor said.
It’s a sentiment echoed here. The idea that no one can be worse than the Democrats on Israel-Gaza, and that domestically – on social issues and the economy – Trump would be better for this community.
Drive west out of Hamtramck through the Detroit suburbs and you reach Dearborn.
About half the population here is Arab-American, most from Lebanon. Over coffee with local environmental activist Samraa Luqman, a conversation that should alarm the Harris campaign.
Image: Samraa Luqman, who voted for Clinton in 2016 and wrote in Sanders’s name in 2020
She tells me that she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, she wrote Bernie Sanders’s name onto the ballot in 2020. And this year?
“I’m voting for Trump,” Samraa says. “Why?” I ask.
“The genocide. Policy-wise, I don’t like any of the Republican policies, to be frank, at all… I will still vote for him because one thing I hate more than all those other policies is genocide… And that’s the sentiment of an entire community.”
I asked what made her think Trump would be any better for the Arab cause.
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“Trump is a wild card… will he do exactly what Kamala does or worse or better? But I know for sure what the Democrats are doing and they’re intending to continue it.”
This journey through communities that feel now forgotten and unheard ends for me where it started for them – at Detroit’s old Ford factory which drew so many Middle Eastern immigrants here generations ago.
There I met the local Yemeni-American Democratic Party caucus leader with a startling conclusion.
“I think the damage is great. I assure you that it’s not just about Michigan. This is a nationwide phenomena,” he said.
“I am very worried,” Abdulhakim Alsadeh said.
Image: Abdulhakim Alsadeh
I ask him if he thinks the Democratic Party has messed up this campaign.
“Yes, I believe so. I really do,” he said. “The Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, reached out to the Yemeni-American community. They sat with him. They talked with him.”
“Everybody is concerned,” he said.
It won’t take many to swing this state and streamline the path to the White House.
Here, through all the contradictions, many are swinging to Trump.
Freelance producer Ahmed Baider contributed to this report
A large-scale Russian attack through the night into Sunday injured at least 11 in Kyiv and killed three people in towns surrounding the capital.
There were attacks elsewhere as well, including drone strikes in Mykolaiv, where a residential building was hit.
Image: An apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Mykolaiv. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
‘Massive’ attack
In Kyiv, the city’s administration warned “the night will be difficult”, as people were urged to remain in shelters.
The city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described it as a “massive” attack.
He said: “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working. The capital is under attack by enemy UAVs. Do not neglect your safety! Stay in shelters!”
It came after at least 15 people were injured in attacks the night prior.
Russia claimed it also faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, and that it intercepted and destroyed around 100 of them near Moscow and across Russia’s central and southern regions.
Image: A municipality worker cleans up after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
Russia ‘dragging out the war’
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued a prisoner exchange, marking a rare moment of cooperation in the war.
Amid the most recent attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for sanctions on Russia.
Russia “fills each day with horror and murder” and is “simply dragging out the war”, he said.
Image: A resident looks at an apartment building that was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Pic: Reuters
“All of this demands a response – a strong response from the United States, from Europe, and from everyone in the world who wants this war to end,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
Every day “gives new grounds for sanctions against Russia”, he said, and each day without pressure proves the “war will continue”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is ready for “any form of diplomacy that delivers real results”.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Image: Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Image: Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Image: Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Image: Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
Image: A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
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Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
Image: A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Image: Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.