Mike Rogers is spending the run-up to the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 praising the sacrifice of first responders, including a Monroe firefighter who developed cancer after rushing to Ground Zero.
What Rogers failed to mention is that when Congress tried to guarantee medical care for responders sickened by the attacks, he warned the program could threaten the nation’s finances and voted against the legislation twice.
On Wednesday, Rogers posted a video about Capt. David Nadeau, a longtime member of the Monroe Charter Township Fire Department who drove from Monroe to Ground Zero on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001.
“As a result of his heroism, 25 years later — he has cancer,” Rogers wrote. “Nobody deserves this.”
But when Rogers was a member of Congress in 2010, he opposed legislation designed specifically to provide health care to people suffering illnesses from their exposure to the toxic aftermath of the attacks.
During a House Energy and Commerce Committee debate that year, Rogers objected to guaranteeing the health program.
“By making this a new mandatory program, you jeopardize the financial health of the United States of America,” Rogers said.
And he followed through.
On July 29, 2010, Rogers voted against the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which would have created a program to provide medical services and health monitoring to first responders and others suffering from illnesses tied to the attacks. It also would have reopened the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.
The bill received 255 votes but failed because it was brought up under a procedure requiring a two-thirds majority. House records show Rogers voted no.
When the bill returned for final passage on Sept. 29, Rogers voted against it again. This time it passed 268-160.
After the Senate amended the legislation in December, the House voted once more to send it to President Barack Obama. Rogers didn’t vote. The House approved the measure 206-60, and Obama signed it into law on Jan. 2, 2011.
The research on Rogers’ record was provided to Metro Times by American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic-aligned opposition research group. Metro Times independently verified the votes and Rogers’ remarks.
Many of the Republicans who voted against the legislation at the time said they supported helping sick first responders but objected to the cost, structure, and tax provisions used to finance the program. But Rogers was more explicit, saying a guaranteed health care program for victims and survivors could jeopardize the financial health of the country.
But Rogers hasn’t expressed those same concerns over President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, which has cost taxpayers more than $37.5 billion since it began Feb. 28, according to the Associated Press. By contrast, the World Trade Center Health Program, which has served nearly 155,000 responders and survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks, cost $4.2 billion over 10 years.
Rogers’ campaign declined to comment on his opposition to the legislation.
His position is especially striking because he has made Sept. 11 a political weapon in his race against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim.
The day after El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, Rogers invoked his past chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee and claimed his opponent “believes America deserved 9/11.”
He doesn’t.
The remark Rogers attributed to El-Sayed actually came from Hasan Piker, a left-wing political streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed. Piker made the comment during a 2019 livestream, then walked it back and apologized.
El-Sayed has repeatedly said Piker doesn’t speak for him and that he disagrees with some of the streamer’s statements, including his notorious 2019 remark that “America deserved 9/11.”
He has also repeatedly denounced the statement. Asked about it in April, he said, “Of course I don’t think 9/11 was justified.” He later called Piker’s remark “a dumb statement” and said plainly, “America didn’t deserve 9/11.”
FactCheck.org investigated Rogers’ allegation and concluded it was false, noting that his campaign produced no evidence that El-Sayed ever expressed such a belief.
In a statement to Metro Times, Rogers’ campaign once again sought to shift the focus from the false claim to El-Sayed’s association with Piker.
“Any attempt to distract from Abdul making Hasan the centerpiece of his campaign is incredibly disrespectful to the thousands of Americans who lost their lives that day,” Rogers’ campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet told Metro Times on Thursday.
Brouillet also falsely called Piker the “unofficial spokesman for Abdul’s campaign.”
Rogers has also accused El-Sayed of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood without evidence and falsely claimed on Fox News that the Democrat wanted to eliminate “our fireworks, football, the Fourth of July.” El-Sayed had actually raised concerns about injuries, pollution, frightened animals, and the effect of fireworks on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Those attacks have unfolded amid a much larger wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric directed at El-Sayed, a Michigan-born physician, epidemiologist, and former Detroit and Wayne County health director who could become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.
Republican senators have called El-Sayed a “terrorist,” a “radical Islamist,” and a “jihadist sympathizer,” while questioning his allegiance to the United States. An analysis by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found that anti-Muslim posts targeting El-Sayed surged twentyfold following his primary victory.
Rogers’ own family has contributed to the harmful rhetoric.
An Instagram account that appears to belong to his wife, Kristi Rogers, reposted a video portraying Muslims as resistant to assimilation and suggesting that many view terrorism as legitimate resistance. The video focused on Dearborn, showed Arabic-language signs inside a Home Depot, and warned that immigration was eroding American culture.
Then, on Aug. 20, Rogers attended a fundraiser at the Bloomfield Hills home of former Republican state Sen. Marty Knollenberg, who drew national criticism in 2015 after describing economically disadvantaged and nonwhite students as contributors to school failure and declaring, “We can’t make an African American white.”
Knollenberg later apologized and said he was not racist.
When asked about the campaign’s focus on Islam, Brouillet claimed the Trump-endorsed Republican opposes Islamophobic statements.
“Mike Rogers condemns hate in all forms, including against the Muslim community,” she said.
A longer record of contradictions
The Sept. 11 votes add to a series of instances in which Rogers’ record has clashed with the image he is trying to sell to voters.
Rogers recently called for a one-year moratorium on new data centers in Michigan after spending months encouraging the state to compete aggressively for them, endorsing faster permitting for artificial intelligence infrastructure, and downplaying concerns about water consumption. The reversal follows fierce opposition from Republicans and Democrats to the explosive growth of massive data centers.
Rogers has campaigned as a champion of affordable housing and deregulation, but Metro Times found that during his years in the Michigan Legislature, Rogers pushed to weaken building safeguards and energy standards while his family had financial ties to the construction industry.
Rogers has also claimed he supports rooting out government “waste, fraud and abuse” while his campaign and allied political committees accepted more than $234,000 from three donors connected to fraud cases, including a businessman whose company paid $9 million to resolve allegations involving a taxpayer-funded pandemic loan.
Rogers has made his national security credentials a central part of his campaign after spending years in the private sector advising and investing in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence companies, including firms that have done business with federal agencies. Those ties could present conflicts if Rogers returns to Washington and helps oversee industries in which he and his wife have had financial interests.
Rogers has also tried to bolster his working-class credentials by describing himself as a former autoworker and claiming he would be the first former autoworker from Michigan elected to the U.S. Senate. That claim was false. At least two former Michigan senators worked on auto assembly lines before serving in Washington.
And his record on social issues includes votes against marriage equality and federal workplace protections for LGBTQ+ people, and against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. His campaign has also enlisted activists and volunteers who have promoted false election claims, opposed LGBTQ+ rights, defended a leaked Young Republicans group chat filled with Hitler praise and racial slurs, or posted misogynistic comments about women in politics.
The stakes are bigger than Michigan.
Rogers and El-Sayed are competing for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control of the chamber, a difficult task on a map dominated by states President Trump carried in 2024. Still, what once looked like a relatively comfortable Republican advantage has tightened considerably, with the Associated Press describing the fight for Senate control this week as wide open.
The Michigan race is essentially a toss-up.
A Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll conducted by the Glengariff Group found Rogers at 45.8% and El-Sayed at 44.4%, a 1.4-point difference within the poll’s 4-point margin of error. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted over roughly the same period found the opposite result, with El-Sayed at 47% and Rogers at 44%. That poll had a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.
https://www.metrotimes.com/news/before-mike-rogers-invoked-9-11-against-abdul-el-sayed-he-voted-against-care-for-sick-responders/