When Kat Abughazaleh was fired from her work as a scholar of extremism and video manufacturer in media matters last year, Elon Mus personally tried to X to celebrate her misfortune.
“Karma is true,” Musk said.
But as Abughazaleh said in a video on Monday announcing her campaign for Congress, she is not afraid to stand in Musk, especially as his influence on the federal government escalates.
Instead, the 26-year-old has her attention in the ninth circle of Illinois. The current representative, 80-year-old Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was first elected to Congress before Abughazaleh was born.
“I have ideas I want to push, and I have a big platform (social media),” Abughazaleh Techcrunch told him on Monday. “I felt I didn’t want to wait for someone to do something when I could do something now.”
Abughazaleh built her audience online through her media work in Matters, where she became known for video making deciphering rhetoric and Fox News inaccuracies. But when Musk sued media issues over an article about how X put advertising along with pro-nazi content, the increasing legal costs made the non-profit to rest Abughazaleh and twelve others.
Now an independent social media creator, she has accumulated over half a million followers on platforms for her progressive political content, with her biggest audience (222,000 followers) in Tiktok.
“There is absolutely no reason that you should not be able to afford shelter, groceries and health care with some money left,” she said in her campaign announcement. “Families must be free of charge for children, social security must be expanded and our inalienable rights should not depend on who is in power.”
Abughazaleh did not expect to go with Musk to be relays for the wider public. But over ten months after Musk celebrated her vacation, over 30,000 federal workers now know the feeling of losing their jobs due to billionaire machinations.
“Many people in journalism, especially in this disinformation beat, have gone through some kind of test period, or a directed practice, a dry run of what Trump and Musk have made to the rest of the country,” she told Techcrunch.
“We knew what would happen … We are upset to be right, but it also means we have the means to fight again and know what is happening and know how to treat it.”
A tikoker returned political candidate
While young people have historically supported Liberal, General Z voters moved the most conservative in last year’s elections. Abughazaleh thinks this a product of poor approaching by Democrats.
“I think the big problem Democrats have is their digital strategy, and people like me and people who are younger have a better (internet) meaning,” she said. “Something’s something we grew up with.”
Some critics may think that her age is a two -edged sword as she is young enough to have a long trail online. But Abughazaleh does not worry. As she wrote a skeptic on X, “I hope you enjoy my high school one Direction Fan Blog and my cat pictures.”
In the Trump era – the president literally possesses a social media platform where he posts constantly – it’s not so taboo to show personality online.
“We have a president who posts everything that comes to mind at all times,” she said. “I think we’re good to the way, having a presence from the age of 13.”
Given her story with Musk, she is not planning to focus X on her digital strategy. Above all other social media platforms, Abughazaleh is giving priority to Bluesky, where it has about 154,000 followers.
On Monday, for example, she posted her campaign announcement exclusively in Bluesky for an hour and a half before being transferred to other platforms.
“I really like Bluesky’s policies for many things,” she said. “They are hiring more moderators, and many other places are not moderators, or the moderators are shooting.”
Meta, for example, fixed its content moderation policies in January, ending its third -party fact control program.
Bluesky has grown to over 33 million users, and even former President Barack Obama joined the platform over the weekend. But its population is still relatively small compared to long social giants like Instagram or X.
Regardless, Abughazaleh’s strategy has proven so far successful. In the first seven hours of her campaign, she collected $ 100,000 with an average contribution of $ 45.
“We’ve received more donations on social media from Bluesky so far from any other platform,” Abughazaleh Techcrunch told.
Abughazaleh is also enthusiastic about Bluesky open -sourced nature. She is trying to echo that transparency on her YouTube channel, where she plans to share videos documenting her campaign experience.
“I am connected to be really transparent how to run for office because I feel like it’s kind of this black hole that looks much harder than it should be,” she said.
Even if she does not win a place in the congress, she hopes her opening for this process will inspire other Gen Z candidates to run.
“If this campaign goes as planned, I would be the youngest woman elected to Congress,” she said. “But I think it would be good if we had another candidate who went inside and be even younger than me.”
