When Kat Abughazaleh acquired laid off from her job as an extremism researcher and video producer at Media Issues final 12 months, Elon Musk personally chimed in on X to have a good time her misfortune.

“Karma is actual,” Musk said.

However as Abughazaleh mentioned in a video on Monday saying her campaign for Congress, she’s not afraid of standing as much as Musk, particularly as his influence on the federal government escalates.

As an alternative, the 26-year-old has her eye on Illinois’ Ninth District. The present consultant, the 80-year-old Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was first elected to Congress earlier than Abughazaleh was even born.

“I’ve concepts that I need to push, and I’ve an enormous [social media] platform,” Abughazaleh instructed TechCrunch. “I felt I didn’t need to wait round for somebody to do one thing after I might do one thing proper now.”

Abughazaleh constructed her on-line viewers via her work at Media Issues, the place she grew to become identified for making movies decoding the rhetoric and inaccuracies of Fox Information. However when Musk sued Media Matters over an article about how X positioned ads alongside pro-Nazi content material, the mounting authorized prices led the non-profit to put off Abughazaleh and twelve others.

Now an impartial social media creator, she has amassed over half 1,000,000 followers throughout platforms for her progressive political content material, with her biggest audience (222,000 followers) on TikTok.

“There may be completely no cause you shouldn’t have the ability to afford housing, groceries, and healthcare with some cash leftover,” she mentioned in her marketing campaign announcement. “Households ought to have free childcare, Social Safety needs to be expanded, and our inalienable rights shouldn’t be depending on who’s in energy.”

Abughazaleh didn’t anticipate her run-ins with Musk to be relatable to the broader public. However over ten months after Musk celebrated her layoff, over 30,000 federal employees now know the sensation of shedding their jobs because of the billionaire’s machinations.

“Lots of people in journalism, particularly on this disinformation beat, have been going via type of a trial interval, or a observe run, a dry run of what Trump and Musk have been doing to the remainder of the nation,” she mentioned.

“We knew what was going to occur… We’re upset that we’re proper, however that additionally signifies that we’ve got instruments to combat again and know what’s occurring and know deal with it.”

A TikToker turned political candidate

Whereas younger folks have traditionally leaned liberal, Gen Z voters shifted extra conservative in final 12 months’s election. Abughazaleh thinks this a product of poor outreach from Democrats.

“I believe the massive drawback Democrats have is their digital technique, and folks like me and folks which might be youthful have a greater understanding [of the internet],” she mentioned. “It’s one thing that we grew up with.”

Some critics might imagine her age is a double-edged sword since she’s younger sufficient to have a prolonged on-line footprint. However Abughazaleh isn’t fearful. As she wrote to at least one skeptic on X, “I hope you get pleasure from my center college One Course fan weblog and photos of my cat.”

Within the period of Trump — the president actually owns a social media platform the place he posts consistently — it’s not so taboo anymore to point out persona on-line.

“We’ve got a president that posts no matter involves his thoughts at any time,” she mentioned. “I believe that we’re effective with identical to, having a presence from age 13.”

Given her historical past with Musk, she isn’t planning to middle X in her digital technique. Above all different social media platforms, Abughazaleh is prioritizing Bluesky, the place she has round 154,000 followers.

On Monday, for instance, she posted her marketing campaign announcement solely on Bluesky for an hour and a half earlier than shifting to different platforms.

“I actually like Bluesky’s insurance policies on plenty of of issues,” she mentioned. “They’re hiring extra moderators, and plenty of different locations aren’t moderating, or are firing moderators.”

Meta, for example, overhauled its content moderation policies in January, ending its third-party fact-checking program.

Bluesky has grown to over 33 million customers, and even former president Barack Obama joined the platform over the weekend. However its inhabitants continues to be comparatively small in comparison with longstanding social giants like Instagram or X.

Regardless, Abughazaleh’s technique has confirmed profitable so far. Within the first seven hours of her marketing campaign, she raised $100,000 with a median contribution of $45.

“We’ve gotten probably the most donations on social media from Bluesky to date out of some other platform,” Abughazaleh instructed TechCrunch.

Abughazaleh can be enthusiastic concerning the open supply nature of Bluesky. She’s making an attempt to echo that transparency on her YouTube channel, the place she plans to share movies documenting her marketing campaign expertise.

“I’m tying to be actually clear about run for workplace, as a result of I really feel prefer it’s type of this black gap that appears much more tough than it needs to be,” she mentioned.

Even when she doesn’t win a seat in Congress, she hopes that her openness about this course of will encourage different gen Z candidates to run.

“If this marketing campaign goes as deliberate, I’d be the youngest lady elected to Congress,” she mentioned. “However I believe it might be cool if we had one other candidate that got here in and was even youthful than me.”