May 18, 2025
Kat Abughazaleh for GQ
📸: Daniel Stewart
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Kat Abughazaleh for GQ
📸: Daniel Stewart
The progressive TikTok star is running for Congress in a Democratic district that hasn’t had a competitive primary in decades.
Tessa Stuart at Rolling Stone:
Illinois 9th District has only been represented by two people since 1965, and there hasn’t been a competitive primary since the race Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, the district’s current representative, won in November 1998. “I wouldn’t be born for another four months,” deadpans Kat Abughazaleh, the TikTok-famous political commentator now running to represent the district. Abughazaleh is transparent about the fact that she is not what anyone thinks of as shoe-in for Congress: a 26-year-old narcoleptic freelance social media creator who doesn’t live in the district and has only lived in the state for less than a year, challenging a Democratic Party leader who has represented this part of Illinois for more than a quarter of a century. That’s kind of the point: She is a normal person — with a rental lease she can’t break before it’s up, financial pressure bearing down on her, and prescription medication that she needs to function properly and that has been challenging to obtain since Elon Musk went after her employer, and she and many of her colleagues were laid off. And when she looks to Congress, not only does she not see enough people who are concerned with the practical day-to-day challenges she and so many of the people she knows are struggling with — the costs of housing, health care, groceries, transportation — she also doesn’t see anyone confronting with any level of seriousness the peril of our current moment, two months into Donald Trump’s second term. “We are in an emergency,” Abughazaleh says. “Right now, the answer to authoritarianism isn’t to be quiet. It’s not matching pink outfits at a state address. It’s not throwing trans people under the bus. It’s not refusing to look at the party at all and see where it could be better. The answer is to very publicly, very loudly, very boldly, stand up. The only way to fight fascism, and this has been proven over and over and over again, is loudly, proudly, and every single day.”
Abughazaleh may be young, but she is a wildly successful, incisive communicator who is stepping up at a time when it is clear that the party is in desperate need of new messengers. And she is popular on the social media platforms where sitting Democrats’ posts are continually flopping, ridiculed for their tone deafness. The day after the 2024 presidential election, Abughazaleh thought she would wake up with an irrepressible urge to flee the country. Instead, she says, it was the opposite: “I woke up and thought, ‘You’re gonna have to drag me out by my dead body’ … I just got really angry, and I thought about running at that moment, but I was like, ‘No, I’m sure Democrats will do something,’ and then they haven’t — and it’s just been not only disappointing, but scary to watch.” Schakowsky, currently representing the district, “has had a pretty great track record on her voting,” Abughazaleh admits. But she is also 80 years old, and hasn’t had a competitive primary in decades. “She’s been a good congresswoman, but I want to be better.”
[...] Abughazaleh was born in Texas and raised as a Republican — really Republican. Her maternal grandmother, Taffy Goldsmith, was such a legendary GOP operative that when she died, the flag at Texas state capitol was flown at half mast. (Abughazaleh inherited the mink coat Goldsmith wore to Nixon’s inauguration.) Her father is a Palestinian immigrant. Both her parents, she says, were Reagan Republicans whose relationship with the party has ruptured since Trump took it over. Abughazaleh’s own political views took shape at college in Washington, D.C. She studied at George Washington University, and went to work at Media Matters after graduation, where she was employed until 2024, after Musk sued the organization, and she and 11 others got laid off. The day the news broke, Musk tweeted “Karma is real” and his coterie of sycophants, including Libs of TikTok, piled on. Abughazaleh says it was one of the worst days of her life. The saga didn’t end there, either — Abughazaleh was deposed as part of Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters, questioned on video for seven hours. (The lawsuit is ongoing.) After she was laid off from Media Matters, Abughazaleh did freelance video production with Mother Jones and Zeteo, but she is stepping away from work with both outlets during her campaign. “It’s terrifying… I don’t have health insurance, I have no income coming in, and am using GoodRx like my life depends on it — because it kind of does.”
Progressive social media influencer and former MMFA journalist Kat Abughazaleh (Kat Abu) is running for a US House seat in #IL09, currently occupied by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D).
Has everyone on the internet decided to stop taking things in good faith? I'm sorry I'm fucking pointing out this new candidate for congress has fucking zero connection to the district and that's a big red flag. Fucking politics at some point became: Republicans do something, but fucking everyone turns around and blames the Democrats. I'm sorry, but the fucking people breaking the government RIGHT NOW in NEW AND UNPRECEDENTED WAYS are fucking REPUBLICANS! We need to flip seats, and primary smartly! And PART OF THAT IS TO LIVE IN YOUR FUCKING DISTRICT! ITS NOT THAT FUCKING HARD! Or to have lived in the state for a full fucking year.
Also, I'll fucking say it, I don't trust she's fully given up conservative values. She found a way to watch Fox at work, after coming from a very republican family. I don't trust anyone who can raise $200k on a dime. Fucking no way.
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When so many of these people are unqualified, with very little to no experience in the field they're supposed to lead, I start wondering if these are the qualifications in the first place. Because all of this is starting to look like a feature rather than a bug.