\n<\/p>\n
When Kat Abughazaleh got laid off from her job as an extremism researcher and video producer at Media Matters last year, Elon Musk personally chimed in on X to celebrate her misfortune.<\/p>\n
\u201cKarma is real,\u201d Musk said<\/a>.<\/p>\n But as Abughazaleh said in a video on Monday announcing her campaign<\/a> for Congress, she\u2019s not afraid of standing up to Musk, especially as his influence on the federal government<\/a> escalates. <\/p>\n Instead, the 26-year-old has her eye on Illinois\u2019 Ninth District. The current representative, the 80-year-old Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was first elected to Congress before Abughazaleh was even born.<\/p>\n \u201cI have ideas that I want to push, and I have a big [social media] platform,\u201d Abughazaleh told TechCrunch. \u201cI felt I didn\u2019t want to wait around for someone to do something when I could do something right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Abughazaleh built her online audience through her work at Media Matters, where she became known for making videos decoding the rhetoric and inaccuracies of Fox News. But when Musk sued Media Matters<\/a> over an article about how X placed advertisements alongside pro-Nazi content, the mounting legal costs led the non-profit to lay off Abughazaleh and twelve others.<\/p>\n Now an independent social media creator, she has amassed over half a million followers across platforms for her progressive political content, with her biggest audience<\/a> (222,000 followers) on TikTok. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is absolutely no reason you shouldn\u2019t be able to afford housing, groceries, and healthcare with some money leftover,\u201d she said in her campaign announcement. \u201cFamilies should have free childcare, Social Security should be expanded, and our inalienable rights shouldn\u2019t be dependent on who\u2019s in power.\u201d<\/p>\n Abughazaleh didn\u2019t expect her run-ins with Musk to be relatable to the broader public. But over ten months after Musk celebrated her layoff, over 30,000 federal employees<\/a> now know the feeling of losing their jobs due to the billionaire\u2019s machinations.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people in journalism, especially on this disinformation beat, have been going through kind of a trial period, or a practice run, a dry run of what Trump and Musk have been doing to the rest of the country,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe knew what was going to happen\u2026 We are upset that we\u2019re right, but that also means that we have tools to fight back and know what\u2019s happening and know how to handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n While young people have historically leaned liberal, Gen Z voters shifted<\/a> more conservative in last year\u2019s election. Abughazaleh thinks this a product of poor outreach from Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the big problem Democrats have is their digital strategy, and people like me and people that are younger have a better understanding [of the internet],\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that we grew up with.\u201d<\/p>\n Some critics may think her age is a double-edged sword since she\u2019s young enough to have a lengthy online footprint. But Abughazaleh isn\u2019t worried. As she wrote<\/a> to one skeptic on X, \u201cI hope you enjoy my middle school One Direction fan blog and pictures of my cat.\u201d<\/p>\n In the era of Trump \u2014 the president literally owns a social media platform where he posts constantly \u2014 it\u2019s not so taboo anymore to show personality online.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a president that posts whatever comes to his mind at any time,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that we\u2019re fine with just like, having a presence from age 13.\u201d<\/p>\n Given her history with Musk, she isn\u2019t planning to center X in her digital strategy. Above all other social media platforms, Abughazaleh is prioritizing Bluesky, where she has around 154,000 followers<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Monday, for example, she posted her campaign announcement exclusively on Bluesky for an hour and a half before moving to other platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cI really like Bluesky\u2019s policies on a lot of of things,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re hiring more moderators, and a lot of other places aren\u2019t moderating, or are firing moderators.\u201d<\/p>\n Meta, for instance, overhauled its content moderation policies<\/a> in January, ending its third-party fact-checking program.<\/p>\nA TikToker turned political candidate<\/h2>\n