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Kat Abughazaleh has a clear goal: Get into Congress, do some good, “get some fascists out,” and then go back home to hang out with her cat.
And the road to next year’s Democratic primary election for Illinois’ 9th District has been eventful for her, to say the least.
The 26-year-old candidate sat down virtually with Daily Kos on Thursday. Abughazaleh spoke from a room plastered with campaign posters and one Smokey Bear graphic that reads, “Remember, only you can prevent fascism.”
Shortly before Daily Kos’ interview, Abughazaleh stood with protesters at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois. Residents have clashed with agents outside the facility, with members of the press and peaceful protesters dodging pepper balls and being manhandled.
Despite being carried and thrown to the ground by a masked ICE agent in September—an assault which, according to Abughazaleh, happened three separate times—she was still showing up to peacefully protest.
The disturbing video of Abughazaleh’s assault ultimately went viral, but she told Daily Kos that accruing views was never the main goal.
“I am not going to these protests to go viral,” she said.
“I’m going because what is happening at the Broadview ICE facility is atrocious. It is a processing facility. People are not supposed to be held there for more than 12 hours at a time, but they’re being held for days or weeks at a time, without beds, without hot meals, without access to hygienic facilities,” she continued.
Abughazaleh has amassed supporters over the years because of her fearless approach to politics. Prior to her run for Congress, she worked for watchdog group Media Matters for America. And the journalist-turned-politician, like many young people in the U.S., believes that both legacy media and older elected officials are using an “old playbook.”
“It’s 2025, and if you aren’t willing to have courage, even when you’re scared, if you’re not willing to set an example through your actions, not just words, not just strongly worded letters, then you are not ready to represent the people in this moment,” she said.
Daily Kos caught up with the Gen-Zer to hear what she’s been up to since announcing her run six months ago, the failures of legacy media on reporting extremism, and much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Daily Kos: It’s been six months since you announced your campaign. Let’s do a little check-in here. How are things going?
Abughazaleh: Things have been going extremely well, far exceeding my expectations, and I really believed in our mission. We have shown a new model for a grassroots campaign. We’re polling second in a district where I was considered the “long shot” after I launched. We have over 7,000 volunteers. We’ve raised over $1.4 million, with an average donation of 32 bucks. And I think the best part of this campaign is all of the innovative, creative, and genuinely new ideas that we—my staff and our volunteers—have been able to put forward. We have been using our campaign resources to benefit people right now, to reach out to voters but materially improve their lives.
So, we’ve used our campaign office as a mutual-aid hub. People can come in and get what they need, whether it be clothes or food or drinks or toiletries or books or anything else. We try to make our events multipurpose, where you can come for the campaign, but you’re also helping the community.
For a kickoff event, we didn’t charge $500 a plate. We asked people to bring boxes of pads and tampons. We’re doing a coat drive and car wash this weekend, to make sure that people have the clothes they need for winter.
We’ve been doing beach cleanups and park cleanups, and also really trying to bring the apolitical and the political together. So we’ve done board game nights and taught embroidery classes, done knitting circles. Now we are fundraising via [livestreaming], because the way a lot of candidates get their money is they just call rich people all day. And I don’t think that’s a sustainable or healthy way to base our entire political system, especially right now as oligarchs consolidate power. So we have been playing video games and doing crafts and talking to fun guests, and we’ve raised over $30,000 in just over two weeks.
DK: You really encapsulated everything I was going to ask you about. You hosted a punk show, and you’ve really been connecting with the community in your area. That’s something that I keep hearing from younger Democrats and people who are running, that older generations who are in office right now aren’t really in touch with the community. Would you agree with that?
Abughazaleh: Yeah, I think that’s something we see across the country in our political system. As many people point out, I’m a transplant. I’m not originally from here, but I have been making as much of an effort to build community and make sure our campaign is rooted in the community in a way that most people have never seen from a campaign.
We try to include everyone, even in a district that’s gerrymandered like ours, which is necessary, with Republicans trying to disenfranchise tens of millions of people nationwide, but that means that you have to represent every part of your district.
So we go from everywhere—from urban to suburban to rural. We try to make sure we have events everywhere, and we really try to make sure that politics is something that’s a team sport.
So like with our punk show, for instance, which we called “Punks for Progress.” We had some local bands. We ended up packing the venue, and it was a lot of fun. I’d say at our events, about half the people there have never considered going to a political event, and half of those people have never voted before. And I think what I would really like to see is everyone, including my opponents, adopting similar strategies.
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I think it would be incredible if my opponents outspent us in the community, if they hosted more events than we do in the community, if they made the same effort to reach out to as many individuals as possible, and not just for votes, but because it’s the right thing to do.
Only one candidate wins any race, and if every campaign adopted a similar strategy, every election would be a net benefit to a community, and not just for democracy’s sake.
DK: You have been viral online, and you have a very strong online presence right now. You’re hosting these events that probably draw a lot of a younger crowd. It has been an issue with younger people [not] voting in general. But have you been able to connect with older generations, who may be like, “I voted for [incumbent Rep.] Jan Schakowsky and I voted for older people for this long. Why you?”
Abughazaleh: I’ve honestly been surprised at just how much of our base is older, and we are trying to make an effort to reach out to older folks as well, in a variety of ways. I think what it comes down to is everyone feels like their representatives don’t give a damn. And the thing is, a lot of older people want a better future for younger people. They want to see the world change, and they want to have politics return to a place that’s about the people.
We actually had older folks at our punk show. We have 70-year-olds in our campaign Discord server. And I think with young people, you know, there’s this idea that they just don’t vote, they don’t care. We saw in New York, that’s not true. We don’t give young people something to vote for.
Our emphasis is not on any specific demographic. It’s on all demographics. It’s “leave no voter behind.” It’s “make sure that everyone is represented.”
And so some people have said that we have a disproportionate focus on young people, and I genuinely don’t think that’s true. We’re trying to reach every demographic, every group of people, every individual.
It’s just that politics has left young people behind. It’s left Black and brown people behind. It’s left immigrants behind. And so when you make any effort for outreach, it’s seen as disproportionate.
DK: Speaking of immigrants, you have been at these protests at the ICE facility in your town. And you’ve gone really viral over a video of an ICE officer pushing you down. What can you tell me about that?
Abughazaleh: From angles, you can tell I’m literally in the air. He threw me, and that was actually the third time an ICE officer has thrown me. I am not going to these protests to go viral. I’m going because what is happening at the Broadview ICE facility is atrocious. It is a processing facility. People are not supposed to be held there for more than 12 hours at a time, but they’re being held for days or weeks at a time, without beds, without hot meals, without access to hygienic facilities.
One morning, I was there around 5 AM and saw detainees being marched into vans in the same clothes they were detained in. We have heard reports of mothers and of pregnant women and grandmothers sleeping on concrete, of dozens of people in a single cell. And Broadview, the ICE facility, has put up plywood over the windows. They have boarded up the windows so we can’t even see what’s inside. They deny any investigations or any inspections of this facility. And before that video, which I feel like everyone and their mother saw, they had been brutalizing protesters.
And what I really try to stress to people is, anything that we’ve been going through, from being thrown to the ground, to being shoved, to being berated, to being shot with pepper balls, to being tear gassed, to having snipers on the roof to shoot us with rubber bullets—it’s awful. It’s being treated like a war zone that does not recognize the Geneva Conventions, but it also doesn’t hold a candle to what the people in that facility are going through.
So we’re recording this on Thursday, Oct. 2. On Oct. 3, we’ll be holding a press conference at [the Broadview ICE] facility tomorrow. We’re holding a press conference and encouraging as many elected officials to show up to demand that there is more transparency in this facility, that inspections are allowed, that there is accountability for ICE officers who have broken the law, and that a gate that ICE erected to keep protesters off of a public street is taken down because it endangers the lives of everyone around, from protesters to press to businesses in the area.
It’s a fire hazard. The fire department in Broadview has demanded that it come down, and it’s still up.
I kind of feel like Upton Sinclair when he said, “I aimed for the public’s heart and I hit them in the stomach,” referring to [his 1906 novel] “The Jungle,” when he wrote about the mistreatment of workers, especially immigrant workers, and people were horrified at the conditions of the meatpacking industry.
And that is one of the big reasons we have the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] now, and I think people saw a man twice the size of a young blonde woman picking her up and throwing her to the ground, and they were horrified. That’s a horrible thing to see.
So I am happy that there’s attention on this facility, but I want to urge people to think about, if they are willing to do that on camera in front of the press, to a congressional candidate, what are they doing behind the boarded-up windows?
DK: It is a very big topic right now, and the more attention that’s being put on it is crucial. And like you said, this isn’t really [about] what’s going on with the protesters. But the bigger issue, what’s happening with immigrants and immigrant families.
I’m in Los Angeles, and one thing that I cover often is immigration. I speak with people in the neighborhood who are born and raised in the U.S. but have immigrant family members, and they’re scared, they’re not leaving their homes. Is this a conversation that you’re having as well with people?
Abughazaleh: Yeah, including in my district. Broadview is not in this district, but it is where people who are detained by ICE in this district go. It is where they are disappeared to.
I had someone reach out to me to ask me if I could provide any aid in recovering a family member who had been brought to Broadview. And I said, “I’m not an elected official, but here are some resources that you can use. Here are some people you should talk to.” And this person told me that their family member who had been at Broadview, they could not contact them until they were in a facility in a totally different state. And when they finally heard from this family member, they said that they were glad to be in this completely separate state because it was the first time they had slept on a bed since being abducted.
That is what we are seeing across the country. And [President Donald] Trump has focused on Chicago as a place to terrorize because this is the heart of the labor movement. This is a city built by immigrants. This is the only town where Trump had to cancel a rally because he got scared of protesters. What we need is this facility to be shut down. And we need accountability, and we need transparency.
DK: You haven’t always been a politician, but you have been adjacent. You were a journalist at Media Matters. How did you get from there to here?
Abughazaleh: The two things are totally intertwined. In terms of my experience as a researcher and journalist, I started my career as a researcher at Media Matters, covering Fox News, and then I was laid off. I was laid off after Elon Musk sued the nonprofit for accurate reporting, and Elon Musk and people like him have used our industry as a dry run for what they are doing to the federal government right now.
I and my colleagues have spent years trying to get Democrats to take the far right seriously. We told them about Jan. 6 before it happened. We told them about election denial and COVID misinformation and where the DEI/CRT panic would lead, and they ignored us. And I got sick of waiting around for someone to do something. I built a large platform with my own work, but it is still a privilege to have, and I want to use it however I can to make a difference and show that this is how you stand up to the right.
Illinois does so many things correctly, or they try to do so many things correctly, even when we fall short—because we’re human—and that is why Illinois is leading the way, in this country, of resisting the Trump administration.
It is also why, until very recently, Illinois leaders didn’t have to deal with people like Elon Musk and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller on a daily basis.
I have. I understand the right. I have a track record of not only fighting but winning against the right. And I want to see people in Congress that can do that.
I don’t want to be in Congress forever. I want to get in, do some good, get some fascists out, and then go back home to hang out with my cat.
If we don’t have literacy in new media, that’s a problem. If we don’t have literacy in far-right narratives, conspiracy theories, and misinformation in our leadership, that is just as big of an issue.
DK: Do you feel like journalists, media outlets, and larger legacy media outlets are doing justice to cover what’s going on right now?
Abughazaleh: Absolutely not. Legacy media is bowing down to Trump. We have seen this across outlets.
We have seen independent journalists take over, take the helm, make an effort to actually report on what’s happening and do so without fear—or with fear, and do it anyway.
It’s funny that you say that. At these protests, it has been very difficult for me to balance being a candidate—and trying to set an example of both protesting but also safety—and my urge to document and make sure things are documented. And that is extremely important.
I heard someone say, “I wish that more people were standing up for people like you”—as in me—“that get pushed down by ICE, instead of just filming.” And I’m like, well, filming right now is unbelievably important and puts you at a risk.
ICE, at this Broadview facility, has arrested members of the press simply for doing their job.
When our leaders and our media refuse to stand up to fascism, it sets an example for Americans as a whole that this should be normalized and it shouldn’t. Which is why it is so important—even if we don’t have the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, or the White House—to stand up, because otherwise your constituents, the people that are watching your material, they’re like, “Is this normal? I thought it wasn’t, but I guess it is.”
And it’s not. It’s not normal, and capitulation will never be enough for this administration. They only want total submission.
DK: I don’t often get to talk to people who have done both in front of the camera and behind the camera. There is an issue of these independent journalists who have taken money from larger sources. And it has influenced their reporting. These are people who have hundreds of thousands of followers and listeners. Is that something that you think about as well?
Abughazaleh: A hundred percent. Look, grift money is so real, and that’s why a lot of really good journalists have stopped doing the work they used to.
I’ve had people ask, “How do you find your information?” And I always tell them, “Find a journalist you trust, and if something sounds too good or too bad to be true, triple-check it. Then find who they trust. Where do they get their information, and build that network?”
And always remember that human beings are not perfect. If someone gets something wrong. They should be able to admit it. If they can’t, they are not a reliable source. When I talk about the independent journalists doing the important work on the ground, that’s what they’re doing. They’re on the ground, and they are the ones that are reporting things that this administration won’t.
People that are taking money from sources are compromised—their reporting will reflect what we’re already seeing from compromised institutions. Every fascist movement thrives when there is little to no resistance, and it thrives even more when there aren’t any independent journalists that are out there doing the work.
I think a lot about Marisa Kabas, I think a lot about Zeteo, I think a lot about Amanda Moore. [I think about them] in terms of who is doing work on extremism and what is actually happening in this institution and scooping major news outlets because these news outlets are too scared to cover what is happening with this administration.
DK: Bringing it back to your campaign, you are one of a handful of younger Democrats who are saying the lifetime politicians aren’t doing enough. Are you communicating with candidates like Saikat Chakrabarti or other of these young challengers coming up?
Abughazaleh: I’ve been in touch with some challengers across the country. I think it’s this idea of solidarity. It’s a very weird time to be in politics, especially as a young challenger. And there are very few people that truly understand the weird conditions that come with that—the institutional pressure you get, the way small mistakes can be used against you, or that complete lies can be made up because you are a challenger.
And so I have been in touch with some other challengers across the country, just kind of venting to each other, honestly. But overall, I lean most on my community here and people that want to see a difference. And it’s really funny, I have, at events, some people that have been in the Democratic Party for a very long time that are like, “Don’t tell anyone that I was here.”
But they’re supportive. People realize that this is a time for change and actual action.
DK: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. But is there anything we haven’t talked about that you maybe want to talk about?
Abughazaleh: The thing I always try to stress over and over and over again is that the old playbook is gone. It’s been gone for a long time.
There are so many people in races across the country that I look at, and I’m like, you would have been a great Congress person in 2012 or 2014. But it’s not 2012, it’s not 2014, it’s not 2008, it is not 1994—it’s 2025, and if you aren’t willing to have courage, even when you’re scared, if you’re not willing to set an example through your actions, not just words, not just strongly worded letters, then you are not ready to represent the people in this moment.
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Alix Breeden
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