Kat Abughazaleh is one of those influencers who – unnervingly – seem to pop out of nowhere fully formed. There was a stint at Media Matters – which in many ways pioneered the modern industry in “disinformation”-watchdogging, political fact-checking and “studying the far right” – where she made short-form videos taking the fight to people like Tucker Carlson. After the 2024 election Abughazaleh, now 26, was one of several youthful activists who called for the destruction of the “gerontocracy” in the Democratic party. She is now a candidate for Illinois’s 9th congressional district, after first issuing a primary challenge to 81-year-old Representative Jan Schakowsky. “I just couldn’t watch it anymore. I thought, fuck it, I’m going to run,” she told WIRED. She has regularly appeared on CNN panels since – and last September she was thrown to the ground by an ICE agent.
On Tuesday evening Abughazaleh failed to appear at a campaign event with Indivisible, an anti-MAGA community organization in Chicago. Her campaign released a statement claiming that the candidate had been asleep. “I have a chronic illness called narcolepsy. It makes me extremely tired and occasionally causes ‘sleep attacks,’ times when my brain literally cannot stay awake,” she claimed. “I ended up sleeping through alarms, calls, and even my campaign manager knocking on my door repeatedly.”
A lady who has made a career out of criticizing disinformation and of accusing others of sloth now having to give a dubious and opaque explanation for why she fell asleep? The irony is not lost on Cockburn. Welcome to the gerontocracy, Kat.
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