'Sea change': First Gen Z ever elected in US now running to shake up Congress

EVANSTON, Ill. — When Bushra Amiwala ran for public office for the first time, in March 2017 and at just 19 years old, Donald Trump had just signed an executive order banning travel for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Fast forwarding eight years might evoke déjà vu.

Now 27, Amiwala is running again, this time for a U.S. Congress seat in Illinois’ 9th district, and Trump is back in the Oval Office with a new travel ban barring entry of foreign nationals from 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, and restricting visas for seven other countries.

“The rhetoric [Trump] was spewing was very anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic, racist. Period,” said Amiwala, who is Muslim.

“It's wild and a shame that he's still in the White House today.”

In 2017, Amiwala didn’t win her primary election for a seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners, which oversees public health and safety budgets in the second-largest county in the nation. But her opponent, Larry Suffredin, then a 16-year Democratic incumbent, called her the day after the vote, saying, “‘You have to run again, just don't run against me this time,’” Amiwala said.

Amiwala said Suffredin told her she “‘galvanized” voters “to pay attention to a political process that they historically have felt disenfranchised from,” and said the race saw “historical voter turnout” in a nonpresidential primary year “because your name was on the ballot.”

Six months later, Amiwala launched another campaign, running for a board seat in the school district she graduated from not long before.

In 2019, at 21, Amiwala became the “first Gen Z elected in the country,” when she won a seat on the Chicago suburban Skokie School District 73.5 Board of Education, a distinction registered by the Chicago History Museum.

She was reelected in 2023 but now has her sights on the congressional seat held since 1999 by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), 81, who said in May she would not seek reelection.

“I haven't seen someone else who looks like me and brings that everyday lived experience to the table,” Amiwala told Raw Story.

Amiwala faces a crowded field in the 2026 Democratic primary, running against Ill. Sen. Laura Fine, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, progressive influencer Kat Abughazaleh and high school math teacher David Abrevaya — so far.

Amiwala said she plans to “emulate that grassroots effect” from her previous campaigns, which taught her to “stretch a dollar.”

“The amount of special interest groups and the amount of money that they continue to pour into our elections means that these current people that we have in Congress — not all of them, but a lot of them — serve those special interests, not the people that actually vote them into office,” Amiwala said.

Amiwala said her campaign team consisted of “a ton of everyday people that literally live in the district, that are excited to have a candidate like me stepping up to the plate in spite of literally every odd being stacked against them.”

“Money can't buy you reputation and to have a consistent, proven track record of … showing up and being there, regardless of whether it's campaign season or not, it’s something I am really grateful that people acknowledge that and see that and are already excited to be saying that on my behalf, without me having to have hired flashy consultants and sales people and on-the-ground field people doing this.”

Suffredin, 77, told Raw Story he spoke with Amiwala — whom he called “a very bright young woman” — before she launched her run for Congress, telling her to raise “enough money to be competitive, to get known.”

Suffredin also said he was “very close” to Schakowsky, having served as a treasurer for her early campaigns, and was a “good friend” to many of the Democrats in the race, including Amiwala, Fine and Biss.

He is not endorsing anyone yet, he said, given his current role as an adviser to the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

“I think whoever goes to Washington has to realize that we're at a sea change in the Democratic Party, and I think in the Democratic leadership in the Congress,” Suffredin said.

“They've got to be prepared to go and jump into trying to establish the agenda for the future, if we're going to survive as a political party.”

‘Enticing fear’

Amiwala said Democrats in Congress should “absolutely, 100 percent” be standing up to Trump more, particularly regarding his talk of running for a third term, which the U.S. Constitution does not allow.

Trump’s June 7 deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to immigration raid protests hit close to home: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided “Muslim-owned businesses” in Skokie, Ill., in February, and last week arrested at least 10 people at immigration check-ins in Chicago, Amiwala said.

“It’s authoritarianism. It’s fascism. It's enticing fear within communities,” Amiwala said.

“That is what the administration does to us, everyday individuals every single day constantly enticing fear, distracting us, and then slipping in at a midnight vote a piece of legislation that talks about a 10-year lack of regulation on artificial intelligence."

House Republicans added a provision to Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” on spending and tax cuts, preventing states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade — a move that managed to outrage even far-right Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA).

In Democratic ranks, fierce debate continues about the advanced age of many party leaders and the need for new blood — much of it stoked by David Hogg, 25, a Gen Z activist who pushed hard for change but this week said he would step down from the Democratic National Committee.

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-TL), 28, remains the only Gen Z legislator in Congress. Amiwala said her party needed to do away with its “dismissive mentality towards these new, fresh perspectives” and old systems where “mediocrity is constantly being rewarded.”

“I can't wait for even five or six years from now where so many of us Gen Z-ers are in the House and, who knows, maybe even in the Senate by then,” Amiwala said.