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Deja Foxx doesn’t call herself optimistic. Although the 25-year-old activist began telling the world as a teenager that she intended to become president of the United States, the 2024 election was a punch in the gut. “I was at Howard [University] on election night during that concession speech, and it was difficult, but not surprising,” she told Teen Vogue. Foxx found she no longer had faith in many older elected officials she’d spent her career uplifting, lobbying, or critiquing on behalf of Gen Z. Now Foxx is running for Congress in her home state of Arizona, seeking to replace the late representative Raúl Grijalva, who held that office for almost Foxx's entire life until he passed away in March. Foxx has mere months to win a competitive primary in a special election to replace Grijalva — and to set the tone for the next generation of women in politics.
I’m a Gen Z feminist who came into consciousness online during the first Trump presidency — a coming-of-age experience that feels inseparable from internet friendships with people like Foxx, whom I’ve followed since 2018. I’ve witnessed her meteoric rise from a “free-lunch kid,” who went viral in high school for confronting then Republican Senator Jeff Flake over voting to defund Planned Parenthood, to an influencer strategist for Kamala Harris’s 2020 campaign, to a seasoned content creator bringing politics and young people together.
Most headlines identify Foxx as a Gen Z influencer, a label I find reductive, if not entirely misleading. Foxx is very online, yes, but she’s harnessing her digital skills in favor of political goals, particularly reproductive access. Social media savvy is also just plain common sense for Foxx’s small but growing cohort of Gen Z politicians and candidates, from Representative Maxwell Frost, who pulls no punches against President Donald Trump on Twitter, to New York City Council member Chi Ossé, whose TikToks unpack issues like local transit policies, to Kat Abughazaleh, running for Congress in Illinois after a career in progressive media.
Foxx is among a number of young activists who came up during Trump’s first term, some of whom have since burned out or left politics entirely. In a special issue cover for Teen Vogue, March for Our Lives cofounder Delaney Tarr described the betrayal she felt after becoming this “new kind of 21st-century celebrity.” The “youth activism industrial complex” that Tarr defines in that piece puts the focus on “the individual vs. the system, the youth vs. everyone who should bear responsibility” for the crises we’re facing.
For some Gen Z progressives, frustration with electoral politics has prompted a larger reckoning with the morality of the American government and the violence it inflicts at home and abroad. Foxx’s alma mater, Columbia University, became ground zero for student anti-war advocacy — and repression — the year after she graduated. That same year, Harris campaigned with Republicans like Liz Cheney, pushed for harsher immigration policies, and declined to break with Joe Biden on providing military support to Israel. Foxx says that her peers’ feelings of disappointment and heartbreak after the election were “valid,” and she shares them. She knows she can’t ask youth to continue taking risks to protest when politicians won’t listen to them. That’s why Foxx hopes to rebrand the Democratic Party into one that works for its people. She’s calling out what many agree is the rise of authoritarianism under Trump, of course, but also elected Democrats who she says need to “have a spine.”
Over Zoom, Teen Vogue spoke to Foxx about the congressional race, her coming-of-age journey, and the future of Gen Z politics.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: Let’s start with the nitty-gritty of this race. It's going to be a hard one. You're up against a very crowded field of competitors, including the late representative Grijalva’s daughter and some other seasoned politicians, in a solidly blue district. What made you decide to enter the race, and how do you plan to stand out?
Deja Foxx: I’m building the plane as I fly, but we have the cultural moment behind us…. I've been conducting interviews with electeds and people on the ground over the last year. Since the loss in 2024, what I have heard, not just from young people, but from people all across the country, is that they want new and younger leadership…. This is a seat that's been held for 20 years. People my age in this district have basically never seen a competitive congressional election, and I think they deserve to have options. Healthy primaries are good for everyone and good for our democracy.
More specifically, on how I differentiate from these other candidates in the field: I grew up in Section 8 housing and on SNAP benefits and Medicaid…. For me, the [social services] that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have put in their crosshairs aren't theoretical and they’re not talking points. They're the things that made it possible for me to be the first in my family to go to college. I think that lived experience differentiates me from people in the field, but so does my age. We need young people with a real sense of urgency at this moment.
TV: Running for office takes a lot of people and infrastructure behind you. How are you navigating that?
DF: I had already been looking at this seat for 2026, when, over the summer, the late Congressman Grijalva shared that he wouldn't be running again because he was sick…. Then during [Trump’s joint address to Congress], I was interviewing electeds on Capitol Hill. [So] many people watched and felt a sense of frustration that people in both parties didn't stand up to Donald Trump… And I was there myself, just thinking, like, these cannot be the fighters. These [cannot] be the people standing between Donald Trump and my mom and her neighbors’ access to housing and food…. That was the day I started having conversations about a seat. Just a few days later, the congressman passed, which threw us into a special election on a completely different timeline.
If you're looking to run for office, here's some advice: there's a personal aspect…. You have to really feel called to it because you risk your safety and privacy. It changes not only your life, but the lives of the people you love. For me, the first calls I made were to my big sisters…. As you're prepping up to run, make sure that your tightest circle is gonna be there with you, and that your personal life, including your personal finances, are set up to handle this, which precludes so many young people from running. The second piece on the logistics is that I have been building relationships in this space before I ever knew I would need them. I have been an organizer in Arizona since 2015. I got my start organizing around sex ed in my school district, and I've worked on campaigns, most notably the Kamala Harris campaign in 2020. [Editor’s note: Foxx was one of Teen Vogue’s 21 under 21 honorees in 2018.] When I gave it my hard, personal yes after those conversations with my friends and family, the next step was to head to my network and ask for their support.
TV: What's your strategy for reaching out to your neighbors and the people you grew up with? How do you think that engaging with voters is going to be different from engaging with your followers?
DF: I actually think they go hand in hand. In the same way that there was a time when phone-banking and text-banking were new, our campaign has already launched different strategies. Just the other night, three young people and I were sitting around my kitchen table, going through the folks who engaged with our launch video, going through comments, reshares, looking to see who was in our district, and sending each of them a direct message. This was, again, borrowing from my organizer background: You gotta make direct asks to people…. We've already been launching new and different strategies like DM-banking…. Young people are not gonna answer their phone from a number they don’t know.
On our day of action, we all gathered at a brewery. I think half of our volunteers had never collected signatures or petitions before, so we trained them. Then we hit Fourth and Congress, which are party streets in Tucson, and got out and had conversations with voters who hadn't heard about the special election…. While a lot of people in a primary like this would go for high-efficacy voters because it's likely to be a low-turnout election, that's not our strategy. We are looking to engage people who otherwise would have sat out this election.
TV: I’m curious if you have any takeaways from the 2024 Harris campaign. In many ways, it feels like a temperature check of where our country is, where young men are specifically, and how the internet and tech are increasingly structurally far-right places. How do you think we move forward?
DF: I think about all of those young people we lost in 2024 who didn't turn out to vote. I had to take a hard look in the mirror as someone who has worked behind the scenes for causes and candidates to create content publicly asking young people to take action, to share their stories, to organize, to vote. I came to the personal feeling that I couldn't ask them to keep doing that if I couldn't give them something to really get excited about after this hard loss. That influenced my decision to get into this race…. Every election, people ask me, How do we get young people involved? And the answer is, we need to get young people on the ballot.
TV: You helped support that campaign, which many young progressives critiqued as too mainstream and, on issues like immigration and Palestine, pretty violent. Do you see your congressional run as a repudiation of that brand of establishment politics?
DF: What I am taking from that election into this one is serious learning. When Biden was at the top of the ticket, there was a serious and necessary conversation about age. People want new names. They told us that they want younger candidates, and I'm bringing them that option. And then when we saw the transition from Biden to Harris, there was real frustration from folks feeling like they didn't have a choice. And that's what primaries like this one are all about. We have the opportunity to give people in southern Arizona options. And so part of getting into this race is already disruptive, saying that people should get to have decisions about who their elected officials are, who is gonna be on their ballot, and who they send to a general election and on to DC.
The last thing I'll say is that I intend to represent not only my constituents in southern Arizona, but young people who have put their voice to the issues that they care most about, have been in the streets, loud on their campuses, and taken risks to show elected officials where their values are. I have the opportunity in this race to give them someone that they can vote for, not just because they have to, but because they are excited to do so, and that absolutely includes issues like immigration and Palestine.
TV: Our generation is expected to have less than what those before us had, from the backsliding of reproductive and civil rights to more financial insecurity. Climate change is coming to cook us. People our age feel like we are in the bad timeline, not the one where we get things right. How do you stay optimistic?
DF: Other generations have let us down. Young people are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, they tell me they're worried about making rent. My sense of urgency and action comes from a sense of responsibility to people I'm in community with: my friends, my family, my neighbors. I'm not even sure that optimism is the right word, but I think people dismiss how important it is to feel fought for, to feel that there are people in power willing to risk as much as what you have on the line. And that, I think, is what's lacking in DC right now.
TV: A lot of people have, for lack of a better term, crashed out of institutional politics. We don’t think elected officials are coming to save us.
DF: Girl! This is probably the first time I’ve said it in an interview, but I was in the same boat. It was crashout or Congress! This country, this last election, left me just as disappointed and heartbroken and horrified as you. I am not above those feelings…. I was absolutely at the point of a crashout…. It is valid to feel like there's not much that, as a young person, you can do to make structural change, right? That's not just a feeling, that's by design. People have asked me, Why don't you run for state and local first? Why not start there? And there is nothing more important than those offices, but it is disingenuous to tell young people to sit on school boards that are often unpaid, to tell them that they need to go to the state legislature where they get paid $20,000-something a year, making it a prerequisite to leadership, when older generations have created a cost-of-living crisis. It’s not enough to just tell young people to get involved. We need to make real pathways for it to be possible.
I hope to set some of that example, by being really vulnerable in this race…. If we can prove in southern Arizona that young, progressive disruptors are winners, that is going to change who gets recruited, supported, funding, and endorsements in the 2026 midterms…. At this moment, the identity of the Democratic Party is up for grabs. We have an opportunity in this 2025 special election to make that point.
TV: Let’s talk a bit about your backstory. Was there a particular moment that felt like a turning point in building your leadership capacity?
DF: What a good question. No one's ever asked me that question. You know, I have been deeply frustrated over the past year with people in the media for their coverage of women like me, who have built a large social media following after viral moments like bird-dogging my senator for birth control access, or getting arrested on Capitol Hill after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. These are career-making moments for me, and I have seen time and time again headlines that reduce me to an influencer. What built my capacity as a leader, in part, has been taking ownership of who I am in the public eye. I refuse to just accept the labels that are put on me.
When I got into this race, a lot of people suggested, out of love and caution, that I should sit this one out…. I was prepared to push back and say, I am qualified. I may not have held public office, but I have been on the other side of power…. Those moments where I have been dismissed, year after year, viral video after viral video, were how I built the capacity to define myself.
TV: Some people feel resentment toward what they call “the youth activist industrial complex,” where young leaders were incentivized to share their trauma from a very young age, without support. I’m curious how you have processed your early start.
DF: I've been doing this work for a decade…. When I went toe to toe with Jeff Flake, it was because it was my birth control funding on the line. The response to me as a teenager was often that people were glad the future was in my hands. Throughout the years, as we saw things get rolled back, like Roe v Wade, I got clear-eyed on the fact that if people were gonna tell me they were inspired by me, they needed to give me the tools to make change. They needed to make space for young people to be in real positions of power. Not just the spokesperson, but the one writing the messaging.
I often think about that 15- or 16-year-old girl, my younger self, working at the gas station, working hard in AP classes so she could be the first in her family to go to college, living with a boyfriend and his family. There's a version of my younger self out there right now who deserves somebody in power who is in her corner wholeheartedly. I can't keep asking young people to get involved at the level that I did, let your life get turned upside down, go from private to public overnight, commit your formative years, all of high school and college, to this movement unless I can assure them that if they do, their protests will be heard in the halls of power.
We are in a different political landscape where it feels that so many people in the highest offices are willing to punch down and punish student activists on campuses who are exercising free speech. And so if we are going to ask young people to get involved, we need to be prepared on the back end to support them.
TV: You’re right that there are material and devastating consequences for young people using their voices. It’s not a perfect analogy, but something I’ve rarely seen acknowledged in coverage of you is simply how much scrutiny you get as a young woman online. You have dealt with numerous cancellation attempts, including those from the right wing, but also from your peers, some of whom criticized your decision to work for Harris. You’ve grown up in public, in real time. How do you handle backlash as your profile rises?
DF: Nothing prepared me better to run for office than being cyber-mobbed at 20 years old. I also want to acknowledge that that kind of digital violence, whether it's cyber-mobbing, hate speech, doxxing, or deep fakes, is gender-based violence. We will lose out on an entire generation of women leaders if we don’t get to the root of this. Every member of Gen Z who’s had our entire lives documented, every party, every outfit, every phase, would be precluded from running. I already know that for every young girl who's ever posted bikini pics or sent a risky photo, those are in the back of her head should she decide to run.
There's never been a better time to redefine what respectability looks like. I don't believe that there are perfect politicians. In the era of total documentation, I think we will come to find that. I hope we can remember that the people in power are just people, too. I hope that by running this race, doing it with integrity and being uncompromising on my sense of self, I can be a part of changing that narrative and making space for the women who come after me to run their races wholeheartedly and authentically.
