Donald Trump’s second term has ushered in a new era in American politics. It’s brasher, crueler, more direct, more super online, and certainly more dystopian.
Democrats and sometimes even Republicans have struggled to compete with Trump’s monopoly on the attention market. But the leaders of both parties are only mortal—yes, even Trump—and they’re not going to be around forever.
A new generation of political talent is muscling its way onto the scene, armed with new ways of connecting with the masses and original visions of the country they want to live in. Here are the candidates, the influencers, and the insiders on both the left and the right that we think you’ll keep hearing from, and why. You might just remember when you spotted a future president in this edition of WIRED.
After the shock of the 2024 election loss, some Democrats became convinced of the need for a “liberal Joe Rogan”—someone to appeal to the podcast-bro demographic that helped put Trump back in the White House. But there are already Democrats and progressives who know how to mobilize an online audience—and think they know where the party’s communications have gone wrong.
Melted Solids
Production agency,
Brooklyn, New York
If you were caught up in the avalanche of content coming from the New York City mayoral primary race, you likely saw a video by Melted Solids, which worked with Zohran Mamdani early on in his campaign. Cofounders Anthony DiMieri and Debbie Saslaw come from advertising and content production backgrounds, not politics. They bring a documentary-style approach focused on platforming regular people. “Listening, not lecturing,” as Saslaw describes it. One of their most viral collaborations with Mamdani is a video of the candidate interviewing Trump voters (and nonvoters) in Queens and the Bronx.
But not everyone can nail the essence of a Melted Solids video, or even understand what makes them special. In Andrew Cuomo’s unsuccessful attempt at mimicking Mamdani, he’s seen hand-shaking and back-slapping potential voters, but their voices remain unheard. You’re likely to keep seeing DiMieri and Saslaw’s influence on political messaging, though, thanks to Mamdani’s upset victory in June.
Chi Ossé
City Council member, New York City
“Before I am an elected official, before I am a son, before I am a brother, I am a shitposter, and I have always been,” says Ossé. “If there’s another language that I speak, it is the internet.” The 27-year-old City Council member is the creator of several videos with millions of views on Instagram, including his series “Why Shit Not Working?” that breaks down the most intransigent elements of New York City’s dysfunction.
Ossé frequently uses his online presence to galvanize public opinion and even once to pass policy. With one social media call in 2023, he got more than 1,000 people to attend a board meeting on rent guidelines to voice concern about a double-digit percent proposed increase on rent-stabilized apartments. Now other politicians are taking cues from his success, including Mamdani—Ossé says he had to remind the mayoral candidate to post his campaign launch video on TikTok.
Deja Foxx
Digital strategist, Arizona
Foxx’s star rose practically overnight in 2017, when the then-16-year-old’s exchange with US senator Jeff Flake over his vote to restrict funding to Planned Parenthood went viral. The activist and content creator built a career on that moment, working as a digital strategist for the Kamala Harris 2020 campaign and then appearing as a speaker at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
This year, the 25-year-old launched her own campaign in a special election for the late Raúl Grijalva’s Arizona congressional seat. In a July TikTok video that she filmed with family members, she reminisced about filing campaign paperwork online: alone, in her bedroom, “with no staff, no donor list.”
The rest of her social media is just as earnest and direct, featuring front-facing videos that ground her progressive policies in her life experience: Foxx was raised by a single mom, experienced homelessness, and relied on federally funded programs like Section 8 and Title X.
While Foxx ultimately lost the primary to Adelita Grijalva, Raúl’s daughter, her digital strategy generated notable momentum in the last few weeks of her campaign. She hit 300,000 TikTok followers and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in small donations. Despite her loss, Foxx caught the attention of younger progressives in the House of Representatives, who say they are excited about her future in politics.
Manny Rutinel
State representative, Colorado
Rutinel, 30, may have invented a new way to campaign online: via heartfelt Instagram photo montages set to pop music, sometimes sung by the man himself. Now he’s deploying these videos in the race to unseat Republican representative Gabe Evans in Colorado’s Eighth District, which is projected to be one of the midterms’ most competitive races.
Rutinel’s posts are often deliberately hammy. (He once did a Christopher Walken impression to announce a motion in the Colorado state legislature.) They also consistently deliver his campaign message: that he’s a champion for working people because of his own working-class upbringing. (Rutinel did not respond to WIRED’s request for an interview.)
In the first six months of 2025, Rutinel raised more than $1.6 million, about half of which came from small-dollar donations. In the crowded field of Democratic candidates opposing Evans, he is the only one who has kept up with the Republican’s fundraising. As the race gains national attention, Rutinel’s distinct online presence might earn some copycats in years to come.
Over on the right, some of the youngest members of Trumpworld have iterated on The Donald’s playbook, mixing traditional and new media to reach the base and capture everyone else’s attention.
Anna Paulina Luna
US representative, Florida
The 36-year-old Air Force veteran is the apotheosis of the GOP’s digital strategy: the nation’s first influencer turned right-wing member of Congress. Paulina Luna got there with a canny sense for what works online, and what doesn’t.
“If you want to be effective in the future of politics, especially in the next presidential election or the next statewide races, you have to have a presence on social media,” she told WIRED. “But it can’t be a shit presence. It has to be a legit presence, because people can see right through it.” Paulina Luna may have clips of her appearances on Fox News to share, but she says followers would much rather see her extemporize directly to her iPhone for 45 seconds on whatever subject, from UFOs to the culture wars. The House GOP has taken notice of Paulina Luna’s success: Her communications director was invited to speak to members about how to use vertical video.
Brett Cooper
Media personality, Nashville, Tennessee
After building a formidable following with her Daily Wire show The Comments Section, 23-year-old Cooper struck out on her own earlier this year. Within six months of launching on YouTube, in early 2025, The Brett Cooper Show accrued more than 1.5 million subscribers, racking up hundreds of thousands of views each episode.
Cooper doesn’t stray far from the politics-meets-pop-culture formula that made her Daily Wire show a success, but she has ditched explicitly partisan rhetoric for more coded cultural commentary. She picks topics that capture the attention of young women, offering a light-touch conservative critique of, say, Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni.
“I never want my content to be a time suck,” Cooper says. “I never want it to be like mindless fluff.”
The 24-year-old White House correspondent for Real America’s Voice knows how to make an entrance. She’s part of the West Wing’s new, young, and vocally right-wing press corps, and her outfits alone generated entire news cycles early in the second Trump administration—mostly thanks to the Daily Mail compiling social media scoldings over her more casual attire. Winters leaned into it, dunking on them and using the coverage to keep building her brand.
Winters, who abstains from both alcohol and tap water as part of her wellness regimen, tells WIRED that she thinks the MAHA movement is the new “gateway drug” for the GOP.
Winters also cohosts War Room on Real America’s Voice with Steve Bannon, her mentor, and has a direct line to the MAGA base heading into 2028.
The coalition that helped elect Barack Obama twice—college-educated, young, Black, and Latino voters—cracked in 2016 and fractured completely in 2024. Now a new slate of candidates on the right are trying to prove that it’s not just Trump who can broaden the GOP’s base.
Mayra Flores
Congressional candidate, Southern Texas
The 39 year-old Flores became the first Mexican-born congresswoman in 2022, when she flipped a Texas House seat—the 34th District—in a special election. After losing the next two races for that district, she’s now going to try again, thanks to redistricting that has made the area much redder.
Flores aims her candidacy directly at the idea of demographic destiny. “As I grew up, I began to question why so many Hispanics consider themselves Democrats, since the majority of us have been raised with strong conservative values,” she says in one of her earliest campaign videos. “The Hispanic community is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-America.” (Flores did not respond to WIRED’s request for an interview.)
Amir Hassan
Political candidate, Michigan
The Navy veteran is running to flip Michigan’s Eighth District as a “proud Muslim” who supports Israel and the America First agenda. If he wins, Hassan would represent his native Flint, the seat of a yearslong water crisis that has shaken residents’ trust in government.
Today, the district leans left. But Genesee County, where Flint sits, shifted more than 5 percentage points for Trump in 2024. Hassan sees an opportunity for change.
“Where I’m from, we’re raised to think Democrats are the good guys. We’ve been held culturally hostage for over half a century,” the 39 year-old says in a campaign video. “But look around. Flint is what happens when your vote is taken for granted.” (Hassan’s campaign also declined to be interviewed for this piece.)
A growing group of Democratic politicians at different levels of government have challenged their party’s fecklessness with plans to address intractable problems like public safety and the cost of living. The most ambitious among them want to completely remake Congress.
Saikat Chakrabarti
Political adviser and congressional candidate,
Bay Area, California
The 39-year-old Chakrabarti cofounded Brand New Congress—which was aligned with the so-called Justice Democrats, the group that recruited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He ran AOC’s campaign before becoming her chief of staff in Washington, where he helped write the Green New Deal.
Chakrabarti says he felt compelled to run for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress after he watched the House Democratic leader and other Democrats in the wake of Trump’s 2024 win, “helpless to really change anything.” He has a detailed set of proposals for California’s Eleventh District, including the extensive Mission for America plan to transform the US economy through massive mobilization and investment in green technology. The country needs ambition on that scale, he says, to kick it out of its current state of disorder. Chakrabarti hopes to inspire others to run for Congress and remake the Democratic Party.
“It’s got to be whole new people with new ideas, who are clear on what they stand for and what they’re fighting for, taking over the party,” he says.
Omar Fateh
State senator, Minnesota
Fateh has been called the “Mamdani of Minneapolis,” nominally because he is also a state legislator challenging an incumbent mayor with a campaign focused on affordability and standing up to Trump. But the comparison has been wielded in transparently racist ways, too: before he died, Charlie Kirk began fearmongering over the 35-year-old’s Islamic faith.
Fateh says the current Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, has failed to end homelessness and transform public safety in a city still grappling with the murder of George Floyd. His primary focus is on the city’s cost of living, and he’s bringing proposals to raise the minimum wage, spur housing development, and implement rent stabilization. But a trail of dueling op-eds in the Minneapolis Star Tribune signals that some consider this race a battle between the democratic socialist wing of the party and the moderate progressives.
“Who does our city trust to lead in the time of crisis?” Fateh says. “Do we want leadership that’s rooted in justice and compassion, or do we want more performative politics?”
Brandon Scott
Mayor, Baltimore, Maryland
While Trump and the right obsess over imagined crime waves in Blue State cities, they have conveniently ignored the real turnaround Scott has overseen in Baltimore. The 41-year-old was elected in 2020 after a handful of corruption scandals involving previous Democratic mayors. Five years and one reelection later, the city has seen homicides drop to their lowest level in a decade, thanks in part to his detailed plan to reduce gun violence.
It used to be a predictable arc for those who wanted to climb the Democratic Party ranks: Spend a few terms on the back benches of Congress or in a state legislature, gain some seniority, get a leadership role on a good committee, and then, maybe, you could say you had arrived.
Now a whole host of Democrats who grew up online have been able to sustain viral fame and turn it into fundraising and organizing prowess.
Mallory McMorrow
State Senate majority whip, Michigan
The 39-year-old state senator became a minor celebrity among politics nerds in 2022. After a Republican colleague delivered an invocation on the state senate floor, claiming “children are under attack,” McMorrow walked out of the chamber. Several days later, that same politician sent out a fundraising email with the baseless allegation that McMorrow wants to “groom and sexualize kindergartners.” In a speech addressing the email, McMorrow said, “I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme … Hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen.” That video, of course, went viral.
McMorrow could have been a flash in the pan, but she managed to make that moment last, becoming a highly sought-after campaign surrogate and featured speaker at fundraising events around the country. Now she’s running for US Senate in one of the most competitive races of the 2025 midterms. One of her influences, McMorrow tells WIRED, came from working at Gawker.
“You can talk about policy, you can talk about powerful people, you can talk about something fun, and you can mix and match these things,” she says. “That’s what I do in my digital presence sometimes: I’m talking about being a mom, and a funny thing my daughter said on Instagram last night.”
Zach Wahls
State senator, Iowa
Wahls had his own stand-and-deliver moment back in 2011, when the then-19-year-old spoke at a public forum about how, while he was “raised by two women,” his family wasn’t so different from other Iowans. After his remarks went viral, Wahls built a community around children of same-sex parents and won a state senate seat in 2019.
“I had no idea the impact that speech would have on my life,” Wahls, now 34, tells WIRED. But it revealed something to him. Authenticity has a way of cutting through the noise. Now he’s running for Joni Ernst’s US Senate seat.
Wahls is also attuned to what’s at the core of younger voters’ beef with the US economic and political system. “It feels like the ladder is being pulled up,” the Democrat says. “So many people can’t become homeowners, can’t start a career, can’t start a family … those issues affect people in the most personal and intimate parts of their lives.” With his focus on economic populism, including campaign promises to break up monopolies and raise the minimum wage, Wahls is charting a potential course for young Democratic hopefuls in redder states.
The Lone Star State sits at the crossroads of America’s changing political landscape. Over the past few years, a new generation of unapologetically progressive Democrats have challenged the GOP’s grasp on politics, threatening to shift the state blue. That fight exploded in spectacular fashion at the Texas statehouse this summer when Republicans tried to force a vote gerrymandering themselves more deep-red districts.
Isaiah Martin
US House candidate, Houston, Texas
Martin started out in politics as a voting-rights activist at the University of Houston, but the 27-year-old had his breakout moment this year as Republicans attempted to push through their controversial gerrymandering effort. In an act of civil disobedience that went viral online, Martin was arrested and forced out of a public hearing. (The charges were later dropped.)
“I do see a blue Texas on the horizon,” says Martin, who is running in a special election for the 18th District this November. But to get there, he says, Democrats need to fight fire with fire. That means more protesting and using similarly controversial tactics, like breaking legislative quorum. “We’ve tried to hold ourselves to a different moral standard,” Martin says. “On the other side, you have Republicans that are going for a jugular.”
Texas Democrats fleeing the state to avoid a vote on the GOP’s gerrymandering bill is a good start, according to Martin, but the real challenge will be whether they dare to do more.
James Talarico
State representative, Austin, Texas
The 36-year-old former public school teacher went viral with a speech opposing a bill that would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The clip landed him on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this summer. The interview, which has nearly a million views on YouTube, shot Talarico to political stardom, positioning him as one of the most promising Texas progressives in recent years.
“People are fascinated by Texas, always have been,” Talarico says. “They are excited by our state. They’re terrified by our state. Texas is America on steroids.”
Often, the most powerful movers and shakers in Washington, DC, are the faces you see the least (well, anywhere other than their own social media feeds). They’re on the phone connecting their politician bosses with podcasters or throwing parties establishing a new political scene.
Alex Bruesewitz
Political adviser, Washington, DC
As senior media adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign, the 28 year-old Bruesewitz was the mastermind behind the president’s podcast strategy. By placing Trump on shows like Theo Von’s This Past Weekend and the NELK Boys’ Full Send Podcast, Bruesewitz helped young, predominantly male audiences see the president in a new light.
“Whether you’re a comedian making people laugh, or you’re a frat bro chugging beer and body-slamming a ping-pong table,” Bruesewitz says, “you have to lean into your authenticity.” Now, Bruesewitz is leading digital messaging at Never Surrender, Trump’s leadership PAC, setting the tone for how MAGA Republicans communicate online.
CJ Pearson
Influencer, Washington, DC
The 23-year-old Trump stan may have started out as a social media influencer, but he has quickly become one of the most important people in digital MAGAworld. Pearson helped throw one of the biggest parties during inauguration weekend—sponsored by TikTok—which included some of the trendier names in MAGA politics, such as Riley Gaines and Bryce Hall. Now he’s building his own political-influencer marketing company, leveraging the connections he has made online over the years to support Republican candidates and issues.
Andrew Schulz
Comedian and podcaster, New York
Schulz might claim he isn’t political, but the people vying to appear on his show, Flagrant, sure are. The 41-year-old had one of the most memorable interviews with Trump during the campaign when they chatted about universal insurance coverage for IVF. More recently, Schulz has ripped Trump for flip-flopping on the issue. He has also criticized Trump on his refusal to release files from the Jeffrey Epstein case, which he said amounted to “insulting our intelligence.” Now Flagrant is the closest thing to a swing state in the podcast landscape.
While Trumpism and its more youth-oriented offshoots are remaking American politics, there’s a far-right renaissance on the other side of the Atlantic too. A new generation of European politicians and influencers are using their clout to continue improving the prospects of parties and policies that were once seen as too extreme to have any chance of success.
Jordan Bardella
National Rally president, France
With over 1 million followers on Instagram, 30-year-old Bardella has leaned into his reputation as a beau gosse—French for a good-looking man—by mixing meticulously edited photos with more casual scenes showing him with his family and glad-handing with voters. Those powerful parasocial relationships make him the perfect 21st-century successor to Marine Le Pen. He knows how to put a TV-ready face on the National Rally, which has gone from a fringe movement in France to the most popular party in the country. With Bardella as its leader, RN has mirrored the GOP and other far-right parties in Europe with its hostility toward supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion, and continues its long tradition of opposing most forms of immigration. However, sometimes the American variety of fascism is too much, even for him: Bardella canceled an appearance at CPAC—traditionally the biggest conservative confab in the US—after Steve Bannon gave what appeared to be a Nazi salute.
Andrea Stroppa
Elon Musk fanboy, Italy
The computer scientist and prolific poster on X, who is in his early thirties, is called Musk’s representative in Italy by local media. Like his role model, Stroppa tries to shape politics through unfiltered posts on social media, whether he’s accusing the Italian government of purportedly drafting “anti-Musk” amendments or calling for the resignation of the interior minister. Given the chance, he’d probably put his home country on the DOGE diet to cut down on government bureaucracy and spending.
Source images: Getty, AP Images; Courtesy of Freelancers Union; Mario De Lopez (Melted Solids), Courtesy of Targeted Victory (Amir Hassan)
