Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky Makes Her Retirement Official
Schakowsky faced a tough primary against a 26-year-old influencer who has a history of bashing Israel.
Longtime Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) announced she will retire at the end of her term.
Schakowsky has been in office since 1999. She turns 81 this month.
“For the last 26 years, I have had the distinct honor and privilege of representing the 9th Congressional District of Illinois, my lifelong home and the best district in the nation,” stated Schakowsky. “Today, it is with profound gratitude and the utmost appreciation for my constituents that I announce my decision not to seek reelection at the end of my current term.”
Politico reported the possible retirement a few weeks ago.
Schakowsky did not choose to retire because her district became red. The 9th District includes part of Chicago and northern suburbs.
It turns out Schakowsky faced a tough primary against a young influencer who has lived in Illinois for less than a year.
Kat Abughazaleh, 26, announced her run in March.
Abughazaleh brought in “more financial support in her campaign’s first week than Schakowsky did in the entire first quarter of 2025,” according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
Most of that money came from out of state, too.
Abughazaleh addressed Schakowsky’s retirement in a video, promising to push “for even bolder progressive change.”
Schakowsky, who is Jewish, strongly supports Israel. That support brought lightning rods towards her from the far-left.
I wonder if Schakowsky’s support for Israel led to substantial financial support for Abughazaleh, whose father is Palestinian.
Abughazaleh has a keffiyeh hanging on her wall in her videos.
The former Media Matters employee has a history of bashing Israel:
In a fundraising text message following the official launch of her campaign, Abughazaleh further repudiated the close relationship between the United States and Israel, writing that “Democratic leadership should do something to stand up for Palestinians.” She also condemned her primary opponent for voting to “send billions to Israel.”
On Instagram, Abughazaleh posted a painting depicting a woman wearing a keffiyeh wrapped around her head, captioned: “Collective liberation includes palestinian liberation. freedom for all means freedom for palestinians [sic].” She has also posted another photo of herself standing next to street art reading “Free Palestine” and wrote a caption saying “from the river to the sea” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages throughout southern Israel, Abughazaleh has launched numerous tirades condemning the Jewish state. She has slammed Israel’s war efforts in Gaza on X/Twitter, condemning Jerusalem for supposedly practicing “far-right militant ethnonationalism.” She has praised journalists in Gaza for “documenting their own genocide.”
In 2022, Abughazaleh rebuked Israel as a “genocidal apartheid regime” and accused the Jewish state of practicing “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. That same year, she also wrote that “pretending Israel is anything but an apartheid state is a lie people tell themselves to ease their own conscience” and that Israel “has no qualms with killing Palestinian children.”
Lovely. She’ll fit right in with The Squad.
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Huh. She thinks the Dem leadership should stand up more for Palestinians and here I thought they were elected to stand up for America and Americans living in their districts
Nope. Not Democrats. They exist to support fringe left groups, REAL fascists, racial racketeers, and other such types.
Yeah that’s all we need is yet another low IQ antisemite woman in congress as if we didn’t have enough of them.
It’s good for us.
No conservative is going to win that district, she won by 37 points in 2024.
By all means, Democrats, fill your safe seats in Congress with the stupidest, most racist liberal women imaginable. It only helps us.
You’re being pragmatic. I’m not inclined to be. Don’t get me wrong, Schakowsky is a disaster too but we don’t need another Hamas mouthpiece in congress.
“I wonder if Schakowsky’s support for Israel led to substantial financial support for Abughazaleh, whose father is Palestinian.”
She’s probably getting a good chunk of Harvard’s erstwhile grift from Qatar. They see the writing on the wall.
One thing is for sure: Never underestimate the stupidity of Democrat voters in IL-9.
the newest and MORE RADICAL AOC
Kat Abughazaleh
gesundheit
“Retirement”. Ticks me off every time I hear of a politician retiring. Read the contemporaneous writings of the Founders – elective office was never intended to be a career. You got elected, served a term or two, then returned to your farm, store or office. Professional politicians are grifters, every single one of them.
They should not get pensions nor any benefits after leaving office.
And sails off with how much in her retirement package?
Congress must pass must stricter laws on who can finance campaigns and who can call themselves a representative of a state to prevent these carper bagger types from taking seats. I despised it when Hillary Clinton used NYS to climb to the top without having ever lived her before her run for Senate. I believe you should be required to live in a state for minimum of ten years before you can run for Congress. This is even worse in NYS at the state and local levels.
The states can and should do this. They should legislate both residency and funding. It is in their interests, but the democrats will never do this because so much of their funding comes from the coasts.
The states can’t do this. Nor can Congress.
Lady_knight, Congress can’t pass such laws. Nor can any state. If you want such laws you will have to first persuade two thirds of each house of Congress, and then majorities in at least 75 state legislative chambers (two each in 37 states, and one in Nebraska. As a practical matter you’d need more than that, since there’d be states in which you managed to persuade one house but not the other.)
Another octogenarian leftist moves on…
We desperately need:
1. Term limits
2. Age ceilings
Here’s an idea. We desperately need an informed populace so that there is no need to adjust the constitution.
Why do we need either of those things? We have elections every two years. Her constituents have had an opportunity every two years to decide that she was too old, or had been there too long. And every two years they’ve decided she wasn’t and hadn’t, and that they still wanted her. So why should they have been forced to elect someone else?
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