(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) One radical leftist candidate offered a bizarre excuse for skipping a major candidate forum: she fell asleep.
The candidate, leftist journalist Kat Abughazaleh, is running for the Democratic nomination in Illinois’s 9th congressional district. The seat is held by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is not seeking re-election.
Abughazaleh is one of several individuals federally indicted on charges alleging they conspired to impede and interfere with a U.S. law enforcement officer during an anti-ICE protest.
Abughazaleh, 26, admitted she missed the event after experiencing what she described as a “sleep attack.”
“I want to offer my sincerest apologies as well as an explanation. I have a chronic illness called narcolepsy,” Abughazaleh wrote in a statement. “It makes me extremely tired and occasionally causes ‘sleep attacks,’ times when my brain literally cannot stay awake.”
The leftist journalist-turned-politician claimed her condition was “usually well-managed but — like with any disability — has flare-ups and today was one of those.”
She added, “I ended up sleeping through alarms, calls, and even my campaign manager knocking on my door repeatedly.”
Abughazaleh insisted the incident was not an excuse and said she wanted to be “transparent” with voters.
The leftist activist was known online for her past work with Media Matters, the far-left nonprofit that claims to be “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
Abughazaleh said she was attempting to reschedule the forum and vowed not to sleep through it next time.
Kat Abughazaleh is responding this evening with a statement after missing a candidate forum hosted by Indivisible Edgewater, citing narcolepsy and her sleeping through the event
Here's a statement from her sent to attendees pic.twitter.com/YNIZIogUB3
— Matthew Eadie (@mattheweadie22) January 21, 2026
