Arizona may have voted to send Donald Trump back to the White House, but voters in the state’s Third Congressional District also elected Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian American Democrat to ever serve and the youngest new member of the incoming Congress. The 32-year-old Arizona native and daughter of immigrants already has a long political résumé. She caught the political bug in high school while working to elect Barack Obama to his first term. By 2014, she was a climate adviser at the United Nations who worked with the team that delivered the Paris Agreement. She then traded policy for politics after being incensed by Trump’s first term, and in 2020 she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Phoenix City Council.
Yet for all her wins, Ansari hasn’t done much celebrating. Instead, she’s gearing up to defend her majority-Latino district from Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations on day one. Climate change is also high on her list of priorities. “Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing cities that is also severely impacted by climate catastrophes like heat and drought,” she says. Last summer alone, her district saw temperatures as high as 118 degrees, and more than 300 people likely died due to heat-related illnesse. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the incoming administration couldn’t care less, which is why Ansari is already hard at work. Just two weeks after winning her seat, she was elected House Democrats’ freshman class president.
The Cut spoke with Ansari about preparing for Trump 2.0, generational battles on Capitol Hill, and what it was like to win her race on a night when her party overwhelmingly lost.