During the 2024 presidential election, @KamalaHQ was something of an alter ego for Vice President Kamala Harris — as Harris ran a buttoned-up campaign, the online accounts shared clips of her set to viral TikTok sounds, shitposted unflattering pictures of Donald Trump, and adopted a voice that was at times indistinguishable from the average 20-something posting about politics on X. It was an effective way to rack up likes, engagement, and explainers, but it did not stop Trump from winning a second term.
The same people who ran @KamalaHQ announced last week that they were reviving the accounts and rebranding as Headquarters, described in various places as a “Gen Z content hub,” a “newsroom,” and “an online media brand.” Headquarters launched on platforms including Instagram, TikTok, X, Substack, and Facebook, where so far it has largely shared clips of breaking news moments: Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show performance, for example, or of lawmakers grilling Trump administration officials about Jeffrey Epstein. (Its first handle on X, @headquarters_67, was derided by some; the account later changed its handle to @headquarters_68, and is now @HQNewsNow.) The Instagram account has already co-posted content with the locally focused Courier Newsroom, a similar left-leaning media brand that is expanding across the US.
The effort is a response to the reality that the right has spent years building up a content machine that now has a hold on the highest levels of the Trump administration, which itself is filled with podcasters, trolls, and internet agitators. By repurposing social media handles with millions of followers and an established voice, Headquarters is looking to flood the zone with unabashedly liberal, anti-Trump content. Some of the responses to Headquarters boiled down to “This is cringe.” Many questioned whether a content hub was enough of a response to the lawlessness of the second Trump administration. Others, of course, were happy to see the memes.
I spoke with Lauren Kapp and Parker Butler, managing partners at Luminary Strategies, and Arlie Shugaar, director of platforms at People for the American Way (PFA), part of the team running Headquarters, about their plan to counter the right-wing content machine.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Verge: This idea of repurposing a campaign social media account is definitely novel. How should voters and audiences understand the account? Is it an extension of the Democratic Party? Should they think of it as a third-party content creator/influencer account? Is it an extension of Kamala Harris as a politician?
Parker Butler: I would think of it as a news and commentary resource with an obviously progressive lens. The vice president does not have editorial control over the content. The accounts are repurposed, so they are not the vice president’s campaign accounts. They are an entirely new brand with a different purpose. Central to that is the recognition that an account like this with 8 million-plus followers across platforms can have an enormous impact across not just one election, but many elections, many causes, and I think that’s particularly important as we head into 2026.
How were you thinking about what to do with the account after the election?
Lauren Kapp: We saw this as a huge missed opportunity if we did not repurpose it. There was such a surge in [followers] after the ticket transition in July 2024. And while the Kamala HQ account is known for its memes and trends, we had an entire clipping apparatus that was embedded in the KHQ team and we’re really ramping that up. We’re going to be creating very similar styles of content that we were on the campaign, but also you’ll continue to see a lot of direct-to-camera videos of our staffers. The entire clipping apparatus is getting restarted again as well too, and just really holding this current administration accountable on a day-to-day basis.
How many people are working on the account on a given day?
LK: On a daily basis, there’s between eight to 12 of us who are supporting Arlie. The project is housed under People for the American Way, and Arlie is going to be building up a team. Then you have [Harris’] team, who is kind of serving as an advisory position through PFA, and then Luminary Strategies, who is our firm that’s providing the initial support for this project.
The goal is basically to find and create new talent and to create a talent pipeline through People for the American Way, given the fact that Democrats are very behind in digital at large. This account was something that I think a lot of young people found exciting during 2024, and by rebranding it, we’re hoping to have a lot of new folks that can be involved in this account in different capacities.
Talk about the sort of pipeline a little bit. Is it similar to the right’s Turning Point USA contributors, where there’s a central organization and then there are people who are on message or under the same umbrella of values and ideologies, who are then creating their own content for their own platforms?
PB: It’s a mix. Part of this is building up the talent pipeline from a staffer perspective, getting folks more in the left-leaning space who understand digital. There’s so much focus on policy and research and a more brainiac style of staffer types in the Democratic space, but there’s less of an emphasis on digital-first, online-first strategy. We want to show young people that this is a viable career path to do this sort of thing.
We’re also working with front-facing creators as well. The name of Headquarters speaks to what we want to be, which is sort of a nexus in the space. The right is this machine that is constantly putting out stuff in a coordinated way. The left feels often a lot more disparate and disconnected. We want to be that hub for a lot of folks. Whether you’re a creator or you run a page, you can feel like, “I’m being uplifted by Headquarters, I’m collaborating with them and they’re helping to grow my presence.”
“At large, the strategy has to be first and fast.”
There was the Wired story last year about a similar political group that was working with content creators to teach them how to shoot video or edit online content. Some people felt misled because they didn’t realize it was a coordinated thing. Do you worry about that type of reaction?
PB: There is an element of this program that involves collaborating with creators. It’s not like a paid operation. The point of this is to audience-build with creators. That’s one piece of this program, but another piece of it is really the owned social piece — building up these pages and putting out content from Headquarters itself. The emphasis is less on sort of coordinated creator messaging.
What does it take to get attention online in the current media ecosystem? What formats work? What tone have you landed on? What do you see doing well on social?
LK: At large, the strategy has to be first and fast. I don’t think a lot of left-leaning groups have the apparatus set up to be able to post online quickly. There’s a lot of layers of approvals that prevent people from being able to drive narratives, which often leaves people to be reactive versus proactive. [On the campaign] we had a very quick approval process where it took, barring objection, five minutes, and we are following that model because it worked during the campaign.
Arlie Shugaar: We have always split up our content strategy based on platform, but the one thing that we see really perform well across all platforms are clips. I think people really want to decide for themselves and see it straight from the source, so that’s huge for us.
Is there anything that you want to do differently with headquarters than how you did things with Kamala HQ?
AS: One of the main pieces of feedback and learnings from 2024 was that it was too trendy or too geared towards certain demographics. I’m really interested in expanding that reach and not just in a way of using different trends that might be on another side of the internet, but in a really intentional and thoughtful way that speaks to folks where they’re at and just make sense and make sure that they’re involved in the conversation.
Will Headquarters take policy positions? Will you endorse candidates?
LK: The big three for us right now are definitely Epstein, ICE, and the economy because that’s really what’s driving conversation right now and we’ll continue to churn out content on that.
I’m curious if you feel tied or burdened by the Harris/Walz agenda. Do you feel like people will associate Headquarters specifically with some of the stances or policy positions of the campaign?
PB: It’s not like we’re putting out a very specific policy. We’re not running for office. Again, this is an account that’s meant to educate people broadly about progressive issues. We are primarily a values-based account, so it’s less of a “Here’s our specific prescription of this particular policy on this particular issue,” but it’s more about “These are our values and this is the information that you need to be armed with to come to an educated conclusion and to get activated in this space.”
We trust folks to come to their own conclusions and come to their own opinions about things. This isn’t meant to be propagandizing. We are branding it as a newsroom because we want it to be information first and less of telling people exactly what to believe.
LK: There were so many criticisms about how we lost the election online, how we didn’t go on enough podcasts, we didn’t do this, we didn’t do that, and the vice president heard that and she’s taking a direct action to try to create something within the progressive ecosystem online. I personally see this as a huge investment in the space. By no means are we saying that this is going to fix everything, but this is a small step forward in the right direction.
[Asked in a follow-up email whether Headquarters would share content related to Palestine — an issue that haunted the Harris campaign and Joe Biden presidency — Butler said, “Our mission is to hold Trump and MAGA accountable on issues where they are out of step with Americans — no issue is off the table for us to talk about in that regard.”]
How do you plan to work around the fact that there are Democratic candidates around the country that aren’t totally aligned with the party? I’m thinking, like, congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois. Would Headquarters feel comfortable posting videos of her? Would Headquarters post a video about abolishing ICE? I’m just so curious about where you stand, really.
PB: Yeah, I mean, again, that goes to what I was mentioning earlier about how we see Headquarters being a nexus of the broader space. We believe very strongly that in order to defeat fascism, we need to be a big tent. Obviously there’s different factions within the party and there’s plenty of discourse to go around on which sort of faction is better or what have you, but at the end of the day, we want to uplift the folks in the left-leaning space broadly. So absolutely, especially as we get closer to the general election and these primaries take place after that, I think we want to uplift everyone across the space because ultimately this is a very dire moment for our democracy, and so we want to make sure that the coalition to defeat MAGA is as big as possible.
There was a Headquarters launch campaign on X and other platforms. Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter to destroy it; he bought it to remake something in his image according to his political leanings. There’s obviously issues, like the AI deepfakes. Substack has its own issues with Nazi newsletters and content that’s monetized. I’m curious if you believe you need to be on these platforms.
AS: I think that being on these platforms is pretty essential to reach the folks that are on there just getting their regular content and scrolling. We’re interested in going wherever is putting us in contact with folks that want to be reached. We had a Truth Social back in 2024, and I think we are definitely interested in going to these places where even if just one post can educate and reframe what’s happening in the conversation for people, we’re interested in doing that.
Is Headquarters on Truth Social?
PB: We are reaching out to the reps to change the username, but yes, we will have an account there.
I think part of the reason why the right has so thoroughly dominated some of these spaces is that Elon Musk literally bought Twitter to do that, right? X has this effect of taking whatever issue Musk cares about at the moment and creating news out of it. How do you balance being active on a platform or stop posting there so that it doesn’t legitimize or normalize a far-right platform?
PB: Billionaires are buying hip social media platforms because they know that social media is ground zero for where these narratives originate. And so it would be foolish for Democrats or those on the left to see that and to say, “Okay, right-wing billionaires are doing this, so now we’re going to recede and move backward.” What we need to do is move forward and get in the game. We have to fight back. We need to invest ourselves in social media. So that’s a big part of the idea behind Headquarters is, we’ll go anywhere because the kind of voters that we have to win over and win back are exactly the type of people who may scroll on X or they might listen to a podcaster that most people on the left don’t listen to. And so we want to go everywhere.
How will you know if you’re successful?
PB: This sounds broad, but if we are able to shift the cultural tide against MAGA. There was so much conversation last year around young people moving to the right. They voted for Trump in larger numbers and that was in large part due to cultural shifts and what was seen as cool, what was seen as where to head. We want to reverse that and we want to show people that there’s a much better way.
AS: I think generally we will know if we’re successful by making sure that we’re building on the platforms, the huge platforms that we’ve already amassed, and making sure that we can keep growing those platforms and give people a sizable place to amplify their message and just get all the information out there.
So looking at followers and engagement on the platforms?
[After our conversation, Luminary Strategies shared some initial figures at the end of Headquarters’ first week back: It had racked up 160 million “views” across platforms, added 300,000 new followers, and its posts were shared more than half a million times, the firm said.]