Three days from the one-year anniversary on which Barack Obama made the surprise decision to commute her 35-year prison sentence, Chelsea Manning has confirmed that she is running for senator. She will be running as a Democrat in Maryland against 74-year-old career politician Ben Cardin.


Her platform is transparency, unsurprisingly. Her campaign video flashes a Glenn Greenwald headline published on the Intercept two days ago, reading: “The same Democrats who denounce Donald Trump as a lawless, treasonous authoritarian just voted to give him vast warrantless spying powers.” The piece refers to Congress’s passage of a bill which extends the National Security Agency’s surveillance program for six more years and allows the government to spy on foreigners’ and Americans’ electronic communications without a warrant (see how they voted here). The video closes with her Twitter signature, the hashtag #WeGotThis.