Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former congressional chief of staff will challenge Speaker Pelosi in the 2026 Democratic primary for her San Francisco-based House seat. His announcement marks what could be the first major left-wing challenge to Democratic leadership. 

Saikat Chakrabarti served as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff for eight months in 2019 during her first term. He left his job to run an outside group supporting passage of the Green New Deal, which the congresswoman and Senator Markey had introduced just months before. 

Mr. Chakrabarti says that watching Democratic leaders react to the first two weeks of the second Trump administration has made him believe that there is a need for change in the party, especially as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team are making their way through federal agencies, moving to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, and accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems. 

“Watching Trump and Elon freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government, it’s become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership. I don’t understand how DC’s Democratic leaders are so paralyzed and unprepared for this moment after living through President Trump’s first term — and after Trump and Elon warned us exactly what they planned to do,” Mr. Chakrabarti wrote on X. 

“I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” he added. 

Many Democratic leaders and supporters of the party have been raising concerns for years that its leaders are not ready for the moment because they are too old, too entrenched, and too out of touch with where their voters are. Ms. Pelosi, 84, has already filed paperwork to run for re-election next year. She was seen at the Capitol on Wednesday walking with the assistance of two canes because of a recent fall that led to a hip replacement surgery. 

Ms. Chakrabarti cited a recent instance where Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was denied a powerful position on the House Oversight Committee because Ms. Pelosi wanted a septuagenarian ally to serve in the post instead. 

“When Democrats were about to appoint their star communicator — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — to chair the powerful Oversight committee to hold Trump and his cronies accountable, Pelosi personally intervened to block it,” Mr. Chakrabarti wrote in his announcement. 

“The Democratic Party needs to stop acting like it’s competing against a normal political party that plays by the rules, and it needs a bold vision for how to raise living standards, quality of life and security for all Americans. America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face.”

Before getting to Congress, Mr. Chakrabarti ran the left-wing group Justice Democrats, a political outfit that was instrumental in helping Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and others win their 2018 Democratic congressional primaries over more centrist Democrats. He says the party needs to clean house again, like they did during the first Trump term. 

“I’m going to run a very different kind of campaign than most. Instead of spending hours each day doing ‘call time’ with big money donors — I’m going to spend every day talking with voters. I know! What a radical idea!”

“In this campaign, I’ll be talking about the problems we need to solve for San Francisco, for America, and also about the future of the Democratic Party — and how it can provide an alternative vision of change from Trump and MAGA. In addition to daily conversations with district residents, I’ll also be holding weekly Zoom calls open to anyone to talk about national issues and the future of the Democratic Party.”

Since President Trump’s victory in November, Democrats have seemingly been in a daze, wondering how to fight back against a man who won a popular vote victory, every swing state, and both houses of Congress this time around — something he could not accomplish in 2016. Eight years ago, they say he won on a fluke, but now Mr. Trump says he has won a mandate. 

Mr. Chakrabarti is likely the first of many left-wing challengers to hop into the 2026 cycle against incumbent Democrats. In 2018, several Democrats were ousted because they weren’t seen as being combative enough with the first Trump White House, and there is already some of that backlash to members of party leadership again.

At a protest on Tuesday outside of the Treasury Department, activists chanted at Senator Schumer to “shut down the Senate” to stop all of Mr. Trump’s new nominees until Mr. Musk’s access to federal departments and agencies is halted, though just hours after that protest occurred, Mr. Trump’s attorney general was confirmed in the Senate on a bipartisan vote. 

There was no immediate comment from Ms. Pelosi’s campaign.