Who is Olivia Julianna, the Gen Z activist fighting for abortion rights?
If you've scrolled through political TikTok or Twitter anytime recently, you've probably seen Olivia Julianna pop up—usually dropping truth bombs, clapping back at lawmakers, or rallying young voters like a boss.
Tired of too many ads? go ad free now
She's just 22, but this Houston-based activist has already become one of Gen Z's loudest, smartest, and most fearless voices. Whether it's abortion rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy, or calling out political hypocrisy, Olivia doesn't just show up—she shows out.
Born in 2002 and raised in a working-class Mexican-American family in Texas, Olivia Julianna Herrera (she goes by her first and middle names for safety reasons) calls herself a 'queer, plus-size, disabled Latina.'
She's also a first-gen college student, currently majoring in political science at the University of Houston–Victoria. Her activism really took off around the 2020 election, when she started posting videos that broke down big political issues in plain English—just Gen Z doing Gen Z things, but with a ton of insight and fire.
Her big moment came in 2021. When Texas passed its super-restrictive Heartbeat Act, Olivia didn't just post angry tweets—she urged people to flood the state's anonymous 'snitch site' with fake tips.
The site crashed. The message was clear: don't mess with her.
Then came the Twitter showdown of 2022. After Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz made a rude comment about abortion rights activists, Olivia clapped back. He insulted her. She turned that into a fundraising moment—and raised over $2 million for abortion funds. Her response? 'He gave me a national platform. I used it.' Iconic.
From there, Olivia became unstoppable. She landed on Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential list, joined Gen-Z for Change as Director of Politics, and played a key role in mobilizing young voters online.
Tired of too many ads? go ad free now
She's the real deal.
In August 2024, Olivia hit the national stage with a fiery speech at the Democratic National Convention. Rocking a hot-pink power suit (inspired by Nancy Pelosi, no less), she urged Gen Z to show up for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and warned about threats to voting rights. Oh—and she introduced Stevie Wonder. Casual.
In early 2025, she decided to switch gears. Instead of sticking with campaign work, Olivia launched her own Substack, A New Perspective, where she breaks down politics, calls out the BS in both parties, and keeps fighting for the issues that matter. She's still as bold and outspoken as ever—just doing it her way.
Whether she's crashing websites, trending on Twitter, or making political speeches in pink, one thing's for sure: Olivia Julianna is a force, and she's just getting started.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
32 minutes ago
- NDTV
Sheikh Hasina Charged with Crimes Against Humanity Before Tribunal
Quick Read Summary is AI generated, newsroom reviewed. Charges against former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, including crimes against humanity, have been submitted to the International Crimes Tribunal following protests that led to violence and deaths. The interim government has denied foreign conspiracy claims. Charges against former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have been submitted to the International Crimes Tribunal or ICT in Bangladesh. The charges, including the charge of crimes against humanity, were submitted at noon to the registrar of the tribunal following the investigation report. Bangladesh has started the trial against the former Prime Minister related to the killings of protesters by the police during the uprising last year. Sheikh Hasina had fled by helicopter in August 2024 as a violent mob approached her official residence, Gana Bhavan, in Dhaka. The protests, with students at the forefront, was reportedly supported by the then banned Jamaat-E-Islami Bangladesh, a radical Islamist organisation. Apart from Sheikh Hasina, former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and former Inspector General of Police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun have also been named as accused in the case. The International Crimes Tribunal, originally set up to try cases related to war crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War, was reconstituted following ouster of the Awami League government in August last year. In a post on social media, Chief Advisor of the Interim Government of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, meanwhile, has denied CIA's role in last year's uprising against Sheikh Hasina after her refusal to comply with US demands for a military base on Saint Martin's Island. Several claims have been made that the CIA and the ISI were involved in the plot to overthrow Sheikh Hasina. In a post on social media platform X, Muhammad Yunus said, "The July movement itself was not a CIA-ISI conspiracy but a spontaneous outpouring of anger by students and ordinary citizens against Sheikh Hasina's brutal, authoritarian rule, which had suppressed democracy and led to widespread violence. Tens of thousands took to the streets demanding her removal after witnessing hundreds of deaths caused by her government's security forces." "According to a UN fact-finding mission, approximately 1,400 protesters were killed during this period. The narrative of the United States seeking to establish control over Saint Martin's Island is a baseless fabrication pushed by Sheikh Hasina's camp," Muhammad Yunus added. Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed recently alleged that Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-E-Taiba was involved in the uprising against his mother that led to her ouster. Since then, radical elements in Bangladesh have been emboldened and terror-accused have been co-opted into the system by the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus. The Lashkar-E-Taiba is a listed terrorist organisation with close links to Pakistan's spy agency, ISI. Sajeeb Wazed has also quoted BBC reports that say many of those allegedly killed by the Sheikh Hasina government are still alive. "The Yunus dictatorship won't even let them be listed alive and remove charges," Wazed posted on X. After coming to power, Muhammad Yunus has advocated for "stronger ties with Pakistan".
Time of India
34 minutes ago
- Time of India
'Using cheap language against CM': TMC hits out at Amit Shah on remarks against Mamata Banerjee
NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose on Sunday sharply criticised Union home minister Amit Shah for his remarks on CM Mamata Banerjee during his two-day visit to West Bengal. Addressing a press conference, Ghose condemned Shah's comments against Mamata, saying his language resembled that of a " BJP worker, not a home minister of India." "At a time when the All Indian Trinamool Congress is standing firmly with the Government of India, when our national general secretary is abroad on MPs delegation, speaking strongly for the Government of India, speaking against Pakistan-based terrorism; at this time, none other than the home minister comes to Bengal and acts like a BJP worker and uses cheap language against our respected CM, Mamata Banerjee,' Ghose said. Further continuing her jab, she claimed, "Amit Shah's politics is all about divide and rule." — PTI_News (@PTI_News) Ghose's remarks came in response to Amit Shah's speech in Kolkata, where he accused Mamata Banerjee of turning West Bengal into a state of "infiltration, atrocities on women, bomb blasts and immorality with Hindus" since taking office. Shah also alleged that 'hundreds of BJP workers' were killed during her tenure and predicted that the BJP would unseat the TMC government in the 2026 assembly elections. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like CFD: Invertir $100 con IA podría devolverte un segundo salario Digital Group Prueba ahora Undo "For years, Bengal was ruled by communists. After that, Mamata Banerjee came by with the slogan 'Maa, Maati, Maanush'. She converted the great land of Bengal into a land of infiltration, atrocities on women, crime, bomb blasts and immorality with Hindus... Hundreds of BJP workers were killed in West Bengal after Mamata Banerjee became the CM," Shah said. Amit Shah also called on the Bengal CM to contest elections 'without violence,' claiming her 'deposit would be seized." Read more: Amit Shah takes on TMC chief
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
Resource war: How commercial assets turned into front line weaponry
Chennai: Recently, J.D. Vance, the US vice president, confirmed what the world feared. He termed the competition between the US and China in developing artificial intelligence (AI) as an 'arms race'. Policy makers in both the countries believe that whoever wins this race will dominate the world, going forward. At the core of this battle is computing power and this has given a fresh impetus to the chip war that began between the US and China five years ago. In May 2020, during his first term as the president of the US, Donald Trump fired the first salvo. The US commerce department added Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies to the 'Entity List', a measure which prevented the company that sells smartphones, telecom equipment and cloud computing services from accessing advanced computer chips produced or developed using US technology or software. The reason? The US feared that Huawei's attractively priced products, backed by Chinese government subsidy, would soon dominate the next generation telecom networks, ending American clout in the field. The move had a debilitating impact on Huawei. Its global expansion took a hit and revenue crashed. 'A corporate giant faced technological asphyxiation," Chris Miller, in his book Chip War, wrote. According to him, this development reminded China of its weakness. 'In nearly every step of the process of producing semiconductors, China is staggeringly dependent on foreign technology, almost all of which is controlled by its geopolitical rivals—Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or the US," he wrote. China began investing billions of dollars to develop its own semiconductor technology in a bid to free itself from America's chip choke, he added. But the US is in no mood to make this endeavour easy for China. It has progressively tightened restrictions on China's semiconductor sector. The 'Entity List' has since grown to include over 140 Chinese companies—fabrication units, semiconductor tool companies and even investment companies that operate in the sector. Restrictions have extended from chips with high bandwidth memory to semiconductor manufacturing equipment and software tools. China, which sees US restrictions as an attempt to deny it the technological greatness it deserves, has retaliated. It began imposing restrictions on export of critical and rare earth minerals that are crucial for production of weapons, semiconductors and electric vehicles. There are 17 rare earth minerals and China has absolute control on most of them (see chart). In October 2023, it introduced export permits for graphite needed to produce lithium ion batteries. In December that year, it banned transfer of rare earth minerals extraction and separation technologies and the technology to make magnets. China, over the years, has mastered these technologies. In the same month, it banned the export of antimony, gallium and germanium apart from imposing stricter review of graphite exports to the US. In February 2025, in response to Donald Trump imposing 10% tariffs on all Chinese products, the middle kingdom added five more critical minerals— tungsten, indium, bismuth, tellurium and molybdenum to the export control list. This meant that companies require special export licenses to export the minerals. On 4 April, after Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, China further added seven more minerals and magnets to the export restrictions list. There is no clarity whether these restrictions have been suspended after the recent US and China trade talks in Geneva. The US is now scrambling to find alternate sources for these minerals. All of a sudden, economic resources which were till recently seen predominantly as commercial assets, have acquired new edge as strategic instruments. They are no longer controlled just by the market— geopolitics has a greater say over them. A short history Demand for resources began to rise after the Industrial Revolution in 1760 which introduced the use of metals such as iron and steel. The rise of mechanized factory systems increased output and thus, demand for resources. As the demand rose, countries such as Great Britain, France and Belgium began colonizing the world in search of resources. 'Colonization was all about exploitation of natural resources," said S. Gurumurthy, writer and a corporate advisor. The British empire met its demand for cotton, tea, leather, coal and iron ore from India for almost two centuries, he added. Post World War II, resources were seen as market instruments. They were freely traded for a price. According to the World Trade Organization, between 1950 and 2024, global trade volumes grew by 4,500%. 'It was also a period when countries used trade to increase co-dependence in the hope that it would enhance peace and welfare," Dhruva Jaishankar, executive director, Observer Research Foundation — America, said. Europe bought gas from Russia in the hope that the latter would leave them alone. The US built a strong economic relationship with China on the assumption that the Asian nation could integrate with the global economy, eliminate poverty, and embrace democratic principles. Of course, trade in resources has not been entirely free. Nations have imposed restrictions. In the last 75 years, the US is the biggest culprit. As a sole super power, it denied various countries technology and resources that it deemed were dual use—for both civil and military applications. As the US-China rivalry intensifies, the weaponization is spilling beyond dual use technologies. China, it appears, is not loath to leveraging the domination it has built in the global economy. The new normal China accounts for more than 30% of global manufacturing output. This is the highest concentration of manufacturing in one place," said Jaishankar. The US had a similar share for a short period of time immediately after World War II when the protracted war had destroyed much of production facilities in mainland Europe and Japan. 'China has managed to achieve this without a war," he said, adding 'it is now trying to use its manufacturing power as a strategic leverage." It is not just manufacturing. Consider China's domination in the shipping space. It controls over 100 ports across 63 nations. As of 2022, it had 96% share in container production, 48% of global ship building orders and 80% of ship-to-shore cranes. It has similar domination across many sectors. 'What is worrying is that China has revealed its intention to weaponize goods, logistics or the entire supply chain," said an Indian government official who did not want to be identified. There is a conscious attempt by China to make the world depend on it. Simultaneously, it is reducing its dependence on the world. The restriction on export of rare earth minerals is just a beginning, he added. The resentment For more than four decades, China had silently focused on growing its economy. It eased rules to attract manufacturing taking advantage of its low wage costs. It invested in infrastructure—power, roads, ports and airports. It enabled building factories at unheard of scale which substantially reduced the cost of production. Global brands rushed to China to take advantage of it. Until a few years ago, 85% of all iPhone produced by Apple were assembled in China. At one point in time, almost all of Nike's shoes were produced in China. There were warnings within the US about this excessive dependence. Michael Pillsbury's book, The Hundred-Year Marathon, detailed China's secret desire to upstage the US as a global superpower. He, indeed many others, pointed out that China harboured a deep resentment and a sense of injury for losing its status as a middle kingdom when it dominated the world—economically, culturally and militarily. In the early 1700s, China (and India) had a large share of the world economy. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, in 1760, it accounted for a third of the global economy. In the two centuries that followed, it lost out significantly. By 1979, China's share of the global economy was just 2%. Chinese consider the period between 1839 and 1945 a 'century of humiliation' that saw political fragmentation, decline and subjugation by foreign powers such as Russia, Japan and the West. The Chinese yearned to regain this lost glory. Today, China has 19% share in the global GDP, fast catching up with the US' 27%. Late wakeup call Policy makers in the US, for years, took a benign view of China's growth. Pillsbury pointed out that they saw their China policy as a commercial win and ignored the strategic dimension. Only when China began to assert itself, did they realise the depth of US' dependence on China and its real motive. It is not a surprise that Pillsbury, as Trump's advisor, is the architect of US' China policy now. Today, the US and China are engaged in a contest. The US is playing to its strength by denying advanced technology to China. By focusing on the massive $295 trade deficit (in 2024) and imposing massive tariffs, the Trump administration wants to reduce its dependence. China, for its part, is thinking long term to upstage the US. Lizzi Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Centre for China Analysis, best described its strategy in a recent Financial Times article. He wrote: 'Xi is not looking to win the trade war in a conventional sense. He's positioning China for a drawn-out, grinding, contest by building domestic capacity, hardening supply chain and rooting out perceived vulnerabilities to foreign pressure." India play As the US and China fight for supremacy, India needs to have a strategy to deal with the fallout. 'Countries, be it China or the US, have exclusive rights over their resources. Weaponizing such resources is the new normal," said Ajay Srivastava, founder, Global Trade Research Initiative, a trade focussed think tank. India needs to put in place policies to minimise the impact of such decisions. India should identify and develop resources that the world would need and use it as a bargaining chip, he added. 'India may lack such resources now but we need to identify those and invest now," Gurumurthy added. China, Jaishankar said, does not have all the resources within its nation. It had worked assiduously to tap these critical minerals across the world, especially from African nations. China's strength, he added, is in developing the ability to process them in an effective manner. 'India needs to follow a similar strategy. We should strike deals with nations which have these resources and import the mineral for processing in India. That will give us control over it," he explained. India has already drawn up a list of critical minerals and has taken steps to secure them. It is part of the Mineral Security Partnership, a multi-nation initiative led by the US comprising 40 countries. It has struck, or is close to striking, a few deals in Latin America and Africa. But processing the minerals is easier said than done. It is capital intensive and requires a long lead time. Investors don't support such projects unless there is a strong business case. Experts have also suggested that India should frame policies to suit its strengths. Some have questioned pushing electrification of vehicles in a big way. With India lacking the raw material to make batteries, the rise in electric vehicles will shift India's energy dependence from West Asia to China. Others have recommended that India should invest heavily in taking a lead in green hydrogen. India is blessed with abundant sunlight and focus on storage systems can help it use solar power to drive green hydrogen efforts. India's efforts, such as production-linked incentives, have cut its dependence on China for solar cells and modules. More needs to be done if India has to become self-sufficient. To make all this possible, the country, particularly its private sector, would need to invest in research and development. If there is one thing that can come in India's way is its hubris, warned experts. 'What is needed is a long term vision and a step-by-step approach to achieve it," GTRI's Srivastava said.
