Chelsea Manning Has Filed to Run for Senator

Eight months after her release from prison, Chelsea Manning has submitted a federal election filing to run for US Senate in Maryland as a Democrat, the Guardian reports. She would run against incumbent and senior Senator Democrat Ben Cardin, who will be seeking a third term. Cardin, previously a ten-term Congressman, has enjoyed broad success in Maryland, winning the 2012 primary by 74% and the overall vote by 55%.

Cardin’s career has been marked by initiatives to expand Medicaid, welfare, and retirement plans. As the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he’s been touring news networks lately as a chief critic of Trump’s lax approach to Russian aggression.

In 2010, Manning leaked nearly 75,000 documents to Wikileaks including video of airstrikes and detainee records from Guantanamo Bay, and subsequently spent years in prison under conditions which the UN’s torture chief has described as “cruel and inhumane.” After nearly seven years, President Obama commuted her 35-year sentence, and she was released in May 2017.

In her Guardian column which she wrote from prison, she has called for accountability in the CIA’s torture operations and for developed nations to stop punishing refugees for ISIS terrorist attacks. She also chronicled her miserable battle to get gender reassignment surgery in prison as well as the torture of solitary confinement.