LOS ANGELES — Rep. Maxine Waters, an institution of Los Angeles Democratic politics, is facing an upstart challenger from her party seeking to capitalize on the national wave of generational change-seekers.

Myla Rahman, a nonprofit executive, hopes to turn Waters’ 35 years in Congress — and 50 years overall as an elected official — against her, arguing the 87-year-old incumbent has lost touch with her district.

“The community has said that they’d like new energy, a new perspective,” said Rahman in an interview. “And the reality is, the average age is 36 years old in the district. The average person is a renter in the district. So we’ve got a lot of issues that are relatable to my life experience.”

Waters is the rare member of Congress to be both a local icon and a national meme. She gained near-celebrity status in President Donald Trump’s first term as “Auntie Maxine” who regularly lobbed acerbic barbs at the president and his administration. She has maintained an electoral lock on her South Los Angeles district, normally winning with more than 70 or 80 percent of the vote.

That commanding presence has deterred any serious challenge against Waters in decades. But Rahman is aiming to tap into Democrats’ party-wide discontent over their graying representation, spurred on by President Joe Biden’s initial decision to run for reelection in 2024 despite concerns about his advanced age and mental acuity.

In California, long-serving Democratic incumbents like Reps. Brad Sherman and Mike Thompson are facing insurgent campaigns from younger opponents. The generational rift is also roiling the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members are facing challenges from younger Black politicians who argue the old guard is not fighting hard enough for the current political moment.

Rahman, who is 53, pointedly noted Waters has been her representative since she moved into the district at age 6. She said her differences from the congressmember are stylistic, not ideological, and that she considers herself “more energetic, younger, more relatable in terms of the experiences that people face in the district.”

Rahman said she is especially focused on affordable health care after surviving two occurrences of breast cancer. She received her diagnosis the second time just as she was elected city clerk in Carson and stepped down from the role one day after winning because of her health. She is now cancer-free.

Waters’ seniority in Congress has made her a powerful force on Blue Light News; she is currently the top-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services committee and is in position to become its chair if the Democrats win control in the midterm elections.

But Waters is not particularly flush in campaign cash, perhaps because she has so rarely faced a serious challenge. She raised roughly $430,000 in 2025 and started the year with less than $150,000 cash on hand.

Rahman initially sought a state legislative seat in 2026 and raised less than $35,000 for her Assembly campaign, most of which she donated herself. But she said she’s “very confident” she’d be competitive fundraising for a congressional seat. She’s hired veteran Democratic consultant Mike Trujillo to work on the campaign.

After working as a high-level staffer for Los Angeles-area legislators, Rahman said she’s well aware her decision to go up against a pillar of the city’s political scene will stir some outrage.

“I’m sure I’ll get a lot of calls. I’m waiting for ‘how dare you? The audacity of you, who do you think you are,’” she said. “And what I can say is that there’s a choice, and this is a democracy. That’s why we have elections, and the voters can decide.”

Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he is moving forward with a plan to revive a prohibition on House votes to overturn President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.

Johnson told reporters he believes he will have the votes to include the block in a procedural measure set for House consideration Tuesday. The House Rules Committee approved legislation Monday that would prevent any further tariff votes through July 31.

The move comes after a previous blockade imposed by GOP leaders expired — and House Democrats threatened to force a vote as soon as Wednesday that would effectively cancel Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

But it is far from clear that Johnson will actually have the necessary votes. A band of House Republicans are already pushing back on the plans, with a group of at least six tariff-skeptical GOP members discussing the matter on the floor Monday night. With united Democratic opposition expected, nays from as few as two Republicans could derail the effort.

The House on Monday night passed its bipartisan housing package aimed at increasing home supply and affordability, setting up an uncertain effort to merge the measure with a Senate housing bill.

House lawmakers approved by a vote of 390-9 the Housing in the 21st Century Act under suspension of the rules, a fast-track procedure for non-controversial legislation. The bill includes provisions to modernize local development and rural housing programs, expand manufactured and affordable housing, protect borrowers and those utilizing federal housing programs and enhance oversight of housing providers. The package also contained a recently added section aimed at increasing community bank lending.

Congress must now work to get a unified bill to the president’s desk. The Senate passed its own bipartisan housing affordability package in October, which was supported by the White House. Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) — who spearheaded the House bill with ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — told reporters Monday he plans to negotiate with the administration as well as his counterparts on the Senate Banking Committee to get a final version which both chambers and the White House can support.

“We wanted to get [the housing bill and other committee priorities] through the House so that we could work with the Senate to find packages that the President could sign into law, long before the very active summer campaign season,” Hill said. “So I would hope that we could work over the spring and find a way to have a bicameral, bipartisan set of bills.”

Hill has previously said the Senate bill, the ROAD to Housing Act, contained a number of provisions that House Republicans would likely not support. Although the House and Senate bills share many similarities, the Senate measure includes a number of grant programs that would expand federal spending.

But Senate Banking ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that she still wants the House to take up the Senate bill, setting the stage for a potential clash. Support from Senate Democrats will likely be necessary to get housing legislation through the upper chamber.

“ROAD to Housing is a Jenga tower. Adding or taking things away risks losing the unanimous coalition that we have built in the Senate,” Warren said in an interview.

Warren also signaled that she disapproved of the new section added to the House legislation, which would ease regulation on community banks — reflecting Hill’s “Make Community Banking Great Again” agenda.

“House Republicans should not hold housing relief hostage to push forward several bank deregulatory bills that will make our community banks more fragile,” Warren said in a statement before Monday’s House vote.

Katherine Hapgood contributed to this report.