This story was written by Teen VogueStudent pen pals 2024a team of students and recent graduates covering the election cycle from key battleground states.

Cara Nicole spends her days sorting through aesthetically pleasing restock videos and useless celebrity products. Her humorous financial literacy videos have earned her over 222,000 subscribers on YouTube, where she goes by the name @thefinancialfreedomgirl.

Recently, Nicole and a group of other content creators took to Capitol Hill to talk about a perhaps less fun — but no less important — financial issue: taxes. The event, led by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota, was intended to highlight the coming fight for the future of Donald Trump’s administration. Radical tax cuts in 2017. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act resulted in about $2 trillion in tax cuts, bringing major benefits to big businesses and high earners, according to the Center on Budget Priorities and policies. Several of the law’s key provisions are set to expire at the end of 2025, but could be extended depending on who controls Congress next year. So Senators Warren and Smith recruited a group of content creators to help them spread the word about what they call the “tax fight of 2025” to their young, diverse social media audience.

Teen Vogue I caught up with Nicole to learn more about her experiences at the event and how she uses content creation to promote civic engagement.

This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Vogue for teenagers: What was it like participating in the recent tax fight event in Washington?

Cara-Nicole: I had only seen (the senators) on television before, and so seeing them in real life, there’s this surreal moment… where you’re like, “Oh, wow, these are real people.” They live and breathe. These are not simple pixels on a screen. But it was also surreal to be like a history buff, to be at the Capitol and in a place that I’ve studied for so long. Learning about tax policy and economics and how we try to communicate that to everyday people has been very impactful for me as someone who creates content trying to introduce people to complex financial topics and to make them feel involved.