Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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      AOC calls Tucker Carlson ‘trash’ for saying she is not a woman of colour

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      AOC calls Tucker Carlson ‘trash’ for saying she is not a woman of colour‘You’re a creep, bro,’ says New York congresswoman after Carlson attacked Ocasio-Cortez in Fox News segment The Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday night, claiming the US congresswoman was not a woman of colour.“She’s a rich entitled white lady,” he said.In return, the New York Democrat, popularly known as AOC, said: “This is the type of stuff you say when your name starts with a P and ends with dejo.”Dictionary.com defines pendejo as “a mildly vulgar insult for ‘asshole’ or ‘idiot’ in Spanish”.It’s Trump’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth | Lloyd GreenRead more“Once again,” Ocasio-Cortez added, “the existence of a wife or daughters doesn’t make a man good. And this one is basura.”Basura is Spanish for “trash”.She also accused Carlson of sexual harassment.Ocasio-Cortez’s mother is from Puerto Rico, her father from the Bronx. She has described herself as a woman of colour.Carlson said: “No one ever dares to challenge that description, but every honest person knows it is hilariously absurd.“There is no place on Earth outside of American colleges and newsrooms where Sandy Cortez” – Carlson’s derisory nickname for the New York congresswoman – “would be recognized as a quote, woman of color, because she’s not!“She’s a rich entitled white lady. She’s the pampered obnoxious ski bunny in the matching snowsuit who tells you to pull up your mask while you’re standing in the lift line at Jackson Hole. They’re all the same. It doesn’t matter what shade they are.”The leading provocateur in Fox News’ evening line-up was discussing a book about Ocasio-Cortez, Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC, written by Lisa Miller, a reporter at New York magazine.Carlson said Miller’s book was “like a box of Fig Newtons. You know it’s wrong to open it, but the temptation is strong, and so we did.”As the media watchdog Mediate put it, several of the passages Carlson read were “fawning in nature and weave mundane videos AOC has posted online – such as her assembling Ikea furniture – into a grand narrative about her life”.In one passage, Carlson said, the congresswoman is described as “pointedly” saying into a camera, “I’m alone today”.“Is it just us or does that sound like an invitation to a booty call?” Carlson said.“Maybe one step from ‘What are you wearing?’ Either way it’s a little strange. It’s definitely over-sharing and yet, according to the book, over-sharing is the key to Sandy Cortez’s success.”Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Remember when the right wing had a meltdown when I suggested they exhibit obsessive impulses around young women? Well now Tucker Carlson is wishing for … this on national TV.“You’re a creep, bro. If you’re this easy with sexual harassment on air, how are you treating your staff?”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezFox NewsRaceUS politicsDemocratsNew YorkPuerto RiconewsReuse this content More

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      Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Very real risk’ US democracy won’t exist in 10 years

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      Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Very real risk’ US democracy won’t exist in 10 years Efforts by Republicans to restrict voting rights could result in return to Jim Crow era, says progressive in New Yorker interview The progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes the Republican-led pressure on political systems is so great that there is “a very real risk” democracy will cease to exist in the US within a decade.The leftist Democratic politician derided efforts by Republican legislatures around the country to restrict voting rights as the “opening salvos” in a war on democracy, which she said could result in a return to the Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement of racial minorities.In the interview with the New Yorker, she warned that the clock was ticking for Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders to do anything about it, with huge chunks of the president’s agenda, including legislation to protect voting rights, stalled in Congress by more conservative or moderate members of her own party.“Honestly, it is a shitshow,” Ocasio-Cortez said of working in the same Democratic-controlled Congress in which centrist senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have blocked both electoral reforms and Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better social spending initiative.“We don’t have much time,” she said. “The president has not been using his executive power to the extent that some would say is necessary.”The issue of voting rights was a dominant theme of the interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick, who asked her about her previous use of the phrase “if we have a democracy 10 years from now”.“There’s a very real risk that we will not,” she said. “What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn’t.“We’ve already seen the opening salvos of this, where you have a very targeted, specific attack on the right to vote across the United States, particularly in areas where Republican power is threatened by changing electorates and demographics.“You have white nationalist, reactionary politics starting to grow into a critical mass … the continued sophisticated takeover of our democratic systems in order to turn them into undemocratic systems, all in order to overturn results that a party in power may not like.”Although she believes the situation “is not beyond hope”, Ocasio-Cortez fears inaction will lead to a “return to Jim Crow”, a reference to repressive laws in the US south to the mid-20th century designed to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchise Blacks.“You have it already happening in Texas, where Jim Crow-style disenfranchisement laws have already been proposed,” she said.“You have the complete erasure and attack on our own understanding of history, to replace teaching history with institutionalized propaganda from white nationalist perspectives in our schools. This is what the scaffolding of Jim Crow was.“The question we’re really facing is, was the last 50 to 60 years after the Civil Rights Act just a mere flirtation that the United States had with a multiracial democracy that we will then decide was inconvenient for those in power? And we will revert to what we had before?”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Florida man pleads guilty to threatening to kill Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi

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      Florida man pleads guilty to threatening to kill Ocasio-Cortez and PelosiPaul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, also pleads guilty in federal court to threats against Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois A Florida man has pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi, two leading Democrats in Congress, and Kim Foxx, a prominent district attorney in Illinois.‘The walls are closing in’: Trump reels from week of political setbacksRead moreThe US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida said Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, entered his plea in federal court in Fort Pierce on Friday.Hoeffer admitted calling Pelosi’s Washington office in March 2019, threatening “to come a ‘long, long, way’ to rattle her head with bullets and cut her head off”.He admitted a call to Foxx on the same day, saying bullets would “rattle her brain”.In November 2020, Hoeffer called the office of Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive from New York. This time, the DoJ said, Hoeffer “threatened that he would ‘rip her head off’, and told her to sleep with one eye open”.Citing the plea agreement, NBC News reported that Hoeffer also “warned of ‘all-out war’ and a ‘civilian army’” and made racist remarks in his call to Foxx.Hoeffer made his calls before the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021, in which supporters of Donald Trump sought to overturn his election defeat.Some looked for lawmakers to capture or kill. One rioter, from Texas, faces charges including a threat to “assassinate” Ocasio-Cortez. His case has yet to be tried.Capitol police have reported an increase in threats against lawmakers. NBC cited the chief of Capitol police, J Thomas Manger, as saying there were around 9,600 threats in 2021, up from more than 8,000 in 2020.As prominent Democratic women, Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi are common targets for threats, from within the walls of Congress as well as without.Ocasio-Cortez was elected in 2018, as Democrats took the House in opposition to Trump. She quickly became a national star. In 2019, Time magazine began a profile by describing nerves in her Washington office.US man charged with threatening to ‘assassinate’ Alexandria Ocasio-CortezRead more“Every 10 minutes or so,” the magazine said, “someone knocks on the big wooden door of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office on Capitol Hill. The noise makes staffers stiffen.“It’s almost always a harmless fan, one of dozens who arrive each day, leaving neon-colored Post-it notes as devotional offerings.“But in her first three months in Congress, aides say, enough people have threatened to murder Ocasio-Cortez that Capitol police trained her staff to perform risk assessments of her visitors.”This, the magazine said, was “the daily reality for America’s newest human Rorschach test. Wonder Woman of the left, Wicked Witch of the right”.At sentencing in April, Hoeffer will face up to 15 years in prison.TopicsDemocratsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezNancy PelosiUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announces positive Covid test

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announces positive Covid testProgressive congresswoman ‘experiencing symptoms’Office says political star had booster vaccine shot last year The Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for Covid-19.Biden health chief endures Fox News grilling over mixed Covid messagingRead moreIn a statement on Sunday evening, the office of the New York progressive said she was “experiencing symptoms and recovering at home.“The congresswoman received her booster shot this fall and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance”.New York is experiencing a huge surge of Covid cases linked to the Omicron variant, placing strain on hospitals and public health resources.The city has posted high rates of vaccination.Earlier, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, the director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, was asked about the severity of the Omicron variant compared to the Delta variant.Walensky said: “We are starting to see data from other countries that indicate on a person-by-person basis it may not be. However, given the volume of cases that we’re seeing with Omicron we very well may see death rates rise dramatically.”According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 837,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the US. Around two-thirds of the eligible population is considered fully vaccinated but resistance to public health measures stoked by conservative politicians and media has dogged the federal response.Walensky also emphasised the importance of vaccination and booster shots, saying: “We have seen with the Omicron variant that prior infection protects you less well than it had … with prior variants.“Right now, I think the most important thing to do is to protect Americans. We do that by getting them vaccinated and getting them boosted.”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezCoronavirusNew YorkUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      AOC speaks out against Republicans’ gun-wielding Christmas photos

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      AOC speaks out against Republicans’ gun-wielding Christmas photosAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls out Lauren Boebert on Twitter for posting a picture of her family holding rifles in front of a tree Leftwing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out about the hypocrisy of gun-wielding Christmas card photos, an emerging trend among several Republic lawmakers who have posted holiday photos showing themselves and their family holding military-style rifles.Man charged with arson for burning down Fox News Christmas treeRead moreIn a tweet on Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez called out far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who had posted a picture of her family, including her small children, holding rifles in front of a Christmas tree.“Tell me again where Christ said ‘use the commemoration of my birth to flex violent weapons for personal political gain’?” said Ocasio-Cortez, recalling back in 2015 when conservatives declared that there was a “war on Christmas”, with companies like Starbucks facing threats of boycott.“lol @ all the years Republicans spent on cultural hysteria of society ‘erasing Christmas and it’s meaning’ when they’re doing that fine all on their own.”Tell me again where Christ said “use the commemoration of my birth to flex violent weapons for personal political gain”?lol @ all the years Republicans spent on cultural hysteria of society “erasing Christmas and it’s meaning” when they’re doing that fine all on their own https://t.co/TOKE1SmY4C— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 8, 2021
      In addition to Boebert’s gun-themed Christmas photo, Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie recently posted a picture of his family holding rifles while posing in front of a Christmas tree, with the caption: “Merry Christmas! PS: Santa, please bring ammo.”The photo was posted only days after a school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, located an hour outside of the state’s capitol, where four students died and seven people were injured.Boebert and Massie’s Christmas photos faced widespread criticism, as several other Republicans have used violent imagery in attempts to shock and provoke as well as rally supporters. Arizona congressman Adam Gosar was censured after tweeting an animated video depicting him killing Ocasio-Cortez and Boebert received criticism for Islamaphobic comments about Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.“Here his family’s got guns under a Christmas tree just after four kids were killed,” said Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Clinton administration, in an interview with the Guardian. “The guy’s abominable but that’s what’s happening to the Republican party. They’re flat-out nuts. There’s a piece of the Republican party that now supports violence.”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘A core threat to our democracy’: threat of political violence growing across US

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      ‘A core threat to our democracy’: threat of political violence growing across USRepublicans’ muted response to Paul Gosar’s behavior has intensified fears about where incendiary rhetoric may lead Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood on the House floor and implored her colleagues to hold Paul Gosar accountable for sharing an altered anime video showing him killing her and attacking Joe Biden.“Our work here matters. Our example matters. There is meaning in our service,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech last week. “And as leaders in this country, when we incite violence with depictions against our colleagues, that trickles down into violence in this country.”House Republicans heard Ocasio-Cortez’s impassioned plea and responded with a collective shrug. All but three Republican members voted against censuring Gosar and stripping him of his committee assignments, while every House Democrat supported the resolution.The Gosar incident served as the latest data point in an alarming trend in American politics. In a year that began with a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, lawmakers have seen a sharp rise in the number of threats against them. Republicans’ muted response to Gosar’s behavior has intensified fears about the possibility of more political violence in America in the months to come.Jackie Speier, the Democratic congresswoman who spearheaded the effort to censure Gosar, warned that Republicans’ refusal to hold him accountable could have dangerous repercussions.“If you are silent about a member of Congress wanting to murder another member of Congress, even in a ‘cartoon’, you are inciting violence,” Speier told the Guardian. “And if you incite violence, it begets violence.”That cycle is already playing out in the halls of Congress. The US Capitol police reported earlier this year that the agency had seen a 107% increase in threats against members compared with 2020. The USCP chief, Tom Manger, has said he expects the total number of threats against members to surpass 9,000 this year, compared with 3,939 such threats in 2017.Some of those threats have been on vivid display in the past month. In addition to Gosar’s violent video, the 13 House Republicans who voted in support of the bipartisan infrastructure bill earlier month have received threatening messages.Representative Fred Upton of Michigan publicly shared one such message, in which a man called the Republican congressman a “fucking piece of shit traitor”. “I hope you die. I hope everybody in your fucking family dies,” the man said in the message.And those kinds of threats are not reserved solely for members of Congress. Election workers and school board members also say they are receiving more violent messages. According to an April survey commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly one in three election officials are concerned about their safety while on the job.Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel at the government watchdog group Common Cause, described such violent tactics as “a core threat to our democracy”.“The threat of violence is really to intimidate people from doing their jobs and upholding their oath of office,” Spaulding said. “When you start having these violent episodes enter the system, it is totally counter to the way that we are supposed to engage in open and fair debate about policy issues in this country.”There are already signs that fears over personal safety are pushing lawmakers out of office. When the Republican congressman Anthony Gonzalez announced in September that he would not seek re-election, he said his vote to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection had affected the lives of his family members.Gonzalez told the New York Times that, at one point earlier this year, uniformed police officers had to escort him and his family through the Cleveland airport because of security concerns.“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” Gonzalez said.Even though threats are affecting their own caucus members, House Republicans rejected the opportunity to send a message by voting to censure Gosar. Instead, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, attacked the censure resolution as a Democratic “abuse of power” and suggested he would award Gosar with “better committee assignments” whenever Republicans regain control of the chamber.“He’s got a number of radical extremists in his caucus that are very effective communicators to the right fringe, and he can’t really rein them in because reining them in means they will attack him,” Speier said. “You might as well put a brass ring in Kevin McCarthy’s nose because they’re pulling him around.”Dr Joanne Freeman, a Yale history professor and author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, warned that McCarthy’s response to Gosar’s behavior may encourage similar incidents in the future.After all, there are other historical examples of lawmakers being rewarded for violent behavior, Freeman noted. After Congressman Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a cane over his anti-slavery views in 1856, he resigned from the House but was then quickly re-elected by South Carolina voters.“He’s going to be rewarded for it in some ways, and because of that, there will be others that follow in that model,” Freeman said. “It’s a moment that shows how far party is above government and above institutions of government and above institutional stability.”While acknowledging the possibility of future violence within Congress, Freeman added that the Gosar incident could also provide an opportunity for a course correction in political discourse.“We’re in a moment of extreme contingency, and indeed things might become much worse,” Freeman said. “But during that kind of moment of extreme contingency where anything can happen, those are also moments where it’s possible to make positive change.”For Speier, Gosar’s behavior served as a reminder of how far some of her colleagues have strayed from their duties to constituents. The California congresswoman, who announced her retirement last week, urged fellow members to focus on advancing policy rather than spewing violent rhetoric to raise money and rack up retweets.“I love this institution. It’s such a privilege to serve,” Speier said. “We’re given the opportunity to fashion legislation to make lives better for the American people. And that’s what we should be doing.”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRepublicansUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Congresswoman Jackie Speier: ‘Republicans are about doing what’s going to give them power’

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      InterviewCongresswoman Jackie Speier: ‘Republicans are about doing what’s going to give them power’Joan E Greve in WashingtonThe Democratic congresswoman talks about her effort to censure Paul Gosar, her retirement and the shifting dynamics of the House For Jackie Speier, the growing threat of political violence in America is personal.Before becoming a member of the House of Representatives in 2009, Speier served as a staffer to congressman Leo Ryan. When Speier joined Ryan for a 1978 trip to Guyana to investigate the Jonestown settlement, she was shot five times.Speier survived the attack, but Ryan and four other members of their delegation did not.So when one of her Republican colleagues recently shared a threatening video about the president and another House member, Speier knew she needed to act. The Democratic congresswoman spearheaded an effort to censure Paul Gosar, who had tweeted an altered anime video showing him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden.‘Inciting violence begets violence’: Paul Gosar censured over video aimed at AOCRead moreThe censure resolution passed the House last week, in a vote of 223 to 207. All but three House Republicans voted against the resolution, with the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, condemning the measure as a Democratic “abuse of power”.The Guardian spoke to Speier to discuss the censure resolution, her coming retirement and the shifting dynamics of the House as lawmakers face more threats of violence. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.Why was it so important for the House to censure Gosar?The ramping up of vitriol on the House floor has been demonstrable for a number of years now. It was like a match got lit during Donald Trump’s presidency, and it was seen as benefiting members to be provocative and then fundraising off of statements they made on the House floor.It’s very clear that, if you are silent about a member of Congress wanting to murder another member of Congress, even in a “cartoon”, you are inciting violence. And if you incite violence, it begets violence.So that’s why I felt so strongly that we had to draw the red line. This has got to be a red line. And obviously my colleagues agreed, and we passed the resolution.We saw some of your Republican colleagues either trying to justify Gosar’s behavior or downplay it. Do you feel like some of your colleagues have not learned the lessons of the Capitol insurrection, when we saw that violent rhetoric can escalate to potentially deadly violence?The facts don’t matter. That’s the problem. The facts don’t matter. I heard one of the Republicans on a show this morning say she thought it was reprehensible, but she voted against the censure because it also stripped him of his committee assignments. So they always will come up with a rationale to allow them to continue to follow the lead of former President Trump or Kevin McCarthy. It’s not about doing what’s right any more. It’s about doing what’s going to give them power.Specifically in terms of Kevin McCarthy, do you think that his rationalization for this behavior makes it inevitable that this is going to happen again?He’s got a number of radical extremists in his caucus that are very effective communicators to the right fringe, and he can’t really rein them in because reining them in means they will attack him. So they have become the face of the House Republicans. You might as well put a brass ring in Kevin McCarthy’s nose because they’re pulling him around.Politics is politics, but we’re talking about taking the life of another member of Congress. How is that not appropriate for censure?Does it feel like there’s a disconnect between Republicans’ rationalizations and the very real violence we saw earlier this year [during the Capitol insurrection] that could have resulted in the death of a member?Not to mention the fact that they’re eating their young. They’ve got one member, one of these fringe rightwing members, who was giving out the telephone numbers of members who voted for their districts and voted for what is a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and [Republican congressman Fred] Upton gets death threats.You’ve got to have an alligator’s skin to do this job. We know that. I’ve been doing this for 38 years. I’m very accustomed to it. I’m also accustomed to getting death threats. And some are seen as credible, and some are not.So that happens. There has to be a repercussion for that. And, as someone said, if in corporate America, you put out an animated video killing one of your co-workers, you would be fired.There’s a lack of reality in Congress right now. And anything goes. The more hyperbolic you are, the more extremist you are, the more successful you are because it’s all about raising money. Raising money gets you clout and power within the caucus.They have made Minority Leader McCarthy impotent in terms of disciplining anyone in his caucus who strays, who crosses that red line.What is your response to suggestions that Republicans will strip Democrats of committee assignments when they come back into power?If one of my colleagues put up an animated video or a tweet that said they wanted to kill a Republican colleague, I would introduce a censure motion for that. You cannot excuse away that kind of conduct. Someone is going to get injured or be killed. That’s how serious that conduct was.You have been in and around the House for decades now. Do you think that the increased number of threats against members has changed the dynamics of the House in any way?I think it’s become a bloodsport. And if a bipartisan bill like the infrastructure bill that had bipartisan support in the Senate and has bipartisan support in the House is then turned on the members that worked in consensus-building, then that suggests that we don’t want to legislate any more.I know that you announced your retirement this week. As you prepare for your next steps, would you say that this resolution was one way to protect the House as an institution?I love this institution. It’s such a privilege to serve. And I think when you’re in the heat of doing your everyday job here, you might lose sight of the fact that this is such a privilege. We’re given the opportunity to fashion legislation to make lives better for the American people. And that’s what we should be doing.When we get sidetracked into wanting to just disparage each other, then we’re not doing our jobs.I introduced the resolution because it just hit me so dramatically. And it’s yet again another example of women becoming the subject of attacks – physical attacks, psychological attacks – women of color in politics even more. I’ve worked on this issue for years now. And I see it as a way of silencing women and discouraging women from running for office.So for all those reasons, it was really important to take action.TopicsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRepublicansCaliforniainterviewsReuse this content More