Members Of The United States House Of Representatives

"A C-SPAN tweet of her nearly four-minute speech garnered 1.16 million views in a little more than 12 hours, setting a record for the most-watched Twitter video from the outlet of any remarks by a House member, according to a tweet from Howard Mortman, C-SPAN’s communications director. By Friday morning, it had surpassed 2.3 million views."

"Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death."

"Patrick Moore, as reported in ‘Pompous twit will get us all killed’: AOC tweet-tacked over Green New Deal by ex-Greenpeace founder, 3 Mar, 2019 21:19, Russia Today"

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) went viral again yesterday... thanks to her sharp questioning of Michael Cohen at the House oversight committee hearing... The freshman New York congresswoman “expertly laid a trap” to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns, and “won” the Cohen hearing, according to two raving press accounts. Ocasio-Cortez’s testimony focused primarily on Trump’s alleged deflation of his financial assets in order to lower his tax burden. First, she zeroed in on Trump Links, a golf course in Ocasio-Cortez’s district that was constructed with $127 million in city taxpayer funds. “This doesn’t seem to be the only time the president has benefited at the expense of the public,” Ocasio-Cortez said, pivoting to the heart of the matter: Whether Trump deliberately deflated the value of Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, to lower his local property tax bill. Her knack for clever questioning, which is a marked contrast with other members’ preference for grandstanding, is ultimately rooted in a commitment to moving the needle for her constituents."

"Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders just put postal banking back where it belongs: high on the agenda of those who seek to create a just and equitable United States. On Thursday, the pair drew national attention with the announcement of their Loan Shark Prevention Act, a sweeping plan to “combat the predatory lending practices of America’s big banks and protect consumers who are burdened with exorbitant credit-card interest rates. The legislation imposes a 15 percent federal cap on interest rates and empowers individual states to establish lower limits.” ...modern-day loan sharks... work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions...and head financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America... Despite what the knee-jerk anti-government echo chamber may tell you, what Americans need now is banking that serves people, not the Wall Street speculators. American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein...says that the USPS can and should answer the call with “a nonprofit alternative to the big banks”..."

"We see...Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC ... they’re all out there saying, look, we need to do something about corporate greed... the way that they were involved with loans... Over the most of the 20th century... you had caps... And then all of a sudden there was deregulation. And when deregulation took place, all of this bad stuff started occurring. You know, Wall Street stole from mom and pop. The economy crashed."

"Stop the handwringing about @aoc and concentration camps. First of all, she's right. Second of all, she has single-handedly forced a debate about the barbaric and inhumane treatment of migrants at our Southern Border. She is smart, moral and correct."

"One advantage Ocasio-Cortez has over some colleagues is that she consistently attends even the most mundane committee hearings, since she does not spend any of her day calling donors for money. Her online presence is strong enough that she has chosen to rely on it exclusively to raise contributions in smaller increments."

"I don't think that she knows who Adam Smith was."

"Pretty incredible that centrists are allowed to directly blame AOC for losing their own races but when AOC defends herself by pointing out that they rejected her help while the candidates who accepted her help in swing districts won she gets accused of dividing her party."

"AOC embodies the kind of leadership we dream of: brilliant, courageous, and gifted, with a quick mind and an understanding of our history and the political moment from which she emerged. And most importantly to me, she believes in environmental justice."

"Ocasio-Cortez... has repeatedly called out Trump in the past month over his immigration policies, and has compared migrant detention facilities near the southern border to concentration camps. The comparison prompted backlash from multiple GOP lawmakers, who called her remarks disrespectful to the Holocaust and the millions of Jews killed during it. Ocasio-Cortez has stood by her comments, saying she would "never apologize for calling these camps what they are." The New York congresswoman reiterated her stance to Yahoo News, arguing that Trump's tendencies compared to that time period. She also held the president directly responsible for the poor conditions at the migrant detention facilities, saying his policies have led to numerous Central Americans fleeing their native countries."

"Four of the most dynamic women of color in Congress – representatives Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib"

"A viral video of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using a "Corruption Game" to highlight the need for campaign finance reform during a House Oversight Committee hearing last Wednesday has become the most viewed video of any politician in Twitter history... the 29-year-old lawmaker... [highlighted how easy & legal it is for politicians to] enrich themselves... Her examples ranged from taking "special interest dark money" from corporate PACs to fund a campaign to using hush money payments to make potential scandals disappear and writing laws that benefit donors and then buying stocks in their companies for personal financial gain."

"Denouncing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's new policy of cutting off firms that work with primary challengers as "divisive" and "harmful," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday advised small-dollar donors to stop giving money to the DCCC and instead donate to progressive candidates directly."

"The right doesn’t dislike @AOC because she's ineffective. They despise her precisely because she communicates boldly, passionately and in a Twitter-native manner. When AOC talks, Republicans know they are losing."

"The best part of the night, by any metric, was the eye-blink time slot afforded Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to second Bernie Sanders’s nomination. Her remarks were a song, a poem of hope and defiance, and they speak better for themselves than I ever could... One minute and 37 seconds out of a program two hours in length, and Representative Ocasio-Cortez made the most of all of it. Imagine if she had been given the same amount of time as Kasich, or Powell, or even the commercials CNN ran during the roll call? Well, maybe by 2024, the Democratic establishment will have realized which way the tide is running, Biden or no Biden, and give the ever-rising progressive wing of the party its due."

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed Abbott in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday, saying he lacks basic knowledge of biology. "I'm sorry we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And two weeks late on your period ... can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks.""

"Ocasio-Cortez also took issue with Abbott's comments on rape, noting that the majority of people who are raped or sexually assaulted are assaulted by someone whom they know. The anti-sexual violence nonprofit RAINN says 8 out of 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. "These aren't just predators that are walking around the streets at night. They are people's uncles, they are teachers, they are family friends, and when something like that happens, it takes a very long time, first of all, for any victim to come forward," Ocasio-Cortez added. "And second of all, when a victim comes forward, they don't necessarily want to bring their case into the carceral system.""

"One big thing the NatCons are right about is that in the Information Age, the cultural and corporate elites have merged. Right-wing parties around the world are gradually becoming working-class parties that stand against the economic interests and cultural preferences of the highly educated. Left-wing parties are now rooted in the rich metro areas and are more and more becoming an unsteady alliance between young AOC left-populists and Google."

"It was there that I met Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She knew about all that we'd accomplished in Ferguson, and I was immediately struck by her fierceness and clarity of vision."

"I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment, and I will not yield to disrespectful men."

"This is the hood that spawned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the country’s most privileged revolutionaries. She called herself Sandy Cortez back then. She imagined that every place could be just like Yorktown Heights if only we got rid of the police. Apparently, she still believes that."

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who would become a hugely visible and audible figure and a significant voice for progressive issues. She sponsored the Green New Deal in the House of Representatives in February 2019, little more than a year after taking her oath of office. Notice the confluence of Standing Rock, the Justice Democrats, Sunrise, and this young woman's life. She said, "I was really wallowing in despair for a while: What do I do? Is this my life? Just showing up, working, knowing that things are so difficult, then going home and doing it again. And I think what was profoundly liberating was engaging in my first action-when I went to Standing Rock, in the Dakotas, to fight against a fracking pipeline. It seemed impossible at the time. It was just normal people, showing up, just standing on the land to prevent this pipeline from going through. And it made me feel extremely powerful, even though we had nothing, materially-just the act of standing up to some of the most powerful corporations in the world. From there I learned that hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create, with your actions. Hope is something you have to manifest into the world, and once one person has hope, it can be contagious. Other people start acting in a way that has more hope." She went from looking for hope to making it, through her work on many issues and her brilliant leadership on key issues for the country and the world, including climate."

"People compared my election (in 2018) to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s. In both districts of roughly a little more than 700,000 people, it was a good day for democracy."

"Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden unveiled a $2 trillion energy plan Tuesday with a heavy focus on the Green New Deal agenda being pushed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the far-left flank of his party. Speaking in Wilmington, Del., Biden promised a “clean energy revolution,”... Biden’s announcement comes as the presidential wannabe courts idols on the left of his party including Bronx-Queens Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the hope that they will support him and steer young voters his way in November. In May, AOC announced she had been selected to co-chair Biden’s climate change panel along with former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. In a statement to Reuters after news broke that AOC was joining Biden’s climate change panel, a spokesperson for the Democratic socialist said the congresswoman believed in applying pressure “both inside and outside the system.”"

"This entire interview is real but this by AOC stands out: "So I need my colleagues to understand that ... their base is not the enemy.""

"One member of Congress is already laying the groundwork for a new consensus plan to give everyone a job... most notably, it does not rely solely on public-sector jobs to fill gaps in the market. Instead, Khanna’s plan is based on a program used in Germany that combines increased public-sector work with subsidized private-sector jobs to achieve full employment. Khanna’s plan would work by allowing businesses to take on up to 15 jobs subsidized by the federal government at 120% of the cost of labor and 150% for unionized jobs. The extra money would go toward additional costs for increased employment like training and workspaces."

"During a hearing, the freshman lawmaker created a game in which she pretended to be “a really, really bad guy” who wants to abuse the system as much as possible. Then, in a series of questions, she exposed the world of payoffs, dark money, PACs and more. She even revealed how it was perfectly legal for a lawmaker to invest in an industry, then write laws to benefit that industry."

"“I can see Trump being enormously upset that a twenty-nine-year-old Latina, who is the daughter of a domestic worker, is helping to build the case to get his financial records,” she said. “I think that adds insult to injury to him.”"

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knows the power she wields as a woman makes some people very uncomfortable ― and she’s learning to use that to her advantage. “The idea that a woman can be as powerful as a man is something that our society can’t deal with,“ the freshman Democrat from New York told The New Yorker in an interview published Monday. “But I am as powerful as a man and it drives them crazy.” Being the object of a sexist label, Ocasio-Cortez said, is helpful in one area: It really throws off her adversaries, including President Donald Trump."

"Let’s be real: there’s a WHOLE lot of men whose lives, careers, and families have benefited from an abortion (including several “pro-life” GOP Congressmen). Men, we need you right now. You can get through in rooms others can’t. Your power matters. Speak up. This is about us all."

"It is utterly embarrassing that “pay people enough to live” is a stance that’s even up for debate."

"Forced pregnancy is a crime against humanity."

"Charity can’t replace policy, but solidarity is how we’ll face climate change and build a better world."

"The value of human rights is really the path to peace here...That’s a central thing that we need to make sure that we value the safety and the human rights of Israelis and we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians in that process that is similar on equal footing... Just like here in the United States, I don’t believe that children should be detained. I think that starting on those basic principles of human rights, we can build a path to peace together... We really need to make sure that we are valuing a process where all parties are respected, and have a lot of equal opportunity to really make sure that we are negotiating in good faith."

"Republicans could trip over their own shoelaces and they’d still find a way to blame me, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, the Green New Deal, BLM, anything but accept responsibility for their own actions and dealings. Ineptitude, bigotry, and corruption. Disasters in their own right."

"Yesterday, a man sharing that member’s rhetoric tried to assassinate the Speaker and her spouse. What has @GOPLeader said? Nothing. This is who he is"

"Apartheid states aren’t democracies."

"“Imagine if every time someone referred to someone as ‘young lady’ they were responded to by being addressed with their age and gender? They’d be pretty upset if one responded with ‘the old man’, right? Why this kind of weird, patronizing behavior is so accepted is beyond me!”"

"Six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period... And two weeks late on your period for any person -- any person with a menstrual cycle -- can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks."

"The majority of people who are raped, and who are sexually assaulted, are assaulted by someone they know. These aren’t just predators who are walking around the streets at night. They are people's uncles, they are teachers, they are family friends, and when something like that happens, it takes a very long time, first of all, for any victim to come forward. And second of all, when a victim comes forward, they don't necessarily want to bring their case into the carceral system. They don't want to re-traumatize themselves by going to court. They don't necessarily all want to report a family friend to a police precinct, let alone in the immediate aftermath of the trauma of a sexual assault."

"In Washington, I usually know my questions of power are getting somewhere when the powerful stop referring to me as “Congresswoman” and start referring to me as “young lady” instead"

"Billionaires be like “the extreme far left is taking over” when the “extreme far left” in the US is “medicine shouldn’t bankrupt you,” “wages should cover rent,” & “maybe it’s bad that Wall St companies profit off mass surveillance, manufactured housing crises, and caging people”"

"I'm sorry we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period. And two weeks late on your period for any person -- any person with a menstrual cycle -- can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks."

"If those promises do not get fulfilled, it will make future passage of anything much more difficult. BIF will look like a cakewalk"

"the way that we create urgency on the issue of climate is when we have people all across the world in the streets — in the streets — showing up, demanding change and demanding a cessation of what is killing us. We have to send the message that some of us are going to be living on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now, and we will not take “no” for an answer. Climate must be a centerpiece of inside and outside organizing, an electoral and a popular force that cannot be ignored. This issue is one of the issues, the biggest issue of our time, and because of that, we must be too big and too radical to ignore."

"There are already communities actively experimenting and developing solutions… What I work on is not how we find solutions but how we scale to transform our society...there’s the writing by Arundhati Roy, which is that another world is not only possible, but it is already here. And finding the pockets where this world has arrived, is what gives me hope. The Bronx has one of the highest per capita rates of worker cooperatives in the world. That is a new economy in our borough of millions of people. And so whether it’s that, whether it is discussions around mass incarceration, abolitionists organizing, not just, you know, what does it mean to dismantle the jail, but what does it mean to reorganize the society so that we do not have people engaged in antisocial behavior on such a scale that we have today, or that we don’t have antisocial systems... These are not just theoretical conversations that people are having, but there are communities that are actively experimenting and developing solutions.... What I work on is not how do we find solutions, but how do we scale the solutions that we’ve already developed to transform our society. And that is work that breaks our cycles of cynicism. Cynicism, I think is a far greater enemy to the left than many others, because it is the tool that is given to us to hurt ourselves. And hope creates action and action creates hope. And that’s how we scale forward."

"I do think that there is a dam breaking, both in electoral politics, but also in organizing beyond our electoral system. Like what we’re seeing with the precipitation of strikes on a scale that really has not been seen in many years.. It’s a bit of an emperor with no clothes type of situation for our political establishment and our capitalist systems where people are beginning to realize that once we name these systems and describe them, that this water that they are, that people have been swimming in, actually has a name. And there is alternative that people can come up for air if we try to explore alternative ways of doing things... After I won, there was such a large concerted attempt, and continues to be a large-concerted attempt by media to marginalize, not just my victory, but what happened in our community... you have the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, within days saying this was a complete accident. You had every, every major of elected official and Democratic Party member trying to dismiss what happened. And the thing is that it didn’t stop. There would be a case for that if I was the only victory that occurred. But the fact of the matter is that simply wasn’t the case that had the election ’cause people also naming systems and talking about what was previously extraordinarily politically taboo."

"What is so intertwined in this discussion is that this is not just also about open critiques of capitalism, but also open critiques of white supremacy. And it’s in greater understanding of white supremacy, not as just, you know, these social, these racist, social clubs of people dawning hoods, but actually as a system and a systems understanding of how white supremacy has interacted with the development of the United States. And so the way that that ties back in is that so many of these essential labor forces are dominated by women and women of color, whether it’s fast food workers or whether it’s nurses or whether it’s childcare and teaching professions, this, what I would say this capitalist class calls a labor shortage, in what is actually a dignified work shortage, is concentrated overwhelmingly in working class people, a multi-racial working class, but also in professions that are dominated by women and women of color."