Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district. The district includes the eastern part of the Bronx and portions of north-central Queens in New York City. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-Cortez drew national recognition when she won the Democratic Party's primary election for New York's 14th congressional district on June 26, 2018. She defeated Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, in what was widely seen as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries. She defeated Republican opponent Anthony Pappas in the November 6, 2018 general election.
Taking office at age 29, Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States Congress. She has been noted for her substantial social media presence relative to her fellow members of Congress. Ocasio-Cortez majored in international relations at Boston University, graduating cum laude in 2011. She was previously an activist and worked as a waitress and bartender before running for Congress in 2018.
Ocasio-Cortez is among the first female members of the Democratic Socialists of America elected to serve in Congress. She advocates a progressive platform that includes Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, the Green New Deal, and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Early life

Ocasio-Cortez was born into a Catholic family in the Bronx borough of New York City on October 13, 1989, the daughter of Blanca Ocasio-Cortez and Sergio Ocasio. She has a younger brother named Gabriel. Her father was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family and became an architect; her mother was born in Puerto Rico. She has claimed that she also has some Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Ocasio-Cortez lived with her family in an apartment in the Bronx neighborhood of Parkchester until she was five, when the family moved to a house in suburban Yorktown Heights.
Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007. In high school and college, Ocasio-Cortez went by the name of "Sandy". She came in second in the Microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a microbiology research project on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans. In a show of appreciation for her efforts, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session. She later became the LDZ Secretary of State while she attended Boston University. Ocasio-Cortez had a John F. Lopez Fellowship.
Ocasio-Cortez entered Boston University in 2007. Her father died of lung cancer in 2008 during her second year. Ocasio-Cortez became involved in a lengthy probate battle to settle his estate. She has said that the experience helped her learn "firsthand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense of the families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy." During college, Ocasio-Cortez served as an intern for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, in his section on foreign affairs and immigration issues. She recalled, "I was the only Spanish speaker, and as a result, as basically a kid—a 19-, 20-year-old kid—whenever a frantic call would come into the office because someone is looking for their husband because they have been snatched off the street by ICE, I was the one that had to pick up that phone. I was the one that had to help that person navigate that system." Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in international relations with a minor in economics.

Early career

After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx and took a job as a bartender and waitress to help her mother—a house cleaner and school bus driver—fight foreclosure of their home. She later launched Brook Avenue Press, a now-defunct publishing firm for books that portrayed the Bronx in a positive light. Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute.
During the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. After the general election, she traveled across America by car, visiting places such as Flint, Michigan, and Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, and speaking to people affected by the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline. In an interview she recalled her December 2016 visit to Standing Rock as a tipping point, saying that before that, she had believed that the only way to run for office effectively was to have access to wealth, social influence, and power. But her visit to North Dakota, where she saw others "putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community", inspired her to begin to work for her own community. One day after she visited North Dakota, she got a phone call from Brand New Congress, which was recruiting progressive candidates.

2018 campaign

Ocasio-Cortez began her campaign in April while waiting tables and tending bar at Flats Fix, a taqueria in New York City's Union Square. "For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind that bar," she told Bon Appétit. She was the first person since 2004 to challenge Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus Chair, in the primary. She faced a financial disadvantage, saying, "You can't really beat big money with more money. You have to beat them with a totally different game." Ocasio-Cortez's campaign undertook grassroots mobilization and did not take donations from corporations. Her campaign posters' designs were said to have taken inspiration from "revolutionary posters and visuals from the past".
On June 15, the candidates' only face-to-face encounter during the campaign occurred on a local political talk show, Inside City Hall. The format was a joint interview conducted by Errol Louis, which NY1 characterized as a debate. On June 18, a debate in the Bronx was scheduled, but Crowley did not participate. He sent former New York City Council member Annabel Palma in his place.

Endorsements

Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by progressive and civil rights organizations such as MoveOn, Black Lives Matter, and Democracy for America, and by actress and first-time candidate Cynthia Nixon. Nixon, like Ocasio-Cortez, also challenged a longtime incumbent: she ran against Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo in the 2018 New York gubernatorial election but lost by 66% to 34%.
Governor Cuomo endorsed Crowley, as did both of New York's U.S. Senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, 11 U.S. Representatives, 31 local elected officials, 31 trade unions, and groups such as the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, among others. California representative Ro Khanna, a Justice Democrat like Ocasio-Cortez, initially endorsed Joe Crowley but later endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in an unusual dual endorsement.

Primary election

On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez received 57.13% of the vote to Joe Crowley's 42.5%, defeating the 10-term incumbent by almost 15 percentage points. Her win, and Crowley's defeat, came as a shock to many political commentators and analysts and immediately garnered nationwide attention. Time called her victory "the biggest upset of the 2018 elections so far"; CNN made a similar statement. The New York Times described Crowley's loss as "a shocking primary defeat on Tuesday, the most significant loss for a Democratic incumbent in more than a decade, and one that will reverberate across the party and the country". The Guardian called it "one of the biggest upsets in recent American political history". She was outspent by a margin of 18 to 1 but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party's far left. Merriam-Webster reported that searches for the word "socialism" spiked 1,500% after her victory. Crowley conceded defeat on election night, but did not telephone Ocasio-Cortez that night to congratulate her, fueling short-lived speculation that he intended to run against her in the general election.
Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky congratulated her. Several commentators noted the similarities between Ocasio-Cortez's victory over Crowley and Dave Brat's Tea Party movement-supported 2014 victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia's 7th congressional district. Like Crowley, Cantor was a high-ranking member in his party's caucus. After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed several progressive primary challengers to Democratic incumbents nationwide, capitalizing on her fame and spending her political capital in a manner unusual even for unexpected primary winners.
Without campaigning for it, Ocasio-Cortez won the Reform Party primary as a write-in candidate in a neighboring congressional district, New York's 15th, with a total vote count of nine, highest among all 22 write-in candidates. She declined the nomination.

General election

Ocasio-Cortez faced Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election. Pappas, who lives in Astoria, is an economics professor at St. John's University. According to the New York Post, Pappas did not actively campaign. The Post wrote that "Pappas' bid was a long shot," since the 14th has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+29, making it the sixth most Democratic district in New York City. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost six to one. The district and its predecessors have been in Democratic hands for all but two years since 1923 and without interruption since 1949.
Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by various politically progressive organizations and figures, including former President Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. She spoke at the Netroots Nation conference in August 2018, and was called "the undisputed star of the convention".
Crowley also remained on the ballot, as the nominee of the Working Families Party and the Women's Equality Party. Neither Crowley nor the WFP party actively campaigned, with both having endorsed Ocasio-Cortez after her Democratic primary victory. Ocasio-Cortez described the WEP, which Governor Cuomo created ahead of the 2014 New York gubernatorial election, as a cynical, centrist group that endorsed male incumbents over female challengers like her and Nixon. Former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who won reelection in 2006 on a third-party line after losing the Democratic Primary in 2006, penned a July 17 column in the Wall Street Journal expressing his hope that Crowley would actively campaign on the WFP ballot line. Dan Cantor, Executive Director of the WFP, wrote an endorsement of, and apology to, Ocasio-Cortez for the New York Daily News; he asked voters not to vote for Crowley if his name remained on the general election ballot.
Ocasio-Cortez won the election with 78% of the vote to Pappas' 14%. Crowley, on the WFP and WEP lines, received 9,348 votes. Her election was part of a broader Democratic victory in the 2018 midterm elections, as the party gained control of the House by picking up 41 seats. Saikat Chakrabarti, who had been her campaign co-chair, became chief of staff for her congressional office. Co-creator of two progressive political action committees, he has been called a significant political presence.

Media coverage

The first media network to give Ocasio-Cortez a platform and extensively cover her campaign and policies was The Young Turks, a left-wing online news program. After her primary win, she quickly garnered nationwide media attention, including numerous articles and TV talk-show appearances. She also drew a great deal of media attention when she and Sanders campaigned for James Thompson in Kansas in July 2018. A rally in Wichita had to be moved from a theater with a capacity of 1,500 when far more people said they would attend. The event drew 4,000 people, with some seated on the floor. In The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote that while Sanders remained "the de-facto leader of an increasingly popular left, do things that do not come naturally to him, like supply hope". Wallace-Wells suggested that Ocasio-Cortez had made Sanders's task easier, as he could point to her success to show that ideas "once considered to be radical are now part of the mainstream".
Until she defeated incumbent Joe Crowley in the 2018 Democratic primary, Ocasio-Cortez received little coverage on most traditional news media outlets. Jimmy Dore interviewed her when she first announced her candidacy in June 2017. After her primary win, Brian Stelter wrote that progressive-media outlets, such as The Young Turks and The Intercept, "saw the Ocasio-Cortez upset coming" in advance. Margaret Sullivan wrote in The Washington Post that traditional metrics of measuring a campaign's viability, like total fundraising, were contributing to a "media failure" and that "they need to get closer to what voters are thinking and feeling: their anger and resentment, their disenfranchisement from the centers of power, their pocketbook concerns."
Ocasio-Cortez's campaign was featured on the cover of the June 2018 edition of The Indypendent, a free New York City-based monthly newspaper. In a tweet she hailed the cover appearance on "NYC's classic monthly" as an important breakthrough for her campaign. Otherwise Ocasio-Cortez was barely mentioned in print until her primary win.
The Young Turks have continued to cover Ocasio-Cortez and defend her from political and media elites who see her as outside the political culture of DC, with occasional criticism on some of her policies.
Ocasio-Cortez was one of the subjects of the 2018 Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 11/9; it chronicled her primary campaign.
In an attempt to embarrass Ocasio-Cortez just before she took office, Twitter user "AnonymousQ" shared a video dating to Ocasio-Cortez's college years: a Boston University student-produced dance video in which she briefly appeared. Many social media users came to her defense, inspiring memes and a Twitter account syncing the footage to songs like "Mambo No. 5" and "Gangnam Style". Ocasio-Cortez responded by posting a lighthearted video of herself dancing to Edwin Starr's "War" outside her congressional office.
In 2019, Elizabeth Warren wrote the entry on Ocasio-Cortez for that year's Time 100. In January 2019 the documentary Knock Down the House, which focuses on four female Democrats in the 2018 United States elections who were not career politicians, including Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush, and Paula Jean Swearengin, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Ocasio-Cortez was the only one of the women featured to win. It was released by Netflix on May 1, 2019.

116th Congress

Tenure

When the 116th Congress convened on January 3, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez entered with no seniority but with a large social media presence. Axios credited her with "as much social media clout as her fellow freshman Democrats combined"., she had 7.3 million Twitter followers, up from 1.4 million in November 2018 and surpassing Nancy Pelosi. By July 2019 that had risen to almost 4.8 million, or about seven times the population of her congressional district. She had 2.2 million Instagram followers as of January 2019 and 500,000 followers on Facebook as of February 2019. Her colleagues appointed her to teach them social media lessons upon her arrival in Congress. In early July 2019 two lawsuits were filed against her for blocking Joseph Saladino and Dov Hikind on Twitter in light of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that it was a violation of the First Amendment for President Trump to block people on Twitter. On November 4, 2019, it was announced that they settled the lawsuit with Ocasio-Cortez issuing a statement apologizing for the Twitter block.
In an interview with the Yahoo! News podcast Skullduggery, Ocasio-Cortez said she had stopped using her private Facebook account and was minimizing her usage of all social media accounts and platforms, calling them a "public health risk".

Arrival

In November 2018, on the first day of congressional orientation, Ocasio-Cortez participated in a climate change protest outside the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Also that month, she backed Pelosi's bid to be Speaker of the House once the Democratic Party reclaimed the majority on the condition that Pelosi "remains the most progressive candidate for speaker".
in December 2018
During the orientation for new members hosted by the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter in December 2018 about the influence of corporate interests by sponsors such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where's labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?"
In January 2019, when Ocasio-Cortez made her first speech on the floor of Congress, C-SPAN tweeted the video. Within 12 hours, the video of her four-minute speech set the record as C-SPAN's most-watched Twitter video by a member of the House of Representatives.

Hearings

In February 2019, speaking at a Congressional hearing with a panel of representatives from campaign finance watchdog groups, Ocasio-Cortez questioned the panel about ethics regulations as they apply to both the president and members of Congress. She asserted that no regulations prevent lawmakers "from being bought off by wealthy corporations". With more than 37.5 million views, the clip became the most-watched political video posted on Twitter.
When President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen appeared before the Oversight Committee in February 2019, Ocasio-Cortez asked him whether Trump had inflated property values for bank or insurance purposes and inquired where to get more information on the subject. Cohen's reply implied that Trump may have committed tax and bank fraud in his personal and business tax returns, financial statements and real-estate filings. New York Times columnist David Brooks praised her for her skill in questioning Cohen.

Media coverage

According to reports in March 2019, Ocasio-Cortez continued to receive media coverage early in her congressional tenure on a par with that of 2020 presidential candidates and was considered "one of the faces of the Democratic party" and one of the most talked-about politicians in the United States. Between July 8 and 14, 2019, she drew more social media attention than the Democratic presidential candidates. Tracking company NewsWhip found that interactions with news articles on Ocasio-Cortez numbered 4.8 million, while no Democratic presidential candidate got more than 1.2 million. David Bauder of the Associated Press wrote that Trump's supporters are thus having "some success" in having "Ocasio-Cortez be top of mind when people think of" the Democratic Party.
According to a Media Matters for America study, Ocasio-Cortez has been intensely discussed on sister television channels Fox News and Fox Business, being mentioned every day from February 25 to April 7, 2019, for a total of 3,181 mentions in 42 days. The Guardian David Smith wrote that this is evidence that Fox is "obsessed by Ocasio-Cortez, portraying her as a radical socialist who threatens the American way of life." Brian Stelter of CNN Business found that between January to July 2019, she had nearly three times as many mentions on Fox News as on CNN and MSNBC, and seven times the coverage of James Clyburn, a Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. Stelter wrote that the attention Ocasio-Cortez is receiving has caused "the perception, particularly on the right, that her positions and policies are representative of the Democratic Party as a whole". In a CBS News and YouGov poll of almost 2,100 American adults conducted from July 17 to 19, it was found that Republican respondents were more aware of Ocasio-Cortez than Democratic respondents. She had very unfavorable ratings among Republican respondents and favorable ratings among Democratic respondents.
In March 2019, PolitiFact reported that Ocasio-Cortez is "one of the most targeted politicians for hoax claims, despite the fact that she just entered Congress as a freshman". Fake quotes attributed to her, fake photos of her, and false rumors about her have spread on social media. Some of these have originated from 4chan and r/The_Donald. By July 2019 the fake material included attributing things Trump said to Ocasio-Cortez, such as "I have a very good brain and I’ve said lots of things." On July 18, 2019, Charlie Rispoli, a police officer from Gretna, posted on Facebook an apparent threat to shoot Ocasio-Cortez, calling her a "vile idiot" who "needs a round, and I don't mean the kind she used to serve" as a bartender. Rispoli posted the comment in response to a fake news article that falsely quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying "We pay soldiers too much". A photo from the article also had the label "satire". Rispoli was fired for his post and his Facebook account was deleted.

"The Squad"

Ocasio-Cortez is a member of an informal group of progressive freshmen members of Congress called "The Squad," along with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. On July 14, Trump attacked the Squad in a tweet, saying that they should "go back and help fix" the countries they came from rather than criticize the American government. He continued to make the same kind of comment over the next several days, even though three of the women, including Ocasio-Cortez, were born in the United States. Ocasio-Cortez responded in a tweet that "the President's words , telling four American Congresswomen of color "go back to your own country," is hallmark language of white supremacists." She later added, "We don't leave the things that we love, and when we love this country, what that means is that we propose the solutions to fix it." Days later, Trump falsely asserted that Ocasio-Cortez called "our country and our people 'garbage'"; she had actually said that Americans should not be content with moderate policies that are "10% better from garbage". Trump also falsely claimed that Ocasio-Cortez said "illegal immigrants are more American" than Americans who tried to keep them out; she actually said that "women and children on that border that are trying to seek refuge and opportunity" in America "are acting more American" than those who tried to keep them out.

Green New Deal

On February 7, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez submitted her first piece of legislation, the Green New Deal, to the Senate. She and Senator Ed Markey released a joint non-binding resolution laying out the main elements of a 10-year "economic mobilization" that would phase out fossil fuel use and overhaul the nation's infrastructure. Their plan called for implementing the "social cost of carbon" that was part of the Obama administration's plans to address climate change. In the process it aimed to create jobs and boost the economy. According to CNBC, an initial outline the Green New Deal called for "completely ditching fossil fuels, upgrading or replacing 'every building' in the country and 'totally overhaul transportation' to the point where 'air travel stops becoming necessary'". The outline set a goal of having the U.S. "creating 'net-zero' greenhouse gases in 10 years. Why 'net zero'? The lawmakers explained: 'We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.'" Activist groups such as Greenpeace and the Sunrise Movement came out in favor of the plan. No Republican lawmakers voiced support. The plan gained support from some Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker; other Democrats, such as Senator Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dismissed the proposal.
On March 26, in what Democrats called a "stunt", Senate Republicans called for an early vote on the Green New Deal without allowing discussion or expert testimony. Markey said Republicans were trying to "make a mockery" of the Green New Deal debate and called the vote a "sham". In protest, Senate Democrats voted "present" or against the bill, resulting in a 57–0 defeat on the Senate floor. In March 2019, a group of UK activists proposed that the Labour Party adopt a similar plan, "Labour for a Green New Deal." The group said it was inspired by the Sunrise Movement and the work Ocasio-Cortez has done in the US.

Name-calling incident

On July 21, 2020, The Hill reported that Republican Representatives Ted Yoho and Roger Williams had accosted Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol, where Yoho called her "disgusting" and told her, "You are out of your freaking mind" for recently suggesting that poverty and unemployment were driving a spike in crime in New York City during the coronavirus pandemic. Ocasio-Cortez told Yoho he was being "rude". According to a reporter who overheard the conversation, as Ocasio-Cortez walked away from Yoho into the Capitol, Yoho called her a "fucking bitch". When asked about the incident, Ocasio-Cortez said, "That kind of confrontation hasn't ever happened to me ever... I've never had that kind of abrupt, disgusting kind of disrespect levied at me." Yoho was asked to comment but declined. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy condemned Yoho's actions and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that Yoho should apologize publicly and that his conduct “needs to be sanctioned".
On July 22, Yoho and, without naming Ocasio-Cortez, said he had not addressed the "offensive name-calling words" to any of his colleagues directly. He apologized for "the abrupt manner of the conversation I had with my colleague from New York—it is true that we disagree on policies and visions for America—but that does not mean we should be disrespectful. Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I'm very cognizant of my language."
On July 23, Ocasio-Cortez. In a widely televised speech she condemned male privilege, systemic sexist behavior and culture, and violent language against women. She also criticized Yoho for "hiding behind his wife and daughters" in his speech the day before.

Committee assignments

Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and embraces the democratic socialist label as part of her political identity. In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, she described democratic socialism as "part of what I am. It's not all of what I am. And I think that that's a very important distinction." In response to a question about democratic socialism ultimately calling for an end to capitalism during a Firing Line interview on PBS, she answered: "Ultimately, we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see an evolution in our economic system of an unprecedented degree, and it's hard to say what direction that that takes."
Ocasio-Cortez supports progressive policies such as single-payer Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and trade school, a federal job guarantee, the cancellation of all $1.6 trillion of outstanding student debt, guaranteed family leave, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ending the privatization of prisons, enacting gun-control policies, and energy policy relying on 100% renewables.
She is open to using Modern Monetary Theory as an economic pathway that could provide funding and enable implementation of these goals. Ocasio-Cortez told Anderson Cooper that she favors policies that "...most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden."
Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election and appeared with him at speaking engagements. Campaign rallies she attended with him drew the largest crowds of any presidential rally. On January 25, she joined Michael Moore to fill in for Sanders at a rally at the University of Iowa while Sanders was attending the Senate's Trump impeachment trial.

Environment

Ocasio-Cortez has called for "more environmental hardliners in Congress," describing climate change as "the single biggest national security threat for the United States and the single biggest threat to worldwide industrialized civilization." Referring to a recent United Nations report indicating that the effects of climate change will be irreversible unless carbon emissions are reined in over the next 12 years, she said, "Millennials and people—you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'"
Ocasio-Cortez's environmental plan, termed the Green New Deal, advocates for the United States to transition to an electrical grid running on 100% renewable energy and to end the use of fossil fuels within 10 years. The changes, estimated to cost roughly $2.5 trillion per year, would be financed in part by higher taxes on the wealthy. She has described herself as having an "open mind" about the role of nuclear power in the Green New Deal.

Tax policy

Ocasio-Cortez proposed introducing a marginal tax as high as 70% on income above $10 million to pay for the Green New Deal. According to tax experts contacted by The Washington Post, this tax would bring in extra revenue of $720 billion per decade. Ocasio-Cortez has opposed and voted against the pay-as-you-go rule supported by Democratic leaders, which requires deficit-neutral fiscal policy, with all new expenditures balanced by tax increases or spending cuts. She and Representative Ro Khanna have condemned the rule as hamstringing new or expanded progressive policies. She cites Modern Monetary Theory as a justification for higher deficits to finance her agenda. Drawing a parallel with the Great Depression, she has argued that the Green New Deal needs deficit spending like the original New Deal.

Immigration

Ocasio-Cortez has expressed support for defunding and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on multiple occasions. In February 2018 she called it "a product of the Bush-era Patriot Act suite of legislation" and "an enforcement agency that takes on more of a paramilitary tone every single day". That June she said she would "stop short of fully disbanding the agency," and would rather "create a pathway to citizenship for more immigrants through decriminalization." She later clarified that this does not mean ceasing all deportations. Two days before the primary election, Ocasio-Cortez attended a protest at an ICE child-detention center in Tornillo, Texas. She was the only Democrat to vote against H.R. 648, a bill to fund and reopen the government, because it funded ICE.

Detention centers for undocumented immigrants

In June 2019, Ocasio-Cortez compared the detention centers for undocumented immigrants at the Mexico–United States border to "concentration camps". She cited "expert analysis", linking to an Esquire article quoting Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, who had made a similar claim. Some academics supported Ocasio-Cortez's use of the term for the forced detention of immigrants; other figures strongly criticized it, saying it showed disrespect for Holocaust victims. In response to criticism from Republicans, Ocasio-Cortez said they had conflated concentration camps with death camps. She refused to apologize for using the term: "If that makes you uncomfortable, fight the camps, not the nomenclature."
In July 2019, Ocasio-Cortez visited migrant detention centers and other facilities in Texas as part of a congressional delegation to witness the border crisis firsthand. Ocasio-Cortez described conditions she called "horrifying." She said that women in one cell said they had not had access to showers for two weeks and were told to drink water from the toilet when their sink broke, and that one woman said that her daughters had been taken from her two weeks earlier and she did not know where they were.
Ocasio-Cortez is a supporter of Jesús "Chuy" García's New Way Forward Act which calls for massive immigration reform. The bill intends to lower the standard of immigrants with criminal records from qualifying for asylum in the United States, "makes changes to immigration enforcement, including ending mandatory detention in certain cases" and intends to remove private detention centers for immigrants.

Healthcare

Ocasio-Cortez supports transitioning to a single-payer healthcare system, viewing medical care as a human right. She says that a single government health insurer should cover every American, reducing overall costs. Her campaign website says, "Almost every other developed nation in the world has universal healthcare. It's time the United States catch up to the rest of the world in ensuring all people have real healthcare coverage that doesn't break the bank." The Medicare-for-all proposal has been adopted by many Democratic 2020 presidential contenders.

Anti-poverty

In September 2019, Ocasio-Cortez introduced an anti-poverty policy proposal that would take into account the cost of childcare, health care, and "new necessities" like Internet access when measuring poverty. The proposal would cap annual rent increases and ensure access to social welfare programs for people with convictions and undocumented immigrants. According to the U.S. Census, about 40 million Americans live in poverty.

LGBTQ equality

Ocasio-Cortez is a proponent of LGBTQ rights and LGBTQ equality. She has said she supports the LGBTQ community and thanked its members for their role in her campaign. She publicized and later appeared on a video game live stream to help raise money for Mermaids, a UK-based charity for trans children. At the January 2019 New York City Women's March in Manhattan, Ocasio-Cortez gave a detailed speech in support of measures needed to ensure LGBTQ equality in the workplace and elsewhere. She has also made a point of recognizing transgender rights, specifically saying, "It's a no-brainer... trans rights are civil rights are human rights."
At the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on February 27, 2020, Ocasio-Cortez argued for LGBTQ equality in the context of her religious background. Referencing a Catholic hospital that refused a hysterectomy for a transgender man, she argued, "here is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is. There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital."

Puerto Rico

Ocasio-Cortez has called for "solidarity with Puerto Rico." She has advocated for granting Puerto Ricans further civil rights, regardless of Puerto Rico's legal classification. She advocates for voting rights and disaster relief. Ocasio-Cortez was critical of FEMA's response to Hurricane Maria and the federal government's unwillingness to address Puerto Rico's political status. She believes the federal government should increase investment in Puerto Rico.

Other domestic issues

Israel

In May 2018, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Israel Defense Forces' use of deadly force against Palestinians participating in the 2018 Gaza border protests, calling it a "massacre" in a tweet. In a July 2018 interview with the PBS series Firing Line, she said she is "a proponent of a two-state solution" and called Israel's presence in the West Bank an "occupation of Palestine." Her use of the term "occupation" drew backlash from a number of pro-Israel groups and commentators. Others defended her remarks, citing the United Nations' designation of the territory in the West Bank as occupied. In July 2019, Ocasio-Cortez voted against a House resolution introduced by Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider of Illinois condemning the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel. The resolution passed 398–17.
Ocasio-Cortez warned that Israel's planned annexation of Palestinian territories in the occupied West Bank "would lay the groundwork for Israel becoming an apartheid state." She wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that she will work to "pursue legislation that conditions the $3.8 billion in U.S. military funding to Israel to ensure that U.S. taxpayers are not supporting annexation in any way." AIPAC condemned the letter, saying it threatened the US-Israel relationship.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen proxy war

Ocasio-Cortez voted to withdraw U.S. military aid for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. She criticized President Trump's administration for escalating tensions with Iran.

Political endorsements

In January 2020, Ocasio-Cortez announced the formation of a PAC called Courage to Change, which announced its first endorsements of progressive Democrats on February 21, 2020. Some progressive commentators subsequently criticized Ocasio-Cortez for having only endorsed two Democratic primary challengers by March 3. A notable omission was Cori Bush who had received an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez two years prior.

Electoral history

Awards and honors

The MIT Lincoln Laboratory named the asteroid 23238 Ocasio-Cortez after her when she was a senior in high school in recognition of her second-place finish in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Ocasio-Cortez was named the 2017 National Hispanic Institute Person of the Year by Ernesto Nieto. In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez received the Adelle Foley Award. She was named as one of the 2019 BBC 100 Women.

Personal life

Following the death of Ocasio-Cortez's father in 2008, her mother and grandmother relocated to Florida due to financial hardship. She still has family in Puerto Rico, where her grandfather was living in a nursing home before he died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. She has said, "to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of... African Moors slaves, Taino Indians, Spanish colonizers, Jewish refugees, and likely others. We are all of these things and something else all at once—we are Boricua."
Ocasio-Cortez discussed her Catholic faith and its impact on her life and her campaign for criminal justice reform in an article she wrote for America, the magazine of the Jesuit order in the United States. At a December 2018 Hanukkah celebration in New York, she stated that she may have Sephardic Jewish ancestry, although she does not practice Judaism.
During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez resided in Parkchester, Bronx, with her boyfriend, web developer Riley Roberts.
In 2020, Ocasio-Cortez was a guest judge on an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race.
During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, Ocasio-Cortez achieved a League of Legends rank of Silver III.