Ocasio-Cortez AOC

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Rep. Dina Titus (https://legiscan.com/US/people/dina-titus/id/9140) \D-NV]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (https://legiscan.com/US/people/alexandria-ocasio-cortez/id/20089) [D-NY]

[Rep. Ann Kuster (https://legiscan.com/US/people/ann-kuster/id/15227) [D-NH]

EJ ACW

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has quickly become a powerful voice in the Democratic Party, and a new video showing a speech she delivered in a hearing on the importance of environmental protection and the threat of climate change makes clear why.

Addressing the charge that environmental concerns are “elitist,” she dispatched with the attack quickly.

“One year ago, I was waitressing in a taco shop in downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago,” she said. “This is not an elitist issue — this is a quality of life issue.”

She continued: “You want to tell people that their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint whose kid’s — their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist. You’re telling them, that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos? People are dying! They are dying! And the response across the other side of the aisle is to introduce an amendment five minutes before a hearing in a markup? This is serious! This should not be a partisan issue.”

fox hurts #'s

Over the weekend, Fox News published a story (3/17/19) on a recent Gallup poll that asked the public about their opinions on Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The headline claimed that her unfavorable rating had “skyrocketed”—rising 15 points since last September—and that “most people” now viewed her negatively.

In doing so, the network committed two notable journalistic sins—one of commission and one of omission. First, the headline itself was a sloppy falsehood, as the Gallup poll from February only found a plurality of the public (41 percentvs. 31 percent)—and not a majority, or “most people”—rating Ocasio-Cortez unfavorable rather than favorable.

But second—and more importantly—the story conveniently left out the key role that Fox News itself has played in damaging the public reputation of the congressmember, thanks to a relentless propaganda campaign over the past six months. It’s a chilling case study in the self-fulfilling nature of the right-wing messaging machine.

Ever since her shocking primary upset of Democratic Party fixture Rep. Joe Crowley last fall in New York’s 14th District, Ocasio-Cortez has drawn the white-hot spotlight of the press. Young, outspoken, and, at times, unfiltered or imprecise, the representative has quickly built a national presence after only a few months in office, thanks in part to her push for unapologetically big and uncompromisingly progressive platforms, like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. In addition, she’s become a media phenomenon thanks to hermassive social media following, which has in turn spawned numerous ham-handed attempts by conservatives to attack her online, which consistently backfire.

Conventional right-wing media outlets don’t bother with engaging her directly, however. As her profile has risen, so too have their concerted attempts to target her with unflattering, distorted coverage. And perhaps no place in the conservative media firmament is as obsessed with tracking Ocasio-Cortez as Fox News. Her name appears so frequently on the network, in fact, that she even has her own keyword tag to allow online readers to follow their coverage.

Fox News also has keyword tags for two other outspoken freshman female Democrats in Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib—both of who are practicing Muslims and are also strongly in favor of policies like the Green New Deal. So it’s a not-so-subtle signal about Fox News’ institutional assessment of threats to conservatism that it gives the same organizational treatment to three young, newly elected women of color as it does for the Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer.

This kind of audience guide is admittedly necessary when your news organization is executing a non-stop propaganda campaign. In the 134 days since Election Day, Ocasio-Cortez’s name appeared in 1,173 separate stories on **Fox News alone. Even if many of those stories referenced her only tangentially, that still adds up hundreds upon hundreds of stories or segments focused squarely on her. (This sensationalistic stalking has not gone unnoticed by Ocasio-Cortez, who jokingly calls the network “AOC TMZ”—”no offense to TMZ.”)

To be clear, bird-dogging a politician’s policies or rhetoric is fair game, if the motivation is to hold him or her accountable. But even a cursory perusal of Fox News’ output finds that an overwhelming majority are not good-faith efforts at accountability. Instead, they are intentionally framed to fearmonger or distort Ocasio-Cortez’s policies, if not heap contempt and insults on her personally. Since many Fox Newsviewers are already psychologically primed to disbelieve, if not outright disdain Democrats, the cumulative effect of a campaign of this magnitude is utterly predictable: Many Republicans who had never heard of Ocasio-Cortez before the midterm elections have now absorbed and accepted Fox News’ incessant denunciations of her.

To see a microcosm of how the right-wing messaging congealed around—and against—Ocasio-Cortez, consider Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson’s own personal journey. Just days after the midterm election (11/14/18), he was on-air sheepishly admitting Ocasio-Cortez “has a very good point” in her criticism of the unfair aspects of the New York/Amazon deal.

Three months later, however, there was little interest in making common cause with her left-wing populism. Instead, Carlson (2/13/19) could be found mocking her as a “screechy moron” and a “theocrat,” while fueling conspiracy theories that she would use the Green New Deal to give “control of the entire US economy to the Democratic Party.” And this kind of vicious, unhinged coverage is the rule, not the exception.

During just the past week, for example, Fox News has run more than three dozen separate stories or video segments focused on or referencing Ocasio-Cortez—an average of more than five a day. By comparison, the network had just 21 similar stories listed under its Nancy Pelosi tag during the same period. Below is just a sampling of the “straight news” coverage of Ocasio-Cortez on Fox News this week:

AOC Draws Ire Ripping ‘Your Thoughts and Prayers’ After Christchurch Mosque Shootings(3/15/19)
Former Adviser: Reagan Would Be ‘Angry’ Over Ocasio-Cortez’s Insuration [sic] He Was Racist(3/13/19)
Company Founded by Ocasio-Cortez in 2012 Still Owes $1,870 in Taxes(3/10/19)

The opinion programming on Fox (and Fox Business News) during the past week is if anything even more relentless and less subtle:

Ocasio-Cortez’s Ignorance Proves Admissions Fraud Is the Symptom, Not Cause, of America’s Education Crisis(3/16/19)
Ocasio-Cortez Again Proves She’s Clueless on Economics(3/15/19)
Stuart Varney: Ocasio-Cortez Is So Far Out of Line That She Must Surely Be a ‘Bubble’(3/14/19)
John Stossel: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Pushes Tax Myths That Will Bring Economic Disaster(3/13/19)
Puzder: AOC Doesn’t Know What Socialism, Capitalism Are (3/13/19)
Former Greenpeace Official: Green New Deal Is Completely Crazy(3/12/19)

Fox News is, of course, far from alone here. Ocasio-Cortez has now supplanted Nancy Pelosi as the go-to bogeyman and punching bag for the conservative press, no matter how absurd the depths they must sink to to make it so. (One standout example: a long, rambling March 2 New York Posthit piece that bashed Ocasio-Cortez for hypocrisy because she a) rides in cars and planes, and b) failed to compost a sweet potato peel and threw away two plastic garbage bags in an Instagram cooking video.)

But there is a payoff—and the Gallup poll is the manifestation of Fox News’ successful propaganda campaign. For, in this latest poll, only 22 percent of Republicans now had no opinion or hadn’t heard of Ocasio-Cortez, a mark notably lower than the 32 percent of independents and 29 percent of those from her own party who said the same. Last fall, Gallup (10/5/18) found 43 percent of Republicans had no opinion.

Tellingly, the number of Republicans who rated her unfavorably increased by 21 percentage points—from 52 percent to 73 percent—which happens to be the exact same percentage of Republicans who formed an opinion of her between the fall and winter. That is some powerful convergence.

Fox News wasn’t alone in effectively erasing those who like Ocasio-Cortez. The CNN write-up (3/16/19) of the Gallup poll used a clickbaity headline—“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Polls Like Donald Trump: Poorly”—that failed to acknowledge that members of Congress generally fare poorly in nationwide polling. Another pundit’s summation of the poll, which the congressmember herself called out on Twitter (and which has since been deleted), offered a telling bit of demographic gerrymandering around who counts as the default to the press: “AOC is underwater with every group except women, nonwhites and 18–34 year olds.” This works out to “everyone”—meaning white men 35 and older—being roughly one-fifth of the adult population.

And because Ocasio-Cortez’s net fav/unfav ratings fell slightly among independents and rose by a net 8 percentage points among Democrats, the Gallup poll’s result stands as a proxy for the effectiveness of right-wing partisan branding. Or, as the Gallup survey notes, “The fact that Republicans are more likely to have an opinion of her than Democrats helps explain her overall net-negative rating.”

That inconvenient truth, not surprisingly, never made it into this weekend’s Fox News write-up. But the urgency behind the network’s round-the-clock anti–Ocasio-Cortez campaign shows no sign of relenting. Perhaps most especially because of one of the few, not-so-negative headlines to pierce the veil of Fox News’ propaganda back in January. And it’s worth pointing out that this story’s headline about “most voters” actually got it right this time:

Most Voters Back Ocasio-Cortez Plan to Tax Richest Americans Up to 70 Percent: Poll(1/16/19)

Ocasio-Cortez confound this Trump appointee after she demands to know why the administration is ‘violating the law’

Julia Conley / Common Dreams

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) left Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross flustered on Thursday during a House Oversight Committee as she refused to accept his attempts to meddle with the U.S. census. The freshman…

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) left Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross flustered on Thursday during a House Oversight Committee as she refused to accept his attempts to meddle with the U.S. census.

The freshman congresswoman showed evidence that Ross had lied to Congress multiple times when he claimed he merely wanted to add a citizenship question to the census to fulfill a Justice Department request.

Ross was called before the committee to testify about his attempt to add a question to the 2020 census reading, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”—an item that has not been included in the 10-year accounting of U.S. residents since 1950.

Nearly seven hours into the hearing, Ocasio-Cortez crystallized the Democrats’ central argument against the question: in addition to being discriminatory, the addition of the citizenship question was attempted illegally.

While changes to the census must be made through the U.S. Census Bureau, Ocasio-Cortez noted, Ross consulted with anti-voting rights players in the Trump administration—particularly former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who was serving on President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission in July 2017 when he corresponded with Ross about the question. The exchange took place at the urging of former Trump advisor and white supremacist Steve Bannon.

Kobach “encouraged President Trump to add a question about citizenship to the census in the early weeks of Trump’s presidency,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Shortly thereafter, in April of 2017, Steve Bannon asked you to speak to Mr. Kobach about his, quote, ideas about including a citizenship question on the 2020 census.”

“It’s all there in black and white,’ she said of the email exchange. “Why are we violating the law to include any question whatsoever in the 2020 census?”

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/13/headlines/dems_grill_wells_fargo_ceo_over_abusive_practices_dapl_private_prisons

Dems Grill Wells Fargo CEO over Abusive Practices, DAPL, Private Prisons
Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers grilled Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan Tuesday over the bank’s practices of predatory lending, misleading and defrauding customers, and its relationship to the NRA, private prisons and the fossil fuel industry. California congressmember and Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters called Wells Fargo “a recidivist financial institution.” After the hearing, she told reporters she would call a vote on a bill to break up megabanks found liable for repeated consumer violations. This is New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning Sloan over the bank’s role in climate change and its financial backing of the Dakota Access pipeline, which she noted has leaked at least five times since it started transporting oil in 2017.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Should Wells Fargo be held responsible for the damages incurred by climate change due to the financing of fossil fuels and these projects?”

Timothy Sloan: “I don’t know how you’d calculate that, Congresswoman.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Say, from spills or when we have to reinvest in infrastructure, building sea walls from the erosion of infrastructure, or cleanups, wildfires, etc.”

Timothy Sloan: “Related to that pipeline? I’m not aware that there’s been any of what you described that’s occurred related to that pipeline.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “How about the cleanups from the leaks of the Dakota Access pipeline?”

Timothy Sloan: “I’m not aware of the leaks associated with the Dakota Access pipeline.”

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happily takes on FANG

Ironically, when Google was criticized last month by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-NY) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME) for supporting a conference promoting climate science denial, a Google spokesperson replied, “Google has long been a leader in sustainability. Since 2007, we have operated as a carbon neutral company and in 2017, we reached 100 percent renewable energy for our global operations.”

Google clearly has a different definition of “leader in sustainability” and “carbon neutral company” if it includes helping Big Oil produce more climate-destroying, carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

Green New Deal: The scale of the spending shouldn’t scare you — inaction should

by Marshall Auerback February 27, 2019

Extreme weather variations and increasingly dire scientific reports have spurred surprisingly robust policy proposals for a Green New Deal. Rather admirably, the resolution sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and…

The Green New Deal can work — here’s how

by Jeremy Brecher February 25, 2019

The following is based on a new discussion paper 18 Strategies for a Green New Deal: How to Make the Climate Mobilization Work (pdf)from the Labor Network for Sustainability. The Green New Deal resolution recently…

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1st long coverage of grn new deal was fox

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https://senecastandard.com/climate-guru-im-calling-bullst-on-ocasio-cortez-climate-fakery/30724/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=h810bO-4LIs

In a critique of campaign finance laws that has now gone viral, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) this week showed how the United States has “a system that is fundamentally broken” due to the pervasive influence of corporate money that infects every aspect of the nation’s democracy.

The take-down—which took just under 5 minutes—occurred Wednesday during a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee. To make her point, she played “a lightning round game” with the watchdogs on the panel, including Common Cause’s Karen Hobert Flynn, CREW’s Walter Shaub, and Brennan Center for Justice’s Mehrbani Spitzer.

With her creative attack, said Common Cause, the freshman lawmaker “exposes just how much ‘bad guys’ can get away with under the shameful state of our campaign finance laws.”

Watch the video below:

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/07/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-plan

no lnx many

Green New Deal: Ocasio-Cortez unveils bold plan to fight climate change

Blueprint for a carbon-neutral economy has been embraced by prominent Democrats and evokes FDR’s famous legacy

Emily Holden and Lauren Gambino in Washington

Thu 7 Feb 2019 07.18 EST Last modified on Fri 8 Feb 2019 04.45 EST

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Women’s March in January as activists call for a Green New Deal.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is releasing a broad outline of a vision for the Green New Deal, a plan to battle economic and racial injustice while also fighting climate change.

The new congresswoman’s blueprint, co-introduced by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, aims to develop a carbon-neutral economy in 10 years, which would require huge strides in reducing the US’s reliance on oil, gas and coal. It does not set a date for ending the use of fossil fuels.

Specifically, the resolution says it is the duty of the federal government to craft a Green New Deal “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. That includes getting all power from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources”.

Green New Deal: what is the progressive plan, and is it technically possible?

The document also endorses universal healthcare, a jobs guarantee and free higher education – a huge shift in messaging from nearly a decade ago, when Democrats were advocating for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gases by allotting industry permits for pollution.

Sixty members of the House and nine senators are co-sponsoring the resolution, including several presidential candidates, according to a fact sheet from congressional aides that did not include a list of supporters. However, any legislation would be dead-on-arrival with Republicans in control of the Senate and the White House, and would be difficult for Democrats to implement even if they controlled government. In supporting documents staffer acknowledge the investment required would be “massive”.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said a select committee on climate change, which she has announced the members of, will not be tasked with writing a specific bill and called the Green New Deal a “suggestion”.

“It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive,” Pelosi said in an interview with Politico. “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?”

Discussions on what shape the plan would take also involved major environment, justice and labor organizations, as well as the youth-run Sunrise Movement. Backers hope the six-page resolution will push Democrats vying for the White House in 2020 not just to sign on to the general idea, but to lay out specific legislative goals.

Some environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, said they were encouraged by the movement on climate change but that the resolution does not do enough to confront fossil fuels. The Sierra Club, however, welcomed the document.

Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist from New York who has been in Congress for just over a month, centered her campaign on climate change and a Green New Deal.

But the resolution itself focuses on the tenets of a progressive policy platform as much as it does on climate change.

It is both a framework for a cleaner-energy future and a plan for a large-scale mobilization that would rival in scale and scope the progressive New Deal policies ushered in under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression.

One of its goals is “to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth”.

Students in Belgium demonstrate against climate change inaction.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Students in Belgium demonstrate against climate change inaction. Photograph: Alexandros Michailidis/Alamy

The resolution says significant portions of the American population are suffering from declining life expectancy, exposure to pollution, and lacking access to healthy food, healthcare, housing, transportation and education. It spotlights wage stagnation, lacking socio-economic mobility, income inequality, a racial wealth divide, a gender pay gap and weakened bargaining power for workers.

The resolution text comes as Donald Trump frequently questions the science that shows humans burning fossil fuels are causing temperatures to rise and exacerbate extreme weather. He did not mention climate change in his annual address to Congress this week, despite increasing warnings from scientists.

Democrats, who hold a majority in the House, are trying to raise awareness of climate change as an impending crisis, with two committees holding hearings this week and a third to follow next week. But Republican lawmakers remain resistant to any legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

House Democrats hold hearings to increase pressure on climate change

Republicans in dual climate change hearings called by House Democrats yesterday attacked the as-yet unwritten Green New Deal, charging that it would be far too expensive and would worsen poverty. Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters say the strategy is designed to do the opposite – to create jobs in a green economy.

Meanwhile, Trump’s agencies continue to roll back climate regulations enacted by the Obama administration. US carbon emissions increased last year, according to analysis by the economic firm Rhodium Group.

Ocasio-Cortez elevated the Green New Deal when she joined activists at a protest outside the then minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s office last year. The activists are planning to protest at Democratic debates in an effort to ensure the proposal, which was until now largely a liberal rallying cry for action on climate change, is a prominent issue for the 2020 election.

Before the text was released, several presidential candidates had already embraced the notion of a Green New Deal, including senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand. The former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro committed to the plan during his campaign announcement.

The Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who is the co-chair of the House progressive caucus and a sponsor of the legislation, said the resolution defined the scale and scope of what must be done to combat global warming.

“We really need an urgent and comprehensive approach,” said Jayapal.

Such legislation has little chance of becoming law as long as Republicans control the Senate and Trump is president. But Jayapal said Democrats would continue to lay the groundwork for a Green New Deal while pushing more incremental legislation.

“This is a moment for us to push a comprehensive view of the challenge before us,” she said, “and therefore to offer the solution that we need to address that challenge.”

Supporters of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal rally in Washington in December.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Supporters of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal rally in Washington in December. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

The world has already warmed about 1C since the industrialization in the 19th century and is barreling toward exceeding a 1.5C increase, which climate scientists say will significantly worsen the risks of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.

Already, the process for drafting the brief documents has outlined the fights ahead, even among progressives who want climate action.

A background summary prepared by staffers said the plan “sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then”.

But climate justice advocates who represent the communities seeing the worst of environmental damages and pollution already want to quickly phase out all fossil fuels. Many also oppose nuclear power that uses mined uranium but represents a huge portion of the US’s zero-carbon energy.

Angela Adrar, the executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of communities dealing with environmental problems, said her group supported the vision of the Green New Deal, even though members were concerned about what they saw as loopholes to allow some fossil fuels use.

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mma 119

We've gone over Fox's obsession with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For months, the network has been obsessed with attacking her, even though the attacks keep backfiring and instead make her look better.

Now we have some numbers to show how deep it goes. During the month of January, Fox's prime time shows spent nearly an hour and a half on Ocasio-Cortez in January, while barely mentioning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at all. In fact, the person on Fox prime time who mentioned him the most was Ocasio-Cortez -- in clips of her trying to confront McConnell over the government shutdown.

And there is plenty about McConnell to discuss, starting with how he singlehandedly kept the shutdown going by categorically refusing to vote on any legislation that might override Trump's veto. McConnell also derided a bill by House Democrats that would make voting easier, and complained that making Election Day a federal holiday would be a "power grab" by Democrats.

early marie claire mag

If you haven't yet heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you soon will. The 28-year-old powerhouse is running for congresswoman in New York’s 14th District. O already won her primary on June 26, and now she's fighting to unseat longtime incumbent Joe Crowley.

A Latina from the Bronx, as well as a former Bernie Sanders organizer, Ocasio-Cortez self-describes as a “Democratic socialist.” When pressed about this identifier, Ocasio-Cortez explained to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show: “I believe that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.”

Basically, Ocasio-Cortez is a force to be reckoned with. Since her political rise plunged her into the public eye, however, a few Twitter-centric spats and bumps have sprung up; commentators and conservative politicians alike have attempted to undermine her popularity.

And here's how she responded.

July 1

Conservative TV host John Cardillo tweeted a Google Street View picture of Ocasio-Cortez’s childhood home, claiming that it is a “far cry from the Bronx hood upbringing she’s selling.” He wrote, as a description of the picture, that “this is the Yorktown Heights (very nice area) home @Ocasio2018 grew up in before going off to Ivy League Brown University.”

View image on Twitter

John Cardillo

@johncardillo

This is the Yorktown Heights (very nice area) home @Ocasio2018 grew up in before going off to Ivy League Brown University.

A far cry from the Bronx hood upbringing she’s selling.

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8:46 AM - Jul 1, 2018

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Cardillo’s choice to share images of a congressional candidate’s childhood home on Twitter speaks volumes about the political climate we exist in—and how it exists, at least partially, on social media. Ocasio-Cortez belittled his Tweet with her own.

John Cardillo

@johncardillo

Jul 1, 2018

This is the Yorktown Heights (very nice area) home @Ocasio2018 grew up in before going off to Ivy League Brown University.

A far cry from the Bronx hood upbringing she’s selling.

View image on Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Hey John,

I didn’t go to Brown or the Ivy League. I went to BU. Try Google.

It is nice. Growing up, it was a good town for working people. My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here & I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.

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9:53 AM - Jul 1, 2018

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Jul 1, 2018

Replying to @johncardillo

Hey John,

I didn’t go to Brown or the Ivy League. I went to BU. Try Google.

It is nice. Growing up, it was a good town for working people. My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here & I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Your attempt to strip me of my family, my story, my home, and my identity is exemplary of how scared you are of the power of all four of those things.

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9:54 AM - Jul 1, 2018

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July 21

Florida Representative Ron DeSantis, Republican, referred to Ocasio-Cortez in a speech as “this girl... or whatever she is." He then proceeded to undermine her campaign and general intelligence: “She’s in a totally different universe… It’s basically socialism wrapped in ignorance.”

Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter in response, wielding a few choice words about what, exactly, she is.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Rep DeSantis, it seems you‘re confused as to “whatever I am.”

I am a Puerto Rican woman. It‘s strange you don’t know what that is, given that ~75,000 Puerto Ricans have relocated to Florida in the 10 mos since María.

But I’m sure these new FL voters appreciate your comments!

Amanda Terkel

@aterkel

GOP Rep. calls Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “this girl…or whatever she is” http://bit.ly/2v5I3px by @jbendery

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11:52 AM - Jul 23, 2018

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Nydia M. Velázquez, incumbent congresswoman of New York’s 7th District, came quickly in defense of Ocasio-Cortez. Girl power.

Nydia M Velázquez

@ReElectNydia

.@rondesantisFL who is running for Gov in FL has called @Ocasio2018 "this girl...or whatever she is."

She isn't a girl, she's a woman and soon she will be a Congresswoman.

You should apologize not just to her, but to all the women in Florida your comments have offended.

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2:56 PM - Jul 23, 2018

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July 24

Conservative Review TV (CRTV) spliced Ocasio-Cortez’s PBS interview with Margaret Hoover with fake questions from a CRTV “interviewer.” Ocasio-Cortez responded, per usual, with a fantastic Tweet. “Here’s one bonafide truth,” she writes. “Election day is November 6th.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Republicans are so scared of me that they’re faking videos and presenting them as real on Facebook because they can’t deal with reality anymore.

Here’s one bonafide truth:

Election Day is November 6th.

Shane Goldmacher

@ShaneGoldmacher

This faked interview of @Ocasio2018 by @CRTV has nearly 1 million views on Facebook. In less than 24 hours.

Interview didn't happen. It takes clips from @MargaretHoover's show and edits in faux questions.

Not labeled satire (other than a ?? emoji).https://www.facebook.com/allieCRTV/videos/2289485394657512/ …

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5:34 AM - Jul 24, 2018

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Shane Goldmacher, chief political correspondent of the New York Times Metro Desk, also responded to the video on Twitter.

Shane Goldmacher

@ShaneGoldmacher

This faked interview of @Ocasio2018 by @CRTV has nearly 1 million views on Facebook. In less than 24 hours.

Interview didn't happen. It takes clips from @MargaretHoover's show and edits in faux questions.

Not labeled satire (other than a ?? emoji).https://www.facebook.com/allieCRTV/videos/2289485394657512/ …

5,562

5:17 AM - Jul 24, 2018

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Flashback to July 10: Ocasio-Cortez won the primary in her neighboring 15th District, that day, too, in a write-in campaign.

She’s not even running in that district.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Shockingly - and I’m told this is not a joke - we have ALSO won a primary in the neighboring 15th Congressional District via write-in campaign on the Reform line!

While I am honored that so many Bronxites are excited about our campaign, I will remain the Dem nominee for NY-14.

ken lovett

@klnynews

EXCLUSIVE: @Ocasio2018 with another surprise election win - in a district she wasn't even running in http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-ocasio-cortez-serrano-crowley-reform-20180710-story.html …

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...But something else was unfolding at the same time, something even more symbolic. A new crop of progressive congressional representatives arrived in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. Getting the most press among the newbies is 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bronx-born, Twitter-native, and worm in the heads of right wing pundits. She made waves calling for a Green New Deal, proposing a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent to pay for it, and, last week, marched in the second anniversary Women’s March, worked to end the federal shutdown, and called in to a 57-hour livestreamed game of Donkey Kong 64 to support trans rights.

That’s Donkey Kong, the Nintendo video game from the ’80s. The online game was organized as a fundraiser for Mermaids, a U.K. charity that supports trans youth. It was run by Harry Brewis, known online as “Hbomberguy” and for a series of “Measured Response” videos in which he calmly dissects right-wing talking points and conspiracy theories. Brewis ended up raising about $340,000 for the charity.

Most remarkable about the event—besides a congressional representative showing up—is that the video game community has long been seen as a refuge of misogynistic, right-wing “GamerGate” types. That some people are turning that around and opting for inclusion is a sign of culture shift and progress.

The worlds of Davos and Donkey Kong could not be farther apart. There’s the obvious: the world’s wealthiest assembled in one resort location to save the world for capitalists, and a group of gamers raising money for a cause that benefits a marginalized community.

...

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PMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon privately met with Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., a fierce Wall Street critic who now heads the powerful House Financial Services Committee, CNBC reported.

The two banking tycoons met with Waters to offer their views on various economic topics as she prepared to take over the committee that oversees their firms after the Democrats won back the House majority in November.

Waters did not mention the banking executives by name but told CNBC that she has an “open-door policy.”

“I frequently meet with advocates for consumers, investors and vulnerable families, representatives of large banks, regional banks, community banks, and credit unions, and other stakeholders. They are all welcome in my office to share their concerns,” she said.

Dimon and Solomon have good reason to have concerns. Waters recently added Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., to her committee. All four are freshman members elected as progressives, who repeatedly hit out at Wall Street billionaires during their campaigns.

Ocasio-Cortez said at an event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that “a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.”

The self-declared Democratic socialist has proposed rectifying some of that inequality by taxing income above $10 million at a 70 percent marginal rate. CNBC reported that billionaires attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were “scared” by the proposal and even more concerned by the “momentum” the proposal may have by next year’s presidential election.

“It’s wild that some people are more scared of a marginal tax rate than the fact that 40% of Americans struggle to pay for at least one basic need, like food or rent,” Ocasio-Cortez quipped on Twitter in response to the report.

Pressley has vowed to combat “entrenched disparities” caused by banking and housing laws. Tlaib has embraced Sen. Bernie Sanders’ calls for corporations to pay their “fair share.” Porter, a former law professor who represented California families in foreclosure cases during the Great Recession, has been compared to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a longtime consumer rights advocate and now a 2020 presidential candidate.

Waters herself vowed to fight Wall Street lobbying efforts to weaken financial regulations like the post-recession Dodd-Frank bill in her first policy speech as the committee’s head.

“All of these reforms were designed to help prevent a future financial crisis,” she said. “The committee will be paying close attention to whether financial regulators try to weaken these important reforms, and keeping an eye on the big banks and their activities, including by holding many hearings.”

Waters has had run-ins with Dimon in the past over JPMorgan’s millions in lobbying efforts to derail parts of Dodd-Frank in 2012. Waters grilled Dimon on why he lobbied for reduced regulations overseas even though he admitted that might harm shareholders at home.

“Lobbying is a constitutional right,” Dimon replied.

“Well, I’m not questioning your right to lobby. I’m questioning what’s in the best interest of the American public,” Waters shot back.

AN 119

The attacks on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the far right—and some centrist establishment Democrats as well—have ranged from hysterical to downright silly. And all of this silliness, Rolling Stone’s irreverent Matt Taibbi asserts in his latest article, shows how threatened they are by the 29-year-old congresswoman.

“The real problem most of Washington has with AOC,” Taibbi writes, is that “her self-generated popularity and large social media presence means she doesn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to say anything.”

Taibbi explains that if the New Yorker’s critics “were smart, they’d ignore her”—and the more this “ongoing freakout over newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” occurs, Taibbi stresses, the more pathetic those detractors show themselves to be.

“All of AOC’s supporters sent her to Washington precisely to make noise,” Taibbi explains. “There isn’t a cabal of key donors standing behind her, cringing every time she talks about the Pentagon budget. She is there to be a pain in the ass, and it’s working. Virtually the entire spectrum of Washington officialdom has responded to her with horror and anguish.”

One of the Ocasio-Cortez critics Taibbi takes aim at is former Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who complained that if she is the Democratic Party’s “new face,” Democrats can forget about having a “bright future.”

Taibbi writes, “How many Democrats, do you think, heard that and immediately thought the opposite—that if Joe Lieberman disapproves, Ocasio-Cortez must be on the right track? Sixty percent? Seventy?”

Taibbi notes that because Ocasio-Cortez is new to Congress, it remains to be seen how much she will accomplish on the job. But the fact that many establishment figures in Washington, DC feel so threatened by Ocasio-Cortez, according to Taibbi, speaks quite well of her.

“I have no idea if Ocasio-Cortez will or will not end up being a great politician,” Taibbi asserts. “But it’s abundantly clear that her mere presence is unmasking many, if not most, of the worst and most tired Shibboleths of the capital.”

AN 119

Whether or not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ultimately an effective congressperson remains to be seen, writes *New York Times* columnist Paul Krugman, but she’s already doing a great job of advancing tax policy.

Ocasio-Cortez has advocated a tax rate of 70 to80 percent on very high incomes, which Krugman says seems “crazy”—except to the world’s leading expert on public finance.

“It’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history,” he writes.

The government should look at taxation as a way to raise revenue for the government.

“When taxing the rich, all we should care about is how much revenue we raise,” he explains. “The optimal tax rate on people with very high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue.”

According to a fellow Nobel laureate in economics, “the optimal rate” for taxing the rich is 73 percent.

“So AOC, far from showing her craziness, is fully in line with serious economic research,” he writes. “She definitely knows more economics than almost everyone in the G.O.P. caucus.”

Read the full article here.

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The most important thing we must do to save our democracy is get big money out of politics. It’s a prerequisite to accomplishing everything else.

Today, big money continues to corrupt American politics – creating a vicious cycle that funnels more wealth and power to those at the top and eroding our democracy.

In the 2018 midterm elections, wealthy donors and Super-PACs poured millions into the campaigns of the same lawmakers who voted to pass the 2017 tax cuts, which gave them huge windfalls.

Consider conservative donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, whose casino business received an estimated $700 million windfall, thanks to Trump and Republicans’ tax cuts. The couple then used some of this extra cash to plow more than $113 million dollars into the 2018 election, breaking the record for political contributions by a single household.[vid]

That’s not a bad return on investment – for them. All told, almost 40 percent of total contributions in the 2018 midterms came from people who donated $10,000 or more. Yet these mega-donors comprise a tiny 0.01 percent of the U.S. population.

It’s a worsening vicious cycle: Lawmakers cut taxes and slash regulations for their wealthy campaign donors. Mega-donors and corporations funnel some of that money back into our political system to keep their lackeys in power. Politicians then propose another round of tax cuts, subsidies or bailouts to secure even more donations.

If this isn’t corruption, I don’t know what is. It also breeds cynicism in our democracy. The game seems rigged because it is. A 2015 poll found that the majority of Americans say lawmakers are corrupt, out of touch with their constituents, and beholden to special interests.

In the 2018 midterms, Americans demanded an end to the corruption. And there are signs lawmakers are finally getting message.House Democrats’ first piece of legislation aims to end the big-money takeover.

We must end this vicious cycle in order to reclaim our democracy. We must get big money out of politics. Now.

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Ocasio-Cortez touts highest portion of 2018 small-dollar donors: 'Being people-funded frees me to put people first'

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https://www.ecowatch.com/new-green-deal-ocasio-cortez-2621867003.html

many lnx

Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal Proposal Now Backed by 15 House Democrats

Calls for a Green New Deal are gaining traction in the two short weeks after the young climate activists of the Sunrise Movement and Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stormed Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi's Capitol Hill office.

Fifteen members of Congress have now backed Ocasio-Cortez's proposal to establish a "select committee" in the House of Representatives to develop a plan to—basically—reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to transition the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy sources within 10 years of passing the Green New Deal legislation.

Supporters in the House include John Lewis, the civil rights leader and Democratic congressman from Georgia, and trailblazers Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress.

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As ThinkProgress reported, Democratic congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine joined the growing list of backers on Tuesday.

"We don't need another report to tell us climate change is a threat to our health, environment and economy," she said in a statement on her website. "We must take urgent action to end our nation's reliance on fossil fuels and stop the damage greenhouse gases have done to our way of life."

Pingree, an organic farmer and member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment, said the effects of climate change have greatly impacted her state.

"Look no further than Maine's lobster industry to see the looming economic crisis facing our state due to rapidly warming waters," she said. "Meanwhile rates of asthma and tick-borne illness in Maine have dramatically spiked because of fossil fuel emissions and rising temperatures. I see the crisis of climate change every day in my state and believe a new committee dedicated exclusively to this crisis can support the long-standing work of other House committees and help to fast-track solutions."

Here are the 15 House Democrats supporting the measure:

Jared Huffman (CA-02)

Ro Khanna (CA-17)

Ted Lieu (CA-33)

John Lewis (GA-05)

Joe Neguse (CO-02)

Chellie Pingree (ME-01)

Jamie Raskin (MD-08)

Ayanna Pressley (MA-07)

Rashida Tlaib (MI-13)

Ilhan Omar (MN-05)

Deb Halland (NM-01)

Carolyn Maloney (NY-12)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14)

José E. Serrano (NY-15)

Earl Blumenauer (OR-03)

The proposal also has the support of nearly 100 environmental, economic and social justice organizations, according to the Sunrise Movement.

To build momentum, the youth climate group is organizing another mass action at the Capitol on Dec. 10, right before Congress breaks for the holidays, "to make sure Ocasio's Select Committee on a Green New Deal makes it on the agenda for 2019," Sunrise Movement founder Varshini Prakash said in an emailed press release.

The group launched the effort only yesterday and 230 people have already signed up to participate. (You can also join the action in DC, or if you're on the West Coast, you can sign up for the action in Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco.)

Last week, the National Climate Assessment report—compiled by 13 federal agencies and more than 300 scientists—warned that climate change could kill thousands of Americans each year and slash the GDP by more than 10 percent by 2100.

President Donald Trump, who is fixated on fossil fuels, dismissed his own government's report by saying "I don't believe it."

"People are going to die if we don't start addressing climate change ASAP. It's not enough to think it's 'important.' We must make it urgent," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted after the report's release. "That's why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, & why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn't be writing climate change policy."

Early life and education

Ocasio-Cortez was born in The Bronx, New York City, on October 13, 1989, to Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (née Cortez) and Sergio Ocasio.^[16] Her father, an architect of Puerto Rican descent, was born in the Bronx, while her mother was born in Puerto Rico.^[17][18] Until age five, Ocasio-Cortez lived with her family in an apartment in the neighborhood of Parkchester.^[18] The family then moved to a house in Yorktown Heights, a suburb in Westchester County.^[18] Growing up, Ocasio-Cortez regularly visited her extended family in the Bronx.^[19]

Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007,^[20] where she won second prize in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a microbiology research project on the effect of antioxidants on C. elegans' lifespan.^[21] As a result, the International Astronomical Union named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez.^[22][23] In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session. She later became the LDZ Secretary of State while she attended Boston University. Ocasio-Cortez had a John F. Lopez Fellowship.^[24] In 2008, while Ocasio-Cortez was a sophomore at Boston University, her father died of lung cancer.^[25][26] During college, she was an intern in the immigration office of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.^[27] She graduated cum laude from Boston University's College of Arts and Sciences in 2011 with a bachelor's degree ininternational relations and a minor in economics.^[24][28][29]

Ocasio-Cortez has described her background as working-class, and relates many of her political positions to it. When her father died intestate of lung cancer in 2008,^[30] she became involved in a long 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".^[31]

Early career

After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx, while she worked as a bartender in Manhattan and as a waitress in a taqueria. Her mother, meanwhile, cleaned houses and drove school buses. After her father's death, Ocasio-Cortez and her mother struggled to fight foreclosure of their home.^[32][33] With financial backing from Sunshine Bronx Business Incubator, she established a publishing firm, Brook Avenue Press, which specializes in children's literature that portrays the Bronx in a positive light.^[34] She worked as lead educational strategist at GAGEis, Inc.^[35] Ocasio-Cortez was also an educator at the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute,^[36] in which role she served as the Educational Director of the 2017 Northeast Collegiate World Series, where she participated in a panel on Latino leadership.^[24]

In the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign.^[37] After the general election, she traveled across America by car, visiting places such as Flint, Michigan, and Standing Rock, and speaking to people affected by the human rights violations related to the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline.^[38] In an interview she recalled her visit to Standing Rock as a tipping point, saying that before that, she had felt that the only way to effectively run for office was if you had 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.^[39]

U.S. House of Representatives

2018 election

Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in New York, 2018 § District 14

Ocasio-Cortez was among a slate of nationwide Justice Democrats/Brand New Congress candidacy announcements livestreamed on May 16, 2017.^[40] In August 2017, she attended the Netroots Nation Conference in Atlanta, appearing on a panel with fellow candidates on "how to run a grassroots campaign that puts people above party".^[41][42].

Ocasio-Cortez was the first person since 2004 to challenge the Democratic Caucus Chair, Joe Crowley, in the Democratic primary. She faced a significant financial disadvantage, but said, "You can't really beat big money with more money. You have to beat them with a totally different game." Nearly 75% of her donations were small individual contributions, while less than one percent of Crowley's contributions were.^[31] The Ocasio-Cortez campaign spent $194,000 to the Crowley campaign's $3.4 million.^[43]

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.^[45] 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.^[46][47][48]Ocasio-Cortez has not previously held elected office,^[17] and her campaign video began with her saying "Women like me aren't supposed to run for office."^[44]

Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by progressive and civil rights organizations such as MoveOn,^[49] Justice Democrats,^[50] Brand New Congress,^[51] Black Lives Matter,^[52] and Democracy for America,^[37] and by gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, who, like Ocasio-Cortez, also challenged a longtime incumbent, Andrew Cuomo, in the 2018 New York gubernatorial election.^[53]

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 progressive 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.^[54] California representative Ro Khanna, like Ocasio-Cortez a Justice Democrat,^[55] initially endorsed Crowley, later also endorsing Ocasio-Cortez in an unusual dual endorsement.^[56]

Following her win, Ocasio-Cortez explained her campaign strategy:

I knew that if we were going to win, the way that progressives win on an unapologetic message is by expanding the electorate. That's the only way that we can win strategically. It's not by rushing to the center. It's not by trying to win spending all of our energy winning over those who have other opinions. It's by expanding the electorate, speaking to those that feel disenchanted, dejected, cynical about our politics, and letting them know that we're fighting for them.^[57]

Primary election

:{Bernie Sanders congratulated her, saying, "She took on the entire local Democratic establishment in her district and won a very strong victory. She demonstrated once again what progressive grassroots politics can do."^[11] Noam Chomsky saw her victory as "a quite spectacular and significant event". He believes her win shows a split in the Democratic Party and he thinks that "she was right in saying that the policies she's outlined should have broad appeal to a very large segment of the population."^[64]On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez received 57.13% of the vote (15,897) to Joe Crowley's 42.5% (11,761), defeating the 10-term incumbent by almost 15 percentage points.^[58]Time called her victory "the biggest upset of the 2018 elections so far";^[59] CNN made a similar statement.^[8] 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".^[37] The Guardian called it "one of the biggest upsets in recent American political history".^[60] Her victory was especially surprising as she was outspent 18–1.^[61] Merriam-Websterreported that searches for the word "socialism" spiked 1,500% after her victory.^[62] In a sign of her outsider status, as of 11 p.m. on election day Crowley had not phoned Ocasio-Cortez; she believed he did not have her phone number and stated that she did not have his. Earlier in the evening, however, Crowley, an amateur guitarist, had played a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" at his election night watch party by way of conceding defeat, having dedicated it to Ocasio-Cortez.^[63]}:

At 28 years old, Ocasio-Cortez was one of the youngest nominees for Congress.[citation ^needed]

Several commentators noted the similarities between Ocasio-Cortez's victory over Crowley and Dave Brat's 2014 victory over Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia's 7th congressional district.^[65][66] Like Crowley, Cantor was a high-ranking member in his party's caucus.^[67] After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed several progressive primary challengers to Democratic incumbents nationwide,^[68] leveraging her fame and spending her political capital in a manner not usually seen even in unexpected primary winners.^[69]

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, albeit with a total vote count of nine. She said she appreciated the show of support, but would decline the nomination.^[70][71][b]

Media coverage

After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez quickly garnered nationwide media attention, including numerous articles and TV talk-show appearances. She appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert^[75] and The View in the first few days after the primary^[76] and later on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.^[77]Many journalists faulted the traditional national news media (with a few exceptions such as CBSN) for not identifying, or even recognizing, the newsworthiness of Ocasio-Cortez's campaign.^[72][73] Brian Stelter wrote that progressive media outlets such as The Young Turks and The Intercept "saw the Ocasio-Cortez upset coming".^[66] Margaret Sullivan said that traditional metrics of measuring a campaign's viability, like total fundraising, were contributing to a "media failure".^[73] Ocasio-Cortez was barely mentioned in print-media coverage until her primary election win.^[74]

Ocasio-Cortez also drew a great deal of media attention when she and Bernie 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 YorkerBenjamin Wallace-Wells wrote that while Sanders remains "the de-facto leader of an increasingly popular left, [he is unable to] do things that do not come naturally to him, like supply hope." Wallace-Wells suggested that Ocasio-Cortez has made Sanders's task easier as he can point to her success to show that ideas "once considered to be radical are now part of the mainstream".^[78]

Ocasio-Cortez received backlash after barring members of the media from attending her "listening tour" on August 8 in the Bronx and August 12 in Corona, Queens.^[79][80][81]

Ocasio-Cortez has been the subject of negative press coverage from right-leaning media outlets since her Democratic primary win in June 2018.^[82] Some news outlets, such as Fox News and the Washington Examiner, were criticized for their coverage that mocked Ocasio-Cortez's outfit choices.^[83][84] In July 2018, conservative news outlet CRTVpublished a doctored video that featured footage of Ocasio-Cortez from a previous interview with PBS, spliced to appear as answers to questions read by CRTV commentator Allie Stuckey.^[85] CRTV later added a discaimer that labeled the video as satire as well as providing a link to the original PBS interview.^[85][86]

General election

Crowley also remained on the ballot, as the nominee of the Working Families Party (WFP). Neither Crowley nor the party actively campaigned, with both having endorsed Ocasio-Cortez after her Democratic primary victory.^[93] On July 17, former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who himself won reelection on a third-party line after losing the Democratic Primary in 2006, expressed hope that Crowley would actively campaign on the WFP ballot line in a column in the Wall Street Journal.^[94] Dan Cantor, Executive Director of the WFP, wrote an endorsement of, and apology to, Ocasio-Cortez for the New York Daily News, and called on voters not to vote for Crowley if his name remained on the general election ballot.^[95]Ocasio-Cortez faced Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election.^[87] 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 Indexof D+29 and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost six to one.^[88][89][90] Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by various politically progressive organizations and figures, including former President Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.^[91][92]

In August 2018, Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans.^[96]

Ocasio-Cortez won the election with 78% of the vote (100,044) to Pappas's 13.8% (17,762).^[97] 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 at least 39 seats.^[98]

After the election, Ocasio-Cortez chose Justice Democrats co-founder Saikat Chakrabarti as her chief of staff.^[99]

Tenure

116th Congress

On the first day of congressional orientation, Ocasio-Cortez participated in a climate change protest outside the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.^[100] Ocasio-Cortez backs Pelosi for Speaker of the Houseonce the Democratic Party reclaims the majority in 2019, under the condition that she "remains the most progressive candidate for speaker."^[101]

Ocasio-Cortez enters Congress with no seniority but with a large social media presence that could increase her influence in the House. Axios has credited her with as much social media clout as her fellow freshman Democrats combined. As of November 2018 she has 1.38 million Twitter followers and just under a million Instagram followers.^[102]

Political positions

Ocasio-Cortez is a self-described democratic socialist.^[103] She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.^[13] She supports progressive policies such as Medicare for All, a job guarantee,^[104] tuition-free public college, ending the privatization of prisons, and enacting gun-control policies.^[105]

Education

Ocasio-Cortez campaigned in favor of tuition-free universities and public schools,^[106] saying that "[f]or the cost of the GOP's tax bill, we could forgive ALL the student loan debt in the United States."^[106][107]

Environment

Ocasio-Cortez is a self-described hardliner on environmental issues, calling climate change the "single biggest national security threat" facing the United States. She advocates for the United States to transition by 2035 to an electrical grid running on 100% renewable-energy production and end the use of fossil fuels. She also calls for a Green New Deal in the United States, in which the federal government would invest in the construction of large-scale green-infrastructure projects.^[108]

Ocasio-Cortez has proposed "a select committee in the House to draft a plan that fits the proposal’s standards". Outlined in a draft resolution on her website, the proposal would mean "using nothing but renewable energy for electricity generation" and transitioning to renewable sources of energy "within 10 years of passing Green New Deal legislation", but does not provide details about how the US would move away from non-renewable power sources. It would also roll out a nationwide “smart” electrical grid and "mass energy-efficient building upgrades". Twelve Democrats in the new Congress have supported this resolution: Representatives Jared Huffman, Ro Khanna, John Lewis, Carolyn Maloney, Jose Serrano, Earl Blumenauer, Deb Haaland, Joe Neguse, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Frank Pallone does not believe the committee should have legislative authority.^[109]

Healthcare

Ocasio-Cortez supports transitioning to a single-payer healthcare system, calling healthcare a human right.^[110][106] She says that a single government insurer should ensure that every American has insurance, while reducing costs overall.^[104] On her campaign website, Ocasio-Cortez 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."^[106]

Immigration

Ocasio-Cortez supports a "path to citizenship" for immigrants who entered the United States legally and illegally.^[111][112] She supports abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), calling 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".^[113] She later clarified that this does not mean abolishing deportations.^[114]She has called immigration detention centers operated by the Department of Homeland Security "black sites", citing limited public access to those locations.^[115] Two days before the primary election, Ocasio-Cortez attended a protest at an ICE child-detention center in Tornillo, Texas.^[116]

Criminal justice reform

Ocasio-Cortez supports federal legalization of marijuana, banning private prisons and detention centers, releasing all nonviolent drug offenders, ending cash bail, and automatic, independent investigations whenever someone is killed by a police officer.^[117]

Electoral reform

Ocasio-Cortez has called for public financing of elections and a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v. FEC, Buckley v. Valeo, and Speechnow v. FEC.^[117] She also supports the replacement of the Electoral College with a National Popular Vote.^[118]

Impeachment of President Trump

On June 28, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she would support the impeachment of President Trump, saying, "I think that, you know, we have the grounds to do it." She cited Trump's alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause.^[119][120]

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

After 60 Palestinian protesters participating in the 2018 Gaza border protests were killed on May 14, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Israel Defense Forces' use of deadly force,^[121] tweeting,^[122] "This is a massacre. I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can't be silent about this anymore."^[123] In a subsequent interview, she said, "The idea that we are not supposed to talk about people dying when they are engaging in political expression just really moved me", and said that many constituents, including Jewish Americans, had thanked her for taking that position.^[124] In an interview with the PBS series Firing Line, Ocasio-Cortez clarified that she is "a proponent of a two-state solution".^[125]

After her primary victory, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami expressed his support for "a new generation of candidates who are more outspoken about their opposition to the policies of Netanyahu's far-right coalition and are eager to see the US play a more constructive role in making life better for both Israelis and Palestinians".^[126]

Puerto Rico

Ocasio-Cortez calls for "solidarity with Puerto Rico". She has advocated for granting Puerto Ricans further civil rights, regardless of Puerto Rico's legal classification. She also advocates for both 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.^[127] She believes the federal government should increase investment in Puerto Rico.^[105]

Social issues

Ocasio-Cortez is supportive of the LGBT community, thanking its members for their role in her grassroots campaign.^[128][105] She spoke at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2017.^[129]

Amazon HQ2

In mid-November 2018, Ocasio-Cortez came out against the selection of Long Island City in Queens as one of the two locations for Amazon HQ2. She expressed concern that Amazon would receive tax breaks while critical infrastructure, such as the New York City Subway was deteriorating and the city's public-school and health-care systems were underfunded. Ocasio-Cortez has also raised concerns about the affordability of housing in Queens, since housing prices around the HQ2 campus would rise as a result of the campus's construction.^[130][131]

Awards and honors

The International Astronomical Union named the asteroid 23238 Ocasio-Cortez after Ocasio-Cortez when she was a senior in high school in recognition of her second-place finish in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.^[22][23] Ocasio-Cortez was named the 2017 National Hispanic Institute Person of the Year by Ernesto Nieto.^[24]

Personal life

Ocasio-Cortez has family in Puerto Rico, where her grandfather lived in a nursing home^[127] before dying in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.^[132] After Ocasio-Cortez's father's death in 2008, her mother and grandmother relocated to Florida due to financial hardship.^[17][32] She described her Catholic faith and its impact on her life and her campaign for criminal justice reform in an article in America, the magazine of the Jesuit order in the United States.^[133]

During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez resided in a one-bedroom apartment in Parkchester, Bronx,^[6] with her boyfriend, Riley Roberts. They met at Boston University.^[134]

Notes

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https://www.alternet.org/heres-dire-climate-change-report-trump-white-house-didnt-want-you-see

[another art'l on blk friday release AN]

in a move environmentalists and journalists denounced as a blatant effort to bury facts that conflict with the president's denialism and pro-fossil fuel agenda, the Trump administration used the Friday after Thanksgiving to quietly release Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), which warned "Earth's climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization" and concluded that "greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the only factors that can account" for planet-threatening warming.

:{:{}:

—Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch

"The decision to release this damning report when families are beginning to celebrate the holidays and newsrooms are short-staffed is a brazen attempt to bury the truth from the public that we must act now to move off fossil fuels and stabilize the climate," Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement.

"Releasing this report when no one is looking, tweeting his annual nonsense about global warming and cold weather, and announcing that he'll use the upcoming U.N. climate meetings as a fossil fuel tradeshow, Trump is doubling down on his climate denial for the holidays—as many families are still reeling from unnatural climate disasters across the country," Hauter continued. "The science is way past in on climate change... We must prepare for our climate future in spite of Trump."

From deadly wildfires to catastrophic hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the "impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future," notes the congressionally mandated report—the first of its kind released since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.

Authored by officials from over a dozen federal agencies, the report warns that in the absence of aggressive action to quickly slash carbon emissions, the climate crisis will continue to have increasingly devastating effects on the environment, wildlife, and human health.

"It is very likely that some impacts, such as the effects of ice sheet disintegration on sea level rise and coastal development, will be irreversible for many thousands of years, and others, such as species extinction, will be permanent," the report warns.

Using the hashtag #ClimateFriday, environmentalists worked to overcome the Trump administration's attempt to hide the NCA4 amid the chaos of the holidays by highlighting the report's findings and stressing its dire implications if ambitious and global climate action is not taken.

"This report makes it clear that climate change is not some problem in the distant future," Brenda Ekwurzel, the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement. "It's happening right now in every part of the country."

The Washington Post summarized the report's key findings with regard to major regions of the U.S.:

Already, western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threatening water supplies below them. Coral reefs in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida, and the U.S.'s Pacific territories are experiencing severe bleaching events. Wildfires are devouring ever larger areas during longer fire seasons. And the country's sole Arctic state, Alaska, is seeing a staggering rate of warming that has utterly upended its ecosystems, from once ice-clogged coastlines to increasingly thawing permafrost tundras.

The federal report comes as climate activists and progressives like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are pushing for the Democratic Party to combat the Trump administration's fossil fuel agenda with ambitious climate action centered around a Green New Deal.

"It's not enough to think it's 'important.' We must make it urgent," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. "That's why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, and why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy."

"Climate change is spawning more extreme weather, causing irreparable harm to communities, costing billions of dollars a year, and leading to countless deaths. We can stop climate destruction, but only if we act quickly to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy," concluded Hauter of Food & Water Watch. "This transition is not only possible, but necessary for the health and prosperity of people and the planet."

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https://www.alternet.org/corporate-bribery-lands-amazon-hq2-queens-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-says-new-york-community-outrage

After a year-long race-to-the-bottom competition to determine which city and state lawmakers would most subserviently grovel at its feet and offer the most generous taxpayer-funded gifts, Amazon on Monday reportedly chose Queens, New York and the Northern Virginia suburb of Crystal City as the split locations for its second headquarters, sparking anger among those who believe the online retailer will drive up already soaring housing prices and worsen unsustainable inequality.

"We've been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this," Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote in a Twitter thread late Monday. "The community's response? Outrage."

Highlighting Amazon's enormous size and wealth—the company recently reached a trillion dollars in market value—Ocasio-Cortez added that the "idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need more investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here."

Displacement is not community development. Investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people and families.

Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018

We need to focus on good healthcare, living wages, affordable rent. Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism.

It’s possible to establish economic partnerships w/ real opportunities for working families, instead of a race-to-the-bottom competition.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018

Lastly, this isn’t just about one company or one headquarters. It’s about cost of living, corps paying their fair share, etc.

It’s not about picking a fight, either. I was elected to advocate for our community’s interests - & they‘ve requested, clearly, to voice their concerns.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018

Amazon's search for a second home (HQ2) on top of its current headquarters in Seattle—where the company has successfully crushed efforts by city lawmakers to impose a small tax to fight homelessness—set off what the New York Times described as a "frenzied bidding war," which produced such debasing stunts as New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's suggestion that he would be willing change his name to "Amazon Cuomo" to secure the company's presence in his state.

In addition to the public pronouncements of city and state officials, lawmakers have also been negotiating with Amazon behind closed doors and offering tax incentives that have not faced public scrutiny.

Amazon—which is headed by Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man—is expected to officially announce the HQ2 locations on Tuesday, but it is unclear if any details of the deals with Queens and Crystal City will be made public.

According to one report, Cuomo offered Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars in state subsidies to set up shop in Queens.

"Citizens have no idea what their elected officials have promised to a company headed by the richest person on earth," Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, noted in a statement last week. "We don't know what special new subsidies have been promised that will require state or local enactments. We don't know if gentrification buffers—especially affordable housing—are included. We don't know if clawbacks or other safeguards are included. We don't know the cost per job. But we do know that both deals were negotiated in secret, without any public input."

Some of the taxpayer-funded incentive packages that were made public during the "bidding process" were eye-popping: According to the Washington Post, Maryland offered $8.5 billion and Newark offered $7 billion.

"We shouldn't be giving billions away to one of the biggest companies in the world when our schools are already at capacity and our transit crumbling across the region," Alex Howe of the Metro D.C. branch of the Democratic Socialists of America said in a statement. "We must hold a genuine process of community input and enact strict safeguards, such as a significant annual contribution toward a community land trust, to make sure HQ2 doesn't displace our existing communities and increase already rampant inequality."

It is likely that public education, transit, social services, &/or a variety of other public goods in New York & Virginia will suffer for years to come as a result of the corporate subsidies Democratic governors @andrewcuomo & @RalphNortham have excitedly promised to @amazon.

— Ben Spielberg (@BenSpielberg) November 13, 2018

Derek Thompson, staff writer for The Atlantic, argued on Monday that lawmakers' efforts to lure Amazon to their states constitutes a form of "corporate bribery" that is deeply harmful to the public and should be banned outright by Congress.

"Every year, American cities and states spend up to $90 billion in tax breaks and cash grants to urge companies to move among states. That's more than the federal government spends on housing, education, or infrastructure," Thompson notes. "And since cities and states can't print money or run steep deficits, these deals take scarce resources from everything local governments would otherwise pay for."

"Corporate America is getting all the help it doesn't need," Thompson concluded. "You and I may not like it. But executives such as Jeff Bezos have no reason to care. They are winning by the rules of a broken game."

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AN Even though she's running in a solidly blue district that has no chance of flipping to the GOP, it seems that Republican just can't quit Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The latest example of this phenomenon, which could be aptly dubbed Ocasio-Cortez Derangement Syndrome, was demonstrated by the Republican National Committee when it sent out an email that explicitly compared the aspiring congresswoman to a dictator. The letter wrote that "leading The Democrat Party To The Left With Nothing More Than An Unsubstantiated, Factually Incorrect Socialist Wish List" and was referred to her as the "Mini-Maduro Foreboding The Future Of Democrats."

As CNN described Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan strongman being conflated with Ocasio-Cortez in that email: [vid?]

Maduro is the successor to Hugo Chávez, who ruled from 1999 to 2013. His government is nominally socialist, but with Maduro's assorted power grabs and silencing of critics, Venezuela is not governed democratically. It is currently in the grips of a devastating economic and political collapse owing in large part to a drop in oil prices.

Conservative critics, especially online, routinely reference Venezuela's dire state of affairs when arguing against progressive left policies.

"The RNC knows that the American people support our policies by wide margins. They want universal health care. They want Wall Street to pay their fair share of taxes. They want to raise the minimum wage," Corbin Trent, the communications director for Ocasio-Cortez's campaign, told CNN. "I guess if you can't beat our ideas, you have to lie about them. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is standing in lock step behind a President who abuses human rights and wants to crush the free press which, to me, sounds like a Mini Maduro in the making."

It isn't just the official apparatus of the Republican Party which is taking this stand against Ocasio-Cortez.

"I think the Democrats are radicals," Sam Nunberg,a former adviser for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, told Salon. "They are going so far to the left. Now the media doesn't understand that, or they don't accept it, or they actually are supportive it. Regular Americans, actual rank-and-file Americans, are not. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by all means, please stay out there. Please campaign hard. Elizabeth Warren. Please. Please. Go everywhere you can. Do us a favor. At least [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi is smart enough that all she does is hide and raise boatloads of money."

Last month Rep. Ron DeSantis, a Republican from Florida running for governor, also took a high-profile swipe at Ocasio-Cortez during one of his rallies.Then there was Ben Shapiro, the right-wing pundit who founded the website The Daily Wire. He offered Ocasio-Cortez $10,000 that she could give to her campaign or charity in return for debating on his program for one hour, according to The New York Times. Although he claimed that he did this in order to make "America a more civil and interesting place," Ocasio-Cortez interpreted his offer differently, writing on Twitter that "just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions. And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one."

"You look at this girl, Ocasio-Cortez or whatever she is, I mean, she’s in a totally different universe," DeSantis told his supporters. "It's basically socialism wrapped in ignorance. ... You're repeating canned left-wing talking points and you're somehow the savior of the Democratic Party? Good Lord."

Around that same time Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren facetiously praised Ocasio-Cortez, arguing that she would be a boon to Republican Party candidates in the future.

"I used to love it when Hillary Clinton would come on TV because I thought that it would make it so much easier for [Republicans] in November and in 2020," Lahren said. "But I'm over Hillary. This is my new girl."

But then Ocasio-Cortez spoke, followed by Bush, and I saw something truly terrifying. I saw just how easy it would be, were I less involved and less certain of our nation’s founding and its history, to fall for the populist lines they were shouting from that stage.Perhaps most infamously, there was this piece of ripe hyperbole from Virginia Karuta of The Daily Caller, one that was widely mocked for minimizing the legitimate needs that Ocasio-Cortez has spoken to:

> I saw how easy it would be, as a parent, to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education.
> I saw how easy it would be, as someone who has struggled to make ends meet, to accept the idea that a “living wage” was a human right.
> Above all, I saw how easy it would be to accept the notion that it was the government’s job to make sure that those things were provided.

There are three important takeaways here:

First, it is clear that the Republican Party views Ocasio-Cortez as a boogeyman they can hold up to scare their base into voting. Part of this is because of her democratic socialist views, which the GOP clearly believes are anathema to most Americans; yet there is also a racialized dimension to their approach, as evidenced by the comparison between Ocasio-Cortez and a Latin American dictator in the RNC email (Ocasio-Cortez is of Puerto Rican descent herself) or the calloused way that DeSantis dismissed her last name as "Ocasio-Cortez or whatever she is."

Second, it seems likely that this is the type of rhetoric one should anticipate from Republicans if another self-proclaimed democratic socialist captures the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 (Ocasio-Cortez herself will be too young to run in that year). It remains to be seen whether this would hurt that hypothetical nominee's candidacy or not, but it is at the very least noteworthy.

Third, and perhaps most important, is the fact that Ocasio-Cortez has transformed the Overton Window of American politics. The Overton Window is the idea that politicians can only voice opinions within a certain spectrum of ideas before being branded as "fringe." Beyond Ocasio-Cortez herself, conservatives like Karuta from The Daily Caller are obviously concerned that Ocasio-Cortez's candidacy has further normalized a set of ideas that began to enter the mainstream with Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2016.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/here-are-5-reasons-why-aging-gen-xers-and-boomers-need-democratic-socialism

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https://theintercept.com/2018/07/24/conservative-network-says-fake-interview-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-satire/

CRTV, a streaming service that offers conservative punditry guaranteed to be “100% free of anti-American propaganda,” spent part of Tuesday arguing that a fake interview it created with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — in which the congressional candidate appeared to be stumped by questions she was not, in fact, asked — was a satire, rather than a hoax.

The network, which has verified accounts on Facebook and Twitter, had initially given viewers no way of knowing that they were not watching an embarrassing interview with the democratic socialist running to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District. In fact, the fictional interview with one of the network’s hosts, Allie Stuckey, was created by splicing in answers Ocasio-Cortez had given to different questions during a recent appearance on the PBS show “Firing Line.”

...

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Ocasio-Cortez Becomes Most Ambitious Climate Democrat After Surprise Primary Win

After what CNN called a surprise primary victory Tuesday over 10-term incumbent Representative Joe Crowley in New York's 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just became the leading Democrat on fighting climate change, The Huffington Post reported.

Ocasio-Cortez, a 28 year old Democratic Socialist, is now likely to win November's general election in the historically Democratic district that stretches from the Bronx to Queens, meaning she will join Congress with some of the most ambitious climate plans of any current representative, according to The Huffington Post.

In an email to The Huffington Post, she explained her plans for a Green New Deal to help America switch to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, which advocates say is our best shot of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

"The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan," she wrote. "We must again invest in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy, but this time green energy."

Ocasio-Cortez's climate plans dovetail with some of the other progressive points on her platform, such as a Federal Jobs Guarantee and Solidarity with Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

Ocasio-Cortez told The Huffington Post that the island would be the ideal place to test-run a Green New Deal to help with recovery efforts.

"Our fellow Americans on the island have suffered horrendous losses and need investment at a scale that only the American government can provide," she said.

On her platform, Ocasio-Cortez also links the fight against climate change with her commitments to economic justice and immigrant rights.

"Rather than continue a dependency on this system that posits climate change as inherent to economic life, the Green New Deal believes that radically addressing climate change is a potential path towards a more equitable economy with increased employment and widespread financial security for all," her platform reads.

Her platform also says fighting climate change is necessary "to avoid a world refugee crisis." Concern for immigrants is a large part of her platform. She supports abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which was created in 2003 in the post-9/11 escalation of national security operations and executive power and operates outside the Department of Justice, unlike previous immigration enforcement.

The link between the potential for global warming to increase the number of climate refugees and the need to improve the treatment of current immigrants, many of which are already fleeing deteriorating environmental conditions, is something picked up by the Democratic Socialists of America, the group to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, on the platform for its climate and environmental justice working group, according to The Huffington Post.

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