Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

**Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez** (; born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials as **AOC**, is an American politician and activist. She became the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district in 2019. This includes the eastern part of the Bronx and parts of north-central Queens in New York City. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic Party's primary election on June 26, 2018, when she beat Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley. Her victory was a surprise and many saw it as an upset victory. In November 2018, she would go on to win the general election. She beat Republican nominee Anthony Pappas.

At age 29, she became the youngest woman to become a member of the United States Congress. She is well known for her use of social media. She studied international relations and economics at Boston University. She worked for Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign as an activist. She is a democratic socialist and a progressive. She supports Medicare for All, federal jobs guarantee, a universal basic income, and the Green New Deal. She also supports ending the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, free public college and trade school, and a 70% marginal tax rate for incomes above $10&nbsp;million. She has a younger brother named Gabriel. Her father was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family. She lived with her family in an apartment in the Bronx neighborhood of Parkchester until she was five.
 in The Bronx for a long time.]]
Ocasio-Cortez went to high school in Yorktown Heights. In high school and college, she was known as "Sandy." She came in second in the Microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her because of her science project. In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session.

In 2008, while Ocasio-Cortez was a sophomore at Boston University, her father died of lung cancer. After he died, Ocasio-Cortez had many legal problems to settle his estate.

During college, Ocasio-Cortez was an intern for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. She said that she was the only Spanish speaker at the office.

## Early career 
's 2016 presidential campaign]]
After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx. She later created Brook Avenue Press, a publishing company that printed positive stories about the Bronx. She also worked for the National Hispanic Institute.

During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Ocasio-Cortez volunteered for Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign. While in Standing Rock, she said her trip there was an important reason why she ran for Congress. One day after she visited North Dakota, she got a phone call from Brand New Congress.

## 2018 campaign 
Ocasio-Cortez began her campaign in April 2017. Her campaign was small. She was the first person to run in the primary against Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus Chair. Ocasio-Cortez's campaign did not take money from big companies or rich people.

Ocasio-Cortez was supported by progressive and civil rights groups such as MoveOn, Black Lives Matter, and Democracy for America, Governor Andrew Cuomo, both of New York's U.S. Senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Planned Parenthood supported Crowley. California Representative Ro Khanna at first supported Crowley, but later supported Ocasio-Cortez.

During her campaign, Ocasio-Cortez held town halls where people who lived in her congressional district would talk about political issues. She focused her campaign on Latino communities of her district and criticized ICE. Her campaign used digital political ads more than actual rallies and events. *Time* called her victory a big surprise during the 2018 elections. CNN made a similar comment. *The Guardian* called it "one of the biggest upsets in recent American political history." Crowley raised more money, $1.5 million, compared to Ocasio-Cortez's $83,000. Merriam-Webster said that searches for the word "socialism" went up 1,500% after she won. Crowley accepted his loss but did not call Ocasio-Cortez that night to wish her good luck.

Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky wished her good luck and were happy about the results. Many people said that her victory over Crowley was like when Dave Brat, a Tea Party movement candidate, beat House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary in 2014. Cantor was also a longtime congressman and important Republican politician. After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez supported many progressive candidates who decided to run against current Democratic politicians across the country.

Ocasio-Cortez won the Reform Party nomination without campaigning for it.

### General election 
Ocasio-Cortez ran against Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election. Pappas is an economics professor at St. John's University. Ocasio-Cortez was supported by many progressive organizations and politicians, including former President Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

Joe Crowley stayed on the ballot, as the nominee of the Working Families Party (WFP) and the Women’s Equality Party (WEP). Ocasio-Cortez said that the WEP was a centrist group that supported male politicians more than female politicians. Nixon ran against Governor Cuomo in the primary for New York Governor. Dan Cantor, executive director of the WFP, asked voters not to vote for Crowley if his name was on the general election ballot.

Ocasio-Cortez won the election with 78% of the vote to Pappas' 14%.

### Media coverage 
]]
*The Young Turks* (TYT) was the first media network who talked about Ocasio-Cortez and give her time to talk about her campaign. A rally with Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in Wichita had to be moved from a theater with a seating capacity of 1,500 when more people said they would go to the rally.

Ocasio-Cortez had little media attention until she beat incumbent Joe Crowley in the 2018 Democratic primary. Many people believed the media did a bad job on covering the election because no one paid attention to her primary campaign.

She was one of the people talked about in the 2018 Michael Moore documentary *Fahrenheit 11/9*.

Twitter user "AnonymousQ" tried to embarrass Ocasio-Cortez when they shared a video of her dancing during her college years. Many social media users defended her, and the video inspired memes. After the video was shared, Ocasio-Cortez posted a video of herself dancing to Edwin Starr's *War*. In May 2019 the documentary *Knock Down the House* came out on Netflix.

In September 2021, Ocasio-Cortez went to the 2021 Met Gala.

## 2020 campaign 
In 2020, journalist Michelle Caruso-Cabrera ran against Ocasio-Cortez in the Democratic primary. After Ocasio-Cortez won the nomination, Caruso-Cabrera ran in the general election as a third-party candidate. Other people running against her is Republican John Cummings, a former police officer, and Antoine Tucker, a write-in.

Ocasio-Cortez's re-election campaign was mainly focusing on workplace organizing, fighting eviction, and organizing childcare.

On October 20, 2020, Ocasio-Cortez hosted a Twitch stream of the mobile game *Among Us*, with fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

On November 4, 2020, Ocasio-Cortez won her re-election with nearly 69% of the vote to Republican John Cummings's near 31%.

## United States representative, 2019–present 
### Arrival 
In November 2018, on the first day of congressional , Ocasio-Cortez was part of a climate change protest outside of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office. Also that month, she supported Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House.

In December 2018, Ocasio-Cortez went to an event for new members of the House hosted by the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
]]
In January 2019, when she 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.

### Time in office 
On January 3, 2019, Nancy Pelosi swore in Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman to become a United States Representative.

She began her career with a popular social media, having more followers than all of the newly elected congress members combined. , she had 6.3&nbsp;million Twitter followers, up from 1.4&nbsp;million in November 2018. 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&nbsp;million Instagram followers, and 500,000 followers on Facebook when she began. Some Representatives asked her to teach them social media lessons when she arrived in Congress.

Ocasio-Cortez is a member a group of new progressive members of Congress called "The Squad" along with Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). In July 2019, President Donald Trump attacked the Squad in a tweet, saying that they should "go back and help fix" the countries they came from instead of criticizing the American government. Ocasio-Cortez replied that "the President's words [yesterday], telling four American Congresswomen of color "go back to your own country," is [the] language of white supremacists. We don't leave the things that we love, and when we love this country, what that means is that we [find] the solutions to fix it."
s from supporters]]
Trump falsely said that she called "our country and our people 'garbage'"; she had actually said that Americans should not be happy with average ideas that are "10% better from garbage." Trump also falsely claimed that she said "illegal immigrants are more American" than Americans who tried to keep them out.

In January 2020, Ocasio-Cortez created a political action committee called Courage to Change. Courage to Change was created to help progressive candidates running for office. She was able to raised $2million on her first day of raising money and $5million by February 21. The money went to organizations such as to state and local food banks.

On November 5, 2021, Ocasio-Cortez was one of six House Democrats to vote against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, because she did not support the Build Back Better Act.

In 2023, Ocasio-Cortez was among 56 Democrats to vote in favor of H.Con.Res. 21, which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days. Ocasio-Cortez was among the 46 House Democrats who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.

In January 2024, the United States and other countries stopped giving money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) over reports that some UNRWA workers supported Hamas during the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and took part in the attack. On January 29, Ocasio-Cortez talked about the reports, but also said that not giving money to UNRWA was not good and that the United States start giving them money and help again.
 in Chile in 2023]]
On July 1, 2024, after the court ruled that presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions, Ocasio-Cortez announced she would file articles of impeachment against justices. She said the court was corrupt and that Congress must defend the nation.

In December 2024, Ocasio-Cortez ran to become the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, however lost to Gerry Connolly of Virginia.

### Hearings 
Ocasio-Cortez questioned the ethic regulations that both the president and members of Congress had during a congressional hearing in February 2019. With more than 37.5&nbsp;million views, the clip became the most-watched political video posted on Twitter.

When President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen was at a Congressional hearing in February 2019, Ocasio-Cortez asked him if Trump rose property values for bank or insurance purposes. Cohen said that Trump may have done tax evasion and fraud in his personal and business tax returns and real-estate documents. *The New York Times* supported her because she asked specific questions for a specific answer.

### Media coverage 
, June 2019]]
According to reports in March 2019, Ocasio-Cortez continued to get media coverage early in her congressional career similar to a 2020 presidential candidate. She was called one of the best known Democratic politicians and one of the most talked-about politicians in the United States. Between July 8 and July 14, 2019, she had more social media attention than any of the Democratic presidential candidates, with news articles on Ocasio-Cortez had 4.8 million views, while no Democratic presidential candidate got more than 1.2 million.

Ocasio-Cortez has been talked about many times on Fox News, being mentioned every day from February 25 to April 7, 2019, for a total of 3,181 mentions in 42 days. CNN found that from January to July 2019, she had nearly three times as many mentions on Fox News as on CNN and MSNBC. In a CBS News poll of almost 2,100 people found that more Republicans talked about Ocasio-Cortez than Democrats.

In March 2019, *PolitiFact* reported that she is "one of the most targeted politicians for hoax claims, despite the fact that she just entered Congress as a freshman."

On July 18, 2019, Charlie Rispoli, a police officer from Gretna, posted on Facebook a threat to shoot her. He called her an "idiot" who "needs a round, and I don't mean the kind she used to serve" as a bartender. Rispoli was fired for his post and his Facebook account was deleted.

### Green New Deal 
 was the first piece of legislation that Ocasio-Cortez wrote]]
On February 7, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez wrote her first piece of legislation, the Green New Deal, and sent it to the Senate. The first version of the Green New Deal wanted the completely stop using fossil fuels.

Ocasio-Cortez wanted a marginal tax as high as 70% on income above $10&nbsp;million to pay for the Green New Deal. She used the Modern Monetary Theory as a reason for higher deficits to pay her agenda. She said that the Green New Deal needs a large amount of money like President Franklin D. Roosevelt's original New Deal during the Great Depression. The plan had support from some Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker.

On March 26, Senate Republicans called for an early vote on the Green New Deal without letting anyone talk before the vote. 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 activists, inspired by Ocasio-Cortez, in the United Kingdom wanted the Labour Party to create a similar plan, "Labour for a Green New Deal."

In May 2020, Ocasio-Cortez was picked by then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to be in charge of his climate task force.

### Name calling incident 
 was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans after calling Ocasio-Cortez a "fucking bitch"

When asked about the incident, Ocasio-Cortez said, "That kind of [event] hasn't ever happened to me ever... I've never had that kind of abrupt, disgusting kind of disrespect [aimed] at me".

On July 22, Yoho talked about the event on the House floor and, without naming Ocasio-Cortez, said he had not addressed the "offensive name-calling words" to any congress members directly.

On July 23, Ocasio-Cortez responded to Yoho's comments. In a speech she criticized male privilege, 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.

### 2020 Democratic National Convention 
 and Carolyn Maloney in 2019]]

In early August 2020, two weeks before the 2020 Democratic National Convention was to be held, people began to say that Democrats were not going to let Ocasio-Cortez speak at the convention. On August 10, the Democratic National Committee said that she would speak at the convention on the second day on August 18. The same day, she formally nominated Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

### Online harassment from Paul Gosar 
In November 2021, Representative Paul Gosar shared a video parody of the opening for the anime series *Attack on Titan* on social media. Pelosi said that the video is "a danger that it represents to everyone in the country".

When Republican House members did not want to criticize Gosar or the video, Ocasio-Cortez said that she believed the video was "part of a pattern that normalizes violence".

### Second Trump presidency
, April 2025]]
Ocasio-Cortez gave her first major convention speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She said she supported the Harris-Walz campaign, while also criticizing former President Donald Trump. The speech was very well liked by the Democratic Party and commentators. After the speech, *Politico* wrote that Ocasio-Cortez was one of the party's "most celebrated stars" and that the party knows it. The speech also make people think that she would be a good candidate for the U.S. Senate or president.

In December 2024, Ocasio-Cortez ran to be the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, but lost to the more senior Gerry Connolly, 131–84. When Connolly announced he was leaving the role in May because his cancer was returning, Ocasio-Cortez said she would not run again.

Later in March 2025, Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders started the "Fighting Oligarchy Tour". They gave speeches against Trump's policies in multiple cities. She called Trump's strict immigration policies "authoritarian" and spoke against deportations. During the tour, Ocasio-Cortez was seen as a possible replacement to Sanders as the progressive leading candidate for the 2028 presidential election. 

In June 2025, Ocasio-Cortez openly supported Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election.

In February 2026, Ocasio-Cortez went to the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany. At the conference, she said that liberal democracies have to go against populist authoritarian movements. She also said that Trump's foreign policy wanted to build "an age of authoritarianism". President Trump and members of both the Republican and Democratic parties criticized Ocasio-Cortez saying her speech at the conference was bad for her career.

### Committee assignments 
* Committee on Energy and Commerce
**Past committee assignments**

*Committee on Oversight and Accountability'*** (Vice Ranking Member, 2023–25) (2019–2025)
**Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services
**Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs
*Committee on Financial Services (2019–2023) 
**Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance and International Financial Institutions (2021–2023)
**Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions (2019–2021)
*Committee on Natural Resources (2023–2025)
**Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources (Ranking Member, 2023–25)

### Caucus memberships
*Congressional Progressive Caucus***'
* House Pro-Choice Caucus

## Political views 
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and supports the democratic socialist name of the group as part of her political beliefs. In an interview on NBC's *Meet the Press*, she said that democratic socialism is a "part of what I am. It's not all of what I am. And I think that that's a very important [difference]." During an interview on PBS, she was asked if democratic socialism would to end capitalism, and she answered: "we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see a [change] in our economic system of an [unknown level], and it's hard to say what direction that that takes."
, October 2018]]
, December 2018]]
Ocasio-Cortez supports progressive policies such as single-payer Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and trade school, a federal job guarantee which would make sure states would hire unemployed workers, the cancellation of all $1.6 trillion student debt, supporting family leave, ending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private prisons, creating safer gun-control policies, and energy policy that would use 100% renewable energy. She told Anderson Cooper that she supports policies like those in United Kingdom, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

Ocasio-Cortez supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election and appeared with him at campaign rallies.

Ocasio-Cortez wants more environmental politicians in Congress. She called climate change "the single biggest national security threat" for the United States and the world". With the United Nations saying that the effects of climate change cannot be fixed until carbon emissions are slowed down in the next 12 years.
 talking about the Green New Deal, February 2019]]
Ocasio-Cortez supports ending the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. In June 2018, she said she would support ending the agency and she would rather "create a pathway to citizenship for more immigrants through decriminalization." She later said that this does not mean ending all deportations. Two days before the primary election, she went to 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 would give more federal money to ICE.
 Women's March]]
Ocasio-Cortez supports moving to a single-payer health care system. She said that medical care is a human right. In September 2019, she created an anti-poverty policy proposal that would make the cost of childcare, healthcare, and "new necessities" like Internet access when measuring poverty.

Ocasio-Cortez is a supporter of LGBTQ rights and equality. In January 2019, she gave a speech in support of laws needed to keep LGBTQ rights in jobs and everywhere in the country. She also supports transgender rights and said that "trans rights are civil rights".

Ocasio-Cortez has been supportive of Puerto Rico. Ocasio-Cortez did not approve of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Hurricane Maria. She believes the federal government should pay more attention to Puerto Rico. That same year, she supported the "Block the Bombs Act", which would stop the U.S. from giving Israel multiple weapons.

## Awards 
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory named the asteroid 23238 Ocasio-Cortez after her when she was a senior in high school because she finished in second-place in the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. She was named as one of the 2019 BBC 100 Women.

Ocasio-Cortez talked about her Catholic faith and why it is important for her life and her campaign for criminal justice reform in an article she wrote for *America*. At a December 2018 Hanukkah celebration in New York, she said that she has Jewish ancestry, although she does not practice Judaism.

During the 2018 election campaign, Ocasio-Cortez lived in Parkchester, Bronx, with her boyfriend, web developer Riley Roberts. In April 2022, Ocasio-Cortez became engaged to Roberts.

In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez was named as one of the 2019 BBC 100 Women.

In 2020, Ocasio-Cortez was a guest judge on an episode of ''RuPaul's Drag Race''.

In February 2021, Ocasio-Cortez said that she was a sexual assault survivor when asked about how she felt during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. That same year in May, Ocasio-Cortez said that she has been in psychotherapy because of the events of the United States Capitol. In 2022, she said that she was raped by her then-boyfriend about ten years ago. 

In March 2021, Ocasio-Cortez was name one of the least wealthy members of the Congress, with a net worth of $30,000.

## Electoral history 
### 2018 
### 2020 
### 2022 
### 2024
## Notes 
## References 
## Other websites
* Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez official House website
* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress 
* 
* 
* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's file at Politifact
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*