Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a message for her fellow Democrats in Congress: It’s time to get serious.
The legislator appeared in New York Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday after a surprising hearing by the Special Committee of Inquiry on January 6, she said it was time for Democrats to start acting on the evidence they already had.
This means, as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez explained, the expulsion of any member of Congress who can be shown to have sought a pardon from Donald Trump after January 6 to protect themselves from potential criminal liability they might face for participating in an effort that led to an attempt by Donald Trump supporters to overthrow the government.
“I will say, at a bare minimum, that those who have specifically sought pardon should be expelled from the US House of Representatives,” she said to loud cheers from Colbert’s audience.
“They were willing to commit crimes in order to illegally seize power, and no one… of any party should be willing to do so in order to undermine our democracy,” the MP added.
But January 6 is not the only issue she says her party refuses to take seriously. Following Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats like Elizabeth Warren called on their party leaders to take concrete steps to protect the right to abortion in America. Some of these concrete steps suggested by lawmakers (and rejected by the White House) include coming out to support stall changes that would allow the Senate’s 51-vote majority to codify abortion rights and same-sex and interracial marriage rights. Marriage rights Court monitors and activists are concerned that the Supreme Court will target them in the future.
Lawmakers have also urged the federal government to set up abortion clinics on federal soil, a possibility the White House has also dismissed, citing concerns that women who participate in services in red states could be prosecuted.
The growing friction between progressives and the White House on the issue comes as it seems clear that much of the Democratic Party base is not confident that their party leaders have a plan to save abortion rights in America beyond election campaigns and hope there is very little chance of doing so. Take an absolute majority in the Senate in the next decade.
