It’s hard to recall a newly elected freshman representative to Congress who has made a bigger impact than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her primary victory for New York’s Fourteenth District seat—as a young woman of color beating out a long-established white male incumbent—was big news, and Ocasio-Cortez has been generating headlines almost daily ever since. Practically the day she took her seat in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez became the hero of the left wing of the Democrats and a favored villain of Fox News and the right. She battled Nancy Pelosi to make the Green New Deal a priority, and has been involved with a movement to launch primary challenges against centrist or right-leaning Democrats. Like Bernie Sanders, she embraces the label of democratic socialism and supports free college education for all Americans. She has called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She joined David Remnick in the studio of the New Yorker Radio Hour on July 5th, just after her trip to the border to examine migrant detention facilities. They spoke about why she courted controversy by referring to some facilities as concentration camps; why she thinks the Department of Homeland Security is irredeemable; and whether Joe Biden is qualified to be President, given his supportive comments about colleagues who supported forms of segregation. “Issues of race and gender are not extra credit points in being a good Democrat,” she says. “They are a core part of the ... competencies that a president needs. . . . Where are you on understanding the people that live in this country?”
