A difficult time for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took a turn for the worse Tuesday when she saw members of her party vote for a bill that she attacked to widespread mockery.
Ocasio-Cortez’s viral rant against the Protecting Women and Girls in Sports Act wasn’t enough to convince Democratic allies Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both of Texas, to vote against the bill . Cuellar and Gonzalez joined 218 House Republicans who voted for the bill to block federally funded educational institutions from allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.
For Ocasio-Cortez, the idea of Democratic congressmen voting for a Republican-backed bill even before President-elect Trump returns to office suggests her party is “not in good shape.”
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“We can’t be stupid about this,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent on Tuesday. “It’s just the beginning. Trump hasn’t even been sworn in yet, and if a small sports bill causes the Democrats to defect, we’re not in good shape.”
Ocasio-Cortez advised Democrats not to be “nimbs” on the same day she delivered a widely mocked tirade containing multiple unsubstantiated claims and unfinished sentences. Her rant sparked many viral responses on social media that called her “the stupidest person in Congress.”
For Ocasio-Cortez, this marks a bad start to 2025 after a difficult 2024. Despite being re-elected to her seat in the House of Representatives in New York, Ocasio-Cortez saw members of her coalition, “The Squad,” lose their seats, including Jamaal. Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in Missouri.
Ocasio-Cortez also lost in her bid to become the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, getting passed over by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.
Additionally, Ocasio-Cortez has frequently been the subject of viral mockery on social media, often due to her steadfast stance on transgender inclusion in women’s and women’s sports.
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In November, Ocasio-Cortez shared a video of Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware speaking out against transgender inclusion in women’s sports with a caption that read, “This ticket is predatory and people deserve better.” The publication sparked strong reactions on social networks.
“AOC says it’s predatory behavior to not want men to participate in women’s sports. For AOC, acknowledging biological reality is ‘predatory’. You know what’s really predatory? Sexualizing children and normalizing pedophilia,” conservative influencer and former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines wrote on X in publishing a PK Press Club Digital article about Ocasio-Cortez’s comments.
The mockery of Ocasio-Cortez resumed weeks after the election when X users discovered that she no longer included her “she/her” pronouns in her bio.
Ocasio-Cortez is one of several prominent Democrats who remain strongly supportive of transgender inclusion in women’s sports, even though the issue emerged as a vulnerability for Democrats in the November election.
Many Democrats who spoke against the bill Tuesday did not argue that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. Instead, they argued that measures preventing transgender inclusion would subject girls to genital exams and sexual predators, even though the bill contains no provisions suggesting genital exams for girls in the sport.
Ocasio-Cortez included this unsubstantiated claim in her speech Tuesday, but paid tribute to transgender athletes by shouting “Trans girls are girls!” in the House of Representatives.
In this April 10, 2019 photo, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., listens during a House Financial Services Committee hearing with big bank executives on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Ocasio-Cortez previously co-sponsored the Equality Act, which was proposed in 2019 and underwent revisions that would “require public schools to allow biologically male athletes who identify as transgender in women’s sports teams. In March 2023, Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, proposed a resolution “recognizing that it is the duty of the federal government to develop and implement a Transgender Bill of Rights.”
Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, other House Democrats have publicly withdrawn their support for transgender inclusion, including Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas; and Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y. Yet every single one of those Democrats voted against the bill on Tuesday.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A national exit poll conducted by the legislative action committee Concerned Women for America found that 70% of moderate voters considered “Donald Trump’s opposition to transgender boys and men playing girls’ and women’s sports and to transgender boys and men using the bathroom girls and women” as important to them. . And 6% said it was the most important question of all, while 44% said it was “very important.”
In June, an investigation conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago asked respondents to weigh in on whether transgender athletes of both sexes should be allowed to compete in sports leagues that match their preferred gender identity rather than their biological sex.
In this survey, 65% of respondents answered that this should never or rarely be allowed. When respondents were asked specifically about adult transgender female athletes competing on women’s sports teams, 69% opposed it.
