Politics

AOC denounces anyone engaging in online vitriol after Trump’s victory — Democrats included

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

AOC denounces anyone engaging in online vitriol after Trump’s victory — Democrats included

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted a postmortem of sorts on her Instagram account over the weekend, using the platform to connect with voters over Donald Trump’s election victory and how to best prepare for the days and years ahead.

At one point, in response to a question about Democratic infighting and the post-election rancor more generally, the New York Democrat denounced those who have been all too eager to engage in malicious finger-pointing after the election.

Despite the fact that Trump ran a campaign steeped in white racial grievance and the fact that MAGA influencers were literally calling for white men — specifically — to g et out to the pollssome commentators have resorted to tired takes about Kamala Harris losing because the party lean ed too much into “identity politics.”

The Democratic ticket didn’t actually lean into identity politics, but some in the party have settled on that line of thought as well — such as Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who suggested that Democrats’ support for trans people’s rights helped spell their doom this cycle.

Without naming names, Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram:

This is a not insignificant problem. It’s interesting that we are in a cultural moment where, on the left and the right and the center, there’s just a certain cache and reward to being an a–hole. And yeah, we’ve seen it on the right — we also see it on the left. And I actually think that we need to be paying more attention to how a person is, because a lot of people use righteous or popular causes as an excuse or a smokescreen to let out their worst impulses or the ways that they wish they could treat people. And I think we need to pay a lot more attention to that in terms of deciding how to trust and who to trust as we move forward. I think it’s a really big deal.

I agree. I do think a lot of liberals are spending far too much time trying to score cheap political points when it would be far more productive for them to be girding their constituents and the country against the looming Trump presidency — and all the illiberalism it could entail. That criticism actually extends to one of Ocasio-Cortez’s top allies in the Senate — Bernie Sanders — as well.

AOC basically wanted to refocus people’s attention on what lies ahead, although she did take time to ask for feedback from people who voted for her and for Trump. She also spoke about how misconceptions among immigrant communities — including documented citizens who voted — helped benefit Trump.

And she said some people still don’t seem to grasp what a Trump presidency is likely to mean:

I think a lot of people were finding out this week what a tariff meant, that a tariff is not what China or some other country pays — it’s what you pay. What we pay. I think a lot of people aren’t ready for mass deportations and what that means. One in every 15 people in this country lives in a mixed-status family. So that means that we’re talking about one in every 15 people potentially having their families broken apart. I don’t think we’re ready for that, including what that means for the economy. I don’t think we’re ready for the censorship that is coming, and for a whole lot more. But our job right now is to get ready, and to prepare.

What does that preparation look like? Ocasio-Cortez said she’s still taking a moment to process her plan. But she said she’ll personally be “doing a lot more direct communication” — i.e., methods other than social media, which can be overrun with unverified claims and outright propaganda.

“I think I’ll be planning on using my email list to give a lot more thorough and specific things about what’s on my mind and how to prepare for things,” she said. And she encouraged her followers to get out of their online bubbles:

My recommendation is to join and enter community right now: whether it is church, or your knitting circle, or mosque or temple, or whether it is joining … New York City DSA [Democratic Socialists of America]or Working Families Party, an interest group — get into physical community.

For those in despair, she talked about intentional joy being a radical act of defiance.

“I mean, listen: The fear is telling us something, but I also want to underscore how important it is during this time — that it actually is important to be intentional about living, and living fully, and bringing joy into the day to day. And loving on the people who you love,” she said.

“There’s like this scolding culture sometimes where it’s like, if someone dares to be happy in public, people want to, like, pounce on them. We are actually going to need that now more than ever — not in some gauzy, you know, bubble-gum, kind of like ‘deny how bad everything is’ kind of way, but that cultivating it is a tool of our survival.”

Ya’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

Politics

The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening

Published

6 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?

If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.

Politics

The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear

Published

36 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

VANCOUVER — Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to watch Canada’s thrashing of Qatar. Garber probably did not want Carney to enjoy the stadium experience too much.

BC Place is Major League Soccer’s most troublesome facility. The arena is old, was not designed with soccer in mind, and is owned by a government agency — the BC Pavilion Corporation, which also controls the Vancouver Convention Center — that forces the Vancouver Whitecaps to fight for dates on the calendar against concerts and other events.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” Garber told reporters Friday in Seattle.

The Whitecaps are now up for sale, and Garber is actively pushing British Columbia’s political establishment — including Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim — to find a solution can keep the team from decamping to Las Vegas. While the government has been willing to renegotiate its financial relationship with the team, a proposed new stadium would take “four-plus years” in construction, which Garber said was untenable.

“It unimaginable how long we’re going to be out of the stadium,” he told reporters Friday in Seattle. “They are very relevant club that doesn’t have a good business model, and you can’t be sustainable.”

Garber recounted he met with Eby while in Vancouver, and sat with Carney and Victor Montagliani — the head of regional soccer confederation CONCACAF and a close ally of the prime minister — during the match itself. Garber said he has placed a league official in Vancouver full-time to manage the negotiations with local officials over the Whitecaps’s future.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” said Garber. “It’s easier for business people to make decisions, a little harder for politicians.”

Politics

The accidental American

Published

1 hour ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In 2001, airline employees stopped a seven-months pregnant Florence Balogun from traveling home to London, deeming her too pregnant to fly. She stayed in New York, where she was visiting, eventually giving birth to a son, Folarin, before returning to London.

Twenty-five years later, Folarin Balogun has attracted global notice as a rising soccer star. Despite training in Arsenal’s youth academy and spending much of his career playing for England’s youth teams, Balogun — legally an American citizen, thanks to his Brooklyn birth — has emerged as a key contributor to the U.S. team’s attack at this year’s World Cup. The striker scored two goals in America’s opener against Paraguay last Friday, hoisting his team to a record-breaking 4-1 victory, the most goals the U.S. men’s team has ever scored in a World Cup game.

While Balogun’s performance has fueled fresh hopes about America’s World Cup prospects, he’s also found himself in the middle of America’s ongoing birthright citizenship debate.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order overturning the country’s long-standing birthright citizenship practice. The American Civil Liberties Union then sued to block the move, taking their legal battle to the Supreme Court. The court is expected to issue a final ruling soon — though it seems“broadly skeptical” of Trump’s effort.

“The executive order itself doesn’t claim to strip away [Balogun’s] citizenship or or the citizenship of other people born before [Feb. 19, 2025],” Cody Wofsy, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s case, told Blue Light News. “But the constitutional theory that the government is asking the Supreme Court to adopt casts a shadow over the citizenship of millions and millions of people who were born in this country and have lived their entire lives as citizens.”

Examples of high-profile birthright citizens — like Balogun, but also politicians such as Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio — help illustrate the reality of banning birthright citizenship, Wofsy said.

“We don’t know what the justices are thinking,” he said, “but I would hope that they understand just how grave an action the government’s asking them for.”