THEY’RE young, charismatic and, as some of the most liberal members of U.S. Congress, have drawn President Donald Trump’s scorn and rankled party leadership on both sides of the aisle.
They broke barriers on the way into Congress. They’ve been in Washington for less than a year. And they’ve already attracted more celebrity, controversy and conflict than many lawmakers see in a lifetime.
Most recently, the four freshmen minority congresswomen were seemingly the targets of a Twitter rant by Trump.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done,” he tweeted.
They are “the Squad.”
Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib have collectively come to be known by that label since taking office in January.
The four congresswomen have embraced the Squad moniker — a term derived from hip-hop origins and later appropriated by Taylor Swift and the ever-shifting circle of celebrities around her to refer to a tight-knit group of people with common goals.
Three of the Squad members were born in the United States and the fourth has been a citizen for two decades. They have won legions of liberal fans with their fiery tweets, their support for ambitious progressive proposals like the Green New Deal, and their calls to impeach President Trump.
Their activist agenda is sometimes at odds with the leaders of their own party. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got into a spat with Squad members about that culminated in Pelosi saying in a closed-door caucus meeting that Democrats should stop tweeting their grievances about fellow party members.
But those disputes pale in comparison to the battle that erupted when Trump took aim at the Squad in a series of racist tweets. The Squad members, in turn, hosted a press conference together Monday to push back against the president. They called for an impeachment inquiry and turned the focus of the feud back to White House policies on immigration.
Ocasio-Cortez
A self-described democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez won a major upset in New York’s Democratic primary last year by unseating 10-term incumbent former Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley. And at age 29, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
She was born in the Bronx to a father from the same New York City borough and a mother from Puerto Rico. She was working in a restaurant before she became a congresswoman and fighting for better pay for people in similar occupations has been a major part of her political platform.
She is perhaps best known as one of the sponsors of the Green New Deal resolution, which called for the U.S. to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions along with other goals meant to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The congresswoman is a proponent of progressive ideas like “Medicare for All,” a US$15 minimum wage and student loan forgiveness. She has called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and has forcefully spoken out against conditions in migrant detention centers.
Ocasio-Cortez has also become a social media icon and often uses Twitter to promote her policies, fight with her critics and cheer her fellow Squad members. She is by far the most popular House member on Twitter, with nearly 4.8 million followers.
Ilhan Omar
Omar was born in Somalia. Her family fled that country’s civil war when she was 8 years old and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in the U.S. and settling in Minneapolis in 1997, according to her biography. She became a citizen at 17, in 2000.
Omar and Tlaib were the first Muslim women elected to Congress, and previously served in the Minnesota House.
Omar’s election also made her the first Somali-American in Congress. Her victory spurred the House to end its 181-year ban on headwear, and Omar became the first woman to wear a hijab on the House floor.
Omar, 36, has sparked anger with her rhetoric criticizing the Trump administration and U.S. foreign policy since taking office. And she caused an uproar with her criticism of Israel and the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby, which many said played into anti-Semitic tropes.
Some critics have tried to use anti-Islamic rhetoric to paint her as dangerous or to tie her to Islamic extremists.
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called Omar “living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country.”
“I believe as an immigrant, I probably love this country more than anyone that is naturally born,” Omar said while speaking at a Netroots Nation event Saturday.
Trump has been particularly vicious in his criticism of Omar, falsely claiming that she “hates Jews” and supports al-Qaida. On the latter accusation, Omar said she would “not dignify it with an answer,” and that Muslims should not constantly be asked to condemn terrorists.
Omar ran with the support of the Justice Democrats, the same progressive group that helped bring Ocasio-Cortez into politics, and is also a proponent of Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, tuition-free college and raising the minimum wage to US$15 an hour.
Rashida Tlaib
Tlaib, who was elected in 2018, is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress, and she and Omar are the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress.
Tlaib is the first of 14 children born to Palestinian immigrant parents and the first in her family to graduate from high school as well as college. Her father, who was born near Jerusalem, worked on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Co. plant.
Like Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib has embraced progressive ideas like Medicare for All, a US$15 minimum wage, debt-free college and has called for abolishing ICE.
Tlaib aligned herself with a political cause far outside the Democratic mainstream when she said that she supports the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.
Tlaib previously served in the Michigan House. Some right-wing critics have tried to use Tlaib’s religion against her, painting her as un-American or a danger to the country. And, like Omar, she has been accused of anti-Semitism for her criticisms of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez are both members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the first two women of the organization in Congress.
“I think it is a new time,” Tlaib told “CBS This Morning” in November 2018, days before being elected. “It’s a new era of the Civil Rights movement. And it’s time for a change.”
Although all of the Squad members have said Trump should be impeached, Tlaib’s call for impeachment attracted the most attention — because of one particular swear word.
Hours after being sworn into Congress, Tlaib grabbed headlines when she told the audience at a progressive event, “We’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherf****r” in reference to Trump. And since taking office, she has been a leading advocate for the president’s impeachment. She refused to apologize for the remark, writing on Twitter, “I will always speak truth to power.”
Ayanna Pressley
Pressley, 45, is the first African-American woman to be elected to the Congress from Massachusetts. Like Ocasio-Cortez, she pulled off a major political upset in the Democratic primary last year, unseating 10-term Rep. Michael Capuano.
Nearly a decade ago, Pressley became the first black woman ever elected to Boston’s city council, and has long been seen as a rising star in Democratic politics. She has more years of elected political experience than any other member of the Squad.
According to the biography on her congressional Web page, she was born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago by her mother, a community organizer. Her father struggled with addiction and was in and out of jail before going on to become an author.
Pressley is a survivor of sexual assault who has openly discussed abuse she suffered as a child and being raped by an acquaintance in college. She has been an advocate for sexual assault survivors in Congress, arguing for better protections for victims, and she is also a staunch supporter of abortion rights. Pressley’s first amendment introduced on the House floor called for lowering the voting age from 18 to 16, but it did not pass.
Her biography says, “she believes that the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power and that a diversity of voices in the political process is essential to making policies that benefit more Americans.”(SD-Agencies) | 