Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to set up a meeting, presumably to calm the waters after some public sniping following a disagreement on border funding legislation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the lawmakers’ staffs are currently working to coordinate a time and date.
The most recent bout of tension was heightened after the “squad” — Ocasio-Cortez joined by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — and Pelosi came down on opposite sides of a bill for funding border security late last month. Pelosi vented her frustration in a New York Times interview:
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Ocasio-Cortez answered in the Washington Post.
“The persistent singling out—it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful,” she said. “The explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
Ocasio-Cortez tried to soften her comments during an interview with CBS on Wednesday.
“Just as there were members of Congress that did not vote for the speaker on the House floor the day of our swearing in, just as there are members who challenge her conclusions, who disagree with her, so do we from time to time, but that does not mean that there is a fundamental fracture or a dehumanizing going on within our caucus,” she said.
The squabble seemed to take a hiatus earlier this week though, when Pelosi banded together with Ocasio-Cortez and three other congresswomen who came under fire as President Donald Trump told the four American citizens to “go back” where they came from. Speaking to her caucus before a vote on the resolution to condemn Trump, Pelosi urged unity and called the congresswomen their “sisters.”
