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The Freshman Congressional Renegades
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of U.S. News & World Report
Posted: January 6th, 2019
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-12-27/the...
In the seven weeks since she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined a protest staged in Nancy Pelosi's office, established a new standard to pay interns $15 an hour, tussled with Sen. Lindsey Graham and the president's eldest son on Twitter. Before this 29-year-old Democratic socialist Latina from the Bronx is even sworn in to the House next week, she's become one of the most influential figures in the Democratic Party and the unordained leader of a flock of progressive renegade freshman females hellbent on breaking the norms of the institution. Many of their electoral victories were had by skipping the established line, so they're wired to approach governing in the same rebellious way. Their sizable followings on social media provide them with an imposing arsenal of support that can be converted into raw political power. "The freshman class as an aggregate will have more power than the leadership," says Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat. "The balance of power is shifting in the House. The size of your Twitter following and the size of your external base makes a huge difference." Of the 235-member Democratic House majority that will take power on Jan. 3, just over a quarter of the class totalling 63 members will be freshmen. And during the transition period, a handful of incoming members self-described as the "squad" have signaled their intentions to rock the boat. They not only look different than your father's stodgy, old, whitebread Congress, they're making moves both substantive and symbolic that break with protocol and tradition.
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