The “squad” is back, and it’s bigger than ever.
The proof: Rep. Cori Bush, a newly elected Missouri Democrat, on Sunday tweeted a photo of herself and the rest of the expanded progressive alliance sporting face masks at the opening of the 117th Congress.
- “Squad up,” commented Bush.
The photo shows, from left to right, Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Corez of New York, Bush and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Bush and Bowman are the new “squad” members.
- Like the original crew, informally founded by first-term congresswomen in 2018, the pair won heavily Democratic districts on platforms that read like progressive wishlists: Pass the Green New Deal, defund the police, abolish ICE, slash the military budget, cancel student debt and bilk the rich.
Bowman, 44, a former middle-school principal, ousted 16-term incumbent Eliot Engel to become the first male member of the “squad.”
- Quotable: “I believe our current system of capitalism is slavery by another name,” Bowman told The Root last month.
Bush, 44, a pastor and Black Lives Matter organizer, defeated 10-term incumbent Lacy Clay.
- Quotable: “If you’re having a bad day, just think of all the social services we’re going to fund after we defund the Pentagon,” Bush tweeted in October.
However, the Democrats unexpectedly lost House seats in the 2020 election, and some moderate lawmakers blamed radical rhetoric by the “squad” and their other left-wing colleagues.
Welcome to Congress: On Sunday, all six members of the “squad” put their utopian ambitions aside to help reelect Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California as House speaker.
- Ocasio-Cortez said ahead of the vote that Pelosi needs to go, but that there’s no one to replace her yet.
- “If you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse,” she told The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill.
How hard the progressives will push President-elect Joe Biden leftward remains to be seen.
- “[D]o AOC and the allies she inspires have a strategy to exert real leverage on him, beyond just gripes to reporters?” wrote Politico founding editor John Harris on Friday. “2021 will also give clues to whether she is serious about the possibility of a primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2022.”
