AOC urges Democrats to 'throw a damn punch' if they want to beat back Republican LGBTQ+ hate

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took the GOP to task for passing a bill that would effectively ban transgender women and girls from school sports and told Democrats they will only start winning on LGBTQ+ issues if they’ll “throw a damn punch.”

On Tuesday, despite Democrats presenting a fairly unified front with only two members, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar both of Texas, voting in favor of the anti-trans sports bill, the bill passed with widespread Republican support, something that AOC said liberals needed to counter if they were going to support marginalized communities.

“When we tell the truth about what Republicans are doing, and when we’re unafraid to do that, it generates momentum,” AOC told Semafor political correspondent Dave Weigel at a press briefing after the vote, Them reported. “When we lean into that momentum that we generate, and when Democrats aren’t afraid to throw a damn punch, then we can see that we can yield results.”

If Democrats want to push back against Republicans, the party can’t “cower in the face of tough issues,” she said.

“The reason why I think some folks in the Democratic Party have felt like trans issues are hot water, or immigration issues are hot water, is because they haven’t felt confident or the ability to confidently throw a punch on solid ground that is persuasive and uniting people,” AOC explained.

The so-called Protection of Women and Girls in Sports bill passed with a vote of 218-206 and threatens to withhold federal funding from schools that don’t comply with keeping trans girls from participating in school sports. The bill is one of several that the GOP has pushed forward that would amend Title IX — the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in government-funded schools and education programs — to enforce rules impacting trans people’s access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and protection from discrimination, based on “biological sex” without ever defining it.

The Congressional Equality Caucus said the bill “could force any student to answer invasive personal questions about their bodies & face humiliating physical inspections to ‘prove’ that they’re a girl” because it defines sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

AOC pointed out that to stand up against this kind of discrimination, Democrats have to “be strong” if they want to garner support and create change.

“I think people smell blood in the water. They can understand weakness. And where they see weakness, that’s when everything kind of falls apart,” the congresswoman explained. “So we have to be strong about these things. And I think projecting strength attracts support.”