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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew a hard line at the University of Chicago last week, rejecting calls from fellow progressives to work alongside former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Gaza policy.
"I personally do not trust someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a proven bigot and antisemite, on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis," Ocasio-Cortez said Friday at an event hosted by the Institute of Politics. "I don't think that it benefits our movement, in that instance, to align the left with white nationalists."
For years, critics have blamed purity tests—demanding ideological perfection from coalition partners—as a Democratic weakness that costs elections by alienating potential voters rather than building bigger coalitions. Now, Ocasio-Cortez's refusal to work with Greene raises the question: Is she applying those same tests that Democrats say have weakened them? Or is she in line with the party's actual base?
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The tension Ocasio-Cortez exposed touches a deeper split within the party over strategy. Progressives argue that Democrats lost the 2024 election by appealing to moderate Republicans. But others counter that Harris was perceived as too liberal and that the party needs to move toward the center to win against President Donald Trump and the GOP.
What Happened Between AOC and MTG?
Ocasio-Cortez's response came after a student asked whether she stood by comments she made in 2021 criticizing white supremacist sympathizers in the House GOP caucus. She said she did. On cross-aisle work, she drew a distinction: she collaborates with Republicans on specific bills when she believes their motives align with hers and the outcomes serve progressive goals. In her view, Greene does not meet that threshold on Gaza and Israeli accountability.
AOC: I personally do not trust somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene—a proven bigot and anti-semite—on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis. I don’t think it benefits our movement to align with white nationalists. pic.twitter.com/ufGwW6q6Mv
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 8, 2026
Greene responded directly. "AOC refused to vote for my amendment to strip funding for Israel," she posted on X on May 9. "She can run her mouth all she wants but votes are the only thing that matters, not a bunch of words and nasty name calling."
Newsweek reached out to both AOC and MTG for comment.
Who has Criticized AOC?
The progressive left offered its sharpest response to Ocasio-Cortez's remarks on not working with Greene.
Ryan Grim, editor of the Dropsite News, wrote that Greene "sacrificed her political career to stand against genocide, against Trump, against the Epstein Class." He continued: "If that doesn't earn credibility I don't know what possibly could."
Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, delivered a sharp rebuke. "This is just terrible," he said of Ocasio-Cortez's rejection of Greene. "She sounds just like the establishment. She's attacking an opponent of Israel as an antisemite. This is exactly what Israeli supporters want—split the anti-war movement and the critics of Israel's genocide. Deeply counterproductive. And selfish."
The Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald expanded the critique. Ocasio-Cortez "emphatically condemns policies only when Trump and the GOP do them, gets muted and deferential when Dems do," Greenwald wrote. His point: Ocasio-Cortez has been absorbed into Democratic Party machinery, while Greene has shown a willingness to work across party lines toward outcomes she believes are just.
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And while Ocasio-Cortez shut the door on it, others within the Democratic Party and the left have been open to working with Greene if it serves the same purpose.
Bernie Sanders himself praised Greene in October as a "good Republican" after she bucked party leadership over the Epstein files. "I never thought that I would say this, but you have somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, 'You know what, I was elected by my constituents, that's who I am beholden to, not the president of the United States,'" Sanders said at a CNN town hall in October 2025**.** Ocasio-Cortez is widely considered Sanders' political heir.
Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, another leading progressive, has similarly opened space for Greene, praising her willingness to challenge Republican leadership.
The party's internal debate over coalition strategy will intensify as 2028 approaches. For now, Ocasio-Cortez has drawn a line that parts of her own base say she should not have drawn. Her answer to whether results matter more than character—and whether that answer stays consistent across different coalition partners—will tell the left what she believes about building power.
This mirrors the centrist argument for why moderate coalition-building matters.
Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist think tank, framed the mathematics bluntly. "To win a national election, a Democrat needs to win about 60 percent of self-identified moderate voters," Kessler told Newsweek. "That is the baseline reality."
Who has Defended AOC?
For some of Ocasio-Cortez's critics, her voting record undercuts her blunt criticism of receiving support from Greene, who publicly broke with Trump in 2025 over the release of the Epstein files and U.S. involvement in foreign wars.
In July 2025, Ocasio-Cortez voted against Greene's amendment to end all U.S. military financing to Israel, arguing that defensive weapons were justified. Yet in 2019, Ocasio-Cortez worked with Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Republican Representative Tom Cotton on sanctions against China.
Ocasio-Cortez has also drawn criticism from the left over her alliance with establishment Democrats. Her vote against stripping Israel of funding, her early endorsement of Biden before Harris, and her positioning within the party machinery have prompted questions about whether she has drifted from her original movement principles.
Yet, some progressives defended Ocasio-Cortez's position.
Lawyer Jill Filipovic argued that siding with Greene over AOC meant losing sight of the fundamentals. Francesca Fiorentini, a progressive commentator, acknowledged the difficulty of AOC's position while also pointing to a deeper problem.
"While I personally would've voted with Rep. Tlaib and Rep. Omar on MTG's symbolic amendment, I respect AOC's spite cause let's be real fuck Marge," Fiorentini wrote on X.
"The question isn't whether to work with MTG, but why hasn't AOC been more of a leader on this issue with a base desperate for it," she added.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan drew a distinction between Greene and Liz Cheney, but also raised a question about why the Democratic Party is so reluctant to ally with political enemies consistently. "I can't stand Liz Cheney and I don't think Harris should have campaigned with her so much but I just wonder why we can't be consistent on this stuff," Hasan said.
"I can’t stand Liz Cheney and I don’t think Harris should have campaigned with her so much but I just wonder why we can’t be consistent on this stuff."
Kamala Harris won about 57 percent of independents, which wasn’t enough. This is why figures like Cheney mattered in 2024, he said, and why broadening to moderate Republicans, even at the cost of alienating parts of the base, is mathematically necessary. It’s also the implicit defense of the strategy progressives blame for Harris’s loss.
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“The winning Democrat will likely be a pugnacious centrist—someone who combines a reform agenda with a focus on everyday concerns, especially kitchen-table issues,” Jim Kessler of Third Way, a national think tank and advocacy organization that champions moderate policy and political ideas, said.
Yet, there are other voices that pinpoint exactly the opposite idea: that in the decisive final weeks before the election, Harris remained steadfastly aligned with the Biden administration's approach to Gaza, refusing to break with its support for Israel's military campaign. Among the 19 million voters who cast ballots for Biden in 2020 but did not vote in 2024, nearly a third named Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza as the top reason they stayed home, according to a January 2025 YouGov poll.
"The centrist model at this point has more and more spectacular failures than successes. And it has reinforced for Democrats that the power base of the party isn't in Washington," Progressive strategist Max Burns told Newsweek.
What To Watch for Next
If Ocasio-Cortez runs as a progressive challenger to an establishment Democrat, either against Chuck Schumer for Senate or for the presidency, her refusal to align with figures like Greene will look principled. If she instead positions herself as the acceptable left face within a centrist Democratic coalition, her selectivity about which Republicans to work with begins to look like the selective coalition logic she criticizes others for using.
Whether that calculation is right depends partly on whether Kessler's math holds, or whether base mobilization matters more than chasing moderates.
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