The Democratic Power Broker Working to Undermine AOC

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly working behind the scenes to tank Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s bid to become ranking member on the House Oversight Committee.

Punchbowl News reported Thursday that Pelosi, arguably the most powerful Democratic playmaker in a generation, is set on quashing the New York progressive’s shot at leading the House of Representatives’ key investigative arm.

Pelosi is making calls on behalf of Representative Gerry Connolly, a 16-year House veteran from Virginia, who is also running for the coveted leadership spot.

Last week, Pelosi told Politico who she wanted for one of the most influential positions in the House. “I have supported Mr. Connolly for that, should it be open,” she said.

Pelosi and AOC have had a somewhat tumultuous professional relationship, predicated on the slate of differences between establishment Democrats and a younger, progressive vanguard. Pelosi reportedly took issue with certain progressive tactics, like AOC’s “Abolish ICE” slogan, according to Ryan Grim’s 2023 book The Squad: AOC and the Hope of Political Revolution.

In 2021, Pelosi publicly criticized AOC and other members of the Squad for being the lone Democrats to withhold support for an immigration bill that she had backed. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she told The New York Times in an interview. “But they don’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

AOC and her chief of staff publicly pushed back on Pelosi’s dismissive response, and Pelosi told them to back off, according to Politico. In a private meeting between the two women, things got particularly heated, according to Grim. Pelosi has nevertheless dismissed claims that there is bad blood between her and the Squad.

Meanwhile, AOC has garnered support  from an unexpected place: Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has spent years waging investigations into the political enemies of Donald Trump, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Tim Walz. “I’m a big AOC fan. Obviously, I don’t agree with very much of her policy, but I think she’s a good person,” Comer said on CNN Thursday. 

In her bid for the top Democratic spot on the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has found a perhaps unlikely supporter in the committee’s Republican chairman, James Comer.

Last week, Ocasio-Cortez announced her candidacy for ranking member of the Oversight Committee, writing in a statement that, under Trump, Democrats on the committee “will face an important task” of balancing “our focus on the incoming president’s corrosive actions and corruption with a tangible fight to make life easier for America’s working class.”

Politico reported Wednesday that Ocasio-Cortez, who has served as vice–ranking member on the committee under outgoing ranking member Jamie Raskin, has garnered the support of most Democrats on the committee, though her success will require the approval of the Steering and Policy Committee.

Comer sang the 35-year-old progressive lawmaker’s praises in a Thursday interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown—though he spoke well too of her leading opponent, 74-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly.

Asked if he would “like to co-chair with” her, Comer replied that he’s “a big AOC fan.” “Obviously I don’t agree with very much of her policy,” he continued, “but I think she’s a good person. I think she’s very well spoken.”

Mentioning his history of trading barbs with Raskin, who is running for the top Democratic position on the House Judiciary Committee, Comer said, “The Democrats have nowhere to go but up after having Jamie Raskin for the last four years.”

The Oversight chair added that Representative Connolly, who is reportedly being boosted by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in hopes of sinking AOC’s bid, “would be great,” as would two others who were initially considered possible contenders but have since declined: Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has indicated his disinterest in the role, and Ro Khanna, who endorsed Ocasio-Cortez for the position, according to NBC News.

“But I certainly look forward to the next ranking member,” Comer continued. “If it’s AOC, I think we’ll have a good working relationship. We’ll obviously have a lot of differences on policy, but I think she’s a good, well-spoken person for the Democrats to serve in that position.”

Drone sightings over Northern New Jersey have sparked feelings of confusion and fear from residents and local officials alike—but some attention-seeking, alien-obsessed politicians in D.C. appear to be milking the fear cycle for all it’s worth.

In a video rant posted to her X account Thursday, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene insisted that the government’s continued inability to identify the strange lights hovering over the Garden State was “total bullshit” that put every American “in danger.”

“They can track down a guy that just killed a CEO, but they can’t identify what nightly drones are and where they’re coming from,” Greene continued, referring to Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“Secondly, if they’re telling the truth, then this country is in horrible shape. We’re all in danger,” Greene added. “I mean, seriously, if our great government can’t identify what these drones are—they’re flying every single night, the people are sitting out there videoing with their cell phones—then no American is safe. And I have no respect if our government cannot say what these are.”

Commercial-grade drones were first spotted lingering over sections of Northern Jersey in mid-November, sparking an FBI investigation into the aerial gathering. At a Wednesday briefing between the office of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and the Department of Homeland Security, mayors from the region lamented that no one from state or federal agencies had been able to tell them exactly how many drones were flying over the state, with estimates ranging from 400 to thousands, according to NBC News.

“I’m not sure how I can go back to my residents and say that I’m satisfied from this meeting, when now I know that I have 180 drones that have been flying over the state of New Jersey,” Middletown Mayor Tony Perry told NBC after the meeting. “We have no more information as to where these drones are coming from, where they’re launching from, where they’re landing.”

Greene, famously, loves a space-based conspiracy. In a 2018 Facebook post (two years before she took office), Greene linked alleged sightings of “lasers or blue beams of light” to the cause of the California wildfires. She then, apropos of nothing, further tied those sightings to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family often targeted by antisemitic conspiracies, whom she believed were clearing the land for rail stations.

But she’s not the only D.C. politico to thoughtlessly stoke the flames over the unusual drone sightings. New Jersey Representative Jeff Van Drew suggested to Fox News on Wednesday that the drones were coming from an Iranian “mothership”—a claim that the Pentagon quickly shot down.

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called ‘mothership’ launching drones towards the United States,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the same day.

One of MAGA’s favorite January 6 conspiracy theories seems to have fallen apart.

On Thursday, a report released by a Justice Department watchdog found no evidence that FBI agents helped incite the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The idea that there were undercover FBI agents in the crowd acting as mob catalysts on January 6 has gone from internet fringe to being peddled by multiple right-wing leaders and politicians, including Donald Trump himself.

“There was antifa and there was FBI … leading the charge. You saw the same people that I did,” Trump said at an Iowa rally in January. At other times, he has referred to the January 6 riots, which he encouraged his supporters to attend, as “Entrapment Day.”

Thursday’s report, which came from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, did find that there were 26 informants in Washington, D.C., at the time, referred to as “confidential human sources.” But it found nothing to suggest that any of them were told to join the riots or encourage others to do so.

More than 1,500 people across nearly all 50 states have been charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection, with charges like trespassing, assault of a federal officer, and seditious conspiracy.

The private foundation of the world’s richest man failed to donate the legally required amount for the third consecutive year.

Per what’s known as “the 5 percent rule,” private foundations are required by law to direct at least 5 percent of their assets toward charitable causes. The Musk Foundation is among the largest of such foundations, boasting $9 billion in assets, including millions of shares of Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla.

But The New York Times reported Thursday that the Musk Foundation fell $421 million short of the 5 percent rule in 2023, making it the third year in a row that it missed the mark. The foundation was short by $234 million in 2022 and $41 million in 2021, but later forked up to cover those gaps and avoid a penalty tax.

In contrast to the foundations of other wealthy philanthropists, which tend to focus on broad social causes and the public good, Musk’s private foundation is somewhat unconventional in its focus on serving the interests of its founder. The charity also has no hired staff and is instead run by a three-member volunteer board, including Musk himself.

As the Times reported in March, the Musk Foundation “has been haphazard and largely self-serving—making [Musk] eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.” In 2021 and 2022, around half of the foundation’s donations were linked in some way to Musk himself, his businesses, or his employees, according to the Times.

For failing to meet the legal minimum, the foundation “can distribute more the following year as a make-good”—or pay a hefty penalty to the IRS.

But Musk recently indicated that the IRS could be on the chopping block of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration. “The IRS just said it wants $20B more money,” Musk posted on his platform X last month, asking users to vote on whether its budget should be “increased,” “same,” “decreased,” or “deleted.” The latter won with 60 percent of users’ votes.