Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., declared in an interview with The New Yorker on Monday that ''Jim Crow-style disenfranchisement laws'' are being embraced to combat democracy in Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida.
''What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn't,'' Ocasio-Cortez said. She added that she believes ''white-nationalist, reactionary politics'' is ''starting to grow into a critical mass.''
When asked if she has fears that the U.S. will begin to look like other nations, she replied: ''I think we will look like ourselves. I think we will return to Jim Crow. I think that's what we risk.''
She expanded on this point, asserting that Texas and Florida are pushing ''Jim Crow-style disenfranchisement laws.''
''You had members of the [Texas] state legislature, just a few months ago, flee the state in order to prevent such voting laws from being passed,'' she added, referencing Democratic members of the Texas Legislature who left the state in 2021 in protest of Republican voting legislation.
''In Florida, where you had the entire state vote to allow people who were released from prison to be reënfranchised after they have served their debt to society, that's essentially being replaced with poll taxes and intimidation at the polls,'' Ocasio-Cortez said.
The congresswoman then turned her concerns to Republican efforts against the teaching of critical race theory in schools, calling their alternative curriculum programs ''white nationalist.''
''You have the complete erasure and attack on our own understanding of history, to replace teaching history with institutionalized propaganda from white-nationalist perspectives in our schools. This is what the scaffolding of Jim Crow was,'' Ocasio-Cortez said.
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