Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has slammed the Green Party’s presidential ticket for being ‘predatory’ over its lack of support for transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Posting on X, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the party’s vice presidential nominee, Butch Ware over his comments that biological males should not compete on women’s sports teams.
Ocasio-Cortez has framed herself as a staunch defender of the rights of trans people, and has launched a series of attacks on the Green Party, which threatens to draw votes from Democrats in Tuesday’s presidential election.
‘This ticket is predatory and people deserve better,’ Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
She was responding to a video posted to X by lawyer and columnist Olayemi Olurin, showing Ware, a black Muslim scholar and hip hop artist, expressing his concerns about women’s sports being undermined by trans athletes.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls the Green Party presidential ticket ‘predatory.’
Lia Thomas (left) became the first trans woman to win an NCAA swimming championship in 2022, one of the most controversial examples of including biological males in women’s sports.
‘I don’t think that biological males should play in female sports,’ Ware said in the video.
‘I think it gives an unfair, you know, competitive advantage.’
Ocasio-Cortez has spoken up for trans male-to-female athletes who want to compete in women’s sports teams, despite their advantages of strength, speed, and agility, and the risk of women athletes being injured.
When trans athletes compete against women, such as when swimmer Lia Thomas became the first trans woman to win an NCAA swimming championship in 2022, many participants and onlookers decry the results as unfair.
Republicans have barred trans girls from competing on girls’ school sports teams in some two dozen states.
Ocasio-Cortez has railed against these rules and said that reforms earlier this year to Title IX, a federal anti discrimination law, did not go far enough to protect gender identity in schools and universities.
‘Targeting trans children for playing sports makes all women, whether trans or cisgender, less safe.’ she posted after a congressional debate on the issue.
‘Sex testing is regressive, invasive, discriminatory, and a fundamental violation of our privacy as women and as Americans. This is shameful.’
Ocasio-Cortez is a co-sponsor of the Equality Act, which was proposed in 2019 and entailed provisions that would obligate schools to let male-to-female athletes compete on girls sports teams.
She’s also advocated for a transgender bill of rights.
Her comments on Saturday were not the first time that Ocasio-Cortez had branded the Greens as ‘predatory.’
She’s argued that its presidential candidate, Jill Stein, and Ware are not serious political candidates who come out of the woodwork on presidential election years, sapping votes from the Democrats.
Some X users called out Ocasio-Cortez for her ‘bizarre’ choice of words about the Green Party candidate.
Green Party vice presidential nominee, Butch Ware (left) and presidential candidate, Jill Stein (right) say they’re not merely ‘spoilers’ for the Democrats.
‘If all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably p****d off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious,’ Ocasio-Cortez said in early September.
‘To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory.’
She accused Stein of ‘bad leadership’ because she had run ‘for years and years and years and years in a row’ in presidential contests to gain publicity without successfully fielding candidates in down-ballot races.
Ware and Stein have fought back against Ocasio-Cortez in their own X posts.
Ware said he was a ‘vocal advocate for queer rights’ and that his comments in the posted video had been ‘taken out of context and used to paint me as holding views I fundamentally reject.’
Democrats were succumbing to ‘fear and desperation’ in their tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump and were trying to ‘drive a wedge into the Green Party,’ said Ware.
Stein, meanwhile, has branded Ocasio-Cortez the ‘attack dog du jour’ and accused the Democrats of being ‘predatory’ by pretending to support a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas when they’re really ‘actively funding and arming genocide.’
‘The Democrats are running scared,’ Stein said in her video post.
‘And they should be, because who wants to support a genocide? Who wants to vote for a genocide?’
The Green Party has SOME 244,000 registered members across the US, down from its peak in 2004 at 319,000, and has never had a candidate secure a federal office
The party has fielded presidential candidates in every election since 1996 but has never won more than 2.7 percent of the popular vote.
Democrats have in part blamed Stein for their 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump.
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