Today, what “the Squad” means varies based on who’s using the term. The congresswomen are expanding the definition of their “squad” “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump wrote.Ĭoverage of those tweets and their aftermath typically referred to the congresswomen as “the Squad.” A headline in USA Today read, “‘The Squad’: These are the four congresswomen Trump told to ‘go back’ to other countries.” One in CNN read, “Here are the 4 congresswomen known as ‘The Squad’ targeted by Trump’s racist tweets.” Vox referred to “the Squad” as well.
#Liberal crime squad mod series#
Trump soon joined the conflict, issuing a series of racist tweets that seemed clearly directed at the four. In her column, Dowd referred to “the Squad, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts are known.” They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.” Then in early July, Pelosi called out the four to Dowd in the Times for voting against “our bill.” “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told Dowd. “Throwing more money at the very organizations committing human rights abuses - and the very Administration directing these human rights abuses - is not a solution,” Omar said.
But opponents on the left argued that giving the administration more money for the border would make the problems worse. Pelosi had cast the bill as the best way to improve conditions for children and other migrants at the border. And criticism of them as a group kicked into a higher gear in June after the four broke with Pelosi and the rest of their party to vote against a bill providing $4.5 billion in border funding. But opponents have been singling out the four from the beginning - Fox News host Laura Ingraham called them “the four horsewomen of the apocalypse” in a segment last November. Others didn’t necessarily use the word “squad” to refer to the congresswomen right away. “It’s a shorthand,” showing that “you might be someone who sees the world the way that I do.” “You understand the terminology and you’re using it in the correct way,” she said. As a millennial herself, Brown said she found the use of the term “spot-on.” When she Instagrammed a picture of herself with her four future colleagues shortly after the 2018 midterm elections, Ocasio-Cortez was using a common social media expression of friendship and solidarity that has its roots in hip-hop.Ī squad is “a self-chosen group of people that you want to identify with,” whether you’re just going to the pool or doing civic activism, said Nadia Brown, an assistant professor of political science and African American studies who studies black women in politics.įor Ocasio-Cortez, using the term “squad” showed the common language she shared with her younger constituents. The idea of Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib as a “squad” unto themselves emerged slowly. As Pressley put it on Monday, “our squad is big.” The media started using “the Squad” more widely after Trump’s racist tweets For some critics, it can be a way of targeting and demeaning female politicians of color who “represent everything that stands against the status quo,” as Kelly Dittmar, an assistant political science professor and scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, told Vox.īut for the representatives themselves, using the term can be a way to express solidarity not just with each other but with supporters around the country, Dittmar said. And critics on the right have begun using the term in a pejorative way, with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway saying “these four people in the so-called squad that have done squat in Congress.”Īt this point, “the Squad” has become a term whose meaning depends on who’s using it. Then President Trump got involved, with racist tweets that didn’t name the four congresswomen of color specifically but seemed clearly directed at them, telling them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”Įver since then, “the Squad” has been cropping up in headlines. But the term “the Squad” became more widespread in media earlier this month when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd used it in an interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in which Pelosi took the four to task for voting against a border funding bill. The photo went viral, with a raft of positive media coverage.
cc post shared by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on at 3:21pm PST
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