AOC accuses Marjorie Taylor Greene of ‘trying to get out of work early’

New York congresswoman hits out at controversial Republican over Equality Act

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez implied that her Republican colleague, Marjorie Taylor Greene, was trying to cut her workday short. (AFP via Getty Images)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lashed out at Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday, implying that the Georgia congresswoman was trying to take some undeserved time off.

“You could just vote ‘no’ instead of trying to get out of work early,” the Democratic representative from New York tweeted at Ms Greene, a Republican who has praised the QAnon conspiracy and whose outrageous statements have seen her removed from committee positions.

Rep Greene had earlier boasted on Twitter that she motioned to adjourn the House of Representatives rather than vote on the Equality Act, a bill that would ban discrimination in the United States based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I just made a motion to adjourn in order to give every Member of Congress time to rethink destroying #WomensRights and #WomensSports and #ReligiousFreedom before voting for the #EqualityAct!” she tweeted Wednesday afternoon.

Rep Ocasio-Cortez responded with her acidic tweet, adding, “And you should probably stop using those hashtags because women’s rights include trans women.”

The Equality Act, officially titled HR 5, would codify a decision made in 2020 by the US Supreme Court, which ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay and transgender Americans from discrimination. The court made that ruling on the basis of “sex,” an old-fashioned term open to varying interpretations, but the Equality Act would explicitly protect LGBTQ Americans.

Rep Greene has called the bill “disgusting, immoral, and evil.” 

She and other Republicans argue that the bill would undermine federally funded school sports by allowing transgender girls to compete with what they call “biological” ones.

“Biological women cannot compete against biological men,” Rep Greene said in a speech on Wednesday, conjuring up images of “boys” joining her daughter’s softball team.

“They will be in her locker room, they will be in her showers, they will be in her bathroom, they will be in her hotel room when she travels with her team,” she said with anger rising in her voice. “This is wrong.”

Women’s sports groups have disputed this conception. Several organisations, including the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, published an open letter supporting the Equality Act in 2019.

“The idea that allowing girls who are transgender to compete in girls’ sports leads to male domination of female sports is based on a flawed understanding of what it means to be transgender and a misrepresentation of nondiscrimination laws,” the groups wrote. “Transgender girls are girls and transgender women are women.”

The Equality Act is expected to pass in the House of Representatives, where Democrats hold the majority.

It will then move on to the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans are evenly split, but Vice President Kamala Harris could cast a tie-breaking vote. President Joe Biden has vocally supported the bill.

Rep Ocasio-Cortez is confident about the bill’s prospects in the House.

“We’re gonna pass the #EqualityAct today, protect our LGBTQ+ family and make the world a little bit better,” she tweeted. “Nothing is going to stop that.”