Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not come quietly to Washington, even though she is the right-wing’s chief bogeyperson, as they track her every move. Writing for GQ, Jay Willis says in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter Presence Is a Blueprint for 2020 Democrats::

Now that she is a real-life congresswoman-elect and no longer the hypothetical embodiment of their worst nightmare, right-wing media's fixation on Ocasio-Cortez has metastasized from standard-issue fearmongering to a transparent, desperate obsession. Over the past few weeks, earnest dunk attempts from aspiring Twitter celebrities have centered on her correct opinion that Election Day should be a national holiday; her accidental use of the word "chambers" instead of "branches"; her reluctance to pay rent in two of the most expensive cities in America at the same time; and, of course, her possession of multiple pieces of cold-weather clothing, which was meant to suggest that she must secretly be rich, because as everyone knows, Merriam-Webster defines "working-class" as "owning only one coat."

Politico writes Monday that Ocasio-Cortez is leading a group of progressives very unsettled by the prospect of West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin assuming a minority leadership position on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

At a Friday rally outside the Capitol, Ocasio-Cortez joined other Democratic lawmakers and other incoming Democratic freshmen, arguing that allowing Manchin to become the ranking member of the Energy committee would undercut the momentum behind their "Green New Deal" proposal that calls for transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy sources within a decade of initiating the plan.

“The vast majority of Americans believe that we should not be taking money from the industries that we are legislating and really presiding over in our committee work, but in D.C. that’s a controversial opinion,” Ocasio-Cortez said alongside youth climate activists from the Sunrise Movement.

Manchin, who has a 47 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters Joe Manchin has a steady — and expected position given that he’s elected to support voters in his coal country state — regularly accepts election campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.

Supporters of the Green New Deal say the activism that propelled candidates like Ocasio-Cortez to Washington underscores the citizen support for action on climate change. The argument gained momentum with federal scientists from 13 agencies last week issuing a report forecasting dire economic and physical consequences across America if greenhouse gas emissions continue rising.

“A decade ago it was a little easier to hide behind, ‘I’ve got a state where we can’t do this,’” Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) told POLITICO after the event, noting her Maine delegation colleagues Sens. Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R) often side with Democrats on climate issues. “It may be hard for Joe Manchin to be there, but I think there’s going to be a lot of other colleagues who say, ‘Hey, this needs to be on our agenda, we’ve got to move forward with some legislation.’ And they could be on both sides of the aisle.”

U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith appears third from the right in a 1975 yearbook photo of cheerleaders at Lawrence County Academy. The mascot appears in the middle dressed as a Confederate colonel holding a rebel flag. via Jackson Free Press

U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith attended and graduated from a segregation academy that was set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students, a yearbook reveals. Hyde-Smith enrolled her own daughter at Brookhaven Academy, another Mississippi segregation school founded in 1970, the Jackson Free Press reported.

The latest race-related battle around Tuesday’s Mississippi Senate race with Democrat Mike Espy follows a recent leaked tape in which Hyde-Smith said that she would gladly attend a “public hanging” is one of her supporters invited her. The statement was outrageous, given Mississippi’s history as the lynching capital of the United States.

One of the most famous lynchings in Mississippi was the savage and brutal death of 14-year old Chicago child Emmett Till.

Hyde-Smith is very proud of Mississippi history and has no hesitation to celebrate the segregated south, saying that the Confederacy represents “Mississippi history at its best.”

“I enjoyed my tour of Beauvoir. The Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library located in Biloxi,” Hyde-Smith wrote in a caption on this photos posted to her FB page in 2014. Davis was the Confederate president during the Civil War. His former estate now serves as a museum and library in his honor.
“This is a must see,” Hyde-Smith wrote. “Currently on display are artifacts connected to the daily life of the Confederate Soldier including weapons. Mississippi history at its best!”

I thought of Hillary Clinton, when reading this story. At considerable personal risk to herself, then 24-year-old law student Hillary was working for Marian Wright Edelman, the civil rights activist and prominent advocate for children. Mrs. Edelman had sent her to Alabama in 1972 to help prove that the Nixon administration was not enforcing the legal ban on granting tax-exempt status to so-called segregation academies, the estimated 200 private academies that sprang up in the South to cater to white families after a 1969 Supreme Court decision forced public schools to integrate.

Hillary posed as a young wife, telling the guidance counselor of a seg school that her husband had just taken a job in Dothan, that they were a churchgoing family and that they were looking for a school for their son.

Like many white activists from the North who traveled south to help on civil rights issues, Mrs. Clinton confronted a different world in Dothan, separate and unequal, and a sting of injustice she had previously only read about.

“I went through my role-playing, asking questions about the curriculum and makeup of the student body,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in “Living History.” “I was assured that no black students would be enrolled.”