Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants Americans to see her as the new, steady, moderate voice who can lead the increasingly radical Democratic Party. She didn’t endorse the unhinged Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, Francesca Hong, and in a recent interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, she laughed off “Woke 1.0” as a crazy fad that she has long since outgrown.
Eyeing a 2028 White House run, she now wants Americans to forget her talk of defunding the police, abolishing ICE, and insisting on terms like “pregnant people.” Bring any of that up now, and she says you’re engaging in “cancel culture.”
Ok, fine. AOC can prove she’s really rejected Woke 1.0’s excesses by saying she’s ready to vote in favor of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
The women’s sports issue is the easiest and clearest way to assess whether someone is on Team Sanity. Everyone who has not pledged allegiance to the woke cult knows that males are built to be stronger and faster than females. It’s why women’s sports exist in the first place. Separate world records are kept for men and women because men’s record performances are consistently far superior to women’s. Every child knows this. Deep down, the activists insisting that men should be able to opt into becoming women for the purpose of sports know that this is fundamentally unfair too. The petite 5-foot-4-inch AOC surely knows this. Yet she, like the other woke radicals, decided that she cares more about trans-identifying men’s feelings than she does women’s rights.
Polls consistently show that more than eight in 10 Americans believe that men should not be allowed in women’s sports. They believed this before Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White rocked the WNBA by declaring themselves eligible for the draft. Images of these massive, muscled men preparing to enter women’s competitions drive home the absurdity of denying the male athletic advantage. It would not only be unfair for these men to play against women, but dangerous. The WNBA, a league that had parroted the radical left’s “trans women are women,” is now scrambling to come up with some eligibility criteria that would keep these men out but allow them to continue the farce that men can become women.
AOC can help put them out of their misery and show real leadership by saying women’s sports should be for women only. This would require an explicit reversal of her previous stance. In January 2025, the House passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a bill that would prevent schools receiving federal funding from allowing males to compete in women’s sports, by a vote of 218 to 206. Every Republican who voted supported it. Only two Democrats did. AOC voted no.
If she were to vote yes this time, undoubtedly the dam would break among rank-and-file Democrats who desperately want to back away from the toxic position of pretending that men should be able to self-identify into women’s sports, prisons, locker rooms, and domestic violence shelters. AOC could take a step toward restoring the Democratic Party’s tarnished brand as disconnected from reality and indifferent to actual women’s safety concerns. If she votes yes on protecting women’s sports, Republicans should welcome her conversion. If she votes no, Americans can reasonably conclude that “Woke 1.0” isn’t dead after all.
That’s what renouncing Woke 1.0 would look like. It has to be more than just a press strategy of laughing off yesterday’s slogans but still supporting yesterday’s radical policies. Is AOC ready to really turn the page? We will know when she says she’s ready to vote for the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
