Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both international relations and economics.
Maybe she should have taken Law 101.
The bartender-turned-lawmaker on Sunday said President Joe Biden should ignore the ruling of a federal judge who on Friday suspended the two-decade-old approval of the so-called abortion pill mifepristone while a legal challenge proceeds.
The 67-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, does not go into effect for one week, a delay intended to give the Biden administration the option to file an emergency appeal. The U.S. Department of Justice said it would, Reuters reported.
But forget all that legal stuff. AOC says Biden should just ignore the ruling.
On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Dana Bash was blunt with the two-term lawmaker.
“You called on the Biden administration to do, which is just to simply ignore the court ruling. That’s a pretty stunning position, if you think about it in the abstract about the notion of just ignoring a judge’s position,” Bash said.
“So my question is, when this case is resolved by the Supreme Court, should the administration follow that decision, if that decision ends up banning this abortion drug?” the host asked.
“Well, you know, I want to take a step back and dig into the grounds around ignoring this preliminary ruling as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “There is an extraordinary amount of precedent for this. There is a term known as agency non-acquiescence, and this has been used. And for folks saying this is a first, that this is precedent-setting, it is not.”
AOC claimed former President Donald Trump “did this very thing.”
“The idea of consistency in governance until there is a higher court ruling is not an unprecedented thing to happen. In fact, when the Trump administration did it, it was arguably through a much, you know, a very grave issue when it came to DACA,” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that allows illegal aliens who meet program requirements to remain in the U.S.
“The Trump administration was ordered to fully reinstate DACA, the DACA program. And they, in a complete defiance, did not do that. They rely on the courts, rely on the legitimacy of their rulings. And when they make a mockery of our system, a mockery of our democracy and a mockery of our law as the as what we just saw happen in this mifepristone ruling, then I believe that that the executive branch and we know that the executive branch has an enforcement discretion,” she said.
Bash returned to her original question: “Should that apply if the Supreme Court upholds the Texas judge’s decision?”
“You know, I think one of the things that I think that we need to examine is the grounds of that ruling. But I do not believe that the courts have the authority to, to have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted. And I do believe that it creates a crisis,” AOC said.