Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is urging her Democratic colleagues in Congress to stand firm against President Donald Trump as the federal government is set to shut down on Wednesday morning amid a spending standoff.
“Protecting people is too important a task for us to give up before anything even starts,” she told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday evening.
Republicans have offered a bill that would fund the government at current levels as spending negotiations continue, but Democrats want to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire by the end of the year.
Trump has said he’s not worried about the public turning on him over the shutdown.
But Ocasio-Cortez said he should be, because the president and the Republican Party are weaker than they look.
“What they rely on is the impression of power, the perception of inevitability, in us giving up in advance,” she said.
Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
That perception, she said, is used to try to get people to “comply in advance, and acquiesce in advance, and give up in advance.”
But she said polls show it’s only a perception ― because the public is turning on both the president and his enablers in Congress.
“Donald Trump is at record levels of unpopularity in his tenure,” she added. “The Republican House is at record levels of unpopularity. They are underwater across the board, and they know it. And that is causing them to double down in public, but it is backfiring. That is why whether it’s a shutdown, whether it’s all of this, they want us to blink first and we have too much to save.”
She added in a post on X that Trump is “FAR weaker than he looks” and that Republicans in Congress know their approval ratings are plunging.
“We now have a chance to defend the healthcare of millions of Americans,” she wrote. “Let’s take it.”
Republicans are jacking up healthcare costs across the country and Trump is FAR weaker than he looks.
The GOP knows their popularity is tanking as the American people turn on their extremism.
We now have a chance to defend the healthcare of millions of Americans. Let’s take it. https://t.co/tEaB9V4KJa
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 1, 2025
Hayes asked about a theory on social media that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is willing to shut down the government because he’s afraid he could face Ocasio-Cortez in a primary in 2028.
Ocasio-Cortez is also not worried about Trump’s threat to use a shutdown to fire federal workers.
“Donald Trump is trying to play this bluffing game of, ‘Well, maybe what we’re gonna do is hold the entire federal workforce hostage and fire everybody,’” she said.
But she pointed out that Trump has been firing people anyway, making major cuts to the federal workforce since the so-called Department of Government Efficiency initiative earlier this year.
“They are firing everybody,” she said. “They are completely eliminating the federal workforce.”
The budget negotiation, she said, is a chance for Democrats to “stop this madness.”
See the full interview below: