Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose assertive leveraging of social media has helped propel her to outsized notoriety for a congressional newcomer, appears to have made online history with a morality lesson about the campaign finance system's consequences.
A five-minute clip of the New York Democrat's pungent tongue-in-cheek questioning of witnesses at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing last week may have become the most viewed video of any politician in Twitter history. The video posted by NowThis broke the mark on Monday, the news site's deputy editor Jon Laurence says. As of this afternoon it had 38 million views, 125,000 likes and nearly 49,000 retweets, making it one of the 40 most viewed Twitter videos of all time.
At a hearing on HR 1, the Democrats' catch-all political process overhaul, Ocasio-Cortez used her time to conduct what she called a "lightning round game" with the ethics experts who were testifying. She aimed to demonstrate the ease with which a corrupt House member, senator or president could skirt accountability under current government ethics law, overtly do the quid-pro-quo bidding of campaign donors and profit from insider knowledge.
"It's already super legal, as we've seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy," she concluded.
Protest signs and resource information posters were hung up around a resource tent in Broadview, Illinois. Credit: Britton Struthers-Lugo, Oct. 30, 2025.
Rubber bullet wounds on Bryan’s back, after a day of protesting at the Broadview ICE facility in mid-September. He wears hospital scrubs, acquired after receiving medical attention following the pepper-spray incident earlier in the day. He returned to protest after being discharged from the hospital.Credit: Adriano Kalin (@adriano_kalin).
ICE officers gathered outside the Broadview detention center. Yellow identifying badges can be seen on the front of their uniforms and on their shoulders. Credit: Britton Struthers-Lugo, Oct. 30, 2025.
Screengrab from the Chicago Council of Lawyers. Designed by 
A white bus waits outside the Broadview Detention Center to transport detainees to a permanent detention center or to an airport. The Broadview Detention Center cannot hold detainees for longer than 12 hours, though to reflect increased enforcement operations this has been increased to 72 hours. Longer stays have been recorded since Operation Midway Blitz. Credit: By Britton Struthers-Lugo, Oct. 30, 2025.
A paper outlining resources and ways to report federal law enforcement activity around Chicago hangs on a gate in the protestor “free speech zone”.Credit: Britton Struthers-Lugo. Oct. 30, 2025.
