“They Don’t See Us”: Ayanna Pressley Won’t Let Women Be Ignored by the Republican Majority

When Ayanna Pressley made her debut on the Beltway, Democrats held a double-digit majority in the House of Representatives. Donald Trump was a perfect foil for Pressley and her progressive compatriots. Their influence only expanded with more insurgent progressive wins in 2020. Plus, Democrats won back the Senate and sent Joe Biden to the White House. But now in the twilight of the 117th Congress, “the Squad”—Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, alongside newer recruits like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush—will soon find themselves in unfamiliar territory: the House minority. This is not lost on Pressley, nor are the stakes. In her words, the House Democratic caucus is at a “critical inflection point” ahead of this shift to come on January 3. Pressley is plotting her next move. 

After a midterm cycle that showed the power of galvanizing voters who care about women’s reproductive rights, this is where Pressley sees a path forward for progressives. That, and turning attention to the White House. “There’s an opportunity certainly in the next two years to make sure we’re offering a clear affirmation of who Democrats are and part of that is working closely with the White House,” she says in an interview with Vanity Fair. To steward this, Pressley is running to be the chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, with the intent to make it as relevant a voting bloc as groups like the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus—both of which she’s also a member of. And she’s preparing to push back against a Republican House that appears more interested in scoring political points than pushing any kind of policy agenda. “It couldn’t be more clear. The Republican Party of [Kevin] McCarthy and Trump, they don’t have a policy vision—certainly not one that centers women’s families and the most marginalized,” she says. “They don’t see us. They don’t see women,” she continued later in the conversation.

Pressley pitched herself in a letter to her colleagues at the end of last month. If elected to the chair position, she wrote that she would, “defend women’s issues from the ongoing attacks from those across the aisle,” in the face of the “extremists pose serious threats to the rights of every woman that calls this country home.” She wants the caucus to “be seen as the go-to for women across the board” and to serve as a bulwark against a backlash to women she is bracing for after a historic number were elected to Congress. “It’s always that strange dichotomy,” Pressley said. “[It’s] When we see this wave of women—and none of us are there by magic; we’re there by hard work…. When we see the most coordinated and underlining policy attacks against us.” 

But Pressley’s bid is part and parcel of progressives, and more broadly, the Democratic Party’s reliance on and recognition of the critical role women—and particularly women of color—play in securing victories up and down the ballot. Her party, Pressley stressed, has to keep serving the interests of this critical voting bloc. “The reason why I’m running is to ensure that our collective voices remain front and center at the policy-making table,” she said. Pressley noted Raphael Warnock’s victory over Herschel Walker in the runoff election for the Georgia Senate seat as evidence of this. “We know the outsized role that Black women continue to play, both as strategy partners and building these coalitions and putting together these winning strategies,” she said the day after Warnock’s victory. “But also in the electorate at the ballot box.”

“The Squad” moniker can be traced back to a somewhat spontaneous photo taken during new member orientation. The snap of Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar tied their political fates together. The group’s outspokenness and the fact that both Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez bested Democratic incumbents in the primaries, put their party’s Old Guard on notice. Their profiles and platforms quickly eclipsed those of the traditional arbiters of political influence in Washington. But the quartet represented something of a sea change within the Democratic Party; they redefined what it meant to be a “progressive” and the résumé required to run for Congress. With their historic victories, the members of “the Squad” paved the way for a new generation of progressives, which only grew this past midterm cycle with the additions of Summer Lee and Maxwell Frost, among others. They shifted the Overton window. In some ways, Pressley was always a bit of an outlier in the group. She largely avoided the type of skirmishes with leadership and rank-and-file members the other three, at various times, found themselves embroiled in. 

While “the Squad” branding has faded—largely relegated to the right-wing and conservative press—when asked to reflect on those early days of her congressional tenure, in which the group as a collective, became a bigger target of criticism than even Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi, Pressley responded: “My priorities haven’t changed. My convictions and my resolve have only been further emboldened and the issues I’ve led on my entire life are the issues that I’ve continued to work on.” Policy is her “love language” and she has “always just followed the work.” But as she positions herself for life in the minority, where chances at policy will be few and far between, Pressley acknowledged that her outsized platform could aid her effort to thrust the caucus into greater relevance. “I do think that the platform that I have  earned and built up over time, would [serve]  in such a way to increase the reach and the impact and the influence of this caucus,” she said. 

Pressley isn’t the only “Squad” member to set her sights on a leadership post. Last week, Omar was elected deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Speaking on Monday night, Omar reflected on the approaching shift to the minority. “It is going to be an effort to try to block as much progress as Republicans want to make in the house, even in their messaging bills,” the Minnesota congresswoman said. “I know that with a slim majority, it was challenging—even for Speaker Pelosi.” But this time around, every Squad member, including Pressley, is bringing a lot more legislative expertise to the table. “It was clear from pretty early on when she came to Congress that she had a really deep passion for reproductive rights issues, issues facing women—economic issues and care issues,” a former Capitol Hill staffer said of the Massachusetts Democrat. “And I think the idea of having the Democratic Women’s [Caucus] as more of an organized bloc would be a good one.” 

Pressley was the first woman of color to serve on the Boston City Council, a perch from which she launched the Healthy Women’s Families and Communities Committee. With her election to Congress, she claimed another first as the first woman of color elected to represent Massachusetts. And in her time on Capitol Hill, protecting and promoting women has been a throughline: she is colead of the Women’s Health Protection Act; she serves on the Pro-Choice Caucus; she has been a leader in the fight for paid leave and maternal health justice; and she is the lead co-sponsor in the fight to abolish the Hyde Amendment, to name a few. “The issues of consequence in this moment are issues that I’ve led on,” she pitched. 

“For her time in Congress, she has been a partner and a leader on paid leave for all, in the same way she has led on abortion rights and so many issues that impact women and families,” Dawn Huckelbridge, the director of Paid Leave for All, said of Pressley. “This has been a devastating few years for women, women of color disproportionately. We’ve had years now of shouldering the burdens of a pandemic at home and on the front lines; the fall of Roe; the cutting of the entire family-care agenda. This is a moment for urgent action. What women need is an advocate inside, and that is what Ayanna has always been.” 

When it comes to being in the minority, Pressley is clear-eyed on the challenges Democrats will face. If elected to chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, she intends to flex her concurrent membership on both the progressive and Black caucuses to create a powerful coalition and voting bloc. But it is not lost on her that Republicans’ edge in the House will hinder her hopes. Democrats, she explained, will need to use every tool at their disposal—notably, the power of the pen. Pressley has met with both Vice President Kamala Harris and Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra on abortion access to discuss the adminsitration’s options post-Roe. And she points to the role she played as a lead negotiator in the push for student-debt cancellation, in which she worked closely with the Biden-Harris administration, as evidence of her ability to coordinate effectively with the White House. 

“There’s an opportunity certainly in the next two years to make sure we’re offering a clear affirmation of who Democrats are and part of that is working closely with the White House,” she explained. This, she continued, will include “using the power of advocacy to push for an agenda of executive action with the Biden administration to help ensure the women’s issues don’t get left on the cutting-room floor there.” Pressley doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that executive orders will be critical to protecting women in the fight ahead. 

Should she ascend to the helm of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, Pressley would make one thing clear: “This is not a social club. We are all formidable in our own right.”