AOC joins Biden campaign as co-chair of climate change task force

A spokesperson for the congresswoman said she 'believes the movement will only be successful if we continue to apply pressure both inside and outside the system'

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to the US House of Representatives and one of the most prominent progressive freshman Democrats in the country, is reportedly joining former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

The presumptive Democratic nominee confirmed the news in an interview with News8 in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday, saying: “I'm working with Bernie and with his people. And so, and we've made some changes. We've listened to Bernie supporters and, you know, for example, we have Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, she is on one of the panels.”

An unidentified source later told CNN the New York congresswoman would co-chair a climate change task force for the Biden campaign.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, a former organiser for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign who later endorsed the Vermont senator for the Democratic nomination last year, has been one of the most vocal supporters of a Green New Deal on Capitol Hill since she was elected during the 2018 midterms.

The congresswoman has previously criticised Mr Biden on a host of issues while campaigning for Mr Sanders, and raised controversy in January when she told New York Magazine: “Oh God. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party."

Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Ms Ocasio-Cortez, said in a statement the congresswoman made the decision to join Mr Biden’s campaign “with members of the Climate Justice community” and would be “fully accountable” to those groups while working to elect the former vice president.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez “believes the movement will only be successful if we continue to apply pressure both inside and outside the system,” the statement continued. “This is just one element of the broader fight for just policies.”

Mr Biden has unveiled a sweeping climate plan that includes a $1.7trn federal investment in the country’s “clean energy future and environmental justice” which would be paid fro by rolling back tax incentives passed by Donald Trump, according to the proposal.

In an apparent attempt to woo liberal voters, the former vice president has adopted more progressive policies surrounding student loans and Medicare into his platform following the suspension of Mr Sanders’ campaign. With the addition of Ms Ocasio-Cortez to a climate change task force, the campaign was seen as continuing in its attempts to unify the Democratic Party.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has already said she would vote for Mr Biden in November, while noting in an interview with the New York Times that he should do more than “throwing the progressive wing of the party a couple of bones”.

“I think people understand that there are limits to what Biden will do and that's understandable -- he didn't run as a progressive candidate,” she told the newspaper last month. “But, at the bare minimum, we should aspire to be better than what we have been before. And I just don't know if this message of 'We're going to go back to the way things were' is going to work for the people for who the way things were was really bad."