Rep. Brandon Gill is pushing back against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to package the Democratic Party’s most radical recent positions into a discarded era called “Woke 1”—arguing that the ideology has not disappeared simply because Democrats have learned to describe it more carefully.
The Texas Republican resurfaced AOC’s own record Tuesday after the New York congresswoman urged voters to focus on what Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong says today rather than her calls to defund and eventually abolish police.
AOC offered the defense Sunday during a remarkably friendly interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her electorate,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She then borrowed a phrase from New York City Councilman Chi Ossé:
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy.’”
“I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now,” AOC continued.
That produced an obvious question from Gill and other conservatives: If “Woke 1” was crazy, why are its architects asking voters to forget their records instead of plainly repudiating the policies?
Gill has been warning for months that Democrats have changed their presentation without abandoning their ideology.
“Conservatives like to say ‘woke is dead,’ but it’s not dead; it’s merely dormant,” Gill said in June. “Woke is central to left-wing ideology and wreaked unimaginable pain during Biden’s time in office. We can’t let it happen again.”
“The four years that we suffered under Biden, when Democrats were in power and were flooding the country with illegals, whenever woke was ascendant, all that can come back if Democrats take power again,” he added.
Gill made the same argument during a May appearance on Fox News, identifying AOC as a leading promoter of the very ideas she now treats like an embarrassing television season no longer available for streaming.
“AOC is somebody who has been on the forefront of left-wing politics for a long time now,” Gill said. “She was a cheerleader for every single crazy left-wing policy that Democrats were promoting, whether it was open borders, or defunding local police departments, or defunding ICE agencies, or transing four-year-olds, or raising taxes, raising regulation.”
“That’s what AOC stands for,” he added. “And I don’t think that’s something the American people want anything to do with.”
His response to the “Woke 1” interview was essentially: Oh no, you do not get to laugh, rename the period and walk away without answering for it.
Ocasio-Cortez’s complete answer is more revealing than the catchy phrase. She did not denounce the defund movement, police abolition or the racial ideology that dominated progressive politics after 2020. Instead, she described the rhetoric as a product of lockdown-era conditions while insisting that some of the discussion was “quite fruitful.”
“I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime and bringing crime down,” AOC said. “I think that during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.” That is a communications adjustment, not necessarily an ideological conversion. The congresswoman’s message was not “We were wrong.” It was closer to: We would use different words now.
Even Vox acknowledged Tuesday that progressives are retreating from the rhetorical style associated with “Woke 1” while retaining many of its broader goals. The outlet described a shift away from elite nonprofit language, identity-heavy messaging and academic jargon toward economic populism, housing, childcare and affordability.
AOC made her remarks while being asked about Hong, a Democratic Socialist and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate whose old social-media posts have become a central issue in Tuesday’s primary.
In August 2020, Hong wrote that she supported “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.”
In April 2021, she went further:
“Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.”
Hong has also advocated abolishing ICE and prisons, called Thanksgiving a “colonizer holiday” and reportedly posted approvingly about eliminating the U.S. Senate.
Her campaign now says police and prison abolition are no longer her position and would not be policies she pursued as governor. “She has spoken about police and prison abolition in the past as an aspirational goal, but it is not her current position, and it’s not something she will pursue as governor,” campaign spokeswoman Allison Geyer told Fox News Digital.
But when Politico reporter Jonathan Martin recently asked Hong directly whether she still supported eliminating police over the long term, she repeatedly avoided a yes-or-no answer. “I believe that we have to be serious about public safety, and I’m going to be a governor that is more serious than anyone else in making sure that we are building systems of care,” Hong replied before a campaign aide ended the exchange.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany accused her of attempting to rewrite her record. “Democrat Socialist Francesca Hong can flip-flop all she wants, but she can’t hide who she is,” Tiffany said. “She’s a card-carrying socialist who called to abolish the police, ICE and even the U.S. Senate.”
Hong insists Tiffany has falsely characterized her record and says she is running to lower costs, finance public schools and make childcare more affordable.
The strongest evidence for Gill’s argument comes not from an old tweet but from the Democratic Socialists of America’s current national program. The document was drafted between April and June 2026—not during the pandemic, George Floyd riots or peak “Woke 1.” Under “End Mass Incarceration and Police Immunity,” the DSA calls for redirecting police funding to public services as steps toward:
“Fully abolishing the police and prison system.”
The program also demands abolishing ICE, granting amnesty to all illegal immigrants, abolishing the Senate and Electoral College, replacing the president and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, and establishing public ownership of America’s largest corporations and essential industries.
The organization’s National Abolition Working Group is even more direct:
“Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets or scope of enforcement while cutting budgets annually towards zero.”
That language was not found on an abandoned Tumblr page from lockdown. It is on the DSA’s website now. AOC remains a member of the organization. Hong is backed by multiple Wisconsin DSA chapters, although not formally endorsed by the national organization.
So when AOC says “Woke 1 was crazy,” she is describing positions that her socialist organization republished as national objectives only weeks ago.
AOC did not endorse Hong during the ABC interview, saying her priority is winning control of Congress. Bernie Sanders has also declined to enter the Wisconsin primary.
That caution illustrates the Democratic Party’s dilemma. Progressive candidates are energizing activists and winning primaries, but their documented positions can become devastating liabilities in competitive general elections.
The solution appears to be “Woke 2”: Keep the ideology, lose the alarming vocabulary and lead with free services and affordability.
Gill predicted precisely that strategy. “If you’re going to spend all of your time bashing capitalism, you should expect the younger Democrats who listen to that to become socialists,” he said last month.
“If you’re going to spend all your time bashing the police like the Democrats have done, expect younger Democrats to support defunding the police. If you’re going to spend all your time bashing America as a white supremacist country, you should expect younger Democrats to hate that country and want to abolish its institutions like the Senate.”
“What we’re seeing is the Democrats reaping what they’ve been sowing for so long.”
MY QUICK TAKE
“Woke 1 was crazy” is a wonderful slogan if it is followed by an apology, a reversal and a list of policies you promise never to inflict upon the country again.
AOC supplied none of those.
Instead, she performed the political equivalent of laughing about an old haircut—as if Americans merely survived purple bangs rather than riots, racial division, school closures, ruined businesses, DEI loyalty oaths, biological men in women’s spaces and an organized campaign to defund the police.
Apparently, that was just a quirky phase. Everybody was stuck inside. Banana bread was popular. Abolishing law enforcement seemed like a good idea.
Gill is right to refuse the rewrite. “Woke 1” is not dead when the DSA’s 2026 platform still demands the abolition of police, prisons, ICE, the Senate and private ownership of major industries.
The Left did not abandon the product. It hired a better marketing department. Welcome to Woke 2: Same revolution, fewer land acknowledgments.
