Rep. Ayanna Pressley made headlines last week when she voted against a budget bill — which ultimately passed and which President Trump signed into law — that kept the federal government open but also included increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and allocated some money for a barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I have tremendous respect for my colleagues. I’m proud to be a Democrat, and honored to be serving in Congress at a time when the country is at a crossroads,” Pressley said Friday in an interview with Boston Public Radio. “I had to put a marker down early that if we were going to increase funding for ICE or the CBP, then I couldn’t support it. ... I think the best predictor of the future is the past, and these are agencies that have proven themselves to be rogue.”
Pressley added that had she voted for an increase in funding to these agencies, she would have broken the promises she made to her constituents, many of whom, she says, are negatively impacted by President Trump’s immigration agenda.
“The Massachusetts 7th is being impacted by ICE and [Customs and Border Patrol], right here in our communities,” Pressley said. “This is a district that is 53 percent people of color, 40 percent foreign born. ... The impact is not just being felt on the Mexican border and border communities.”
Pressley, however, has also described herself as a pragmatist, and she said she doesn’t begrudge her colleagues who voted in favor of the compromise bill. She said she would not “play out scenarios” in how she would have voted if the passage of a spending bill had rested on her lone vote.
Now that the bill has passed, Pressley says that she is focused on doing everything within her power to challenge Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall.
“We’re going to leverage every legislative tool and legal avenue available to us to obstruct this declaration of what we consider to be a fake emergency,” Pressley said. “It is a complete overreach and abuse of authority, and I think it’s a diversionary tactic from the real emergency. I sit on financial services and oversight. We held the first hearing on homelessness — that is a national emergency.”
Also on her agenda, Pressley says, is working to bring down prescription drug pricing — a goal she she shares with the president — and working with her fellow freshman colleague Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to make the Green New Deal a reality.
“It’s setting the marker with the Green New Deal, this will initiate tons of legislation that will allow us to actualize those broader aspirational goals,” she said.
Partisan gridlock and growing political partisanship might not make for the most welcoming atmosphere in Washington, but Pressley says that she’s excited and optimistic for the freshman class of the 116th Congress. She compared them to the “Watergate Babies,” the freshman class of lawmakers who came into Congress following the Watergate scandal, on a platform of rooting out corruption.
Pressley — who said in September she would “do whatever we can” to impeach the president — said she still believes Trump has committed impeachable offenses, but she wants to wait to see Robert Mueller's report before moving forward with impeachment proceedings.
“As I’ve said, impeachment has always been on the table and should be on the table,” Pressley said. “The occupant of the White House ... has lost all moral authority and the high ground, and certainly it appears there could be evidence of obstruction of justice and other things, but I can’t substantiate until I see this report.”
As a member of the House Oversight Committee, Pressley will join other lawmakers to question Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen when he testifies in front of the committee next week.
