 You just watched Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be arrested at a capital protest for abortion rights. Now, she wasn't the only lawmaker arrested because there were others, as journalist Edward Isaac Dover points out, other members of Congress who were arrested during the protest include Carolyn Maloney, Rashida Tlaib, Corey Bush, Barbara Lee, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, among others, and as CBS News explains, US Capitol Police said they made a total of 35 arrests for crowding, obstructing, or incommoting, which included 17 members of Congress. Protesters had perched themselves on 1st Street northeast near the Capitol building, blocking the street. Capitol Police said they issued their standard three warnings before beginning the arrests. A spokesperson for Democratic Representative Ayanna Presley of Massachusetts also confirmed multiple arrests of members of Congress and said Presley was among those arrested. Presley's communications director, Ricardo Sanchez, said her arrest was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Representative Catherine Clark, the Democratic Assistant Speaker of the House, was also arrested. Abortion rights supporters and those opposed to abortion rights have been demonstrating near the Supreme Court since the court's decision to strike down abortion protection under Roe nearly a month ago. So what this is, is members of Congress standing in solidarity with abortion rights protesters across the country. And this is really important. Is it just symbolic? Yeah. Is it admittedly political theater? Yeah. But it's important. The House did its job to codify Roe v. Wade. So now it's up to the Senate to do its job. And for that, you have to rely on Democratic Party leadership, Joe Biden, the media. But what members of the House can do, meanwhile, is they can elevate this issue, raise the salience of this particular issue, keep it elevated in the public's minds so that way this issue doesn't begin to fade away. And I think it's really important for members of Congress to put their bodies on the line and subject themselves to arrest when most members of Congress, I'd argue, don't even care about any issue enough to speak up, let alone subject themselves to being arrested. So this is really important. And I commend everyone who did this. It's not often that we see members of Congress do this and get arrested symbolically, but it still is really nice to see whenever it does indeed happen. Now, on the subject of getting arrested, I've got to share this banger of a tweet from Carolyn Bueno who writes, it's quite telling that more members of Congress were arrested today for protesting in support of abortion rights than have been arrested ever for facilitating January 6th. And that, my friends, is an incredible point. So I absolutely commend the members of Congress who did this. Again, it's symbolic. It's political theater, but it's important. It's necessary, and this type of political theater is effective because you generate press coverage. And that's exactly what these members of Congress did. But a dumber element of the story that I have to talk about is the claim that AOC either pretended to be arrested or faked being in handcuffs. And this is being spread by a lot of right-wing commentators, along with members of Congress, speaking of insurrectionists, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out to AOC specifically, quote, you faked being handcuffed for your photo op today as capital police warned you three times to get out of the street. Then you were arrested. So you would stop playing in traffic. Abortion is legal up to 24 weeks in Minnesota. You're protesting nothing. You're a liar. You also have GOP figures like Terrence Williams and Stephen Crowder sharing a video where AOC is ostensibly pretending to be handcuffed. Now, this accusation is also being lobbed at Ilhan Omar as well. But there's a very simple explanation for this. But for clarity's sake, let's let's see the video that they're all referring to. Now, towards the end of that last video there, you can see Ilhan Omar like AOC raising her fist in solidarity. Now, conservatives are claiming that they were faking being in handcuffs. Except the explanation is that they were not faking being in handcuffs. Let me ask you this. If somebody wanted to pretend as if they were in handcuffs, would they literally raise their fucking fist in solidarity? Did they forget? And they were like, oh, sorry, I forgot I'm supposed to be pretending to be handcuffed. Is that really what happened? Not just with AOC, but with Ilhan Omar and also Andy Levin, who raised his fist in solidarity as well, while trying to keep his hands behind his back for the most part. Is that really what you think is happening? That they were faking being in handcuffs? What's the more likely explanation? They weren't handcuffs. And officers just told them to keep their hands behind their backs, knowing that this was a symbolic protest, and they complied. Now, there's also some conspiracy mongers who are claiming that they weren't actually arrested, but you saw the video. They were being arrested. So I just feel like this is nothing more than another transparent attempt by conservatives to distract you from the substance. They don't want you to talk about abortion rights because they lose on this particular issue because the American people disagree with them. So what they do is they distract. They concoct conspiracy theories. So we focus on that rather than the substance, rather than the message that these members of Congress are actually trying to spread. And it's funny that they always fixate on AOC and Ilhan Omar, but not necessarily other members of Congress like Andy Levin, probably because AOC and Ilhan Omar are members of Congress who are the most effective messengers. But this is like the go-to in the GOP playbook, right? When we learned about the leaked draft opinion for Dobs, conservatives weren't talking about abortion. They were feigning outrage over the leak itself. So this is what they like to do, distract, but don't buy into it. We don't have to play their games. Talk about the substance. Don't let the message be lost. What these members of Congress are doing is they're talking about the importance of women controlling their own bodies, women having the right to reproductive healthcare. And members of Congress, GOP propagandists can try to distract, but they only make themselves look dumber. Like if you genuinely believe that they were faking being in handcuffs while they simultaneously raised their fists in solidarity, that doesn't say anything about AOC. It speaks to you and your intelligence level and how fucking stupid and dense you are. So these members of Congress are doing an important thing by keeping this elevated, keeping this high in the public's minds because this matters.