The crisp November air nipped at the incoming freshmen representatives as they filed into the Capitol Visitor Center for orientation. Within less than two months, half the chamber would be at each other's throats over the nomination for House Speaker. But for now, the members-elect were busy meeting their new colleagues and praying they'd get the best offices in the lottery.
However, as the days went on, a nerve-racking realization washed over Congresswomen Delia Ramirez (D-IL) and Summer Lee (D-PA). Against the odds, the two women had made history in the 2022 midterms. In Pennsylvania, Lee, an organizer turned state representative, battled millions of dollars in campaign spending from the PAC operated by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to win her Pittsburgh district and become the first Black woman elected to Congress in Pennsylvania. In Illinois, Ramirez, a housing advocate and state representative whose mother had crossed the Rio Grande with Ramirez in her belly, defeated a crowded field to become the first Latina congresswoman from the Midwest.
Now, they were facing a crisis familiar to millions of Americans across the country: how to pay rent. "We were both silently in our heads doing the math of how much an apartment costs," Lee, 36, tells Teen Vogue, recalling orientation. "We weren't [prepared] for the fact that we've had to leave our jobs. We were going to have to furnish a house…move our stuff in, and we're going to have to pay rent in DC (one of the most expensive cities) and our hometowns."
The pair had met at a friend’s place in July 2022 and hit it off. But even before then, the two politically aligned women kept a close eye on each other's races. So, it made sense when one day Lee leaned over her seat to ask Ramirez, 41, the all-too-familiar freshman orientation question, Do you want to be roommates?
The pair moved into a three-bedroom house within walking distance of their offices and have been living there for the last two years. "It was a godsend for us to find each other, and not just for the financial piece," says Ramirez, who splits her time between the town house with Lee and her home with her husband in Chicago. "But for the navigating Congress piece," interjects Lee.
"We relatable members really struggle in this place," explains Ramirez. "Because the truth is…we have to have uncomfortable conversations with colleagues of ours, who've never known what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck, who have never known what it's like to wonder if their husband is going to get deported because the Dream Act is about to expire, or a judge is going to make a decision.”
The Squad fights for political survival
Ramirez and Lee, who were adopted into the progressive political coalition known as the “Squad,” need allies in Congress now more than ever. The new generation of progressives — the lawmakers most vocally championing issues like a ceasefire in Gaza, student loan forgiveness, immigrant rights, and curbing money in politics — is bracing for the fight of their political lives.
In New York, AIPAC's Super PAC United Democracy Project spent over $14 million in a successful bid to oust fellow squad member Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) from his seat. Then in Missouri, AIPAC and its allies helped unseat one of the progressive movement's most prominent voices, Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO). In total, AIPAC’s PAC is expected to spend roughly $100 million working to defeat progressives who've called for a ceasefire in Gaza, putting the entire Squad, including Lee and Ramirez, on notice.
Although AIPAC sat out Lee's primary race this cycle, her opponent received significant financial contributions from billionaire Jeffrey Yass, a strong supporter of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And Lee says she's prepared to face off against big-dollar donors again in November’s general election, whether that's AIPAC or other well-funded organizations.
"In my race, we are always at risk of monied interests coming in and trying to influence the election," says Lee, adding, "As we say, let's stay ready to get ready, right? Our job is always to prepare as if your challenge could come any day."
However, Lee notes that candidates from working-class backgrounds vying to represent working-class communities simply can't withstand the kind of “dark money” spending that occurred in Bowman’s race. "A district like mine would not be able to sustain raising $20 million for me every two years like that," explains Lee. "And the people who are most likely to be impacted are the people who are the least likely to have historic traditional access to money, the people who are not from the country club class, right? Jamaal Bowman was a school principal. I came from a working-class Black neighborhood. I was an organizer. Cori Bush was a nurse, an activist, an organizer."
Joanna Zdanys, deputy director of the Brennan Center's Elections & Government Program, notes that money can be a massive barrier to entry into politics for women of color and people without access to personal wealth or traditional fundraisers. "We know that women especially are underrepresented at all levels of government. You know, they make up about half of the United States population but are less than a third of congressional and state officeholders. And this disparity is even greater for women of color," says Zdanys. "And research shows that fundraising is a major barrier to entry for women, especially for primaries. It's incredibly expensive to run for office and it's getting more expensive all the time."
Ramirez, who has yet to face the same torrent of outside spending in her race, says the point of going after Bowman was to send a clear warning to progressives to shut up and stand down, especially on calls for a ceasefire. Unfortunately, she says that for some of her colleagues, it's worked. "I asked a colleague about a recent vote two weeks ago, like why would you vote inconsistent with how you [typically] vote and their response was, Did you see what happened to Jamaal?" Ramirez recounts. "This is the reality of what's happening. It's a sickening effect of big, unaccountable dark money in our democratic elections and it has devastating effects on [our] communities, especially communities of color."
Despite the risks, Lee and Ramirez say they're committed to continuing to push the envelope –– because for them these issues aren't just political, they're personal.
A fight for her family
When Ramirez and her husband, Boris Hernandez, married in October 2020, the country appeared to be on the precipice of change. "Immediately after we got married, I told him we needed to apply for an adjustment of status," recalls Ramirez, whose husband, a DACA recipient, arrived in the United States when he was 14 years old from the same town as Ramirez’s family in Guatemala. "And he said to me, 'No, let's wait because if Joe Biden wins, he's willing to give dreamers a pathway to citizenship. It'll be faster and it won't be you who does it,'” she says.
Only that didn't happen. A year later, Ramirez says her husband came to her "heartbroken," asking her to apply for the status adjustment that would help him get on the pathway to citizenship. To this day, he's still undocumented and the fear that she could lose her husband to deportation looms large over the freshman congresswoman.
Ramirez says she recounted her husband's story to President Biden during an immigration meeting. "You get to choose what kind of president you are," she recalls telling Biden. "Do you want to be the president who keeps families together or separates them?"
During the meeting, Ramirez gave feedback on an upcoming executive order that helped to create a clearer path to citizenship for undocumented spouses of US citizens, among other immigration-related reforms pushing the President to help keep mixed-status families together. After a lawsuit from 16 Republican-led states, a federal court paused the program.
A freshman congresswoman speaking plainly and out of turn in front of the head of her party isn’t how things are done in Washington, says Ramirez. But she knew she had to take the opportunity when she had it to push Biden. "Our people have no time to wait," she says. "They're tired of waiting."
While much of what gets argued about in the halls of Congress is theoretical for many members, Lee says the stakes are different when these issues impact you directly. As a first-generation college and law school graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt, Lee knows no one will fight for student loan forgiveness harder than someone who understands the weight of it. "I represent the lived experiences of somebody who was working class, a Black woman in the Mon Valley. And I recognize that the whole purpose of us having a reflective democracy and representative government is that those experiences are supposed to have space," she says.
Nina Smith, a communications strategist and former senior advisor to former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, says Lee, Ramirez, and other members of the Squad are doing something new and that's going to ruffle some feathers. "The Squad shook Washington because they came in and they didn't do things the way things are done in Washington," says Smith, who has also worked with the Working Families Party, a minor political party founded in New York that also supports progressive campaigns, including Ramirez and Lee's. "Washington is a place that is very built on structure and tradition, and a lot of the progressives since 2018 who have come into Congress have walked the line and at times crossed the line over what that tradition means…and that can be unnerving for people who've spent 20, 30 years navigating those structures."
A new era in politics
Seated in Lee's office in the Cannon building on Capitol Hill, the two congresswomen trade jokes and observations about their colleagues, laughter echoing through the room. The pair speak in the casual lockstep of roommates who've stayed up until the early hours debating everything from television shows to politics. It's an ease that feels necessary as they fight not only for reelection but also for their place in a political system that up until their election had excluded them and people like them entirely.
"We are creating a home for liberated Black and brown folks," says Lee. "We're creating a home for liberated, marginalized folks who are like, you know what, electoral politics might not be our God, but it is a weapon."
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