Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, focused on the inside conversation within the White House and the Pentagon, on K Street, under the Dome, and among the media companies covering it all. Tonight, news and notes on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s next moves.

But first…

• McCarthy’s Budget Confusion: The week after Joe Biden introduced his $6.8 trillion 2024 budget, Republican members tell me they are starting to get nervous that Speaker Kevin McCarthy has yet to introduce his own and are now wondering how to respond. The House Freedom Caucus was ready to go public with their own rebuttal, of course, but more media-adroit members are still trying to figure out what their messaging should be and are waiting for directives from leadership. “What’s the plan? I wouldn’t be able to answer it,” said one G.O.P. member. This may be tenable for a few more days, but without a rebuttal, Democrats (as well as Republicans further to the right) are going to cement control of the narrative. House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington initially said that there’s no rush, and that the G.O.P.’s budget proposal could be released as late as May. After all, how do you lower the deficit without touching Social Security, Medicare or defense spending? What is clear is that the longer this takes, the narrative will persist that Republicans just can’t agree.
• The “Angry Mom” Movement: Speaking of the right, House Republicans are about to inject some red meat culture war politics directly into the body politic in the next couple of weeks when H.R. 5, a “Parental Bill of Rights” moves to the House floor, it’s a messaging bill that they hope will become a talker on Fox News. Not surprisingly, the text reads like legislation passed straight out of a swing-district school board, what the G.O.P. hopes will be their new electoral sweet spot. It includes: “Review curriculum, Know if a state changes educational standards, Review a school’s budget, Review a list of books and materials in the school library, Address the school board, etc. etc.”

  The goal is presumably to win back some portion of suburban women who were pissed off by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade but are equally susceptible to the anti-woke parental rights playbook pioneered by Glenn Youngkin and perfected by Ron DeSantis. As one G.O.P. strategist put it to me, “This has a real chance of stemming the tide of losses in suburban women. It’s really easy to say, why can’t you know what’s going on in your kids’ school? The angry mom movement, the angry momma bear, is the untold story as we head into 2024.”

In her earliest years on Capitol Hill, A.O.C. has contained multitudes. She was a #resistance hero, an inspiration, a right-wing target and trigger, and a veritable power center all her own. And yet, amid the chaos of the Trump years, she also posed a material challenge to leadership, a frustration to Democrats who wanted to stay united above all, and a font of vexation to policy wonks, who viewed her Green New Deal as the most well-known non-binding resolution of all time.

Five years into her career on the Hill, A.O.C. remains no less enigmatic or intriguing. Sure, now she’s a backbencher in the minority, supporting the agenda of a president whom she has challenged and a party leadership with whom she has occasionally jostled. None of this is abnormal, but it’s amplified given her celebrity and apparent optionality. A year ago, my Puck partner Dylan Byers observed that some cable news executives half-seriously believed that A.O.C. was one of the few people who could replace Rachel Maddow at MSNBC and preserve the network’s ratings. The water cooler chatter merely confirmed that, at the age of 33, she may be one of the most famous members of Congress in modern times.

But the role A.O.C. plays on Capitol Hill is quite different. Other members may have written, introduced and passed a bill or two by their third term on their own, or landed a spot on a powerful A-committee, like Appropriations, Ways and Means, Energy or Commerce. A.O.C. has barely done either. During her second term, she tried for a perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, perhaps the most powerful perch in Congress and the best place to actualize her Green New Deal. But Pelosi gave the seat dedicated to the New York delegation to Kathleen Rice, a member she may have had even less use for than Ocasio-Cortez. (Ocasio-Cortez voted for Pelosi for Speaker twice; Rice refused.) The Center for Effective Lawmaking named Ocasio-Cortez one of the least effective members of Congress in 2021, for introducing bills that never became law or moved in committee. In fairness, she’s passed amendments and in 2022, her bill to support debt relief for developing countries was included in the COMPETES act. She also worked with Chuck Schumer to insert a provision into the larger pandemic relief to make sure that FEMA paid for Covid funerals and another provision in 2022 that would invest $120 million in the environment of Queens.

These days, Ocasio-Cortez sits on the Natural Resources Committee as a Ranking member on the subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and is a vice ranking chair on Oversight—a committee that has become a safe harbor for The Squad and young freshmen progressives whom other chairs can’t stomach. And while her posting as vice ranking chair may seem like a prominent role—and it is in the sense that she can fill in for ranking member Jamie Raskin—it was created in 2017 to elevate some of these restless younger members. It’s a great place for a talented cross-examiner like Ocasio-Cortez to continue to elevate her profile by earning some soundbites on cable news, but it’s hardly a place to pass legislation.

On the Hill, which is filled with gossips and more gossips and schadenfreude addicts and unofficial H.R. executives, observers are trying to decipher her strategy. Is she starting to choose legislative juice over celebrity? Is she playing the long game? Is this all part of some three-dimensional chess? Or is she suffering some payback from people she rubbed the wrong way when she first landed in D.C.?

Unsurprisingly, given the subject, there are a multitude of views. ​​“She has a huge impact but it’s just not in Congress,” said a former Democratic member. “She faces a choice: does she want to be productive or continue to become a celebrity and have influence the way celebrities have influence on Congress, which is not through legislation?” Another member put it differently: “She’s come to realize that you cannot be an agitator as a congressperson.”

But a person familiar with her thinking explained the plan more expansively. “She recognizes in this moment that she’s not in a powerful position within the caucus because of the way she came in,” this person said. “She sees that she’s set up for something bigger down the line.” One senior Senate source put it much more bluntly: “Only insiders care about policies and committees. The public doesn’t care. Donald Trump was president. What did he pass to get elected?”

Even her vice ranking role on Oversight suggests that, after years of inhabiting the Pelosi penalty box, Jeffries may be dispensing with bygones. “She’s become a better soldier,” another member of Congress said. “I don’t think she’s being marginalized, but I don’t think anyone is going out of their way to empower her either. So much bad blood was built early on.”

Optically, A.O.C. and Jeffries, who hail from neighboring districts, look like a powerhouse representation of the next generation of the Democratic party. But their paths to power have been very different. Jeffries has played the inside game, focusing on building relationships and passing legislation—by the time he was in his third term, he had passed three pieces of legislation that he wrote and introduced. He’s shown deference and respect to Pelosi, which likely helped to clear the field for him.

Jeffries, for his part, has certainly never stood in Ocasio-Cortez’s way. He cleared the way for her to get onto the financial services committee in her second term despite her relative lack of qualifications. Cognizant of her power, and not eager to stoke the flames, Hakeem has not been vindictive, either, but some wonder if he’s done enough to leverage her value. “I think the entire leadership of the Democratic party is stupid for not using her power,” an A.O.C. ally told me. “The Republicans elevate their young and use their energy. There was a weird hostility and I think some of it is jealousy.”

Even if she hasn’t been able to successfully pass her own bills, there’s no question that A.O.C. has been able to influence legislation by shifting the party further to the left with her microphone. At the same time, however, the Squad isn’t quite what it was. As I reported in October, young progressive stars like Maxwell Frost and Greg Casar were not interested in joining the group, preferring to demur the branding and be their own people on the Hill.

But others caution that playing nice with colleagues is only the first step for A.O.C., whose office still suffers from high turnover and hasn’t yet mastered the artful logrolling that leads to power—creating bipartisan goodwill, raising money for others in the party and the D.C.C.C., and managing up to leadership, which she has generally refused. “There’s an outside perception that she’s an amazing transformative figure,” said an insider on Capitol Hill, where that’s far from reality.

The truth is that, unlike so many of the soulless suits who populate this town, A.O.C. has never been a strategic planner when it comes to her career. She’s just started to adjust to her fame, and the threats and stress that come with it. She speaks openly about the impact on her mental health and the need to take time off, as she did in August, ahead of the 2022 midterms. The source said that she also realizes that if she’s going to have a long career, she can’t keep sprinting at this pace. “She knows she’s got time. She can spend 10 years building a career and be the youngest member running for Senate,” said the person familiar with her thinking. “She’s pretty happy right now at being in a position in which she can influence legislation.”

Then again there’s always the risk that the longer A.O.C. stays in Congress, the more likely she will get sucked into the establishment. “What’s going to happen when a newer member of Congress calls her a sellout for striking a deal?” asked the former member. “It might not be worth it.” Fortunately for her, only all of Washington is watching.