Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to find her party's path back into power.

The New York Democrat is a more seasoned figure than when she burst onto the national scene during the first Trump administration. Elected by surprise in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez was a progressive insurgent, a democratic socialist, a frequent critic of her own party, and a social media sensation. She was also a leading character on Fox News, a figure conservatives loved to hate.

Seven years later, she remains an outsized public figure, who also has built relationships inside Congress with Democrats and even some Republicans. At 35, she is a veteran lawmaker.

We sat with Ocasio-Cortez this week just after House Democrats managed a show of unity: they all voted against a Republican budget plan, which barely passed. We talked through her party's path toward political recovery.

Here are a few key points from our video interview.

She thinks Republicans' early moves will hurt them.

"The Republican Party is making certain large errors right now," she said, predicting that an $880 billion cut to Medicaid would affect many voters' health care, and that the president's bid to fire many federal workers will degrade critical services.

She's still defending people without legal status.

Since their election defeat, some Democrats have suggested their party needs a fresh approach to immigration. Many voters saw President Biden's administration as too lax toward people in the U.S. without legal status.

Ocasio-Cortez insists that she still favors a path to citizenship. And she publicly feuded with Tom Homan, President Trump's border czar, after she held an online know-your-rights seminar for people who feared being confronted by immigration agents.

When threatened with investigation, she challenged the Justice Department to try it.

Homan told Fox News that he had asked the Justice Department if she was violating the law by trying "to educate people how they evade law enforcement."

"I was informing all of my constituents of their constitutional protections and in particular, their constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure," Ocasio-Cortez told NPR. She said she intended to put a question to the Justice Department herself: "Well, there is a member of the Trump administration who is threatening and seeks to open an inquiry. And are you going to do it?"

After the interview, the Democrat sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, which she shared with NPR. "I write to request clarity on whether the Department of Justice has yielded to political pressure and attempts to weaponize the agency against elected officials whose speech they disagree with."

Like Trump, she says government doesn't work for many people.

"Everything feels increasingly like a scam," she said. "Not only are grocery prices going up, but it's like everything has a fee and a surcharge. And I think that anger is put out at government."

The Democrat asserts that in her view, government is working very well for the wealthy, while often failing ordinary people.

Unlike Trump, she doesn't want to drastically cut government.

"I mean to the FAA? No. To the NIH? No," she said. "I actually don't want someone taking a wrecking ball to someone's chemotherapy to just see what happens."

She said she was open to examining "certain things like Medicare Advantage that I think is a scam, " allowing private insurers to collect extra premiums.

Reena Advani and Adam Bearne produced and edited this story for broadcast. Majd Al-Waheidi edited it for the web.

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