A Sunday morning worship service at one of America’s most storied churches became the backdrop for a political speech by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Mother’s Day, May 10, 2026 — and the congresswoman walked away having made at least one verifiably false claim from the pulpit.
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, carries a legacy that few institutions in America can match. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as the church’s co-pastor from 1960 until his assassination in 1968.
Today, its Senior Pastor is Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who holds the rare distinction of leading both a historic congregation and a seat in the United States Senate.
Ocasio-Cortez arrived at the church that Sunday not as an invited guest, but as a member of the congregation.
She told those gathered that she had simply come “to be in beloved community,” and that Warnock had reached out to her that very morning asking if she would like to address the church.
Warnock introduced her by noting her Bronx roots, her degree from Boston University, and her early career as an intern for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. What followed was a nearly five-minute address that quickly left Sunday worship behind.
“I don’t take lightly the peril that we are facing just one week after the Voting Rights Act was gutted,” Ocasio-Cortez declared to the congregation, immediately setting the political tone for her remarks.
She was referencing the Supreme Court’s April 29, 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. By a 6-3 margin divided along ideological lines, the court struck down Louisiana’s redrawn congressional map, which had created a second majority-Black district, ruling it constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, held that while compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act could in principle serve as a compelling interest in redistricting, it did not justify Louisiana’s approach in this case.
The ruling stopped short of invalidating Section 2 altogether, though Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent warned the decision effectively hollowed out one of the nation’s most consequential civil rights statutes.
In the ruling’s immediate aftermath, Republican-governed states including Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee moved rapidly into legislative special sessions to eliminate majority-Black districts that had previously carried federal protection under Section 2.
From the Ebenezer pulpit, Ocasio-Cortez pressed further:
“And in the days since, we have learned why the Voting Rights Act existed, as the maps in Tennessee and Louisiana, across this country, as the Supreme Court, to the reverend’s point in Virginia, overturned the maps, 10 to one, to literally draw Black Americans out of power.”
Her account of what happened in Virginia did not hold up to scrutiny.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to strike down a redistricting referendum that had been crafted and advanced by Democrats, finding the measure violated procedural requirements embedded in the Virginia Constitution.
The map that the Virginia court invalidated was not one designed to benefit Republicans.
It was a Democrat-drawn map that would have delivered the party a 10-to-1 tilt in Virginia’s congressional delegation. The court’s ruling kept the existing map — which gives Democrats a 6-to-5 advantage — in place.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said following the ruling that “Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose,” adding that the RNC had “led the charge in court against this blatant power grab” and that Democrats had poured “more than $66 million into an effort to lock in control and silence voters.”
Back at Ebenezer, Ocasio-Cortez leaned into the church’s civil rights heritage to frame her political message.
She referenced the biblical figures of Deborah and Daniel, and invoked Dr. King — who she said “believed in the audacious idea that maybe this country could maybe live up to the promises we made in our founding documents.”
She closed her remarks with a direct declaration to the congregation: “We are not going back!” The visit generated significant national attention. Ocasio-Cortez later posted on social media: “Thank you, @ReverendWarnock, for welcoming me to Ebenezer Baptist Church today. As legislatures across the South seek to draw Black Americans out of power, we gathered this Sunday to steel ourselves for the work ahead. We will always stand together, and we will not go back.”
Ocasio-Cortez is currently running for her fifth term in Congress and has not ruled out seeking higher office in 2028, though she has neither confirmed nor denied interest in a presidential or Senate run.
