Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is warning his colleagues that if they mess with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they could be inviting trouble, McClatchy reports.

Said Comer: “A lot of Republicans are making a mistake picking on her.”

He said the Bronx congresswoman is smart, has a “movement of millennials” and that Republicans should watch closely before tangling with her.

A new Gallup poll finds that while half of U.S. adults were unfamiliar with or had no opinion of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in September “after her seismic primary win over the summer, that figure has shrunk to 29% today.”

“But the increased visibility has not improved her overall standing with Americans. Whereas the public had mixed views of Ocasio-Cortez in September, her image now tilts slightly negative, with 31% viewing her favorably and 41% unfavorably.”

“I am thinking that probably the attention she is getting is a convenient partnership between the media, who kind of likes celebrities, and the Republicans, who want a target.”

— Former Rep. Dick Gephrdt (D-MO), quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)’s chief of staff helped establish two political action committees that paid a corporation he ran more than $1 million in 2016 and 2017,” the Washington Post reports.

“Brand New Congress LLC, the corporation owned by Saikat Chakrabarti, was also paid $18,880 for strategic consulting by Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign in 2017, records show. The following year, he worked as a volunteer to manage her campaign, according to his LinkedIn profile.”

“The arrangement, first reported by conservative outlets, left hidden who ultimately profited from the payments — a sharp juxtaposition with Ocasio-Cortez’s calls for transparency in politics. She has called dark money ‘the enemy to democracy.”

It’s unclear whether Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “actually still lives in the Parkchester neighborhood that has been so closely tied to her rise,” the New York Post reports.

“Her apartment’s next-door neighbor said she had never seen Ocasio-Cortez. Another neighbor, who has lived down the hall from the congresswoman’s apartment for the last 40 years, said he’d never seen her or her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, who has claimed the address as his own since last spring.”

AOC responds: “I still live in my hood and literally instagrammed from my apartment tonight. A man was just arrested last week with a stockpile of guns specifically trying to kill me & others, so yeah I’m not gonna disclose my personal address or tell people when I move. Sorry!”

Ana Maria Archila, the woman who had a widely seen confrontation with former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) last year over his support for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, on Tuesday will attend the State of the Union address as a guest of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), The Hill reports.

Matt Taibbi: “One of the first things you learn covering American politicians is that they’re not terribly bright.”

“The notion that Hill denizens are brilliant 4-D chess players is pure myth, the product of too many press hagiographies of the Game Change variety and too many Hollywood fantasies like House of Cards and West Wing.”

“The average American politician would lose at checkers to a zoo gorilla. They’re usually in office for one reason: someone with money sent them there, often to vote yes on a key appropriation bill or two. On the other 364 days of the year, their job is to shut their yaps and approximate gravitas anytime they’re in range of C-SPAN cameras…”

“We’ve seen this a lot in recent weeks with the ongoing freakout over newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Lest anyone think any of the above applies to ‘AOC,’ who’s also had a lot to say since arriving in Washington, remember: she won in spite of the party and big donors, not because of them.”

A new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll finds that 74% of Democrats (and people who lean Dem) would consider voting for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) if she were old enough to run for president.

In an interview on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that she gives “zero fucks” about criticism she’s received from members of the Democratic party.

She added: “If you think activism is inherently divisive – I mean, today is Martin Luther King Day. People called Martin Luther King divisive in his time. We forget he was wildly unpopular when advocating for the Civil Rights Act. I think that what we really need to realize is that social movements are the moral compass and should be the moral compass for our politics.”