Riley Gaines has fiercely criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez following the congresswoman’s remarks about her tie with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Gaines and Thomas competed side-by-side at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, where Thomas secured her first victory.

In their sole head-to-head race, both swimmers finished in fifth place, a result often highlighted in discussions about Gaines amid her ongoing legal challenges.

The topic resurfaced Monday afternoon when Gaines and Ocasio-Cortez engaged in a heated exchange on social media.

The confrontation began after Gaines posted a photo of Ocasio-Cortez with Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders at the ‘New York Is Not For Sale’ rally.

Riley Gaines hit back at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for trolling her for tying with Lia Thomas

Gaines and Ocasio-Cortez became embroiled in a war-of-words on social media on Monday

Gaines posted the picture on X, along with the caption: ‘We’re being destroyed from within’ and it didn’t take long for Ocasio-Cortez to fire back. 

In reference to their 2022 race, Ocasio-Cortez wrote: ‘Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth’. 

In response, Gaines wrote: ‘It’s *always* “we support women’s rights!” until it’s a woman who wants the right to compete & undress free from less than mediocre men Keep your mentally ill men out of our sports, locker rooms, prisons, etc.’

However, she didn’t stop there. In a follow-up post, she wrote: ‘It’s always hilarious when they think they’ve landed a “gotcha” by pointing out I was the 5th-fastest woman *in the nation* yet they conveniently forget the mediocre man who ranked 462nd in the men’s division lol. Misogynistic dunce’.

Before her transition, Thomas had previously competed for the University of Pennsylvania on their men’s swimming team, where she ranked 462nd in the division.

The fiery back-and-forth comes one month after Gaines secured a huge win in her legal battle to kick biological men out of women’s sport. 

It was reported by Outkick that a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that the Title IX claims against the NCAA can move forward to the next stage, in a big win for Gaines and her fellow female athletes.

The lawsuit surrounds NCAA policies that have allowed biological male athletes to compete in women’s sports, and stems from the 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships, in which Thomas won a national title.

Gaines competed against biological male Thomas (left) at the NCAA Championships in 2022

Gaines and Ocasio-Cortez traded verbal barbs over the former’s performances in the pool

Thomas won a national championship after competing against Gaines back in 2022 

At that event, Thomas – a biological male – used the women’s locker rooms, showers and restrooms, after Georgia Tech hosted under an NCAA agreement that gave the association operational control of the venue.

‘[Thomas] was full naked and, of course, full intact inches away from where we, 18-, 19-, 20-year-old girls, were fully undressed,’ Gaines told Fox News in March. 

The original lawsuit named Georgia officials and the Georgia Tech Athletic Association but the court has now dismissed those, keeping only the NCAA as a defendant in the case as Gaines and Co seek to hold them accountable for previous policies that allowed transgender athletes to compete.

While the case is allowed to progress, the court also threw out two further claims against the association, keeping only the Title IX claim – and the suit will now center around deciding whether the NCAA received federal funding.

Gaines herself has become the de facto spokesperson for kicking transgender athletes out of women’s sport, regularly appearing in the media to give her views on the controversial matter.