Beginnings

Born on June 22, 1949 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and raised in Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren earned a B.S. from the University of Houston in 1970 and a J.D. from Rutgers Law School in 1976. She subsequently taught law at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas, the University of Houston, the University of Michigan, and Rutgers. Then, in 1992 she began a two-decade stint as a professor at Harvard Law School.

Warren Claims Native American Heritage

In 1984, Warren, claiming to be partially of Cherokee heritage, contributed five recipes to a cookbook titled Pow Wow Chow, which was edited by her cousin and was, according to its introduction, a compilation of “special recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families.” It was later learned, however, that Warren had plagiarized at least three of her five recipes. Two of those three originated at Le Pavilion, an exclusive French restaurant in Manhattan, and, according to Breitbart.com, “had appeared in an article written by Pierre Franey of the New York Times News Service that was published in the August 22, 1979 edition of the Virgin Islands Daily News.” Warren copied both of the recipes word-for-word. The third plagiarized recipe, “Herbed Tomatoes,” was apparently lifted from a 1959 piece in Better Homes and Gardens. For further details about Warren’s plagiarism, click here.

In April 1986, when Warren was a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, she filled out a handwritten registration form with the Texas State Bar in which she identified her race as “American Indian.” This fact would not be reported by any media outlet until February 2019.

From 1986 to 1995, Warren—without specifying her heritage—listed herself as a minority professor in the Association of American Law Schools Directory. A 1996 articile in the Harvard Crimson quoted Harvard Law spokesman Michael Chmura identifying Warren as “Native American.” Two years later, the paper dubbed Warren “the first woman with a minority background to be tenured” at the law school. According to historian Victor Davis Hanson, Warren “dropped her Native American claims as soon as she at last received tenure and found her … con suddenly superfluous—to the apparent unconcern of her similarly cynical but now mum employer, Harvard.”

Warren and the FDIC & NBRC

In addition to her professorial pursuits, Warren also has been a member of the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, which focuses on “expanding access to banking services” and “promot[ing] asset accumulation” for “underserved populations.” Moreover, she has served as vice president of the American Law Institute and as the chief adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

Warren Co-Authors Book About an Unfair Financial System

In 2003 Warren and her daughter, Amelia Tyagi — who would later become the founder and chair of the progressive think tank Demos — co-wrote a book titled The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. The authors contend that because of the high fixed costs that modern-day Americans face, two-income families today are generally less financially stable than were single-income families in the 1970s. Warren and Tyagi portray a financial system where “the game is stacked against” ordinary Americans who seek “to provide a decent life for their children.” In the book’s Introduction, Warren praises leftist organizations like the Center for American Progress, Demos, the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, and the New America Foundation for having helped raise people’s consciousness about “issues related to families’ economic stability.” She also notes, proudly, that her book has been quoted by such Democrat luminaries as Howard Dean, John Edwards, Richard Gephardt, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry.

Claims of Racial Injustice in America

On March 19, 2004, at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, Warren spoke at a symposium entitled “Critical Race Theory: The Next Frontier,” alongside a number of academics who, according to FreeBeacon.com, “have advocated for corporate and government reparations for African-Americans, criticized the concept of U.S. citizenship, and accused the United States of operating under a system of ‘apartheid.’” Founded by the late Derrick Bell, critical race theory is an academic discipline which maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines.

Warren subsequently published an article in connection with that symposium, in the Fall 2004 issue of Washington and Lee Law Review. Entitled “The Economics of Race: When Making it to the Middle Is Not Enough,” Warren’s piece stated:

“A growing body of work examines how black families are having much greater difficulty accumulating wealth and how tax codes or other seemingly neutral statutes systematically disadvantage black families…. Hispanic and black homeowners face sharply increased risks of filing for bankruptcy as compared to their white counterparts. These data reinforce the view that middle class Hispanic and blacks are far more vulnerable to the financial difficulties facing every family.”

Flipping Homes for Profit

In 2006 Warren and her daughter co-authored a second book, titled All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, wherein they identified as a myth the idea that “you can make big money buying houses and flipping [reselling] them quickly.” But as National Review Online (NRO) has chronicled, Warren herself had already bought and sold several properties in her native Oklahoma for substantial profit. Specifically:

• Warren and her husband purchased a home for $50,000 in 1991, subsequently filed permits for mechanical and plumbing repairs, and eventually sold the house in 1998 for $109,500, a 119% gain.
• In August 1993 Warren bought a home for $30,000, quickly obtained permits to do plumbing and electrical work, and sold it five months later for $115,000, a 383% profit.
• Also in 1993 Warren purchased a foreclosed property in Oklahoma City for $4,000. Eleven years later she transferred the home to her brother and his wife, who eventually sold it for $30,000 in 2006; neither Warren nor her brother had ever filed any permits to make improvements on the dwelling.
• In June 1993 Warren bought another foreclosed property in Oklahoma City for $61,000 and, despite filing no building permits to renovate, sold it for $95,000 in December 1994.
• In 1994 Warren purchased yet another Oklahoma City house for $72,000 and, having filed no building permits to renovate, sold it for $104,000 in 1998.

Also in All Your Worth, Warren counseled against borrowers taking out home equity lines of credit. “Whether you are borrowing to pay down your credit card debt, play the stock market, or travel to Tahiti,” she wrote, “borrowing against your home is still borrowing–period. It is not saving, it is not smart, it is not savvy. A second mortgage or a home equity line of credit is plain old Steal-from-Tomorrow debt.”

Proposing the Forgiveness of College Loans in Exchange for “Public Service”

In 2007, Warren wrote a piece in the Harvard Law and Policy Review proposing the creation of a federally funded “Service Pays” program in which the government would “increase the amount students can borrow” for college loans, and would then “forgive students one year of college expenses for each year the student worked in public service after college.” This, Warren explained, would enable “typical students” to “begin adult life debt-free at twenty-six with a college diploma and four years of work experience.” Such an arrangement, she added, should also be extended to students who failed to graduate from college.

Warren envisioned Service Pays as “a reformed Peace Corps that would place young people with aid and development organizations around the world,” to assist with such tasks as “rebuilding after natural disasters”; “teaching English”; “improving water usage”; teaching math and science in “urban and rural schools with a substantial minority or lower-income student body”; running “after-school tutoring programs”; “clean[ing] up public buildings and parks”; “rebuild[ing] roads and bridges;” “improv[ing] the environment”; and “organiz[ing] communities to reduce crime and develop the local economy.” Added Warren: “Non-profit organizations that want to participate in Service Pays could apply to the program and be considered on the same basis that AmeriCorps currently uses: ‘Direct service activities must address local environmental, educational, public safety,… or other human needs.” Critics of Warren’s proposal observed that it had the potential to be used as a means of assigning young adults to work with leftwing organizations that would indoctrinate them to a particular political viewpoint.

Calling for More Government Regulation on Banks

Also in 2007, Warren began to advocate for the creation of a federal agency – modeled on the Consumer Product Safety Commission – to protect the public from “over-priced credit products, risky subprime mortgages, and misleading insurance plans.” She called for greater “regulation” by the government to counter the devious tactics of “lenders [who] have deliberately built tricks and traps into some credit products so they can ensnare families in a cycle of high-cost debt.”

Advocating Government Bailouts of Private Citizens

In September 2008, as the U.S. faced its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Warren penned an article titled “Who Will Bail Out American Families?” In that piece, she recommended that just as the federal government had bailed out failing U.S. banks, the AIG insurance company, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, it should likewise bail out American families facing bankruptcy. Depicting such people as innocent victims who had been tricked by unscrupulous bankers, Warren wrote: “They are casualties of a financial system that saw them not as customers, but as prey … a financial system that has been devastated by mindless deregulation and unchecked greed.”

Congressional Oversight Panel

In November 2008, Senator Harry Reid appointed Warren to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel that Congress had created to monitor the effectiveness of the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which was designed to bail out failing U.S. financial institutions; Warren’s duty was to report regularly to Congress on whether TARP funds were being used “in the best interest of the American people.”

Lamenting the Financial Distress Associated with Capitalism

In 2009 Warren co-wrote an article titled “The Increasing Vulnerability of Older Americans: Evidence From the Bankruptcy Court.” Asserting that “the economic news for seniors is consistently grim,” this piece stated that “age is increasingly associated with financial distress and with seeking protection from creditors through the bankruptcy courts.” According to the authors, since 1991 “Americans age fifty-five or older have experienced the sharpest increase in bankruptcy filings,” and “the rate of bankruptcy filings among those ages sixty-five and older has more than doubled.”

Also in 2009, Warren co-authored an article asserting that some 62.1% of all U.S. bankruptcies were the result of medical expenses that people could not afford – supposedly a 49.6% rise over 2001 bankruptcies due to medical expenses. Emphasizing that few Americans were immune from the possibility of becoming insolvent, the authors noted that “most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations”; moreover, “three quarters had health insurance.” Megan McArdle, the business and economics editor for The Atlantic, subsequently pointed out that this study was statistically flawed, and that no rise in medical-related bankruptcies had in fact occurred.

In 2009 Warren appeared in Michael Moore‘s anti-capitalist film titled Capitalism: A Love Story. In a taped interview, the filmmaker told Warren that “capitalism in and of itself, at least the capitalism we know now, is immoral, it’s not democratic, and worst of all, it doesn’t work…” Warren did not disagree, replying: “But we made up these rules, and the rules are of men, of people. We pick what the rules are. The rules have not been written for ordinary families, for the people who actually do the work. We have to rewrite those rules.” When Moore then blamed the greed of “corporate America” for allegedly having tricked people “into these adjustable rate mortgages [which] they may not be able to pay … back,” Warren said: “Its a big part of what happened, and then just layer in on top of that: ‘Can we sell them more credit cards that are loaded with tricks and traps?’”

Lucrative Personal-Injury Lawsuits

In September 2009, Warren worked as a consultant for Travelers Insurance in the Supreme Court case Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Bailey. In that case, Travelers won permanent immunity from all personal-injury lawsuits related to its bankrupt former client, the asbestos-manufacturing Johns Manville Corporation. Records show that Travelers had been aware of the dangers of asbestos for decades, but had misled the public about those dangers. In a Supreme Court brief, Warren criticized the “enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers” who represented asbestos victims. She received more than $200,000 in legal fees for her services.

Warren’s Growing Influence

Warren was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2009 and 2010.

Portraying Financial Institutions & the U.S. Economy As Crooked

In March 2010, Warren addressed a conference that also featured billionaire financier George Soros as a guest speaker. In her talk, Warren emphasized the need to shorten and simplify such documents as credit-card, mortgage, and car-loan agreements – so that people could no longer be “tricked and trapped into paying what [they] didn’t bargain for.”

In July 2010, Warren spoke at an East Hampton, New York event on the topic of “Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial Markets.” Fellow panelists included George Soros and Van Jones. That same month, Warren spoke at a Netroots Nation conference on the topic of “Building a Progressive Economic Vision.”

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Between 2007 and 2010, Warren’s idea of establishing a federal agency to protect financial-product consumers found considerable support in Congress and culminated in a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) being incorporated into a financial regulatory reform bill that was passed in summer 2010. In the summer of that year, Senator Tom Harkin circulated a petition advocating that Warren be named as director of the new CFPB. Warren was likewise endorsed for that position by Congressman Barney Frank, Democrat Senator Al Franken, the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, SEIU president Andrew Stern, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the activist organization MoveOn.

In July 2010, Warren singled out Rep. Barney Frank as the man who “deserves as much credit as anyone on this planet for keeping this Consumer Protection Financial Bureau [sic] and making it strong.”

On September 17, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Warren to be his special assistant in charge of organizing and establishing the CFPB; in this role, Warren would also serve as a special advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Senate approval was not needed for Warren’s appointment, though it would have been required if Obama had named her to be CFPB’s director; Obama was aware that the Senate was unlikely to have confirmed Warren for that post. Following Warren’s appointment, Republican Congressmen Darrel Issa (CA) and Spencer Bachus (AL) sent a letter to the White House requesting more information about what they called the “unusual arrangement” that was “undermining congressional oversight” over presidential appointments. (Notably, CFPB went on to become a haven for highly-paid federal workers. As of January 2017, some 449 CFPB employees were earning at least $100,000 per year, and 228 were getting more than $200,000 annually.)

Warren/Heather Booth Webinar

On April 6, 2010, Elizabeth Warren and Heather Booth were the special guests at a webinar — co-hosted by Americans For Financial Reform and Americans For Fairness In Lending — which focused on “where things stand in the movement for financial reform, and how everyday citizens can get involved in the fight to rein in the big banks and get the economy back on track.”

Running For Senate

On September 14, 2011, Warren announced that she would be running (in 2012) for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat which, at that time, was held by Republican Scott Brown. While campaigning that same month, Warren stated that the government and the public sector play a vital role in wealth creation:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own—nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces [sic] that the rest of us paid for…. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless—keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Claiming a Connection to the Occupy Wall Street Movement

In October 2011, Warren — while enjoying a $429,000 Harvard salary and residing in a $5 million mansion — expressed support for the anti-capitalism rallies which were staged in cities across the United States by Occupy Wall Street and other activist groups. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I support what they do.”

AFL-CIO Teach-In

Warren was scheduled to appear with two leading members of Democratic Socialists of America — Frances Fox Piven and Barbara Ehrenreich — at an October 12, 2011 “National Teach-In” sponsored by the AFL-CIO. The event focused on “the jobs crisis and student activists’ fight for worker’s rights, equal access to education, fair taxation, and economic and social justice.”

Warren’s “Native American” Heritage Resurfaces in Controversy

In April 2012, Warren became embroiled in controversy when the Boston Herald reported that during the 1990s, administrators at Harvard Law School had “prominently touted Warren’s Native American background … in an effort to bolster their diversity hiring record in the ’90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male.” When the media subsequently asked Warren’s Senate campaign for proof of the candidate’s tribal heritage, the campaign initially denied that Warren had ever boasted about it. Warren herself suggested that even if she were unable to produce documentation of a such a heritage, her family “lore” backed up her claim. “Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born,” said Warren. “These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native American[s] and talked about tribes since I was a little girl.” Speaking to a reporter on a local news station in Boston, Warren cited her the “high cheekbones” of her “pappaw” (grandfather) as further evidence of her Native American lineage. Said Warren soon thereafter: “I listed myself [as a minority] in the [professional law-school] directory [from 1986-1995] in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am.”

On May 1, 2012, it was reported that Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes had discovered that one of Warren’s great-great uncles had made a notation on his own marriage license indicating that his mother (Warren’s great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford) was a Cherokee. If that notation (which was not part of the official license) was accurate, it would make Warren 1/32 Cherokee. But in mid-May 2012, it was learned that the document bearing the aforementioned notation was merely an application for a marriage license, not the license itself. Further, census records list O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford as “white,” and Warren’s family is not listed in the Cherokee registry.

Notwithstanding the evidence that Warren’s Cherokee heritage claims were false, Warren repeated her claim in A Fighting Chance, a new book that she released in April 2014. In response to this, the aforementioned Twila Barnes wrote in a blog post: “She [Warren] could have used her new book to acknowledge the truth and apologize for her blatant disrespect of minorities, but instead, she’s continued to perpetuate the lie and attempted to portray herself as a victim.”

In that same post, Barnes then cited the following excerpt from Warren’s book: “What really threw me, though, were the constant attacks from the other side. I would almost persuade myself that I was starting to get the hang of full-throttle campaigning and then — bam! Out of left field, the state Republican Party, or the [Scott] Brown campaign, or some blogger would launch a rocket at me.” To that, Barnes wrote:

“Doing the research, finding the facts and sharing the truth about someone is not an attack. If people were launching rockets, it is because Warren gave them a big target. Research was done to determine if she had Cherokee ancestry. She didn’t have any. That is not an opinion. It is a sound conclusion based on a preponderance of evidence found in historical documents. No one had any control over the lies told except Elizabeth Warren. She had control over it when she opened her mouth and told the story. She also had control when she repeatedly defended her story, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If Elizabeth Warren was a victim, she was only a victim of her own arrogance and dishonesty. If she felt hurt and angry over what happened, she has no one to blame but herself. She could have, should have, just told the truth. She chose not to do that. I don’t feel sorry for her.”

In March 2018, Warren was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd,” where she was asked whether she would consider taking an easily accessible DNA test to address critics who had questioned her purported Native American heritage. But Warren did not answer the question, instead telling a story about how her mother and father had met and married as teenagers over the bitter objections of her father’s family, which opposed the couple’s union because the young woman was part Native American. “That’s the story that my brothers and I all learned from our Mom and our Dad, from our grandparents and all of our aunts and uncles. It’s a part of me, and nobody is going to take that part of me away — not ever,” said Warren. Todd, in response, reiterated his question, to which Warren replied: “I do know. I know who I am. And never used it for anything, never got any benefit from it anywhere.”

In October 2018, Warren shared with the Boston Globe the results of a DNA test conducted upon her by Stanford University researcher Carlos D. Bustamante. In a summary of his findings, Bustamante wrote: “The results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor … in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” This means that Warren’s ancestry is somewhere between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American – i.e., between .09 percent and 1.6 percent Native American. The average European-American, meanwhile, has 0.18 percent Native American DNA.

The Globe noted, moreover, that “because Native American leaders have asked tribal members not to participate in genetic databases,” there is no Native American DNA available for genetic testing. “To make up for the dearth of Native American DNA,” the paper reported, “Bustamante used samples from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia to stand in for Native American. That’s because scientists believe that the groups Americans refer to as Native American came to this land via the Bering Strait about 12,000 years ago and settled in what’s now America but also migrated further south.”

Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr. issued the following statement vis-a-vis Warren’s DNA test results:

“A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

Addressing the Democratic National Convention

On September 5, 2012, Warren spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Not Licensed to Practice Law in Massachusetts

In a September 24, 2012 interview with Boston’s 96.9 FM radio program Jim and Margery, Warren, who had provided paid legal services for many clients during the preceding decade—including the Simpson, Thacher, and Bartlett law firm that paid her $212,000 and listed her as “of counsel” in the 2009 brief they submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of their client, Travelers Insurance—admitted that she has never been licensed to practice law in Massachusetts. According to LegalInsurrection.com:

“[T]here are at least two provisions of Massachusetts law Warren may have violated. First, on a regular and continuing basis she used her Cambridge office for the practice of law without being licensed in Massachusetts.  Second, in addition to operating an office for the practice of law without being licensed in Massachusetts, Warren actually practiced law in Massachusetts without being licensed.”

Senator Warren

In November 2012, Warren was elected to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.

Midwest Academy awards

Positions on Minimum Wage, Social Security, & College Loans

In March 2013 Senator Warren suggested raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $22 per hour: “If we started in 1960, and we said [that] as productivity goes up … then the minimum wage was going to go up the same … if that were the case, the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour.” “What happened to the other $14.75?” she asked. “It sure didn’t go to the worker.”

In addition to a minimum-wage hike, Warren also favored an increase in Social Security benefits to retirees, notwithstanding the fact that with a rapidly rising number of baby boomers retiring, the Social Security program itself was headed inexorably toward fiscal collapse. As a December 2013 Wall Street Journal report explained:

“Undeterred by this undebatable solvency crisis, Sen. Warren wants to increase benefits to all seniors, including billionaires, and to pay for them by increasing taxes on working people and their employers. Her approach requires a $750 billion tax hike over the next 10 years that hits mostly Millennials and Gen Xers, plus another $750 billion tax on the businesses that employ them.

In an April 2014 interview with The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Warren cited the escalating cost of borrowing money for college as an example of how America has changed in recent times: “That’s what’s fundamentally changed. Look, it’s tough out there. It really is a rigged game, and it’s set up now over and over and over … that the rich get richer and the powerful get more powerful. They’ve got all the advantages of concentrated money and concentrated power.” The key to addressing this problem, said Warren, is to get involved in politics: “All we got on the other side, is we got our voices and we got our votes, and if we get out there and make something out of them, that’s how we make a difference.”

Claiming Sexism in the Senate

In an October 2014 interview with CNN, Warren was asked whether she felt that her male colleagues in the U.S. Senate sometimes treated her in a disrespectful or sexist manner because she was a woman. She answered curtly, “Yes.” When asked if she could elaborate, Warren said, “Nope. Nope. I’ve said all I’m gonna say.” The interviewer then asked whether the senator found the disparate treatment “surprising.” Warren sighed audibly and then replied: “Not really. I wish it were. But it’s hard to change these big, male-dominated institutions. What I am very happy about is that there are now enough women in the United States Senate to begin to change that place, and I think that’s just powerfully important…. You know, others have said it before me. If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu. And so it is important that we have women in the United States Senate, strong women, and women who are there to help advance an agenda that is important to women.”

Ethics Violation

In a January 2017 op-ed which she wrote for the Washington Post, Warren said “it is critical that each nominee [for newly elected President Donald Trump’s cabinet] follows basic ethics rules to ensure that they will act for the benefit of all the American people.” Emphasizing that nominees with “complex financial histories” must be “forthcoming and transparent,” she argued that financial disclosures were especially vital because they might “reveal potentially damaging information that may undermine fitness to serve.” A few days later, the Washington Free Beacon reported:

“Warren, meanwhile, continues to skirt congressional ethics laws by failing to include a $1.3 million line of credit against her Cambridge, Massachusetts home on financial disclosure forms. The line of credit was extended to Warren and her husband Bruce Mann in 2007 through financial giant Bank of America. It was first noted by the Boston Herald after Warren failed to included the line of credit as a liability on her 2014 financial disclosure filing. It was also absent from her 2015 filing.

“An aide for Warren, who is worth millions, defended the omission, stating at the time that a home equity line of credit like the one that Warren received from Bank of America doesn’t have the same reporting requirements as a typical home mortgage, which would have to be reported.

“The STOCK Act, which was signed into law in 2012, mandated that all members of Congress disclose details of any mortgages on their personal residences in their annual filings. The legislation, however, does not mention home equity lines of credit, which banks offer as alternatives to a mortgage. The Warren aide said that the senator had yet to borrow on the line of credit, which allowed her to leave it off disclosure forms. The exact terms of Warren’s deal with Bank of America such as her interest rate remain a mystery due to the lack of disclosure.”

Warren’s Hypocrisy on the “Gender Pay Gap”

Warren has long claimed — falsely and deceptively — that female workers in the United States are paid considerably less than equally qualified men who do the same work, and that the American workplace is thus “rigged against women.” As the Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday, April 5, 2017: “Warren has used Equal Pay Day, which fell on April 4 this year, in years past as an opportunity to speak out on the gender pay gap. Last year she took to the Senate floor to call Equal Pay Day a ‘national day of embarrassment’ and pledged to continue her ‘fight’ until the pay gap was erased. She gave similar statements on Equal Pay Day in 2015, 2014, and 2013, her first year in the Senate.” But as the Beacon further noted in its April 5 report, Warren now “failed to acknowledge Equal Pay Day for the first time in her Senate career after it was reported on Tuesday that women working in her Senate office earned just 71 percent of what was earned by men.”

Seeking to Punish a Conservative Broadcasting Group

In April 2018, Warren was one of 12 U.S. senators who sought to punish the Sinclair Broadcast Group – widely perceived as a conservative media company – which (a) consisted of 193 television stations and 614 channels in 89 markets nationwide, and (b) had recently announced plans to acquire the Tribune Media Company’s 42 TV stations in 33 markets, a merger that, if completed, would extend Sinclair’s reach to 72% of all American households. The twelve senators included Warren, Independent Bernie Sanders, and 10 other Democrats: Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Maria Cantwell, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, Tina Smith, Tom Udall, and Ron Wyden.

In a letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai, these senators expressed concern over the fact that Sinclair had recently aired an ad showing its various local anchors reading from a corporate script extolling the virtue of “balanced journalism”; stating that “truth is neither politically ‘left or right’”; emphasizing the importance of a “commitment” to reporting that “seek[s] the truth and strive[s] to be fair, balanced and factual”; criticizing “some members of the media” for “us[ing] their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’”; and condemning “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.”

Viewing the Sinclair ad as an implicit defense of President Donald Trump, who had long been under withering attack by media outlets nationwide, the senators wrote in their letter: “We are concerned that Sinclair is engaged in a systematic news distortion operation that seeks to undermine freedom of the press and the robust localism and diversity of viewpoint that is the foundation of our national broadcasting laws.” “We have strong concerns,” they added, “that Sinclair has violated the public interest obligation inherent in holding broadcast licenses. Sinclair may have violated the FCC’s longstanding policy against broadcast licensees deliberately distorting news by staging, slanting, or falsifying information.” The senators also demanded that the FCC put on hold its review of Sinclair’s potential merger with Tribune.

In his response, Pai said he “must respectfully decline” the senators’ request “in light of my commitment to protecting the First Amendment and freedom of the press.” “I understand that you disliked or disagreed with the content of particular broadcasts,” he added, “but I can hardly think of an action more chilling of free speech than the federal government investigating a broadcast station because of disagreement with its news coverage or promotion of that coverage.”

• Note: The information in this section is derived from: “Democrats Running for Office Pull Ads from Sinclair over Anchor Statements on Fake News” (TheBlaze.com, 4-4-2018); “Twelve Senators Seek FCC Probe of Sinclair News Scripts” (Reuters.com, 4-12-2018); “12 Senators Want FCC to Probe Sinclair” (Newsmax, 4-12-2018); “Ajit Pai Rejects ‘Chilling’ Democratic Request for FCC Investigation into Sinclair” (Washington Examiner, 4-12-2018).

Claiming That the Criminal Justice System Is Racist

During a question-and-answer session hosted by Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond at the historically black Dillard University in New Orleans, Warren delivered what she called “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … I mean front to back.” In the course of her remarks, the senator cited such things as disproportionate arrests of blacks for petty drug possession; an overburdened public defender system; and state laws that sometimes bar convicted felons from voting in political elections for the rest of their lives.

Reaction to a Murder Committed by Illegal Alien

In an August 2018 television interview on CNN, Warren was asked to comment on the recent death of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old student at the University of Iowa who had been murdered by an illegal immigrant from Mexico. She replied:

“I’m so sorry for the family here, and I know this is hard not only for the family but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa. But one of the things we have to remember is we need an immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where real problems are. Last month, I went down to the border, and I saw where children had been taken away from their mothers. I met with those mothers who had been lied to, who didn’t know where their children were, who hadn’t had a chance to talk to their children. And there was no plan for how they would be reunified with their children. I think we need immigration laws that focus on people who pose a real threat. And I don’t think mamas and babies are the place that we should be spending our resources. Separating a mama from a baby does not make this country safer.”

Ethics Violation

On October 29, 2018, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a non-partisan ethics watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics against Senator Warren and Senator Kamala Harris. Said the FACT complaint: “Senators Warren and Harris both sent campaign fundraising emails before the Senate vote on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Specifically, the campaign emails both stated Senators Warren and Harris’s official role and positions on the ongoing confirmation hearing and then made direct requests for campaign donations with ‘DONATE NOW’ and ‘CONTRIBUTE’ buttons. Senate ethics laws prohibit candidates from using the promise of official action or legislative work in a direct ask for campaign cash.” “This is a clear violation of the Senate Ethics rules which safeguard against the appearance or actuality of elected officials ‘cashing in’ on their official position for political purposes,” said FACT executive director Kendra Arnold.

Announcing Her 2020 Presidential Campaign

On December 31, 2018, Warren announced that she planned to run for the office of U.S. President in 2020.

Warren’s Desire to “Reshape Our Country and Our Economy”

On her presidential campaign website, Warren explicitly announced her desire to “reshape our country and our economy, restore our government, and save our democracy.” To achieve that end, she said “we need to be willing to fight for bold, structural solutions to the problems we face as a nation. That means tackling generations of racial injustice and systemic discrimination head on and building a government that works for everyone.”

Proposing a Wealth Tax

On January 24, 2019, Warren’s presidential campaign announced that Warren, if elected, planned to impose a 2 percent wealth tax on the holdings of any Americans with assets worth more than $50 million, and a 3 percent wealth tax on anyone whose assets are worth than $1 billion. Warren herself provided additional details in a series of tweets:

• “We need structural change. That’s why I’m proposing something brand new – an annual tax on the wealth of the richest Americans. I’m calling it the ‘Ultra-Millionaire Tax’ & it applies to that tippy top 0.1% – those with a net worth of over $50M.”
• “The rich & powerful run Washington. Here’s one benefit they wrote for themselves: After making a killing from the economy they’ve rigged, they don’t pay taxes on that accumulated wealth. It’s a system that’s rigged for the top if I ever saw one.”
• “The ultra-rich have rigged our economy & rigged our tax rules. We need structural change. That’s why I’m proposing something brand-new: An annual wealth tax on the tippy-top 0.1%. We’d get $3 trillion in new revenue to invest in rebuilding the middle-class. Let’s make it happen.”

That same day, Warren made the following remarks to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:

• “Look at it this way. For years now, for decades now, rich people have gone to Washington and said, ‘just tilt the playing field in our favor just a little bit.’ And then they come back and say, ’tilt it just a little bit more.’ And the next year, ’tilt it just a little bit more, just a little bit more, just a little bit more.’ Until today, in America, the top 1/10th of one percent has amassed about as much wealth as 90% of America.”
• “[T]he way that this is written is to say is to say first all of going to tax all your assets wherever located around the globe. So if you were planning to move them to Switzerland or some island, doesn’t make any difference. They are all going to be taxed. The second part of it is we’re going to build right into the administration of this tax that it has a very high rate of monitoring, of auditing. The rich people on the ultra-millionaire tax. So we’re going to be out there counting them and watching them. And the third part is once you identify these assets, it’s actually not that complicated and hard because unlike some other places that tried to build this one isn’t going to have a bunch of exceptions. This one says all your assets wherever located and we’re going to keep counting. And you’re going to have to to pay if you have more than $50 million in assets. This is the ultrarich. You’re going to have to pay 2% a year of that amount over $50 million.”

The Massive Implications of a Seemingly Small Wealth Tax

The Tax Foundation explains that a seemingly low-percentage wealth tax is actually massive, when we examine exactly how it affects a person’s after-tax return-on-investment:

“Compared to income taxes, wealth tax rates seem much lower, but this rate can be deceptive. The best way to interpret wealth tax rates is to translate them into an equivalent income tax rate. For example, consider an investor who owns a long-term bond with a fixed rate of return at 5 percent each year. A 3 percent annual wealth tax would imply that 60 percent of the capital income from owning the long-term bond would be remitted as tax—the 3 percent wealth tax translates to a 60 percent income tax rate in this example. A 5 percent annual wealth tax would equal a 100 percent income tax rate, because the wealth tax would take all this taxpayer’s capital income. A 10 percent wealth tax, calculated in the same manner, implies that all capital income earned in this year plus part of the stock would have to be turned over as taxes, which means a 200 percent income tax.

“The after-tax rates of return for these scenarios are presented in Table 1. Under the assumption of a fixed pretax return of 5 percent, an annual wealth tax of 10 percent results in a negative rate of return at -5 percent.

Table 1. Wealth Tax Rates vs. Equivalent Income Tax Rates

	Pretax return	Annual wealth tax rate	Implied income tax rate	After-tax return
Scenario A	5%	2%	40%	3%
Scenario B	5%	3%	60%	2%
Scenario C	5%	5%	100%	0%
Scenario D	5%	10%	200%	-5%

“Seemingly low 2 percent and 3 percent wealth tax rates imply much higher income tax rates; in this example, 40 percent and 60 percent, respectively. For safe investments like bonds or bank deposits, a wealth tax of 2 or 3 percent may confiscate all interest earnings, leaving no increase in savings over time.”

Warren’s 2020 Presidential Platform on Key Issues

On her presidential campaign website, Warren outlined her positions on a host of major issues, including the following:

• 100% Clean Energy for America: The science is clear. The world’s leading experts have long known that climate change is caused by human beings, it is here, and it is accelerating. We already see its effects — record floods, devastating wildfires, 100-year storms that happen every year … The climate crisis will leave no one untouched. But it also represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity: to create millions of good American jobs in clean and renewable energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing…. The world must limit warming to below 1.5° C to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes, cutting carbon pollution roughly in half by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. As the world’s largest historical carbon polluter, the United States has a special responsibility to lead the way. That’s why I’m an original supporter of the Green New Deal, which challenges us to … launch a ten-year mobilization through 2030 to achieve net-zero domestic greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible.
• A Fair and Welcoming Immigration System: Immigrants have always been a vital source of American strength…. President Trump sees things differently. He’s advanced a policy of cruelty and division that demonizes immigrants. He’s axed programs that protect young Dreamers and asylum seekers fleeing violence and upheaval. He’s championed dramatic cuts to legal immigration, and imposed a bigoted ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries. He’s threatened to close our ports of entry to lawful transit and commerce, and exploited a crisis of his own making at the border to score cheap political points. But while Trump may have taken the system to its most punitive extreme, his racist policies build on a broken immigration system and an enforcement infrastructure already primed for abuse…. We need real reform that provides cost-effective security at our borders, addresses the root causes of migration, and provides a path to status and citizenship so that our neighbors don’t have to live in fear.
• A Fair Workweek for America’s Part-Time Workers: My Fair Workweek plan will: Require employers with 15 or more employees to give two weeks of advance notice of work schedules;… Empower employees to ask for schedules that work for them without fear of retaliation;… Ensure a right to rest between shifts…. Require employers to offer additional work hours to existing, qualified, part-time workers before hiring new employees or contractors…. Provide benefits to part-time workers.
• A Great Public School Education for Every Student: Funding for public K-12 education is both inadequate and inequitable. I’ve long been concerned about the way that school systems rely heavily on local property taxes, shortchanging students in low-income areas and condemning communities caught in a spiral of decreasing property values and declining schools. Despite a national expectation of progress, public schools are more segregated today than they were thirty years ago, and the link between school funding and property values perpetuates the effects of ongoing housing discrimination and racist housing policies, like redlining, that restricted homeownership and home values for Black Americans.
• A Working Agenda for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders: More than seventy-five years after Fred Korematsu went to the Supreme Court to fight for the human rights of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were unconstitutionally incarcerated, we are still failing to guarantee true equality for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
• A Working Agenda for Black America: For too long, Black communities have been locked out of opportunity…. Long before I got into politics, I wrote about how Black Americans are more likely to fall into bankruptcy than white Americans, and how payday and subprime lenders are basically legally sanctioned corporate swindlers who prey on families of color…. My student debt cancellation plan will help close the wealth gap between Black and white families. My criminal justice plan will end the practice of mass incarceration that has destroyed the lives of so many Black and brown men and their families. My housing plan will help families living in formerly redlined areas buy a home and start building the kind of wealth that government-sponsored discrimination denied their parents and grandparents. My plan for entrepreneurs of color will level the playing field by creating a new program with $7 billion in funding to provide grantsto entrepreneurs of color. My environmental justice plan includes justice for the Black and Brown communities that have struggled with the impact of pollution, and my plan respects the rights of Native Americans to protect their lands and be good stewards of this earth. And on day one of my Administration, I will use my executive authority to start closing the pay gap between women of color and everyone else – because it’s about time we fully valued the work of women of color.
• Accelerating the Transition to Clean Energy: Climate change is an existential threat. It’s real, it’s man-made, and we’re running out of time to address it. Our government needs to take bold action and use all the tools available to combat climate change before it’s too late. That’s why I’m proud to be an original supporter of the Green New Deal. That’s why I’ve proposed a historic $2 trillion investment in researching, developing, and manufacturing clean energy technology here in America so that we can lead the global effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and beyond. That’s why I support returning to the Paris Agreement and restoring Obama-era environmental protections like the Clean Power Plan. And that’s why I’ve proposed a set of executive actions I’ll take on day one of the Warren Administration to stop drilling and promote renewables on public lands.
• Addressing Discrimination and Ensuring Equity for Farmers of Color: American agriculture was built on the backs of Black farmers. But farmers of color – and especially Black farmers – have experienced a long history of discrimination…. My administration will work to dismantle the structures in USDA that perpetuate discrimination, protect the civil rights of Black farmers and other underrepresented farmers, and provide real access to land and credit – so we can achieve a new farm economy that works for everyone.
• Addressing Our Maternal Mortality Epidemic: Unfortunately, despite decades of progress, roughly 700 women continue to die each year from pregnancy or delivery complications in the United States, making it one of only thirteen countries where maternal mortality rates have worsened over the last 25 years. We are facing a maternal mortality crisis in America. And for Black moms, particularly those living in rural areas, it’s an epidemic. The data shows that Black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes. This trend persists even after adjusting for income and education. One major reason? Racism. In a detailed report, ProPublica found that the vast majority of maternal deaths are preventable, but decades of racism and discrimination mean that, too often, doctors and nurses don’t hear Black women’s health issues the same way they hear them from other women.
• Affordable Higher Education for All: The first step in addressing this [student debt] crisis is to deal head-on with the outstanding debt that is weighing down millions of families and should never have been required in the first place. That’s why I’m calling for something truly transformational — the cancellation of up to $50,000 in student loan debt for 42 million Americans. My plan for broad student debt cancellation will: cancel debt for more than 95% of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt; wipe out student loan debt entirely for more than 75% of the Americans with that debt; substantially increase wealth for Black and Latinx families and reduce both the Black-White and Latinx-White wealth gaps; provide an enormous middle-class stimulus that will boost economic growth, increase home purchases, and fuel a new wave of small business formation…. Once we’ve cleared out the debt that’s holding down an entire generation of Americans, we must ensure that we never have another student debt crisis again. We can do that by recognizing that a public college education is like a public K-12 education — a basic public good that should be available to everyone with free tuition and zero debt at graduation. My plan for universal free college will: give every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees…. The entire cost of my broad debt cancellation plan and universal free college is more than covered by my Ultra-Millionaire Tax — a 2% annual tax on the 75,000 families with $50 million or more in wealth. For decades, we’ve allowed the wealthy to pay less while burying tens of millions of working Americans in education debt. It’s time to make different choices.
• Comprehensive Criminal Justice Reform: The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but nearly 20% of the world’s prison population. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in prison and jail. Our system is the result of the dozens of choices we’ve made — choices that together stack the deck against the poor and the disadvantaged. Simply put, we have criminalized too many things. We send too many people to jail. We keep them there for too long. We do little to rehabilitate them. We spend billions, propping up an entire industry that profits from mass incarceration. And we do all of this despite little evidence that our harshly punitive system makes our communities safer — and knowing that a majority of people currently in prison will eventually return to our communities and our neighborhoods. To make matters worse, the evidence is clear that there are structural race problems in this system. Latinx adults are three times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. For the exact same crimes, Black Americans are more likely than whites to be arrested, charged, wrongfully convicted, and given harsher sentences…. Real reform requires examining every step of this system: From what we choose to criminalize, to how law enforcement and prosecutors engage with communities and the accused, to how long we keep people behind bars, how we treat them when they’re there, and how we reintegrate them when they return. We cannot achieve this by nibbling around the edges — we need to tackle the problem at its roots. That means implementing a set of bold, structural changes at all levels of government….

  Break the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools increasingly rely on police officers to carry out discipline while neglecting services that are critical to the well being of students. At least fourteen million students attend schools with a police officer but without a single counselor, social worker, psychologist, or nurse. It’s no surprise that tens of thousands of students are arrested annually, many for minor infractions. Zero tolerance policies start early — on average 250 preschoolers are suspended or expelled every day — and, even in the youngest years, students of color bear the brunt. In later grades, Black and Brown students are disproportionately arrested in schools, while students with disabilities face an increased risk of disciplinary action.

  Invest in diversion programs for substance abuse disorder. People who struggle with addiction should not be incarcerated because of their disease.

  Repeal the 1994 crime bill. The 1994 crime bill exacerbated incarceration rates in this country, punishing people more severely for even minor infractions, and limiting discretion in charging and sentencing in our judicial system. That punitive “tough on crime” approach was wrong, it was a mistake, and it needs to be repealed.

  Address the legacy of the War on Drugs. For four decades, we’ve subscribed to a “War on Drugs” theory of crime, which has criminalized addiction, ripped apart families — and largely failed to curb drug use. This failure has been particularly harmful for communities of color, and we need a new approach. It starts with legalizing marijuana and erasing past convictions, and then eliminating the remaining disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. And rather than incarcerating individuals with substance abuse disorders, we should expand options that divert them into programs that provide real treatment.

  Stop criminalizing homelessness. Housing provides safety and stability, but too many experience homelessness. To make matters worse, many cities have criminalized homelessness by banning behavior associated with it, like sleeping in public or living in vehicles. These laws draw people into the justice system instead of giving them access to the services they need. They disproportionately impact communities of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities, all of whom experience higher rates of homelessness. Rather than treating the homeless like criminals, we should get them with the resources they need to get back on their feet.

  Stop criminalizing poverty. A simple misdemeanor like a speeding ticket shouldn’t be enough to send someone to spiraling into poverty or worse — but often the fines and fees levied by our legal system bury low-income people who are unable to pay under court-related debt, with no way out.

  End cash bail. Around 60% of the nearly 750,000 people in jail have not been convicted of a crime — and too often, those jails are overcrowded and inhumane. Our justice system forces its citizens to choose either to submit to the charges brought against them or be penalized for wanting to fight those charges. We should allow people to return to their jobs and families while they wait for trial, reserving preventive detention only for those cases that pose a true flight or safety risk.

  Law Enforcement Reform. The vast majority of police officers sign up so they can protect their communities. They are part of a profession that works tirelessly and takes risks every day to keep us safe. But we also know that many people of color, including Native Americans, disproportionately experience trauma at the hands of law enforcement, sometimes with life-altering consequences. On average, three people are shot and killed by the police every day, a disproportionate number of them young and Black. Others are arrested and entered into a system that unduly penalizes even minor infractions.

  Demand increased civilian oversight. Approximately 150 communities have civilian oversight boards, but that covers only a small percentage of law enforcement agencies in America. To expand local oversight and democratic engagement in policing, I will implement a competitive grant program that provides funding to communities that establish an independent civilian oversight mechanism for their police departments, such as a civilian oversight board or Office of Civilian Complaints.

  Establish a federal standard for the use of force. I will direct my administration to develop and apply evidence-based standards for the use of force for federal law enforcement, incorporating proven approaches and strategies like de-escalation, verbal warning requirements, and the use of non-lethal alternatives. At the federal level, I’ll prohibit permissive pursuit policies that often result in collateral damage, like high-speed chases and shooting at moving vehicles. And I’ll work with local law enforcement agencies to ensure that training and technology deployed at the federal level can be implemented at all levels of government, helping to limit the use of force while maintaining safety for officers and the communities they are sworn to protect.

  Increase federal funding for law enforcement training. My administration will provide incentives for cities and states that hire a diverse police force and provide tools and resources to ensure that best practices on law enforcement training are available across America, providing local police with what they need to meet federal training requirements, including training on implicit bias and the scientific and psychological roots of discrimination, cultural competency, and engaging individuals with cognitive or other disabilities.

  Restrict qualified immunity to hold police officers accountable. When an officer abuses the law, that’s bad for law enforcement, bad for victims, and bad for communities. Without access to justice and accountability for those abuses, we cannot make constitutional due process protections real. But today, police officers who violate someone’s constitutional rights are typically shielded from civil rights lawsuits by qualified immunity…. I support limiting qualified immunity for law enforcement officials who are found to have violated the Constitution, and allowing victims to sue police departments directly for negligently hiring officers despite prior misconduct.

  End racially discriminatory policing. Policies like stop-and-frisk and “broken windows” policing have trampled the constitutional rights of countless Americans — particularly those from Black and Brown communities — without any measurable impact on violent crime. I’ll end stop-and-frisk by directing the Justice Department to withhold federal funding from law enforcement agencies that continue to employ it and other similar practices, and I’ll work with Congress to pass legislation to prohibit profiling at all levels of law enforcement.

  Separate law enforcement from immigration enforcement.The data are clear. When local law enforcement is mixed with immigration enforcement, immigrants are less likely to report crimes, and public safety suffers. It’s time to stop directing law enforcement officers to do things that undermine their ability to keep communities safe.

  Reduce mandatory minimums. The 1994 crime bill’s mandatory minimums and “truth-in-sentencing” provisions that require offenders to serve the vast majority of their sentences have not proven effective. Congress should reduce or eliminate these provisions, giving judges more flexibility in sentencing decisions, with the goal of reducing incarceration to mid-1990s levels.

  End the death penalty. Studies show that capital punishment is often applied in a manner biased against people of color and those with a mental illness. I oppose the death penalty. A Warren administration would reverse Attorney General Barr’s decision to move forward with federal executions, and Congress should abolish the death penalty.

  Eliminate private prisons.I have called to eliminate private prisons that make millions off the backs of incarcerated people.

  Reduce needlessly restrictive parole requirements. Technical parole and probation violations make up a large number of all state prison admissions, sometimes for infractions as minor as a paperwork error. While many rules are made at the state level, the federal government should seek to remove those barriers wherever possible, reduce parole requirements for low-level offenders, and remove the threat of jail time for minor parole violations.

  Establish a federal expungement option. Many states provide a certificate of recovery for nonviolent offenders who have served their time and maintained a clean record for a certain number of years. This should be replicated at the federal level.

  Raise the age for criminal liability. We know that cognition and decision-making skills continue to develop beyond the teenage years. For that reason, many states have raised the age of adult criminal liability to at least 17, or granted additional discretion to prosecutors when charging offenders between the ages of 16 and 18. The federal government should do the same — raising the age of adult criminal liability to 18, eliminating life-without-parole sentences for minors, and diverting young adult offenders into rehabilitative programs wherever possible.

• Congressional Action to Protect Choice: Roe v. Wade established a woman’s constitutional right to safe and legal abortion and has been the law of the land for over 46 years. [E]xtremist Republican lawmakers know what the law is — but they don’t care. They want to turn back the clock, outlaw abortion, and deny women access to reproductive health care. And they are hoping the Supreme Court will back their radical play…. Access to quality reproductive health services, including safe and legal abortion, is essential to a woman’s health and economic security, but systemic barriers have made it especially difficult for low-income women and women of color to get the access to reproductive care they need. Federal funds are prohibited from being used for abortion care, which disproportionately affects women of color who are more likely to experience unintended pregnancies and more likely to seek abortions….

  Guarantee reproductive health coverage as part of all health coverage. All women — no matter where they live, where they’re from, how much money they make, or the color of their skin — are entitled to access the high-quality, evidence-based reproductive health care that is envisioned by Roe. Making that a reality starts with repealing the Hyde Amendment, which blocks abortion coverage for women under federally funded health care programs like Medicaid, the VA, and the Indian Health Service. Congress should also expand culturally- and linguistically-appropriate services and information and include immigrant women in conversations about coverage and access. Congress must also pass the EACH Woman Act, which would also prohibit abortion restrictions on private insurance. And we should ensure that all future health coverage — including Medicare for All — includes contraception and abortion coverage.

• Empowering American Workers and Raising Wages: I will fight to pass the Raise the Wage Act, which increases the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour for all workers – including tipped workers and workers with disabilities – and indexes the minimum wage to median wage growth. While I push to enact that legislation, I will sign an executive order on the first day of my administration to require all federal contractors to pay a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
• Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on American Families: Health care is a human right, and we need a system that reflects our values. That system is Medicare for All…. Under my plan, Medicare for All will cover the full list of benefits outlined in the Medicare for All Act, including long-term care, audio, vision, dental, and mental health benefits. My plan will cover every single person in the U.S., and includes common-sense payment reforms that make Medicare for All possible without spending any more money overall than we spend now.
• Expanding Social Security: In 2019, the average Social Security beneficiary received $1,354 a month, or $16,248 a year. For someone who worked their entire adult life at an average wage and retired this year at the age of 66, Social Security will replace just 41% of what they used to make…. My plan: increases Social Security benefits immediately by $200 a month … for every current and future Social Security beneficiary in America; updates outdated rules to further increase benefits for lower-income families, women, people with disabilities, public-sector workers, and people of color; finances these changes and extends the solvency of Social Security by nearly two decades by asking the top 2% of families to contribute their fair share to the program.
• Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act: We need to use all the tools available to address the racial wealth gap.That’s why I’ve proposed an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that mortgage lenders in communities of color lend to everyone on an equal basis.
• Fighting Back Against White Nationalist Violence: Unfortunately, the [Trump] administration has chosen to ignore the threat posed by white nationalists and affiliated violent extremists. Donald Trump has openly stoked these fires…. We have all experienced the consequences of our president’s moral deficiencies. Hate crimes spiked after Trump’s election, and last year violent personal attacks reached a 16-year high…. It is clear that racists, white supremacists, and people with hateful ideologies of all kinds feel empowered and protected by this president…. In a Warren administration, combating white nationalist crime will be a top priority for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security — we’ll use the investigative and prosecutorial resources of these Departments to go after any white nationalist crime involving a threat to life or associated with a broader white nationalist organization that has previously engaged in violence.
• Fighting For Justice As We Combat The Climate Crisis: A seminal study found that black families are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of air pollution than white families – even when they have the same or more income. A more recent study found that while whites largely cause air pollution, Blacks and Latinxs are more likely to breathe it in…. Our crisis of environmental injustice is the result of decades of discrimination and environmental racism compounding in communities that have been overlooked for too long…. The Green New Deal commits us to a “just transition” for all communities and all workers. But we won’t create true justice by cleaning up polluted neighborhoods and tweaking a few regulations at the EPA. We also need to prioritize communities that have experienced historic disinvestment, across their range of needs: affordable housing, better infrastructure, good schools, access to health care, and good jobs. We need strong, resilient communities who are prepared and properly resourced to withstand the impacts of climate change. We need big, bottom-up change – focused on, and led by, members of these communities.
• Get Rid of the Electoral College: [I]t’s time to elect presidents with a national popular vote, and that means getting rid of the Electoral College.
• Honoring and Empowering Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples: The story of America’s mistreatment of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians is a long and painful one, rooted in centuries of discrimination, neglect, greed, and violence. Tribal Nations robbed of more than a billion acres of land. Resources seized and sacred sites desecrated. Native languages and religions suppressed. Children literally stolen from communities in an effort to eradicate entire cultures. Native history is American history — and we must be honest about our government’s responsibility in perpetuating these injustices for centuries. And yet, despite this history, Tribal Nations and indigenous peoples have proven resilient and continue to contribute to a country that took so much and keeps asking for more. They serve in the United States military at higher rates than any other group in America. Each year, more and more Native people go to college and graduate school, and start businesses. Efforts to preserve Native cultures and languages are more prevalent and successful now then at any time in our nation’s history…. It will not be easy, but our government must uphold its commitments and promises to Native and indigenous peoples. We must recommit to the principles of protecting Tribal sovereignty and advancing Tribal self-determination in all federal decisions that affect Native communities.
• How We Can Break Up Big Tech: [My] administration will make big, structural changes to the tech sector to promote more competition — including breaking up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
• Leading in Green Manufacturing: Invest $2 trillion over the next ten years in green research, manufacturing, and exporting — linking American innovation directly to American jobs, and helping achieve the ambitious targets of the Green New Deal.
• Leveling the Playing Field for Entrepreneurs of Color: [T]he playing field is tilted against entrepreneurs of color. On average, Black, Latinx, Native American, and other minority households have a lot less wealth than white households. That means they have less of their own money to put into their business and less collateral to attract outside credit…. That’s why I have a new plan: a Small Business Equity Fund to help close the startup capital gap for entrepreneurs of color…. The new program will have $7 billion in funding to provide grants to entrepreneurs — not loans or loan guarantees…. It will be targeted at closing the entrepreneurship gap.
• My Plan to Create 10.6 Million Green Jobs: There are already clean energy job opportunities across the country. But with $10.7 trillion in federal and private investments, we can turn these opportunities into 10.6 million new, union jobs rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure and transitioning to the new clean energy economy.
• Our Military Can Help Lead The Fight In Combating Climate Change: Nibbling around the edges of the problem is no longer enough — the urgency of the moment demands more. That’s why today I am introducing my Defense Climate Resiliency and Readiness Act to harden the U.S. military against the threat posed by climate change, and to leverage its huge energy footprint as part of our climate solution. It starts with an ambitious goal: consistent with the objectives of the Green New Deal, the Pentagon should achieve net zero carbon emissions for all its non-combat bases and infrastructure by 2030.
• Paid Family and Medical Leave: Elizabeth will fight for up to 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave in a one year period to care for a newborn or newly adopted child; to act as caregiver to a spouse, child, parent, domestic partner, or chosen family member with a serious health condition; to deal with the worker’s own serious medical condition; or address specific military caregiving needs. Workers would receive 66% of their salary, capped at $4,000 per month, with a minimum payment of $580 per month. Unlike our current unpaid federal leave system, which is limited to businesses with over 50 employees, paid family and medical leave would be available to anyone who meets the work history requirements for Social Security Disability Insurance.
• Protecting and Empowering Renters: My Housing Plan for America invests $500 billion over the next ten years to build, preserve, and rehab more than three million units that will be affordable to lower-income families…. Landlords shouldn’t be able to arbitrarily push families out of their communities to make an extra buck or because of thinly-veiled racism and discrimination. I’ll work to secure tenants’ rights nationwide — including by creating a federal just cause eviction standard, a right to lease renewal, protections against constructive eviction, and tenants’ right to organize. To enforce these rights, I’ll condition the $500 billion in new affordable housing funding to states from my housing plan on states affirmatively adopting these key tenant protections. Judges in eviction proceedings would also be required to consider how an eviction might harm a tenant’s health conditions or a child’s ability to stay enrolled in local public schools, and to temporarily stay evictions if tenants can’t find another home in the same neighborhood.
• Protecting Our Communities from Gun Violence: Big money talks in Washington. And the NRA represents a particularly noxious example of Washington corruption at work. Over the last two decades, the NRA has spent over $200 million on lobbying Congress, influencing elections, and buying off politicians…. When I am president, I will send Congress comprehensive legislation containing our best ideas about what will work to reduce gun violence. [These include] … increasing taxes on gun manufacturers … to 30% on guns and 50% on ammunition;… set[ting] the federal minimum age at 21 for all gun sales;… passing a new federal assault weapons ban;… banning high-capacity ammunition magazines;… prohibiting accessories that make weapons more deadly [such as] silencers, trigger cranks, and other mechanisms that increase the rate of fire or make semi-automatic weapons fully automatic;…. prohibiting anyone convicted of a hate crime from owning a gun;…. creating a new private right of action allowing survivors of gun violence to hold the manufacturer of the weapon that harmed them strictly liable for compensatory damages to the victim or their family.
• Protecting Our Public Lands: [O]n my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that says no more drilling — a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases, including for drilling offshore and on public lands…. With one stroke of his pen, President Trump shrunk our protected lands by more than two million acres in 2017 — the single biggest rollback of protected lands in U.S. history. His move opens up Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah for mining and drilling, which will cause irreversible damage. These lands are part of our national fabric, sacred to tribes and beloved by American families…. The National Park Service is funded by taxpayers, and it’s long past time to make entry into our parks free to ensure that visiting our nation’s treasures is within reach for every American family.
• Restoring America’s Promise to Latinos: We are living through a dark moment in our nation’s history. Donald Trump ran a campaign on demonizing Mexicans and immigrants—and won. Since then, Latino communities and communities of color have borne the brunt of attacks from Donald Trump and his administration—from family separation to deportations to inciting violence—all while padding the pockets of private detention centers and their own corrupt personal interests.
• Safe and Affordable Housing: The centerpiece of my plan is the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act…. It invests $500 billion over the next ten years to build, preserve, and rehab units that will be affordable to lower-income families…. By building millions of new units, my plan will reduce the cost of rent for everyone…. And because my plan invests in housing construction and rehabilitation, the Moody’s analysis also finds that it would create 1.5 million new jobs. How would we pay for this new investment? Simple. Currently, an heir doesn’t pay a dollar of estate taxes until they inherit a fortune of $22 million or more. I would lower that threshold to $7 million … and raise the tax rates above that threshold so ultra-millionaires and billionaires pay a larger share. Those changes affect only 14,000 of the wealthiest families each year, but … they fully cover the cost of my plan.
• Strengthening Our Democracy [Voting]: My plan will mandate automatic voter registration and same-day registration for federal elections…. Every state will also be required to offer same-day registration, which acts as a fail-safe for anyone who is mistakenly left off the rolls…. Under my plan, states will be banned from removing voters from the election rolls unless the voter affirmatively requests to be removed or there is objective evidence of a legitimate reason to remove them, like death, change of address, or loss of eligibility to vote. We will also re-enfranchise those who have served their time and left prison…. We will make Election Day a national holiday, and all federal elections will have a minimum of 15 days of early voting, expanded voting hours, the option to vote with a sworn statement of identity instead of an ID, convenient polling locations, and voting by mail.
• Ultra-Millionaire Tax: The Ultra-Millionaire Tax taxes the wealth of the richest Americans. It applies only to households with a net worth of $50 million or more—roughly the wealthiest 75,000 households, or the top 0.1%. Households would pay an annual 2% tax on every dollar of net worth above $50 million and a 6% tax on every dollar of net worth above $1 billion. Because wealth is so concentrated, this small tax on roughly 75,000 households will bring in $3.75 trillion in revenue over a ten-year period.
• Universal Child Care: My plan provides the kind of big, structural change we need to transform child care from a privilege for the wealthy to a right for every child in America. Here’s how it works: The federal government will partner with local providers … to create a network of child care options that would be available to every family. These options would include locally-licensed child care centers, preschool centers, and in-home child care options. Child care and preschool workers will be doing the educational work that teachers do, so they will be paid like comparable public school teachers. And here’s the best part. The federal government will pick up a huge chunk of the cost of operating these new high-quality options. That allows local providers to provide access for free to any family that makes less than 200% of the federal poverty line. That means free coverage for millions of children.

Warren Conflates the Threats Posed by White Nationalists, ISIS, and Al Qaeda

At a March 2019 town hall meeting hosted by CNN in Jackson, Mississippi, Warren was asked: “Since the election of Donald Trump, the number of hate crimes has increased and white supremacists have become more emboldened online and in public. What are your plans to unite the country?” She replied: “Oh, good. Thank you for that question. You know, it starts with the fact that we’ve got to recognize the threat posed by white nationalism. White supremacists pose a threat to the United States like any other terrorist group, like ISIS, like Al Qaeda.”

Blaming “Prejudice” for Blacks’ Worse Maternal Health Outcomes

At a “She the People Democratic Presidential Forum” in Texas in May 2019, a young woman who identified herself as a worker in the maternal health field and a “proud member of the Black Lives [Matter] movement” asked Warren what she would do, as president, to address the fact that “for black women, the risk of death from pregnancy-related causes is three to four times higher than for white women, and black women are twice as likely to suffer from life-threatening pregnancy complications.” In response, Warren said that how the federal government “treats its mamas and its babies” is “ultimately about our values.” She added: “We have failed our babies exactly in the way you talk about…. And the best studies that I’m seeing put it down to just one thing — prejudice. That doctors and nurses don’t hear African-American women’s medical issues the same way that they hear the same things from white women. And we’ve got to change that and we’ve got to change it fast because people’s lives are at stake.”

Warren Falsely States That White Police Officer in Ferguson, Missouri “Murdered” Black Teen Michael Brown Five Years Earlier

In August 2019, Warren made reference to the infamous 2014 altercation in which a white policeman named Darren Wilson had shot and killed a black teenager named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  Even though compelling ballistic, eyewitness, and forensic evidence subsequently showed that the officer had shot Brown in self-defense, Warren now said: “Five years ago Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson.”

Warren Does Not Deny That She Is a Socialist

At an August 2019 campaign stop in Iowa, one of Warren’s supporters, attempting to provide the senator with an opportunity to deny the charge that she was a socialist, said to her: “The press right away brands you as a socialist, and I know how [poorly] that goes over in rural areas. With healthcare and all that, they’re going to say, ‘Well, you know, socialism was in my early lifetime associated with communism.’ We know why we grew up with all that kind of thinking, and rural people have long memories.” In response, Warren defended her campaign’s calls for things like “Medicare for All” and student-debt forgiveness programs. Afterward, Warren told reporters: “I didn’t hear it [the supporter’s question] as a concern about the actual policies. I heard it as a concern about the name-calling. And that when you hear the actual policies, folks say, ‘Oh, no, I’m in favor of that.’  I think this is really about the truth wins out, you get out and talk about what you really fight for, what you really stand for. It matters.”

Calling for the Impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

In September 2019, Warren reacted vocally after The New York Times printed an article about a newly published book about Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s 2018 Supreme Court nominee. The Times piece – written by the book’s authors, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly – noted that the book – titled The Education of Brett Kavanaugh – discussed allegations in which a woman named Deborah Ramirez, who had been a Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh more than 30 years earlier, claimed that a drunken Kavanaugh had once exposed his penis to her during a campus party. The article further reported that another “former classmate,” Max Stier, claimed to have personally witnessed the incident in question. But the article never mentioned Stier’s deep ties to the Democratic Party – most notably, he had worked for President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, while Kavanaugh was a member of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigative team which looked into Clinton’s misconduct in office. Nor did the article mention that Ramirez had refused to be interviewed about the alleged incident; that all three of the friends whom she had identified as witnesses steadfastly maintained that it never occurred; and that all three friends had stated that not even Ramirez herself could recall the incident. Despite the paucity of evidence against Kavanaugh, Warren, asserting that “these newest revelations are disturbing,” said: “Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.”

Caught in a Lie About Why She Left a Teaching Job

During her 2019 presidential campaign, Warren repeatedly claimed that when she had worked as a young public-school teacher many years earlier, she was fired for no reason other than the fact that she was pregnant. For example, on October 2 she told a town hall audience in Carson City, Nevada, that she had “loved” working as a teacher, but: “By the end of the first year, I was visibly pregnant, and the principal did what principals did in those days: Wish me luck and hire someone else for the job.” According to Fox News: “Warren has repeated the story at campaign appearances throughout the summer, each time repeating the ‘principal did what principals did’ line to describe her departure from teaching.”

But that story completely contradicted what she had said in an interview posted to YouTube in 2008, where she recalled:

“I was married at nineteen and then graduated from college actually after I’d married. And my first year post-graduation, I worked — it was in a public school system but I worked with the children with disabilities. And I did that for a year, and then that summer I actually didn’t have the education courses, so I was on an ’emergency certificate,’ it was called. And I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work out for me.’  And I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years, and I was really casting about, thinking, ‘What am I going to do?’  And my husband’s view of it was, stay home. You know, we have children, we’ll have more children. You’ll love this…. So … I went back home to Oklahoma for Christmas and saw a bunch of the boys that I’d been in high-school debate with, and they’d all gone on to law school. And they said, ‘you should go to law school. You’ll love it…. So I took the tests, applied to law school … And I took to law school like a pig takes to mud. I mean, this was fabulous. I loved law school. And then my third year, final year in law school, I got pregnant again, and I didn’t take a job…. [Later] I took the bar, hung out a shingle in northern New Jersey, did real estate closings and little incorporations and lawsuits, all on the civil side, and raised my two babies. And then Rutgers called and said, ‘Somebody didn’t show up to teach a class, would you like to come and teach it, and start Thursday?’  And I said, yeah…. I [eventually] got my first full-time tenure-track teaching job … at the University of Houston.”

Caught in a Lie About Having Sent Her Children to Public School

Also during her 2019 presidential campaign, Warren was confronted by pro-school-choice activist Sarah Carpenter, who organized a protest of Warren’s November 19 speech in Atlanta and told the candidate: “We are going to have the same choice that you had for your kids because I read that your children went to private schools.” Warren denied the claim, telling Carpenter: “My children went to public schools.” But as Warren communications director Kristen Orthman later told the Washington Free Beacon: “Elizabeth’s daughter went to public school. Her son [Alex] went to public school until 5th grade.” Starting in 5th grade, Alex Warren attended the Kirby Hall School, a high-tuition college preparatory school is known for its “academically advanced curriculum” and small class sizes.

Warren Favors Making U.S. Aid to Israel Contingent upon Israel’s Cessation of Settlement Building

In October 2019, Warren stated that she was open to the idea of making U.S. aid to Israel contingent upon the Israeli government agreeing to terminate its construction of houses in West Bank settlements. “Right now, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu says he is going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements, [but] that does not move us in the direction of a two-state solution,” Warren said in response to a question about whether U.S. aid should be tied to Israeli settlement activity. “It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table. Everything is on the table.”

Applauding 9-Year-Old Transgender Child

During a CNN town hall focusing on LGBT-related issues on October 10, 2019, Warren loudly and enthusiastically applauded a nine-year-old biological girl who identified herself as follows: “My name’s Jacob, and I’m a nine-year-old transgender American.” “All right, Jacob!” Warren gushed while the CNN audience likewise erupted in applause.

Warren’s Son-in-Law Produces a Film Whose Investors Are Funded and Controlled by Iran’s Islamist Government

In his 2020 book Profiles in Corruption, author Peter Schweizer notes that Sushil Tyagi, the husband of Warren’s daughter Amelia, heads the movie production company Tricolor Films, which produced The Song of Sparrows, a film directed by Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi. Two of the movie’s more notable investors, says Schweizer, were the social deputy of the State Welfare Organization Of Iran and the Cultural & Artistic Organization Of Tehran, both of which “are funded and controlled by the Islamist Iranian government.” Moreover, Schweizer asserts that The Song of Sparrows has film credits that read like a “who’s who of prominent Iranian government institutions.” For example, there is an expression of thanks to the “Iranian Revolutionary Guards Air Force,” which is considered a terrorist entity by the U.S. government.

Warren Condemns Trump for Killing of Terrorist Iranian General Soleimani

In January 2020, shortly after President Trump had ordered the U.S. military to kill Qasem Soleimani — the longtime leader of the terrorist Quds Force division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps — Warren referred to the killing as an “assassination.” “This assassination of Gen. Soleimani is reckless, and it has been part of an escalating series of attacks that the Trump administration has put forward,” she said. In the days that followed, Warren issued some additional statements such as the following:

• “Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move [by Trump] escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.”
• “Donald Trump ripped up an Iran nuclear deal that was working. He’s repeatedly escalated tensions. Now he’s assassinated a senior foreign military official. He’s been marching toward war with Iran since his first days in office—but the American people won’t stand for it.”
• In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Warren referred to Soleimani only as “a government official, a high-ranking military official,” and she suggested that Trump may have ordered the killing in order to divert public attention from his pending impeachment trial in the Senate: “Next week, the President of the United States could be facing an impeachment trial in the Senate. We know he’s deeply upset about that. And I think people are reasonably asking, why this moment? Why does he pick now to take this highly inflammatory, highly dangerous action that moves us closer to war?”

Warren Says That All Illegal Aliens Should Be Able to Secure American Citizenship

During a February 2020 town hall meeting in Las Vegas, Warren said: “Immigration does not make our country weaker, immigration makes our country stronger. We need to change our immigration laws. I want to see expanded immigration. I want to see a path to citizenship, not only for DREAMers, but for everyone who is here to stay. Mixed-status families, we should not have. We should keep our families together. I think that’s powerfully important.”

Warren Drops out of Presidential Race

After performing poorly in numerous Democratic primaries, Warren ended her presidential campaign on March 5, 2020.

Warren’s Amendment to Rename U.S. Military Bases Named after Confederate Generals

On June 10, 2020, the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee voted to pass an amendment that Warren offered to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), to rename several U.S. military bases that were named after Confederate generals. Warren described the names of those bases as a “tribute to white supremacy.” Notably, the U.S. Army under former President Barack Obama had described the use of Confederate names as a gesture of “reconciliation, not division.”

Warren Accuses Billionaire Elon Musk of Paying Too Little in Taxes

Warren Demands That Amazon Alter Its Algorithms to Suppress Books That Spread “Misinformation” About COVID-19

On September 7, 2021, Warren sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, demanding that the company use its algorithms to suppress the sale of books that, according to the senator, spread “COVID-19 misinformation.” By Warren’s telling, Amazon searches for various COVID-19 and vaccine-related terms yielded many books “based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures, including those written by the most prominent spreaders of misinformation.” “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products—an unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful course of action from one of the nation’s largest retailers,” Warren wrote in the letter. “At a time when every step towards ending the pandemic could save countless lives, misinformation poses a substantial obstacle.” “Given the seriousness of this issue,” she added, “I ask that you perform an immediate review of Amazon’s algorithms and, within 14 days, provide both a public report on the extent to which Amazon’s algorithms are directing consumers to books and other products containing COVID-19 misinformation and a plan to modify these algorithms so that they no longer do so.”

Warren complained, among other things, that Amazon algorithms seemed to promote The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal. That book, wrote the senator, “asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D, and quercetin — supplements sold on [one co-author’s] website — can prevent COVID-19 infection, a claim with such little scientific basis that the FDA sent a letter instructing [the co-author] to cease selling these supplements for the unapproved and unauthorized treatment of COVID-19.”

Kara Frederick, a Heritage Foundation research fellow in technology policy, warned that Warren’s letter was emblematic of a “broader trend: That of the Biden Administration and other progressive officials attempting to circumvent the Constitution by pressuring private tech companies to restrict freedom of expression under a broad definition of misinformation.” “Current attempts to define misinformation are mutable and often used as a catchall for ‘views we don’t like,’” Frederick added. “This catchall is then weaponized against anything to the right of leftist narratives about a host of topics. (see: NY Post’s Hunter Biden-Ukraine story in 2020, YouTube’s suppression of Ron DeSantis’s policy roundtable on COVID in April, their takedown of Hoover’s Scott Atlas’s coronavirus interview last September etc.).” Frederick also noted that “a few months ago, the Wuhan lab leak theory [regarding the origins of COVID] was actively suppressed by these [Big Tech] companies as misinformation before a confluence of evidence indicated its plausibility.”

Warren Blames Grocery Store Chains for Inflation of Food Prices

In mid-December 2021, Warren sent a letter to the heads of the grocery store chains Kroger, Albertson’s, and Publix, accusing them of price gouging. “Your company, and the other major grocers who reaped the benefits of a turbulent 2020, appear to be passing costs on to consumers to preserve your pandemic gains and even taking advantage of inflation to add greater burdens,” she wrote. “Your companies had a choice,” the senator added. “They could have retained lower prices for consumers and properly protected and compensated their workers, or granted massive payouts to top executives and investors. It is disappointing that you chose not to put your customers and workers first.”

In reaction to Warren’s remarks, John Nolte of Breitbart.com wrote:

“This is pure demagoguery and a shameless attempt to blame-shift away from the serial failures of … Joe Biden. Are we honestly supposed to believe that after decades … of ridiculously cheap and plentiful food that all the big grocery stores chose now, right now, to huddle together in an illegal conspiracy to raise prices? Basically, she’s asking a business that operates with some of the lowest profit margins of any American industry (in the two percent range) to absorb the added costs of Biden’s failures, namely 1) inflation, 2) supply chain shortages, and 3) exploding fuel costs.

“Compare grocery chain profit margins to airlines (seven percent), electric utilities (seven to nine percent), alcoholic beverages (five to seven percent), restaurants (nine to 11 percent)… But grocers are the problem? […]

“The competition for your grocery dollar is fierce, which is true just about everywhere. Grocery stores don’t make money off profit margins. The grocery business is a volume business, and this is one of the great blessings of living in America, in a capitalist society—cheap and plentiful food. Food is so cheap and plentiful, America’s poor no longer fear hunger. Instead, America’s poor have an obesity problem. […]

“But to Warren’s anti-science way of thinking, all of a sudden — hey, what a coincidence! — in the middle of the worst inflation in 40 years, inflation brought on by Joe Biden’s cheapening of the currency through lunatic and unnecessary spending, the grocery chains all got together to form an illegal monopoly-type agreement to stiff their customers and workers. You see, thanks to Joe Biden’s obscene war on affordable energy, gas prices are up over 50 percent, but that has nothing to do with food prices. Thanks to Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s gross apathy and incompetency, America is facing an unprecedented supply chain crisis. Still, according to Warren, that has nothing to do with food prices.”

During a January 7, 2022 appearance on MSNBC, Warren called for the use of anti-trust laws to punish grocery store chains that she claimed were gouging American consumers. Said the senator: “Now what you got is a handful of giant [grocery store] chains, and then what happens…? Kroger, their profits just in the third quarter of 2021 were almost $900 million. That was more than three times what their profits were during the same time period in 2019. Now, if they are able to expand profits, not expand prices, but to expand profit, that’s because they have a lot of market dominance. If we move in with an anti-trust law, break up these giant corporations, then we get real competition.”

John Nolte of Breitbart.com again responded to Warren’s remarks:

“It’s obvious what [Warren is] up to here. The same thing she was up to the last time she floated this deranged conspiracy theory. She’s hoping to let … Joe Biden off the hook for the record inflation that is solely his fault. First, Biden’s lunatic spending cheapened the dollar and increased prices. Second, Biden’s supply chain mismanagement ensured that more demand than supply increased prices. And then, Biden’s [horrible] mismanagement of the China Flu [COVID-19] resulted in personnel shortages that further damaged the supply chain, which again created more demand than supply and increased prices even more. […]

“The facts are this… Grocery stores operate on some of the smallest profit margins of any business out there. Theirs is a volume business, not a profit-margin business. Additionally, once you understand that grocery stores are a volume business, you understand why their profits exploded during the third quarter of 2021. That’s when omicron [the Omicron variant of COVID] hit. That’s when people started stockpiling groceries again. Also, Because of the virus, fewer people are going out to eat, which means they are eating at home, which means they are buying more groceries. More people than ever are working out of their homes, which means they are eating at home rather than going out. […]

“What does [Warren] believe? That ALL OF A SUDDEN, after decades and decades, the grocery stores all got together to gouge their customers during a pandemic? That ALL OF A SUDDEN, after decades and decades, they decided to risk prison by fixing their prices during the third quarter of 2021? […]

“THE key question [is]: ‘[D]o you believe plunges in inflation & profits in early 2020 were driven by companies becoming more altruistic, less concentrated?’ [And if] Democrats are so concerned with Big Grocery Chains, why did Democrats close small businesses and allow Big Grocery Chains to remain open during their anti-science lockdowns?”

Warren Warns Oil Companies Not to Increase Their Profit Margins after Russian Invasion of Ukraine

During a March 8, 2022 appearance on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Warren praised President Biden’s decision to ban U.S. imports of Russian oil and gas in response to Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. When Mitchell asked if Congress should be “monitoring profiteering” by oil companies during the crisis, the senator answered: “Absolutely, and actually, we are. I’m co-sponsoring, with Sen. Whitehouse and others, a bill on a windfall profits tax. Look, we get it, supply and demand, that prices go up. But profit margins should not go up. That’s just oil companies gouging when they do that. So, we’re going to be on them on this.”

Warren Continues to Blame the Private Sector for Inflation

During a March 16, 2022 appearance on CNBC’s The Exchange, Warren explained America’s skyrocketing inflation rates as follows:

• “I think the primary cause of this bout of pricing increases starts with COVID. And the fact that we have supply chain kinks and that people rapidly shifted the demand curves so that demand for services went down and demand for goods went up. So those two forced prices up.”
• “What has also happened is that now that we’re living in America where there’s a lot more concentration in certain industries, look at the oil industry, look at the meat industry, look at groceries generally. What’s happened is that these companies have said ‘you know, we’ll pass along costs, but while we’re at it and everyone’s talking about rising costs let’s just add an extra big dollop of cost increases to expand our profits.’”

Warren Again Blames “Price Gouging” for Rising Oil and Gasoline Price

On March 21, 2022, Warren said: “Senator Whitehouse and I and others have introduced a windfall profits tax, that says if you’re out there price gouging, you’re going to have to give up a big chunk of your ill-gotten gains. That’s the best way I know to be able to push back against these oil companies.”

Outraged by Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade

On May 2, 2022, Politico reported that an unidentified individual had leaked an initial draft majority opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which the Court had decided to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. “No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending,” said Politico. Whereas Roe had guaranteed federal constitutional protections for abortion rights, the new ruling would return responsibility for those rights to each individual state. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote in his opinion, adding: “We hold that Roe and Casey [a 1992 decision that largely reaffirmed the rights set forth in Roe] must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

In response to the Court’s decision, an outraged and nearly tearful Warren addressed a crowd of raucous protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building on May 2. Among her remarks were the following:

• “I am angry because of who will pay the price for this! It will not be wealthy women. Wealthy women can get on an airplane. They can fly to another state. They can fly to another country. They can get the protection they need. This will fall on the poorest women. This will fall on the young women who have been abused, who are victims of incest. This will fall on those who have been raped. This will fall on mothers who are already struggling to work three jobs to be able to support the children they have.”
• “Well, I am here because I am angry. And I am here because the United States Congress can change all of this.”
• “Understand this! Understand this. I have seen the world where abortion is illegal, and we are not going back. Not ever. So say it with me, ‘We are not going back.’” (“We are not going back!” the protesters shouted in response.) “Not ever!” (The crowd repeated, “Not ever!”)

After Warren had finished delivering her speech, she told one reporter: “This is what — The Republicans have been working toward this day for decades. They have been out there plotting, carefully cultivating these Supreme Court Justices so they could have a majority on the bench who would accomplish something that the majority of Americans do not want. […] Extremists … We’ve heard enough from the extremists.”

After the Supreme Court officially announced its decision regarding Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, Warren told ABC’s This Week on June 26: “The Republicans have been very overt about trying to get people through the court who didn’t have a published record on Roe, but who they knew — wink wink nod nod — were going to be extremist on the issue of Roe v. Wade. And that is exactly what we have ended up with. This court has lost legitimacy. They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had. They just took the last of it and set a torch to it with the Roe v. Wade opinion.” Moreover, Warren called for Democrats to pack the Supreme Court with several additional Justices whose political ideology was in line with that of the Democratic Party. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our Court,” said Warren, “and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court.”

Calling for the End of the Senate Filibuster

On May 11, 2022, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer placed the Women’s Health Protection Act, which was intended to legally enshrine the right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at every stage of pregnancy from the moment of conception through the moment of delivery, up for a vote in the Senate, in order to get every senator on record vis-a-vis the issue of abortion rights. With 49 votes in support and 51 against, the bill fell 11 votes short of the 60 votes needed in order to overcome the filibuster rule and be debated by the full 100-member Senate. One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin, joined all 50 Republicans in voting to block the bill. After the vote, Warren told a CNN reporter: “I believe in democracy, and I don’t believe that the minority should have the ability to block things that the majority want to do. That’s not in the Constitution.” Despite the fact that the bill did not even garner a majority of votes, Warren added: “What we’re talking about right now are the individual rights and liberties of half the population of the United States of America. I think that’s enough to say it’s time to get rid of the filibuster.”

Republican Senator Ted Cruz mocked Warren for her comments. Wrote Cruz on social media: “Um, a bipartisan MAJORITY of the Senate just voted down the Dems’ radical abortion bill. 51 is greater than 49, even using Harvard math. You don’t get to call the losing side the majority just because you agree with it.”

During a July 17, 2024 appearance on ABC’s The View, Warren stated that it was vital for Democrats to win majorities in both the House and Senate, so as to empower Senate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster rule and push through their legislative agendas without impediment. Said the senator: “So, we can make Roe v. Wade the law of the land, we got to have a majority in the house, skinny majority and can take a skinny majority in the Senate. I’ll take 50, and a Democrat in the White House. We have those three things, we will suspend the filibuster, we have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade. First vote Democrats will take in the Senate, first substantive vote, is to make Roe v. Wade law of the land again in America.”

Warren Condemns Crisis Pregnancy Centers

On July 6, 2022, Warren stated that many pregnant women entered crisis pregnancy centers thinking that they could obtain abortions there, only to have the staffers at those centers try to change their minds. Said the senator: “Here in Massachusetts, these so-called crisis pregnancy centers outnumber genuine abortion clinics by 3-to-1…. [The people employed by these centers] wish them [pregnant women] harm. And that has to stop. We need to put a stop to that in Massachusetts right now.”

On July 12, 2022, Warren said: “In Massachusetts, right now, those ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber true abortion clinics by 3-t0-1. We need to shut ’em down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut ’em down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that.”

Warren’s Response to Deadly Hamas Attack Against Israel (2023)

At daybreak on October 7, 2023 — which was the major Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah — the Islamic terror group Hamas carried out a massive, multi-front, surprise attack against Israel, firing thousands of rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, while dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the Israeli border in a number of locations by air, land and sea. The attack had been planned in conjunction with officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with agents of three other Iran-sponsored terrorist groups. “In an assault of startling breadth,” reported CBS News, “Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.” By October 8, at least 600 Israelis had been killed and 1,800 wounded, making it the bloodiest day Jews had experienced since the Holocaust. Moreover, Hamas took more than 240 Israelis hostage, including dozens who were American citizens, and moved them to the Gaza Strip. The terrorists also paraded Israelis’ mutilated bodies in Gaza, to cheering crowds of Palestinians. By October 19, the official casualty toll in Israel had reached more than 1,400 dead (including at least 32 Americans) and 4,500 injured. (On October 27, 2023, the Israeli Defense Forces launched an invasion of the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of destroying Hamas and its leadership once and for all.)

On October 27, 2003, Warren joined fellow Democrat Senators Jeff Merkley, Mazie Hirono, Ed Markey, Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders, Tina Smith, Chris Van Hollen, Raphael Warnock, and Peter Welch in releasing the following statement on the Israel-Hamas War:

“Israel has a right to defend its citizens after Hamas’s terrorist attacks, which have driven the region into turmoil and cost thousands of lives. The war in Gaza has become a humanitarian crisis and has claimed the lives of innocent Palestinians. As the United States put forward at the United Nations, we are calling for humanitarian pauses to allow full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian assistance for civilians and the immediate, unconditional release of all remaining hostages.”

On December 6, 2023, Warren went to the Senate floor to speak about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Among her remarks were the following:

“As I have said before, Israel has both a right to defend its citizens from Hamas’s terrorist attacks and an obligation under the laws of war to protect innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Palestinians are not Hamas, and they should not be punished for Hamas’s terrorism.

“I want to be clear about how I see the war that Israel is currently waging in Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing war cabinet have created a humanitarian catastrophe, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians and risking a wider conflict in the Middle East. The Gaza Health Ministry estimates that more than 15,000 people in Gaza have been killed and more than 40,000 injured. The vast majority of those killed and injured have been Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. This level of civilian harm is a moral failure. It is why – for weeks – I have called on Israel to stop bombing Gaza. […]

“I will say it again:  Hamas must release the hostages and stop firing rockets at civilians in Israel. The Israeli government must stop the bombing in Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid. And all of us must do everything possible to resume the cease-fire and extend it for as long as possible.

“The long-term goal must be peace. Two states for two peoples.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s actions are not moving closer to a two-state solution. Instead, his actions set the conditions for endless violence.

“Since October 7, extremist settlers in the West Bank have deliberately hunted down and killed Palestinians, and, according to the United Nations, displaced more than 1,000 people. In Gaza, Israeli forces have struck hospitals and refugee camps, killing scores of civilians in pursuit of its military targets. Israel has ordered Palestinians to evacuate for safety and then bombed the safe zones.

“The videos from Gaza of dead children and wailing parents are shattering. They document the current Israeli government’s continued moral and humanitarian failures. And now it appears that Israel is prepared to impose in southern Gaza the same staggering level of civilian death that it carried out in the north. That is wrong.

“I lay these actions at the feet of Prime Minister Netanyahu. If the Prime Minister insists on conducting military operations with little regard for civilian life and in a manner that moves the region deeper into perpetual war, then he does not deserve America’s blanket financial support. I understand the desire to help Israel and the people of Israel, but given the actions of the Prime Minister, Congress should condition any military funding on an agreement that civilian lives will be protected, that Palestinians will receive the humanitarian aid they need, and that international law will be fully respected. […]

“I have long believed that a two-state solution is the best path—the only path—for Israel’s long-term security and the only way to ensure that Palestinians have the rights, the freedom, and the self-determination they need to build a secure future for themselves and their children.”

Warren Accuses Israel of Genocide

On April 5, 2024, Warren made a speaking appearance at the Islamic Center of Boston (ICB), where a female member of the audience asked her: “Do you think that Israel is committing genocide [in Gaza]?” At first, Warren attempted to avoid giving a direct answer, saying: “So, what’s happened now is there’s going to be a long and involved debate over what constitutes genocide when you ask a legal question. For me, it is far more important to say what Israel is doing is wrong. And it is wrong. It is wrong to starve children within a civilian population in order to try to bend to your will. It is wrong to drop 2000-pound bombs, in densely populated civilian areas.” But the crowd grew impatient with Warren’s evasiveness and demanded a “yes or no” answer regarding the question of genocide, to which the senator replied: “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll [the International Court of Justice will] find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so.” Those words made Warren the first U.S. senator to directly accuse Israel of genocide.

Warren’s Senate Voting Record

For an overview of Warren’s voting record on an array of key issues, click here.

Additional Information

Warren’s political campaigns have been supported by such organizations as the Council for a Livable World, 21st Century Democrats, the Progressive Democrats of America, and Democracy for America.

Additional Resources:

Elizabeth Warren: Senate Candidate, Marxist Author & Shameless Race Grifter
By Kelly O’Connell
May 13, 2012

Controversy Over Warren’s Alleged Cherokee Heritage:

Calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” Is the Best Way to Fight Racism
By Daniel Greenfield
November 29, 2017

Elizabeth Warren: My Aunt Bea Was White before She Was Indian
By Michael Patrick Leahy
July 2, 2012

Warren Listed As “Woman of Color” by Harvard Journal in 1993
By Michael Patrick Leahy
May 25, 2012

Boston Globe Makes the Bell Connection
By Joel Pollack
May 25, 2012

BOOK:

Elizabeth Warren: How Her Presidency Would Destroy the Middle Class and the American Dream
By David L. Bahnsen