Warren is campaigning on the promise she will push sweeping changes that address economic inequality and root out corruption. The former Harvard law professor was a prominent voice for stricter oversight following the 2008 financial crisis before being elected to the US Senate in 2012.

University of Houston B.S., 1970; Rutgers University, J.D., 1976

June 22, 1949

Bruce Mann; divorced from Jim Warren

Methodist

Amelia, Alexander (with Jim Warren)

Professor, Harvard Law School, 1995-2012;
Visiting professor, Harvard Law School, 1992-1993;
Law professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 1987-1995;
Professor of law, University of Texas Law School in Austin, 1983-1987;
Assistant and later associate professor at the University of Houston Law Center, 1978-1983;
Law lecturer at Rutgers School of Law, 1977-1978;
Speech pathologist at a New Jersey elementary school, early 1970s

WARREN IN THE NEWS

JPMorgan just got a lot bigger — and Elizabeth Warren is alarmed

Updated 4:26 PM ET, Tue May 2, 2023

JPMorgan Chase has once again come to the rescue of the banking system by acquiring a doomed bank. And that makes Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren very worried. By blessing JPMorgan's takeover of First Republic Bank, Warren fears federal regulators just made the" Too Big to Fail" problem even worse. "What happened here is because a bank was under-regulated and started to fail, the federal government has helped JPMorgan Chase get even bigger," Warren told CNN on Tuesday in her first on-camera interview about the First Republic failure. JPMorgan agreed to pay the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $10.6 billion to buy most of First Republic after regulators shut the large regional bank. In a relief to investors and bank customers, the JPMorgan deal protects all of First Republic's depositors. "It may look good today while everything's flying high, but ultimately if one of those giant banks, JPMorgan Chase, starts to stumble, the American taxpayers are the ones who will be on the line," Warren said. Asked if the decision to let JPMorgan get even bigger gives her pause about how Biden-appointed regulators have handled the crisis, Warren argued a different bank should have been allowed to buy First Republic. "There were multiple bidders here and every other bidder was a lot smaller than JPMorgan Chase. My view on this is it's important to look at the effect on competition and to try to keep a more diversified banking system," Warren said. "Let somebody else buy this bank. Let somebody else take over those assets." 'This is how the system works' Of course, JPMorgan was only named the buyer of First Republic after the FDIC first held a competitive bidding process. The FDIC declined to comment on Warren's comments. A White House spokesperson pointed to comments made Monday by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who stressed the FDIC followed procedures in the First Republic resolution. "FDIC has a statutory obligation to choose the path that's the least cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund. And that's what they did here," Jean-Pierre said. "It was necessary to ensure continued resilience of the banking system and to do so at no cost to the taxpayers." Jean-Pierre argued that no recent administration has "done more to promote competition" and address concentration across industries. Sheila Bair, who led the FDIC in 2008 when it sold Washington Mutual to JPMorgan, defended how the agency handled the First Republic failure. Bair noted the FDIC must choose the option that does the least damage to its insurance fund. Often, it's the biggest banks that have the firepower to make the best offers. "This is how the system works. If you put a bank up for auction, you've got to go with the best bid," Bair told CNN on Monday in a phone interview. For his part, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is hopeful his bank's takeover of First Republic eases the stress in the banking system. The First Republic deal "helps stabilize the system, which is a good thing," Dimon said on Monday in response to a question from CNN. Clawing back banker pay In the wake of the bank failures, Warren is calling for accountability — both of bank executives and regulators. Warren has co-sponsored a bill with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that would empower the FDIC to claw back executive compensation at banks that fail. "These executives who take on a lot of risk and then toss their banks over a cliff will actually have to give up those bonuses and huge salaries," Warren said, adding she wants the Senate Banking Committee to mark up the bill next week. Meanwhile, regulators continue to study their own mistakes in the lead-up to the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank. The Federal Reserve's own autopsy on the Silicon Valley Bank failure acknowledged regulatory and supervision weaknesses at the Fed. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week he welcomes the "self-critical" report and agrees with and supports recommendations on how to strengthen the Fed's practices. For her part, Warren said the Silicon Valley Bank report shows why she continues to believe Jerome Powell shouldn't be at the helm of the Fed. "In this failure to regulate and supervise these banks, somebody needs to be held accountable. And that's the guy at the top, the one who sets the tone, the one who made it happen," Warren said. The Fed declined to comment.

After bank failures, Elizabeth Warren demands Fed crackdown on large regional banks

Elizabeth Warren: Crypto giants are 'collapsing under the weight of their own fraud'

Elizabeth Warren calls out Elon Musk for 'unavoidable' conflicts of interest caused by Twitter takeover

STANCES ON THE ISSUES

climate crisis

A backer of the Green New Deal, the broad plan to address renewable-energy infrastructure and climate change proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Warren has set out one of the most detailed proposals for making it happen. In June 2019, she introduced a suite of industrial proposals with names like the “Green Apollo Program” and “Green Marshall Plan.” Her Green Industrial Mobilization is the most ambitious – and expensive, with a $1.5 trillion price tag over 10 years – for spending on “American-made clean, renewable, and emission-free energy products for federal, state, and local use, and for export.” The “Green Apollo” plan would invest in scientific innovation and the “Green Marshall Plan” would facilitate the sales of new green technologies to foreign markets. In September 2019, Warren announced she would adopt the climate change proposals championed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who bowed out of his climate change-focused candidacy in August 2019. That includes a 10-year plan for moving to 100% clean energy and emissions-free vehicles, as well as zero-carbon pollution from all new commercial and residential buildings by 2028. Warren says achieving those goals would take another $1 trillion in investment on top of her existing proposals, which she says would be covered by reversing the 2017 Republican tax cuts. Warren said in October 2019 that, if elected president, she would mandate all federal agencies to consider climate impacts in their permitting and rulemaking processes. When tribal nations are involved, Warren wrote in a Medium post, projects would not proceed unless “developers have obtained the free, prior and informed consent of the tribal governments concerned.” She said a Warren administration would aggressively pursue cases of environmental discrimination, and would fully fund the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s environmental health programs. Warren told The Washington Post she would recommit the US to the Paris climate accord, a landmark 2015 deal on global warming targets that Trump has pledged to abandon. More on Warren’s climate crisis policy

economy

Warren says she’s a capitalist but wants regulation. “I believe in markets,” she said in a March 2019 CNN town hall, following up with a focus on rules and regulation. “Market without rules is theft.” The senator has released a tax plan that would impose a 2% tax on households with net worths of more than $50 million and an additional 1% levy on wealth above $1 billion. This tax would cover, according to Warren, a universal child care program she announced in February 2019. Warren has staked out her claim as an opposition leader against what she sees as big business overreach. Also in February 2019, she criticized Amazon for “walk[ing] away from billions in taxpayer bribes, all because some elected officials in New York aren’t sucking up to them enough. How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?” She was opposed to the recent deregulation efforts around banks. Warren is calling for the breakup of companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon and advocated legislation that would make Amazon Marketplace and Google search into utilities. In July 2019, Warren released a plan aimed at Wall Street and private equity that would reinstate a modern Glass-Steagall Act, which would wall off commercial banks from investment banks, place new restrictions on the private equity industry and propose legislative action to more closely tie bank executives’ pay to their companies’ performance. She also released a set of trade policy changes that would seek to defend American jobs by negotiating to raise global labor and environmental standards. The senator wrote that she would not strike any trade deals unless partner countries meet a series of ambitious preconditions regarding human rights, religious freedom, and labor and environmental practices, among other issues. She said she would renegotiate existing trade agreements to ensure other countries meet the higher standards, and she pledged to push for a new “non-sustainable economy” designation to give her the ability to penalize countries with poor labor and environmental practices. Warren said in October 2019 that she would extend labor rights to all workers, protect pensions and strengthen workers’ rights to organize, bargain collectively and strike. More on Warren’s economic policy

education

Warren has released a plan to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt for tens of millions of Americans. The amount of relief would be tied to income, with those households making $250,000 or more shut out of the program. Households earning less than $250,000 would be eligible for relief on a sliding scale, with those reporting less than $100,000 a year eligible for the maximum. Warren unveiled the proposal as part of a larger program that would supercharge federal spending on higher education, including eliminating tuition and fees for college students at two- and four-year public institutions. It would also ask states to pay a share of the costs. Warren would expand grants for low-income and minority students to help with costs like housing, food, books and child care. Her campaign has priced the plan at $1.25 trillion over 10 years and says it would be paid for by her wealth tax. The plan would also establish a $50 billion fund for historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. More on Warren’s education policy

gun violence

During the first Democratic debate, Warren called gun violence “a national health emergency” that should be treated like a “virus that’s killing our children” – and called for robust new restrictions and new investment in research. “We can do the universal background checks, we can ban the weapons of war,” Warren added, “but we can also double down on the research and find out what really works.” Though her campaign has not yet released a gun control plan, Warren has been active on the issue as a senator. In February 2018, less than two weeks after the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, she sent letters to nine major gun company shareholders, asking that they use their influence to pressure the industry to take steps to reduce gun violence. She supports bans on so-called assault weapons and legislation prohibiting high-capacity magazines, and has voted to expand background checks for gun buyers.

healthcare

Warren has endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, which would create a national government-run health care program and essentially eliminate the private insurance industry. In a plan released in November 2019, Warren said she would implement Medicare for All in two phases that would be complete by the end of her first term. Warren proposed a plan in April 2019 to drive down the maternal mortality rate among African American women. Warren has also co-sponsored legislation in the Senate aimed at lowering the price of prescription drugs that includes allowing the federal government to manufacture generic medications if their prices spike. More on Warren’s health care policy

immigration

Warren unveiled a plan in July 2019 to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, pledging to reverse a series of Trump administration policies and authorize her Justice Department to review allegations of abuse against detained migrants. The proposal would decriminalize crossing the border into the United States without authorization, a step first championed by former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, and separate law enforcement from immigration enforcement. If elected, Warren said, she would first seek to pursue her agenda through legislation, but “move forward with executive action if Congress refuses to act.” Warren also said she supports legislation that would provide a path to legal status and citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Her plan would end privately contracted detention facilities and she promises that she would “issue guidance ensuring that detention is only used where it is actually necessary because an individual poses a flight or safety risk.” Warren backs expanding legal immigration, raising the refugee cap and making “it easier for those eligible for citizenship to naturalize.” She would reduce “the family reunification backlog” and provide “a fair and achievable pathway to citizenship.” More on Warren’s immigration policy

LATEST POLITICAL NEWS

2 New York counties' executive orders targeting migrants are temporarily blocked by federal judge

Updated 5:41 AM ET, Wed Jun 7, 2023

A federal district court judge on Tuesday granted a motion barring two New York counties from executing orders aimed at stopping New York City from sending migrants and asylum seekers to their communities for shelter. Orange and Rockland counties issued emergency declarations last month in response to New York City Mayor Eric Adams' plan to bus willing migrants to hotels within their communities on a temporary basis as his city struggles with housing an influx of migrants. Days later, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of several migrants, saying the counties' orders were unlawful. In his opinion Tuesday, New York Judge Nelson Roman granted the civil rights organization's request for a preliminary injunction, holding that it showed it was likely to succeed on multiple criteria of its federal claims, including violations of due process and equal protection clauses under the US Constitution. The judge noted that "the fear that 'thousands' of migrants/asylum seekers" would inundate Rockland and Orange counties "is speculative as the record shows that New York City's plan includes relocation of about 300 people to the two counties." New York City officials have repeatedly stressed that they were scrambling to house a crush of migrant arrivals -- some of them bused to New York by Republican governors and local officials from Southern states. Since last spring, New York City has processed more than 65,000 migrants and at least 35,000 remained in the city's care as of mid-May, city officials previously said. Adams announced in early May that the city would temporarily send willing migrants to neighboring New York communities ahead of a surge of migrants that was expected with the expiration of Title 42 -- the Trump-era policy enacted early in the Covid-19 pandemic that allowed authorities to quickly expel migrants at US land borders. "Today's decision sends a loud and clear message not only to Rockland and Orange Counties, but to all of the counties who have issued these discriminatory executive orders: the Constitution does not allow you to build walls around your county limits," NYCLU Director of Immigrants' Rights Litigation Amy Belsher said in a statement. The court's decision does not interfere with temporary restraining orders that were issued in state courts as they examine whether New York City's program is unlawful, the judge's opinion says. Rockland County Executive Ed Day said his team is "considering all legal options including an appeal of the decision," and added that the federal court's order "has no impact on the existing Temporary Restraining Orders issued by the State court judges." Day noted that his order "never barred anyone from coming to the county." "The only thing this County's order was barring was Mayor Eric Adams from overstepping his authority by luring people out of New York City with predatory marketing and advertising and turning hotels in Rockland into city-run shelters with no regard for law, zoning, or our capacity on hand," Day said. Orange County spokesperson Justin Rodriguez told CNN that Tuesday's ruling doesn't change anything at the present time. "The court noted that the County's allegations that the City's program of sending its homeless to Orange County is a matter of State law that must be resolved in State court," Rodriguez said. He added that Orange County's temporary restraining order against New York City remains in effect until at least June 21, at which time "the State Supreme Court will issue a ruling on the continuing nature of the restraining order." Mayor Adams' press secretary Fabien Levy told CNN that many elected officials, community groups, and faith-based organizations have been "overwhelmingly supportive and enthusiastic" about welcoming migrants into their cities and towns, but "the dangerous executive orders we've seen from some counties simply show the lack of leadership we're seeing across the state." "Today's order against Rockland and Orange counties shows that a county cannot just wall itself off from the rest of the state at-will while simultaneously asking for support in other circumstances," Levy said.

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