On New Year's Eve 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) became the first major candidate to enter the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. With her announcement, Warren kicked off a landslide of women pursuing the top office in the country—with senators Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) following close behind.
Before Warren, 69, entered politics, she was a law professor at Harvard University. As one of the nation's top experts in bankruptcy law, she was tapped to head up the congressional panel that oversaw the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which bailed out the banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Around the same time she proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a paper that attracted the attention of President Obama. The CFPB, which launched in 2010 with Warren at the helm, works to protect consumers in the financial sector.
When she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, she became the first woman ever to serve from her state, and in her time there she's made economic reform one of her most important causes. It's also at the heart of her presidential campaign. "My daddy had a heart attack and couldn't work. My mom found a minimum-wage job at Sears, and that job saved our house and our family," Warren explained in her campaign announcement. "Working families today face a lot tougher path than my family did, and families of color face a path that's steeper and rockier, a path made even harder by the impact of generations of discrimination. I spent my career getting to the bottom of why America's promise works for some families but others who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster. What I found is terrifying. These aren't cracks families are falling into—they're traps. America's middle class is under attack."
Warren's outspokenness has also made her a particular target for Donald Trump. Trump, who loves nothing more than to give his critics nicknames, bestowed the moniker “Pocahontas” on Warren. The taunt (itself a racial slur) refers to Warren's self-proclaimed Native American heritage. Trump then challenged her to take a DNA test to prove it, which she did. In October 2018, she revealed the results, which did suggest some Native American roots, but the move attracted further attacks from Trump and also offended the Cherokee nation, who released a statement that said, “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.”
She has since apologized to members of the Cherokee Nation. "Senator Warren has reached out to us and has apologized to the tribe," Cherokee spokesperson Julie Hubbard said in a statement. "We are encouraged by this dialogue and understanding that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests. We are encouraged by her action and hope that the slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end."
Warren is perhaps best known to American women for the phrase, "Nevertheless, she persisted." Senator Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) first used it to describe Warren's testimony against then Senator Jeff Sessions' (R-Ala.) nomination to attorney general. Warren then reclaimed the words and turned them into a call for women's rights and recognition.
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Here we break down seven of the issues Warren will fight for in her bid to become the Democratic nominee for president.
Taxes
Warren recently proposed a new tax on Americans with a net worth of $50 million or more. CNN reports that Warren's plan would impose a 2 percent tax on those whose net worth exceeds $50 million and would include an additional 1 percent tax on billionaires. In a tweet about the plan, Warren wrote, "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. We need structural change. That’s why I’m proposing something brand new – an annual tax on the wealth of the richest Americans." And a recent poll shows that raising income taxes on 10-millionaires, as Warren's plan proposes, has significant bipartisan support.
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The Economy
When Warren announced her presidential bid, she put the economy front and center. In her campaign kickoff video, Warren said, "Working families today face a much tougher path than my family did, and families of color face a path that is steeper and rockier, a path made even harder by the impact of generations of discrimination." Before running for the U.S. Senate, Warren chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and oversaw the bank bailouts after the 2008 financial crisis. She also helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans against financial abuse.
In August 2018, Warren proposed the Accountable Capitalism Act, which would redistribute trillions of dollars from American corporations' executives and shareholders to the middle class. Warren wrote about the act in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. "Corporate profits are booming, but average wages haven’t budged over the past year. The U.S. economy has run this way for decades, partly because of a fundamental change in business practices dating back to the 1980s. On Wednesday I’m introducing legislation to fix it," she said. "The Accountable Capitalism Act restores the idea that giant American corporations should look out for American interests. Corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue would be required to get a federal corporate charter. The new charter requires corporate directors to consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders—not only shareholders—in company decisions. Shareholders could sue if they believed directors weren’t fulfilling those obligations."
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In February, Warren also unveiled a plan to give families access to affordable, high-quality child care. She explained in a post that under her plan, the federal government would partner with local providers to create a network of child care options. The government would then help cover the cost of these options, meaning that local providers could offer free child care to families who make less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line. "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," she said.
Health Care
In March 2018, Warren introduced a new health care bill called the Consumer Health Insurance Protection Act, which would work to make insurance within the Obamacare system more affordable and would protect users from premium hikes. The Huffington Post reported that her plan would limit insurance premiums to no more than 8.5 percent of a person's income. However, she also supports Medicare for All, a form of single-payer health insurance.
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Education
Warren supports efforts to make college more affordable. In 2017 she backed a bill that would have eliminated tuition for many students attending public colleges. When teachers across Los Angeles went on strike in January 2019, Warren stood in solidarity with them. She tweeted, "I support @UTLAnow & LAUSD teachers who are for fighting for better pay, smaller classes, & better resourced schools for our kids. When we fail our public school teachers, we fail their students—and we fail our future. I’m with our teachers all the way."
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Climate Change
In September 2018, Warren spearheaded a bill called the Climate Risk Disclosure Act, which would require public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and other climate risks. Warren also supports the "idea" of a Green New Deal, a slate of bills that would invest in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure to help boost the economy and limit carbon emissions. A Senate aide for Warren told Axios, "Senator Warren has been a longtime advocate of aggressively addressing climate change and shifting toward renewables, and supports the idea of a Green New Deal to ambitiously tackle our climate crisis, economic inequality, and racial injustice."
Immigration
Like other high-profile Democrats, Warren has called for the immigration system to be reimagined and for ICE to be abolished. "The President's deeply immoral actions have made it obvious—we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom, starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and that works," said Warren at an immigration protest this past June. She has also been a strong opponent of the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy (which separated children and families on the border). "This one hits deep, where America lives. Not just Democrat America, [but] Republican America, independent America, people who just don't care about politics," Warren said. "People who say, 'This is not what America does. We do not put small children in cages,'" she continued. "What I care about is whether people push Trump to stop this, that's where we need to be right now."
Reproductive Rights
In 2018, Republicans in the Senate proposed a bill that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks. Warren, a fierce advocate for women's reproductive rights, took to the Senate floor and delivered an impassioned address in opposition to the bill. “Forty-five years after Roe v. Wade, abortions are safer today than getting your tonsils out,” she said. “A lot of women are alive today because of Roe.” Warren then called the bill “part of a broad and sustained assault by Republican politicians on women’s rights to make decisions about their own bodies.” In 2017 she also defended Planned Parenthood in a similar speech. “Frankly, I am sick of coming down to the Senate floor to explain to Republicans what Planned Parenthood does,” Warren said. “I am sick of explaining that it provides millions of women with birth control, cancer screenings, and STI tests every year. I am sick of pointing out, again and again, that federal dollars do not fund abortion services at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else.” Warren is a supporter of the Me Too movement and has called on Congress to pass laws to support survivors.
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Samantha Leach is an assistant editor at Glamour. Follow her on Twitter @_sleach.
