UPDATE, Feb. 9, 1:30 P.M.: Elizabeth Warren officially announced her 2020 presidential bid during a speech in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In her address, she firmly called out the Trump administration and laid out her plans for "structural reform." Alongside Representative Joe Kennedy and Senator Ed Markey, Warren positioned herself as a force who will challenge the wealthy elite, corruption in Washington, and the current White House.
"The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken," Warren said, according to CNN. "He is just the latest and most extreme symptom of what's gone wrong in America. A product of a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else. So once he's gone, we can't pretend that none of this ever happened."
She added that the country can't afford to "just tinker around the edges," indicating that her fight for working families will be a broad-reaching one.
"This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way," she said.
According to The Hill, Warren preparing for a six-stop campaign tour that will start in New Hampshire and include visits to Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, and California.
Original Story:
Democrat Elizabeth Warren just made a big first step toward formally announcing her candidacy for president of the United States in 2020. The U.S. senator from Massachusetts filed papers on Monday (December 31) to form an exploratory presidential committee, the first of the rumored Democratic candidates to do so.
This move allows her to legally ramp up fund-raising efforts and begin staffing up in key states (Iowa, New Hampshire). It's essentially one step short of her literally saying, "I'm running," but the groundwork is in place. Along with the legal filing, Warren also released a new video that is one part biography and one part a focus on one of Warren's tentpole messages of leveling the economic playing field for Americans.
The video begins with a bit of information about Warren's working-class upbringing in Oklahoma and how she rose from that to become a teacher, a Harvard law professor, and now a senator. From there, she begins discussing the policy issues that will likely make it into her campaign platform—starting with the nation's shrinking middle class.
“America’s middle class is under attack,” Warren says. “How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie. And they enlisted politicians to cut them a bigger slice.” Her video highlights her work in Washington to fight for the middle class, including the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
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Warren also changed the handle on her campaign Twitter account—different than her official account as senator, which remains intact—to read simply @ewarren, rather than @elizabethforma, as it read during the 2018 midterms. The updated bio on the account labels it the "official account: 2020 Exploratory Committee."
It's no great surprise that Warren is one step closer to entering what could become a crowded field of Democrats vying to win the nomination and defeat Donald Trump. "After November 6 [the midterm elections], I will take a hard look at running for president," she said back in September.
Warren has long been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump and his administration, who have never shied away from attacking her. She has also been a target of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who famously said of the Senator after a heated debate on the floor: "She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted."
This post has been updated.
