Elizabeth Ann Warren (née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013.

A member of the Democratic Party and regarded as a progressive,[2] Warren has focused on consumer protection, equitable economic opportunity, and the social safety net while in the Senate.

[15][16][17][18] She is the fourth child of Pauline Louise (née Reed, 1912–1995), a homemaker,[19] and Donald Jones Herring (1911–1997), a U.S. Army flight instructor during World War II, both of whom were members of the evangelical branch of the Protestant Methodist Church.

[36] According to Warren and economists who follow her work, one of her key insights was that rising bankruptcy rates were caused not by profligate consumer spending but by middle-class families' attempts to buy homes in good school districts.

[49][50]: 1315 On November 14, 2008, U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid appointed Warren to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.

[52] During Warren's tenure, these reports covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry and other topics.

[62] According to Warren, she left the Republican Party because it is no longer "principled in its conservative approach to economics and to markets" and is instead tilting the playing field in favor of large financial institutions and against middle-class American families.

[74] Warren nonetheless raised $39 million for her campaign, more than any other Senate candidate in 2012, and showed, according to The New York Times, "that it was possible to run against the big banks without Wall Street money and still win".

[83] At a March Banking Committee hearing, Warren asked Treasury Department officials why criminal charges were not brought against HSBC for its money laundering practices.

[91][92][93][94] In early 2015, President Obama urged Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free trade agreement between the United States and 11 Asian and South American countries.

[104][105] On October 3, 2017, during Wells Fargo chief executive Timothy J. Sloan's appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, Warren called on him to resign, saying, "At best you were incompetent, at worst you were complicit.

"[109] The day after the attack, Warren joined the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation to call for Trump's immediate removal from office through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or impeachment.

[131] A longtime critic of President Trump, Warren called him a "symptom of a larger problem [that has resulted in] a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else".

[132] Warren staged her first campaign event in Lawrence to demonstrate the constituency groups she hopes to appeal to, including working class families, union members, women, and new immigrants.

[150] Due to the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Warren was unable to make final campaign stops in person and opted to send her dog Bailey to meet with voters in Iowa.

[151] In June 2020, CNN reported that Warren was among the top four vice-presidential choices for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, along with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Representative Val Demings, and Senator Kamala Harris.

[153] In late April, CNBC reported that big-money donors were pressuring Biden not to choose Warren, preferring other candidates purportedly on his list, such as Harris, Whitmer, and Amy Klobuchar.

[164] Warren supports worker representation on corporations' board of directors, breaking up monopolies, stiffening sentences for white-collar crime, a Medicare for All plan to provide health insurance for all Americans, and a higher minimum wage.

"[172] After the June 24, 2022, ruling in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Warren wrote a New York Times op-ed requesting that President Biden unblock "critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services".

[190] The Washington Post reported that in 1986, Warren identified her race as "American Indian" on a State Bar of Texas write-in form used for statistical information gathering, but added that there was "no indication it was used for professional advancement".

[197] In October 2018, Warren released an analysis of a DNA test by geneticist Carlos D. Bustamante that found her ancestry to be mostly European but "strongly support[ed] the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor", likely "in the range of 6 to 10 generations ago".

[199] Geneticists Krystal Tsosie and Matthew Anderson called the interpretation of the test "problematic", citing, among other reasons, "Warren's motives, and the genetic variants informing the comparison".

"[196] During a January 2019 public appearance in Sioux City, Iowa, Warren was asked by an attendee, "Why did you undergo the DNA testing and give Donald more fodder to be a bully?"

Green considers Warren to have demonstrated "a new way" approach in national politics, whereby politicians engage in "big, loud, messy fights that offered moral clarity and galvanized public sentiment behind a position."

[238] Fellow journalist Brian Stelter concurred with Green's analysis that Warren (as well as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez) had "helped lead an economic 'backlash' to the 2008 financial crisis that pulled the [Democratic] party leftward.

That same month, Zachary Warmbrodt of Politico wrote: President Joe Biden is enlisting a small army of [Warren's] former aides and allies to run his government.

Warren's expanding network in the upper echelons of the administration includes protégés who helped execute her aggressive oversight of big banks and other corporations as well as friends who share her views of the risks looming on Wall Street.

[254] In an article in The New York Times, Jeff Madrick said of the book: The authors find that it is not the free-spending young or the incapacitated elderly who are declaring bankruptcy so much as families with children ... their main thesis is undeniable.

[257] The study was widely cited in policy debates, but some have challenged its methods and offered alternative interpretations of the data, suggesting that only 17% of bankruptcies are directly attributable to medical expenses.

[259] According to a Boston Globe review, "the book's title refers to a time she says is now gone, when even families of modest means who worked hard and played by the rules had at a fair shot at the American dream.