Maxine Moore Waters (née Carr; born August 15, 1938) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for California's 43rd congressional district since 1991.

[11] Upon the retirement of Augustus F. Hawkins in 1990, Waters was elected to the United States House of Representatives for California's 29th congressional district with over 79% of the vote.

The presiding officer, Carrie Meek, classed her behavior as "unruly and turbulent", and threatened to have the Sergeant at Arms present her with the Mace of the House of Representatives (the equivalent of a formal warning to desist).

Waters felt King's questioning of Maggie Williams (Hillary Clinton's chief of staff) was too harsh, and they subsequently exchanged hostile words.

She criticized media coverage of the hospital and asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny a waiver of the cross ownership ban, and hence license renewal for KTLA-TV, a station the Los Angeles Times owned.

[23] In 2011, Waters voted against the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, related to a controversial provision that allows the government and the military to detain American citizens and others indefinitely without trial.

[27] The amendment targeted domestic surveillance activities, specifically that of the National Security Agency, and would have limited the flexibility of the NSA's interpretation of the law to collect sweeping data on U.S.

[29] A key provision of the bill includes the collection of 10 basis points for "every dollar outstanding mortgages collateralizing covered securities", estimated at $5 billion a year.

[31] For her tenure as chair of the House Financial Services Committee in the 116th Congress, Waters earned an "A" grade from the nonpartisan Lugar Center's Congressional Oversight Hearing Index.

[32] After a 1996 San Jose Mercury News article alleged the complicity of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Los Angeles crack epidemic of the 1980s, Waters called for an investigation.

"[39] Liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Waters to its list of corrupt members of Congress in its 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2011 reports.

[40][41] Citizens Against Government Waste named her the June 2009 Porker of the Month due to her intention to obtain an earmark for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center.

[53] Waters and other House members objected to Florida's electoral votes, which George W. Bush narrowly won after a contentious recount.

[58] In July 2017, during a House Financial Services Committee meeting, Waters questioned United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.

[59] In early 2018, Waters was among the members of Congress the Republican Jewish Coalition called on to resign due to their connections with Nation of Islam leader and known anti-Semite[60] Louis Farrakhan, who had recently drawn criticism for antisemitic remarks.

In regard to the looting of Korean-owned stores by local black residents, she said in an interview with KABC radio host Michael Jackson: There were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes.

[69] On June 23, 2018, after an incident in which White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denied service and asked to leave a restaurant, Waters urged attendees at a rally in Los Angeles to harass Trump administration officials, saying:If you see anybody from [Trump's] cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.

Comments by Waters on April 17, 2021, while attending protests over the killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, drew controversy.

[73] Responding to questions outside the Brooklyn Center police department[74] – a heavily fortified area that for days had been the site of violent clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators attempting to overrun it[75][76] – Waters commented on the protests and the looming jury verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who at the time was charged with murdering George Floyd.

[100] At a Congressional Black Caucus town-hall meeting on jobs in Detroit, Waters said that African American members of Congress were reluctant to criticize or place public pressure on Obama because "y'all love the President".

[104] Waters has called Trump "a bully, an egotistical maniac, a liar and someone who did not need to be president"[41] and "the most deplorable person I've ever met in my life".

[105] In a 2017 appearance on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, she said Trump's advisors who have ties to Russia or have oil and gas interests there are "a bunch of scumbags".

[115] Moments before voting for the second impeachment of Donald Trump, she called him "the worst president in the history of the United States.″[116] On June 18, 2019, Waters asked Facebook to halt its plan for the development and launching of Libra, a new cryptocurrency, citing a list of recent scandals.

[122] In 1998, Waters wrote Castro a letter calling the 1960s and 1970s "a sad and shameful chapter of our history" and thanking him for helping those who needed to "flee political persecution".

[123] In 1998, Waters wrote Castro an open letter asking him not to extradite convicted terrorist Assata Shakur from Cuba, where she had sought asylum.

[127] After the coup, she, TransAfrica Forum founder Randall Robinson, and Jamaican member of parliament Sharon Hay-Webster led a delegation to meet with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and bring him to Jamaica, where he remained until May.

Waters asserted in 2007 that President George W. Bush was trying to "set [Congress] up" by continually requesting funds for an "occupation" that was "draining" the country of capital, soldier's lives, and other resources.

In particular, she argued that the economic resources being "wasted" in Iraq were those that might provide universal health care or fully fund Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education bill.

Additionally, Waters, representing a congressional district whose median income falls far below the national average, argued that patriotism alone had not been the sole driving force for those U.S. service personnel serving in Iraq.

[137] A few months before these speeches, Waters cosponsored the House resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney for making allegedly "false statements" about the war.