Elizabeth Warren
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,[3] Warren has focused on consumer protection, equitable economic opportunity, and the social safety net while in the Senate. Warren was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, ultimately finishing third.
For other people named Elizabeth Warren, see Elizabeth Warren (disambiguation).
Elizabeth Warren
Chuck Schumer
Position established
Position established
Democratic (1996–present)
Republican (1991–1996)[1]
- Politician
- law professor
- author
Born and raised in Oklahoma, Warren is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School and has taught law at several universities, including the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. She was one of the most influential professors in commercial and bankruptcy law before beginning her political career. Warren has written 12 books and more than 100 articles.[4][5][6]
Warren's first foray into public policy began in 1995, when she worked to oppose what eventually became a 2005 act restricting bankruptcy access for individuals.[7][8] During the late 2000s, her national profile grew after her forceful public stances in favor of more stringent banking regulations after the financial crisis of 2007–2008. She served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and proposed and established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for which she served as the first special advisor under President Barack Obama.[9]
In 2012, Warren defeated incumbent Republican Scott Brown and became the first female U.S. senator from Massachusetts.[10] She won re-election by a wide margin in 2018, defeating Republican nominee Geoff Diehl.[11] On February 9, 2019, Warren announced her candidacy in the 2020 United States presidential election.[12] She was briefly considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in late 2019, but support for her campaign dwindled. She withdrew from the race on March 5, 2020, after Super Tuesday.[13]
Personal life
Warren and her first husband divorced in 1978,[16][20] and two years later, Warren married law professor Bruce H. Mann on July 12, 1980,[147] but kept her first husband's surname.[20][148] Warren has three grandchildren through her daughter Amelia.[2]
On April 23, 2020, Warren announced on Twitter that her eldest brother, Don Reed Herring, had died of COVID-19 two days earlier.[149][150] On October 1, 2021, she announced that her brother, John Herring, had died of cancer.[151]
As of 2019, according to Forbes Magazine, Warren's net worth was $12 million.[152][153]
Ancestry and Native American claims
According to Warren and her brothers, older family members told them during their childhood that they had some Native American ancestry.[166][167] In 2012, she said that "being Native American has been part of my story, I guess, since the day I was born".[168] In 1984,[169][170] Warren contributed recipes to a Native American cookbook and identified herself as Cherokee.[171][172]
During Warren's first Senate race in 2012, her opponent, Scott Brown, speculated that she had fabricated Native ancestry to gain advantage on the employment market and used Warren's ancestry in several attack ads.[173][174][175] Warren has denied that her alleged heritage gave her any advantages in her schooling or her career.[176] Several colleagues and employers (including Harvard) have said her reported ethnic status played no role in her hiring.[177][178] From 1995 to 2004, her employer, Harvard Law School, listed her as a Native American in its federal affirmative action forms; Warren later said she was unaware of this.[179]
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".[180] A 2018 Boston Globe investigation found that her reported ethnicity played no role in her rise in the academic legal profession, and concluded there was "clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools", and that "Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her".[181] In February 2019, Warren apologized for having identified as Native American.[172][182][183]
Throughout his presidency, former president Donald Trump mocked Warren for her assertions of Native American ancestry,[184] and pejoratively called her "Pocahontas".[185] At a July 2018 Montana rally, he promised that if he debated Warren, he would pay $1 million to her favorite charity if she took a DNA test and "it shows you're an Indian".[186] 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".[187] Other geneticists, while not disputing the test's validity, found the underlying science "flawed" due to the lack of Native Americans in the United States in the database.[188] 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". They added: "because Bustamante used Indigenous individuals from Central and South America as a reference group to compare Warren's DNA, we believe he should have stated only that Warren potentially had an 'Indigenous' ancestor 6-10 generations ago, not conclusively a 'Native American' one. The distinction might seem hypercritical to most, but to the sovereign tribal nations of the United States it's an important one."[189]
After publicizing Bustamante's interpretation of the test, Warren asked Trump to donate the money to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. Trump responded: "I didn't say that. I think you better read it again".[186][190][191] The Cherokee Nation called the use of DNA testing to determine Native American heritage "inappropriate and wrong".[178][192] According to Politico, "Warren's past claims of American Indian ancestry garnered fierce criticism from both sides of the aisle", with "tribal leaders calling out Warren for claiming a heritage she did not culturally belong to."[185]
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?" She responded in part, "I am not a person of color; I am not a citizen of a tribe. Tribal citizenship is very different from ancestry. Tribes, and only tribes, determine tribal citizenship, and I respect that difference."[193] She later privately contacted leadership of the Cherokee Nation to apologize "for furthering confusion over issues of tribal sovereignty and citizenship and for any harm her announcement caused". Cherokee Nation executive director of communications Julie Hubbard said that Warren understands "that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests".[194] Warren apologized again in August 2019 before a Native American Forum in Iowa.[195][196]
In February 2019, Warren received a standing ovation during a surprise visit to a Native American conference, where she was introduced by freshman Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM), one of the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. Congress.[197][198] Haaland endorsed Warren for president in July 2019, calling her "a great partner for Indian Country".[199]