senator Elizabeth Warren

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth Warren, a fearless consumer advocate who has made her life’s work the fight for middle class families, was first elected to the United States Senate on November 6, 2012, by the people of Massachusetts, and was re-elected for a second term on November 6, 2018, and a third term in 2024.

Elizabeth is recognized as one of the nation’s top experts on bankruptcy and the financial pressures facing middle class families. The Boston Globe has called her “the plainspoken voice of people getting crushed by so many predatory lenders and under regulated banks.” She is one of the nation’s leading progressive voices, fighting for big structural change that would transform our economy and rebuild the middle class.

She has put forward bold, ambitious plans to:

• End lobbying as we know it and make other sweeping changes to eliminate the influence of money in our federal government through the most comprehensive anti-corruption legislation since Watergate;
• Impose an ultra-millionaire tax on fortunes worth over $50 million to generate $2.75 trillion in revenue over ten years—enough to pay for universal child care, student debt relief, and a down payment on a Green New Deal;
• Address the nation’s housing crisis by building more than 3 million new homes, cutting rents nationwide by 10%, and taking the first steps towards healing the legacy of housing discrimination through historic new investments in federal housing programs;
• Extend criminal accountability to corporate executives who oversee and direct illegal scams;
• Give workers a greater say in the decision-making process at the nation’s biggest corporations by empowering them to elect 40% of the board at the company where they work;
• Require every public company to disclose climate-related risks;
• Provide Puerto Rico with a path to comprehensive debt relief and rebuild the island’s infrastructure;
• Allocate $100 billion to solve the opioid and substance use crisis; and
• Address skyrocketing prescription drug costs, including through the public manufacturing of generic drugs.

Elizabeth consistently reaches across the aisle to deliver wins for Massachusetts, making her one of the most effective members of the Senate. She helped secure $750 million in debt relief for students who were cheated by predatory, for-profit colleges, including 4,500 Massachusetts students and more than 28,000 students across the country. Elizabeth has also helped pass legislation to double federal funding for child care, make hearing aids available over the counter, reduce out-of-pocket costs for high school students enrolled in career and technical education programs, and put over $6 billion dollars in federal funding towards the fight against the opioid epidemic.

Elizabeth has used her platform to hold some of the nation’s largest corporations and most powerful government agencies accountable for fraud, waste, and abuse. In the wake of the fake accounts scandal at Wells Fargo, her relentless public pressure led to the resignation of two Wells Fargo CEOs, John Stumpf and his successor, Tim Sloan. Elizabeth also launched an investigation to hold Equifax accountable for a data breach that exposed the personal financial information of over 140 million customers and wrote legislation to keep it from happening again. Through her oversight work, she has exposed fraud and abuse perpetrated by Trump Administration officials, including at the Department of Education, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Defense, and has successfully overturned rules that harm consumers and students.

She is widely credited for the original thinking, political courage, and relentless persistence that led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama asked her to set up the new agency to hold Wall Street banks and other financial institutions accountable, and to protect consumers from financial tricks and traps often hidden in mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Warren served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Her independent and tireless efforts to protect taxpayers, to hold Wall Street accountable, and to ensure tough oversight of both the Bush and Obama Administrations won praise from both sides of the aisle. The Boston Globe named Elizabeth Warren Bostonian of the Year and TIME Magazine called her a “New Sheriff of Wall Street” for her oversight efforts.

Before becoming the first woman ever elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in 2012, Elizabeth promised during her campaign to fight for middle class families and to make sure that everyone has a fair shot to get ahead. She called for policies that would level the regulatory playing field for small businesses and ensure that everyone - even large and powerful corporations - pays a fair share in taxes and is held accountable for breaking the law.

Endorsing Elizabeth’s candidacy, the New Bedford Standard-Times said, “Elizabeth Warren has it right on all the things that matter most to us in SouthCoast and across Massachusetts,” with “principles that without a doubt, promote the well-being of the middle class.” The Boston Globe called Elizabeth “a fierce advocate for the lot of working families, creating educational opportunities, and expanding medical research.” The Springfield Republican said, “We need a voice for working families in Washington again. Elizabeth Warren will give us that voice.”

Senator Warren was a law professor for more than 30 years, including nearly 20 years as the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. The graduating class at Harvard twice recognized her with the Sacks-Freund Award for excellence in teaching. She taught courses on commercial law, contracts, and bankruptcy and wrote more than a hundred articles and eleven books, including four national best-sellers, This Fight Is Our Fight, A Fighting Chance, The Two-Income Trap, and All Your Worth. National Law Journal named her one of the Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade, TIME Magazine has named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world four times, and she has been honored by the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association with the Lelia J. Robinson Award.

Elizabeth learned first-hand about the economic pressures facing working families, growing up in a family she says was “on the ragged edge of the middle class.” She got married at 19, and after graduating from college, started teaching in elementary school. Her first baby, a daughter Amelia, was born when Elizabeth was 22. When Amelia was two, Elizabeth started law school. Shortly after she graduated, her son Alex was born. Elizabeth hung out a shingle and practiced law out of her living room, but she soon returned to teaching.

Elizabeth is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers School of Law. Elizabeth and her husband Bruce Mann have been married for 44 years and live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with their golden retriever, Bailey. They have three grandchildren.