https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1207722547770535936

Gunn-Wright is very pro-Sanders as well and here's what she had to say about that:

https://twitter.com/rgunns/status/1207740941962022913

https://twitter.com/benjaminokeefe/status/1207654252644093954

Some excerpts:

You were a Republican for much of your adult life. Does that give you an advantage to understand conservative voters, to be able to tailor your message—
I would describe it not so much as tailoring as finding the part in the heart where we ultimately, as Americans, agree with each other. Much of the conversation that I now have publicly about corruption — how the rich guys are sucking up all the wealth and leaving everyone else behind — is a long-running conversation I’ve been having with my brothers for decades. They get it. My Democrat brother and my two Republican brothers understand that the rules for billionaires and corporate executives are not the same as the rules for their kids. And they don’t like it. And neither do I.

Your family had financial trouble when you were a kid. Obviously, it’s shaped your political philosophy, but I’m curious how it impacted your personal relationship with money.
I’ve always been afraid there won’t be enough money. Always. I’ve always saved. I’ve always watched the prices of everything. And I’ve always worried about the rest of my family, worried about making sure everyone is OK.

Was your decision to go back to college after you dropped out to get married motivated by a need to feel financially self-sufficient?
You’re right, it has that effect. But it was the other way round. I wanted to be a teacher. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since second grade. When I dropped out of school at 19 and got married, I thought I’d given that up. I knew that theoretically I could go back to school, but it would cost money. Finding a commuter college that cost $50 a semester was a door swinging open in a way that I had thought was impossible. So there I was, I could pay for it. And now that I could pay for it, I could be a teacher.

Your dad was the breadwinner before he had a heart attack, and your mom had to go to work to provide for your family. You often describe your mom as encouraging you to get married rather than pursue your education, almost setting you up to end up in the same position she was in.
I think she would have described it as “Be very careful about the man you marry.” That was the pathway to success, not “Go create a path for your own financial independence.” Now, it took a lot of courage for my mother at 50 to take on her first full-time job. But it was never something she was happy about. She didn’t say, “What a great and fulfilling opportunity that was!” She saw it as work born of necessity, because she had to take care of her family and she wanted me to be safe. And to her dying days she still believed that the best way for a woman to be safe was to be married to a man who earned good money.

... One of your earliest forays into politics was battling Joe Biden in the Nineties over bankruptcy reform. There was a big difference back then in your two worldviews. Do you have those same differences today?
Our differences are a matter of public record, and I haven’t changed any of my views. The fundamental problem I see in Washington today is the influence of money. The giant corporations who can spread it around, the billionaires who can buy influence, the lobbyists who are there every day to advance the views of those who pay them well to attend every meeting. It’s why my campaign starts around this question of how power is distributed. Our government works great for those with lots of money and not so much for anyone else. And that’s been a problem for a long, long time.

Did you get the sense that he ever grasped your criticism of the bankruptcy bill?
I don’t want to go back and relitigate 15 years ago.

I’m curious whether you think more Americans are in debt today because of that bill that Biden championed.
Let me say it the other way: A lot fewer people can get the help they need today because of the change in the laws. That’s what the research I did with my co-authors [showed]. There’s been so much work on this, too, about families caught in financial hell who can’t get any help because the bankruptcy laws were tightened to the point of suffocation back in 2005.

... What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
Ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen, and if nobody will get physically injured, then give it a try.

What’s one piece of financial advice that you think everyone should know?
Debt is really dangerous — far more dangerous than you think.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/elizabeth-warren-interview-cover-927716/amp/

https://twitter.com/Cancun771/status/1207266181217947648

https://twitter.com/mj_lee/status/1207300617288507392
(CNN)Hundreds of veterans of Barack Obama's campaigns and administration have signed on to endorse Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president, as multiple Democratic presidential candidates compete to claim the popular former president's political coalition and legacy.

With the Iowa caucuses less than two months away, more than 200 Obama alumni joined a signature-gathering effort led by a pair of former senior Obama aides, Sara El-Amine and Jon Carson. Among other roles, El-Amine was national director of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, while Carson was a national field director for Obama's 2008 campaign prior to joining the administration. Both served as executive directors of Organizing for America, the Obama grassroots organizing network.

The list of endorsers shared with CNN includes Robert Ford, ex-US ambassador to Syria, Natalie Foster, previously the digital director for Organizing for America, and Sean Carroll, a former senior official at USAID. It also features Obama alumni who are currently working on the Warren campaign full-time including in senior-most positions, like Warren chief strategist Joe Rospars, senior adviser Emily Parcell, national political director Rebecca Pearcey and national director of public engagement Alencia Johnson.

In an interview with CNN, El-Amine and Carson touted the "incredible diversity" of the group that has come out in support of Warren. The 200-plus names were collected in under a week, and they planned to continue growing the list, they said.

"We are a group that really uniquely knows that electability is self-determining and that oftentimes it's the people with the boldest vision and the most unlikely candidacies early on who can really shift the field," El-Amine said. "Sen. Warren really has the zest and the grit and the gumption and the audacity that we loved that President Obama really embodied."

https://twitter.com/Santucci/status/1206710986037760001

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Monday that women who have signed nondisclosure agreements at the company run by Mike Bloomberg should be allowed to tell their stories -- especially if those women want to speak publicly about past allegations that Bloomberg fostered a hostile work environment for women.

"I think [nondisclosure agreements] are a way for people to hide bad things they've done. And I think that women should be able to speak," Warren told reporters during a campaign stop in Fort Madison, Iowa, on Monday. "They need to be released from [nondisclosure agreements]."

...ABC News has asked Bloomberg through his campaign if he has considered releasing these women from their nondisclosure agreements. The Bloomberg campaign declined to comment...But in the wake of a #MeToo movement that tested the public’s tolerance for silencing victims, critics say Bloomberg owes his former employees the opportunity to share their stories. "If Mr. Bloomberg is running for president, I think the public needs to know what actually happened in this business," said Bonnie Josephs, a lawyer whose former client, Sekiko Sakai, filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg's company in 1997.

Sakai accused Bloomberg of making sexually explicit and derogatory statements to and about women in the workplace. A company spokesman told ABC News that the company rarely settles disputes, preferring to take them to court. But Sakai’s case is one of at least five the company has settled in the past 25 years. She is now bound by a confidentiality agreement. ABC News has spoken with several women who expressed interest in telling their stories, but feared the prospect of facing retribution from the company for speaking out.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bloomberg-answer-sexist-comments-women-released-ndas-elizabeth/story?id=67764371

Democratic presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren refused to take a lucrative legal job in 2006 after a consumer advocacy group raised concerns about the work, earning the fury of an attorney who had sought to hire her, court documents show.

The records from more than a decade ago, connected to a lawsuit against two credit reporting giants, shed new light on Warren’s motivations for taking on private legal work amid criticism from fellow contenders who have sought to cast the Massachusetts progressive as a hired gun for big business. The legal papers reviewed by CNBC show that years before Warren gained a national reputation as a zealous consumer advocate, a reputation that’s now at the center of her bid for the White House, she refused to take on an $850 per hour case, because she didn’t believe it would advance principles consistent with her beliefs.

... The email records (also) provide a behind-the-scenes look at Warren’s negotiating style, showing her to be a fierce advocate for her own independence. After Sherman explained in an email that he believed he had hired Warren and that he did not want her to work for the NCLC, Warren wrote that she was “quite surprised that you believe you have retained me.”

“I have no present plans to serve as an expert for NCLC, but I am free to do so,” Warren added. “If I decide that I want to serve as their expert, then I will do so.” Sherman responded that if she attempted to serve as an expert for the NCLC, that he would seek to disqualify her from participating in the case. He noted that “I do not make this statement as a threat.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Warren responded. “You called to ask if I would serve as your expert. Asking the question does not give you any claim on me. I will offer expert reports when I think they are appropriate. You cannot strong-arm me either into writing such a report for you or withholding one from someone else.” Sherman told Warren that he did not intend his message as a threat, but instead wanted to be “on record with our position and intentions on this issue, which I now am.” Warren responded curtly several hours later: “And I am on record with my position and intentions.”

More at https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/elizabeth-warren-turned-down-lucrative-job-over-advocacy-group-concerns.html

Ganesh Sitaraman is one of Elizabeth Warren’s closest advisors. He’s also one of Pete Buttigieg’s best friends. How’s that for awkward?

The 37-year-old Vanderbilt Law School professor, who’s been with Warren since before the start of her political career, has been a key architect of the sweeping policy agenda that powered her surge to the top of the Democratic field. But in his new book, The Great Democracy, the first person Sitaraman acknowledges isn’t Warren. It’s the man she’s been battling fiercely for bragging rights in Iowa.

...After college and during the prestigious scholarships in England, their intellectual growth formalized. The two were part of a reading and discussion group called the Democratic Renaissance Project, meeting in dorm rooms and in pubs to “read [the] liberal giants of the 20th century and discuss what we can take from those writers and scholars” to “[rethink] the Democratic Party,” after John Kerry’s presidential loss in 2004, said Shadi Hamid, a member of the group.

“We did share this sense that the Democratic Party had lost its way and that there needed to be a bold progressive vision,” added Hamid, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “One can debate what that means in practice, but that was the starting premise.” But Buttigieg and Sitaraman took different routes in that effort. Buttigieg joined McKinsey, a corporate consulting firm he’s come under fire for working for in recent days, then ran for Indiana state treasurer in 2010, just a few years after he returned from England. Sitaraman went back to Harvard Law School, and later helped Warren with her oversight of the bank bailouts during the financial crisis and worked on her Senate run.

... More evidence of the overlapping relationships can be found in Buttigieg’s memoir, too. In Shortest Way Home, published last February, Buttigieg noted Sitaraman’s influence in his own book’s acknowledgements, thanking him for his “expert guidance, unvarnished advice, and steady encouragement.” Sitaraman’s name came ahead of his own future presidential campaign manager, senior advisor and other friends.

More at https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/15/pete-buttigieg-aide-elizabeth-warren-085172

In Part 3 of our series on pivotal moments in the lives of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, we spoke with Elizabeth Warren about how she came to be known as the blow-it-up candidate. With help from Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial columnist at The Times and founder of DealBook; Harry Reid, a former Senate majority leader; and David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, we explore Ms. Warren’s rise to prominence as an advocate for overhauling the financial system — and why those beliefs can help us understand her run for president now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/podcasts/the-daily/elizabeth-warren.html

Fantastic 45-minute interview with EW at the link. Please listen to it when you have the time; great questions, even better answers. And Warren's description of her first trip to bankruptcy court, what she saw there and the impact it had on her will move you.

Megan Rapinoe, the star of the US women’s national soccer team and World Cup champion, has once again waded into American politics — this time to endorse a 2020 Democratic nominee for president.

“I’m proud to endorse Elizabeth Warren today, for being bold, for being real, for listening to ALL of us, and for being prepared to navigate the unique challenges we face today as a country,” Rapinoe tweeted on Friday afternoon. It’s a message that could resonate with her 900,000+ Twitter followers and many others who take her stances — most prominently when it comes to equal pay for women — seriously.

One of those people taking Rapinoe’s endorsement to heart? Warren, of course. “Megan is a champion of justice on and off the field and a role model for women and girls everywhere,” the US senator from Massachusetts and leading presidential candidate said in a statement sent to me by her campaign. “I am honored to have her endorsement, and look forward to fighting alongside her for big, structural change.”

Rapinoe’s tweet also included video of a phone call between the two women in which the senator thanked the soccer star for her support. “You both lead your team on the field, but you also help lead America off the field,” Warren said. Rapinoe replied that she’d been following Warren’s campaign closely and believes that “it’s amazing. It’s big, it’s bold.”

https://www.vox.com/2019/12/13/21020737/megan-rapinoe-elizabeth-warren-endorsement
https://twitter.com/mPinoe/status/1205537664054595584