News Coverage
Reuters: US Senator Warren demands Medicare nominee Dr. Oz sever industry ties
President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the agency overseeing Medicare should divest financial ties to healthcare and pharmaceutical companies that could benefit from his policy decisions, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday. Television personality and surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz is scheduled to appear on Friday before the Senate Finance Committee, on which Warren sits. The panel will hold a confirmation hearing for his nomination to be administrator of the Centers for … Continue Reading
March 11, 2025
Axios: Why housing affordability keeps getting worse
Not only have home prices soared over the past decade, but it's the "affordable" homes that have seen the biggest price increases. Why it matters: Rising prices, exacerbated by a shortage of affordable homes, put homeownership out of reach for many, driving them to a rental market that's also seen remarkable cost increases. Zoom out: It's a doom loop. A shortage of affordable homes means that buyers compete fiercely for the cheapest ones, pushing up prices. Prices for the bottom third of … Continue Reading
March 11, 2025
Business Insider: Democrats want to work with Trump's education secretary on one big thing for student-loan borrowers
President Donald Trump's new education secretary might find room for agreement with Democrats on a key issue: making sure student-loan servicers do their jobs. On Monday night, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren led a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. James Clyburn, in sending a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon regarding oversight over the companies that manage millions of student-loan borrowers' federal loans. "Despite our … Continue Reading
March 10, 2025
Axios: Scoop: Trump hiring freeze hit anti-terrorism jobs
Recruitment for anti-terrorism posts at the Treasury Department was halted last month, despite a carveout in President Trump's hiring freeze for national security jobs. Why it matters: Treasury's Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) office tracks terrorist and criminal financing and is responsible for enforcing a wide range of government sanctions. Democrats pushed Treasury last month to detail the extent of the freeze, as Axios scooped. Treasury rescinded all job offers at the TFI … Continue Reading
March 10, 2025
Breaking Defense: Deputy defense secretary nominee has ‘clear conflict of interest’ with Ligado lawsuit: Sen. Warren
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is raising concerns with deputy defense secretary nominee Stephen Feinberg’s ties to Ligado Networks, arguing that Feinberg’s family or the private equity firm he founded could financially benefit from the ongoing lawsuit between the communications company and the US government. Feinberg’s Cerberus Capital Management owns about 14 percent of the communications company’s debt and 24 percent of its preferred stock, according to court documents cited by Warren in … Continue Reading
March 10, 2025
American Banker: Warren scolds Fed for 'lack of accountability' on SVB execs
It's been two years since Silicon Valley Bank failed and at least one lawmaker is still waiting for answers — and legal action. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Monday afternoon chastising the Fed Board of Governors for not holding Silicon Valley Bank's leaders individually accountable for its demise. "These executives drove the bank into the ground, requiring extraordinary government intervention and costly support to stave off … Continue Reading
March 10, 2025
Bloomberg : Senators Say Kennedy Must Disclose Details on Drugmaker Meetings
Three senators are calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to disclose what he and President Donald Trump discussed with drugmakers during closed-door conversations. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Bernie Sanders sent a letter dated March 10 to Kennedy, who is a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry. They accused him of attending "unofficial, million-dollar dinners" with industry executives at Mar-a-Lago. "You owe the American public an … Continue Reading
March 07, 2025
Axios: Elizabeth Warren asks Trump's crypto czar for public disclosures
On the morning of the White House's first Digital Assets Summit Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) sent a critical letter to David Sacks, the administration's crypto and AI czar, which she has shared with Axios exclusively. The big picture: The deeper the federal government gets into supporting the blockchain industry, the more it's going to drive up values for existing holders, which raises conflict of interest questions for officials writing those policies, the senator … Continue Reading
March 06, 2025
The Guardian: Elizabeth Warren, Dems call for inquiry in to Musk agency’s firings of probationary workers
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and 10 Democratic Senators have called on the government accountability office (GAO) to investigate the effects of the recent firing of federal probationary employees on the health and safety of the American public. The letter noted at least 25,000 probationary employees at the federal government appear to have been indiscriminately fired under the claims of poor performance, regardless of their performance. The firings put American people “at risk”, … Continue Reading
March 06, 2025
Semafor: Warren probes CEOs over their tax break lobbying
The top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, is asking the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla how they swayed Republicans to pursue bringing back a provision allowing businesses to deduct research and development costs from their taxes right away, instead of spreading them out over multiple years. The move, which is being weighed as part of the GOP's tax package, could retroactively be worth a collective $75 billion for the last three … Continue Reading
March 06, 2025
Wall Street Journal: Senators Call for DOJ Probe of X’s Advertiser Pressure Campaign
Five Democratic senators have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Elon Musk is leveraging his influence in the Trump administration to bully advertisers into returning to X. The request, from Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff and Chris Van Hollen, follows a Wall Street Journal report last month about the social-media platform’s pressuring Interpublic Group to spend more on X. If Musk uses his government position to harm those who don’t … Continue Reading
March 05, 2025
The Verge: Senate votes to strip the CFPB of its power to regulate X
The Senate voted on Wednesday to strip a key financial regulator of its ability to monitor digital platforms like X, as the social media company’s owner, Elon Musk, has become the public face of the government office seeking to shrink the agency’s workforce. The resolution, which still requires House approval, would effectively moot a rule finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) last year establishing its authority to monitor digital payment offerings, just as it already … Continue Reading
February 27, 2025
Reuters: Exclusive: Senators ask Trump's Air Force nominee to respond to allegations of favoring Musk's SpaceX
Two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday asked President Donald Trump's Air Force secretary nominee whether he unfairly favored Elon Musk in a classified, multibillion-dollar spy satellite contract. In a letter sent Thursday, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats, asked nominee Troy Meink how his role in the contract solicitation may have favored SpaceX, Musk's rocket and satellite company. The Massachusetts and Illinois lawmakers cited a recent … Continue Reading
February 27, 2025
HuffPost: Elizabeth Warren Presses X To Find 25,000 Tweets Deleted By Trump Nominee
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to know what happened to 25,000 tweets that a key Donald Trump nominee deleted soon after the 2024 election, and she on Wednesday wrote a letter to X CEO Linda Yaccarino requesting those records. Bill Pulte, an investor whose grandfather founded PulteGroup and made it a housing construction empire, is President Trump’s nominee to serve as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates trillions of dollars in the housing finance … Continue Reading
February 27, 2025
HuffPost: Democrats Alarmed By DOGE’s Access To ‘Sensitive Databases’
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other lawmakers pressed the Education Department on Wednesday to clarify how much access Elon Musk’s team had been granted to student loan borrowers’ sensitive data and what they planned to do with it. In a letter to acting Education Secretary Denise Carter, Democrats said the agency had provided “woefully inadequate” information about who was using the data and to what end. They said the Education Department’s written response to their questions earlier … Continue Reading
February 27, 2025
AP: DOGE access to US intelligence secrets poses a national security threat, Democrats say
Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from Elon Musk about whether staffers at his Department of Government Efficiency have shared national security secrets over insecure communication channels. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia were joined by several other Democrats on a letter Thursday that asserts that reckless actions by Musk and Republican President Donald Trump's cost-cutting initiative present a threat to national security by exposing … Continue Reading
February 26, 2025
Reuters: Democratic senator urges Trump Commerce nominee to take hard line on China
A senior Democratic senator on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security to take a tough line on China, citing Chinese startup DeepSeek's artificial intelligence technology. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, told nominee Jeffrey Kessler in a letter seen by Reuters that the Trump administration should strengthen AI chips rules adopted by then-President Joe Biden's … Continue Reading
February 26, 2025
NOTUS: Top Democrats Want To Know More About Scott Turner’s Interest in Privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Senate Democrats are trying to get Housing Secretary Scott Turner to explain his support for reprivatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and how such a change would impact homebuyers. In a letter obtained by NOTUS, ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Elizabeth Warren and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked Turner to clarify what role the Department of Housing and Urban Development would play in the process — the Federal Housing Finance Agency is the … Continue Reading
February 25, 2025
USA TODAY: Thousands of consumer complaints unanswered after Trump CFPB purge, Dems say
Thousands of complaints submitted by Americans to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleging fraud or scams from private companies are going unanswered following President Donald Trump's efforts to dismantle the agency, Senate Democrats argue in a new report. Their conclusion is based on publicly available data detailed in an analysis released Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs led by ranking member Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. The … Continue Reading
February 25, 2025
Punchbowl News: The Vault: Warren preps grilling for Trump CFPB nom
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will ask the Trump administration nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau whether he’d refuse “any unlawful directives” from the White House and if the agency could operate with only 100 employees, according to a letter reviewed by Punchbowl News. Jonathan McKernan appears before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday as the White House’s pick to lead the CFPB full-time. With much of the agency’s operations still suspended, we expect McKernan … Continue Reading