Elizabeth Warren issued her strongest anti-corruption message yet before a crowd of 20,000 in Manhattan’s Washington State Park, lambasting President Trump and laying out her vision for introducing sweeping government reforms via an “inside-outside” approach.
“Let’s start with the obvious: Donald Trump is corruption in the flesh,” the Massachusetts senator and White House hopeful said. “He’s sworn to serve the people of the United States, but he only serves himself and his partners in corruption.”
Warren, whose largest crowd to date had been 15,000 in Seattle last month, expanded on proposals she released earlier Monday, including banning public officials from trading in private stocks and applying the Code of Conduct for United States Judges to Supreme Court justices.
“No one should be surprised public confidence in our federal courts is at an all-time low, but we can fix it,” she said. “We will rewrite the basic code of ethics for federal judges, and we will appoint a whole new generation of judges with diverse backgrounds and a wide range of legal experiences: judges who actually believe in fundamental laws like equal rights and equal justice.”
While she didn’t mention Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who came under renewed scrutiny last week for decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct he had previously denied, the former Harvard Law School professor was more direct in the Medium post outlining her platform.
“Sexual assault and perjury complaints against Brett Kavanaugh were dismissed when he was confirmed to the Supreme Court,” she wrote. “Under my plan, investigations will remain open until their findings are made public and any penalties for misconduct are issued.”
On Monday night, Warren spoke about Frances Perkins and the women-led union movement that was formed in the aftermath of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 146 garment workers died a stone’s throw from Washington State Park. The senator drew similarities between their story and her own people-focused campaign for the White House.
“With Frances working the system from the inside and women workers organizing and applying pressure from the outside, they rewrote New York state’s labor laws from top to bottom,” she said of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations-era labor secretary, the first woman appointed to a U.S. Cabinet.
Responding to Republican and centrist Democratic detractors who argue Warren’s brand of populism is too extreme, the Wall Street critic called on her party to “meet the moment.”
“We can’t choose a candidate we don’t believe in because we are too scared to do anything else, and Democrats can’t win if we are scared and looking backwards,” she said in a veiled swipe at former Vice President Joe Biden, the nomination race’s front-runner who’s dominating the more moderate primary lane.
Five months out from the Iowa caucuses, Biden and Warren are the top two contenders in the historically crowded field jostling for the right to challenge Trump next year. Biden attracts an average of 26.2% of the vote while Warren pulls 17% support, according to RealClearPolitics data.
Warren will next appear at a NARAL town hall in Manhattan on Tuesday.
