Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tina Smith, D-Minn., have informed the secretary of Health and Human Services they have discovered “significant gaps in COVID-19 testing capacity.”In a letter this week to HHS chief Alex Azar, Warren and Smith said they made the discovery after contacting five of the worlds largest Covid testing labs: Quest, BioReference, ARUP Labs, LabCorp., and Mayo Clinic.They said the labs informed them that they experienced a “large spike in COVID-19 diagnostic testing needs” during the summer surge. The letter said the labs are also developing additional testing capacities but are still short on supplies and are experiencing “confusion about payment and reimbursement for COVID-19 diagnostic testing as a result of Congressional and Administration inaction.”...Read the full article on CNBC.com here.… Continue Reading
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and several Democratic colleagues want immigration detention facilities to track and publicly report data about COVID-19 cases.Warren, along with New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, filed the bill, called the COVID-19 in Immigration Detention Data Transparency Act, Wednesday in both chambers of Congress.The bill would require Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement — and any facilities that contract with those agencies — to collect and submit COVID-19 data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a weekly basis. That data would then be published publicly....Read the full article from WBUR here.… Continue Reading
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey believe that any new COVID-19 relief package needs to include a new round of stimulus checks — and they’re imploring fellow Senate Democrats to hold firm on the position in the midst of the dual public health and economic crises.The two Massachusetts senators signed onto a letter Tuesday urging colleagues to “join us in demanding that any new COVID-relief proposal includes a $1,200 direct payment to adults and $500 to their children,” similar to the first round of checks that were included in the CARES Act last spring....Read the full article on Boston.com here.… Continue Reading
United States Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs, today released the following statement criticizing the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for issuing a final rule on brokered deposits that
poses serious risk to the financial system:"Following a multi-year effort to weaken key safety and soundness rules
put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, Trump-appointed regulators have
now gutted decades-old rest… Continue Reading
United States Senators Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) today announced they will
convene a bipartisan advisory committee to review and provide recommendations
on U.S. Attorney candidates for the District of Massachusetts. Candidates
interested in applying for the U.S. Attorney position must submit
their applications to the Advisory Committee by December 24, 2020.The Advisory Committee on United States Attorney for the District of
Massachusetts Nominations will sol… Continue Reading
United States Senators Elizabeth Warren
(D-MA) and Edward J. Markey (D-MA), along with Representative William Keating
(D-MA-09) released a joint statement on Attorney General Maura Healey's investigation
into the violent events of May 1, 2020 at the C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration
Detention Center, Unit B, Bristol County Sheriff's office. "The thorough investigation by the Office of Attorney General Healey
compiled significant evidence that the Bristol County Sheriff's Office violated
the c… Continue Reading
As Democrats celebrate the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris, we need to have an important conversation about building a 50-state party that can win up and down the ticket. But with a hobbled economy, an international health crisis, a vanishing middle class and widespread racial inequities, we also need to answer another important question — how to deliver on our campaign promises and improve the lives of the American people.The Biden-Harris ticket accomplished something historic — unseating an incumbent president for the first time in a generation and likely flipping states that haven’t voted for Democrats in decades. They did it with the support of the candidates from our contested presidential primary, all of whom urged our supporters to back Joe. They did it thanks to years of grass-roots organizing in the Latino and Native communities in Arizona. They did it thanks to the extraordinary work of Black women in states such as Georgia. The… Continue Reading
For the first time in history, the American people have elected a President and Vice President States who committed to cancelling billions in student loan debt.Americans outside of Washington get it.They see their friends, family, and neighbors crushed by growing debt burdens, unable to afford their first home or start a small business. They know a senior whose Social Security check has been garnished by the federal government just to pay student loan interest. They know a mother struggling to make ends meet who never got a degree and now watches her debt load grow faster than she can keep up with.And even if they don’t know one of our 43 million friends and neighbors buried under 1.5 trillion dollars in federal student loan debt, they understand the need to boost to our struggling economy. This is Econ 101: the best way to jumpstart our economy is to put more money in working families’ pockets — money they can spend in their communities....Read the full article on Blavity here.… Continue Reading
(CNN) As millions of Americans cast their ballots in the most important presidential election in recent history, and as Native communities grapple with the disproportionate toll of a once-in-a-century pandemic, Senate Republicans are focused on one thing: installing a right-wing judge on our nation's highest court.Make no mistake: The Trump administration and Senate Republicans are trying to force a justice onto the court to finish the job they could not finish in Congress. They want to destroy the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We can be sure of it because, right now, Republican state attorneys general are in court trying to do exactly that....Read the full article on CNN here.… Continue Reading
