In Framingham Town Hall, Warren Lays Out Plan to Fight Back Against Trump Policies That Hurt Massachusetts Families
“[U]ltimately, the power is not actually in the White House. The power is not actually in the Congress. The power lies with the people, and that's what I'm counting on.”
“[Billionaires like Elon Musk] believe that the rich can get even more squeezed out of this country and they can do it on the backs of everyone else in this nation, and they hope you won't see that, and they are wrong. We see it, and we will stop it.”
“This is not just Republican versus Democrat. Not anymore. This is a whole lot bigger than that.”
Boston, MA – At a town hall in Framingham, Massachusetts, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) shared her thoughts on President Trump and Elon Musk’s work to “bring down our government from the inside,” and laid out her plan to fight back against the Trump administration’s policies that hurt Massachusetts families.
February 22, 2025
As Delivered
Senator Elizabeth Warren: Hello Framingham! Hello Massachusetts! Oh, sit down, sit down. Damn, it is good to be here with you all. Not that it's not fun to be in Washington. But thank you all for being here.
This is such an extraordinary moment. I know there's a lot you could be out doing, but you're in here because you care. And I'm so glad we have this chance to be together, but I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's a hard time out there.
It is a hard time when our federal government is firing the people who are trying to do cancer research. It is a hard time when our federal government, under co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump, is laying off the people who keep our nuclear materials safe. It is a hard time when our co-presidents are firing veterans. It is a hard time when they are trying to bring down our government from the inside. It is a hard time when President Elon Musk is out there mowing through every federal database that has all your personal financial information, and in some cases, medical information, all of the ways that you can be identified. It is a hard time when that little consumer agency—can we hear it for the CFPB? Yeah. When the cop on the beat that has discovered more than 20 billion dollars of scams over the last dozen years shut them down and made the scammers give the money back to the people they cheated, and now co-president Musk wants to shut that down—not on my watch. You bet. Yeah. Yeah. Not here. And it is a hard time when co-president Trump thinks that he's going to rule by bullying people, whether those people are immigrants, whether those people identify differently he does, whether or not those people are the governor of Maine. It's not going to work.
Here's the deal. Yes, it is a hard time. I acknowledge that, and we came together to talk about it. We don't have all the tools we want. I get it. Boy, can I count to exactly 47 Democrats in the United States Senate and 53 Republicans. I can do that math. I understand that. But the fact that we don't have as many tools as we want does not mean that we have no tools at all. We are in this fight. You bet. So, I want to do something today. I want to tell you, just as our topper, we're going to ask some questions in a minute, but I want to tell you what I'm working on and what we're all trying to do right now.
So part one: what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing in large parts of government is flatly illegal. It's just illegal. It's not like, “Well on the one hand, on the other.’ A big part of what they're doing is illegal, and we are in the courts. We are in the courts, and we're going to fight this out in the courts. That's part one.
Part two: right in the United States Senate, we are the ones who are supposed to do advice and consent. Now, like I said, we're in a 47-53. These nominees are horrible. It's a term of art here. Right. They are terrible. We now have someone who's going to be in charge of our Health and Human Services. Yep. Yep. Yep. Someone who's in charge of the Department of Defense. The Director of National Intelligence. So, I see you've been reading, right? You're staying up, you get who these people are.
The Republicans are going forward in the Senate with these people, Donald Trump has nominated them, going forward. Here's the deal. We're not giving it away for free. They can name horrible people, and maybe we don't have the votes to stop them, but we are not giving it away for free. When RFK gets nominated—you bet—I tried to make clear with my questions: not only does he traffic in antiscience, traffic in antivaxx, but he's making millions of dollars to do it, and that's not right. When our Secretary of Defense is credibly accused of sexual assault, I managed to pry out the information: he paid $50,000 to hush that woman up. When he's falling down drunk at work events and when he drove not one, but two nonprofits straight into the ground financially. We couldn't stop him, but we didn't give it away for free.
Here's how I look at it, with all of these nominees. We're putting a stink on them, and making sure the American people see it, and that every damn Republican who voted for him is going to feel a part of that stink now, and into the future. So, that's part two. And part three is to try to raise a movement. To do it all across this country. Yep. If you've seen me on TV, if you've seen me on podcasts, if you've seen me out in the streets or sidewalks, you understand that's what I'm trying to do and it's what others are trying to do. Because ultimately, the power is not actually in the White House. The power is not actually in the Congress. The power lies with the people, and that's what I'm counting on.
So, with that in mind, I know what we need. We've got people in this room. I don't have to tell you not to give up. You don't give up. You're in this room because you were ready for this fight. So, I wanted to be here today to ask for three things. You know I always come with an ask. I mean everybody, anybody wants to meet me, "Oh, Elizabeth, what do you want now?" because that's my job. So ask number one; tell the stories of what this means. Ask number one, that's it.
Tell the stories of what it means if cancer research is halted.
Tell the stories about what it means if we're going to shut down our national parks.
Tell the stories of what it's going to mean if someone who has dedicated 22 years working in public service just gets laid off.
Tell the stories of what it means if you're going to terrorize an immigrant community so that little business owners have to close their doors because people are afraid to be out on the sidewalks.
Tell the story about what it means when children are afraid to go to school.
Tell those stories.
And the reason for that is: we are at the moment of developing the national narrative for what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing. It is bad, and we need to tell that story, and I need you to tell it. So that's part one, and by the way, when I say tell it, tell it everywhere. Tell it online, do it on your Facebook, do it on Insta, do it texting, but also the group you went to school with, your group that you work on, anybody, anywhere around the country. Go on these chats and tell the stories, because this is how, as a nation, we make the voice of people heard. So that's part one. Part two: do not underestimate the value of organizing. Indivisible. God bless them. Some of you, we have some Indivisible members. And other organizations. I'm all in. One voice is powerful. Two voices is more than twice as powerful. Organizing and getting energy behind it—we keep each other going. So please, organize, get in a group that's organized. Work with others, build your own, bring in your neighbors, but come.
And then, part three, you’ve got to take care. These are hard times, and remember how they say on the airplane, ‘Adjust your own mask before helping the person sitting next to you.’ You actually do have to take a deep breath. This is a time when Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to undermine our confidence and our ability to be with each other, to make our voices heard, to make this government work. And we have to take care of ourselves.
And that's going to be a lot of different things for different people. I have my own. We can talk about that. But with your friends, with yourself, you got to take care, because we're not in this just until tonight. We're not in this just until the end of this month. We are in this for the long haul to save our country.
I know it's hard right now. It's hard to maintain focus. There's so much going on. I sometimes think of this as feeling like you're in a sandstorm, right, and it's just buffeting, and things are coming from every direction. Understand that is intentional. They are doing this because they don't want people to be able to get focused and respond. Why is that? Why all this noise? Why are they doing all these pieces at once? Because they want you to not see the driving force behind it. There is a driving force here, and the driving force is that billionaires like Elon Musk and a handful of the other cronies, they want giant tax cuts so that they can be even richer and so they can run this country. And they want regular folks, people who depend on a little help from the federal government, to be able to stay in a nursing home. People who need, a little kid down the street from you who has a severe disability and he needs an aide to be able to be in a public school. They believe that the rich can get even more squeezed out of this country and they can do it on the backs of everyone else in this nation, and they hope you won't see that, and they are wrong. We see it, and we will stop it. You bet. Yup. I think of this as what we fight for.
This is not just Republican versus Democrat. Not anymore. This is a whole lot bigger than that. This is truly what we think our government is for. Why we organize and get out there, why we vote, why we show up. The Republicans right now have completely caved in. It's Elon Musk and whatever he wants to do, and Donald Trump wants to name himself King. That's where they're headed.
We are the people who actually believe that we can build an America that doesn't just work for a handful at the top. We believe in an America where everybody gets a fighting chance, and what that ultimately means is that we make those investments so people can get them. We make the investment, damn it, in public education—can we hear it for our teachers? You bet. We make those investments in healthcare because healthcare is a basic human right. And we're in the fight to make those investments in housing so everyone has an opportunity to buy a home and build some security.
I'm here because I'm an optimist. And yeah, this is, this is, this tests me. I get it. But I'm still an optimist. I'm an optimist because I truly see up close and personal what happens when we work together. I see the things we build, and I see the people right now here in Framingham, here in Massachusetts, who show up to say investing in our government is worth it. So we're going to stay in this fight. Thank you.
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