Elizabeth Warren Pledges Salary To HIAS As Long As Government Is Shut Down
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Days after launching a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledged her salary to HIAS, the Jewish immigration advocacy group, as long as the government is shut down.
“Over 7,000 people in Massachusetts have been sent home or are working without pay during the #TrumpShutdown,” Warren said Tuesday, New Year’s Day, on Twitter. “Until @realDonaldTrump re-opens the government, I’m donating my salary to @HIASrefugees, a nonprofit that helps refugees and makes our country stronger in the process.”
Trump has sworn not to sign a funding bill until Congress agrees to fund a wall with Mexico, which is unlikely with Democrats controlling the U.S. House of Representatives in the new Congress. As a result, the government is entering its second week of a shutdown, keeping hundreds of thousands of workers at home. Trump wants the wall to slow illegal immigration.
Congress members and their staffs, separate from the executive branch, are not affected by the shutdown.
HIAS has taken a lead among groups opposing Trump’s immigration restrictions, including initiating and joining lawsuits against some of the president’s policies.
Warren launched her bid for the presidency in the waning days of 2018.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO