Longtime California Congresswoman Maxine Waters successfully defended her seat in a contentious race against Republican challenger Joe Collins.
After her recent win, she has turned her focus to supporting the presidency of President-elect Joe Biden. In a hearing on Thursday, Waters called Biden’s election “the dawn of a new progressive America.”
The chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, Waters made the comment during a hearing that featured various Trump appointees to important financial agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the National Credit Union Administration.
Waters said that the reversal of several Trump administration policies around financial services would be a high priority under Biden. She specifically noted a change that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency made under Trump that impacted reducing “redlining,” the act of declaring certain areas off-limits for mortgage lending that has been instrumental in denying homeownership in Black communities.
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“I’m putting our witnesses on notice that I will be working with the Biden administration to roll back these rules,” Waters said.
“We are emerging from the dark days of the Trump administration into the dawn of a new progressive America,” she continued, “where pro-consumer and pro-investor policies will always be first on the agenda.”
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Waters was an outspoken critic of the Trump presidency for the last four years. She characterized the former reality TV host as a “con man.”
In a fiery speech in 2018, Waters responded to incidents in which Trump officials were asked to leave restaurants or other public spaces.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” Waters told the crowd. “And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
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Trump responded on Twitter, saying, “Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!”
After the 2020 presidential election race was called with Biden as the winner, Waters tweeted: “I am exceedingly overjoyed that Trump has been defeated & that the Biden-Harris team have an opportunity to undo the harm this undeserving Prez has caused the country. My hope for the future is renewed! Looking forward to working w/ Biden-Harris team to move our country forward!”
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