Elizabeth Warren Facing Scrutiny Over Native American Ancestry Claims

Potential Democratic 2020 presidential candidate long claimed hard-to-prove ties.

elizabeth warren
Elizabeth Warren on Stephen Colbert's 'Late Show.' (YouTube/CBS)

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren may be dancing with political wolves over her repeated public claims that she has some Native American ancestry. As the 2020 presidential race gets closer, there’s increasing scrutiny on those undocumented claims of Cherokee and Delaware lineage, which she attributes to information passed down in her family. Those nebulous claims, however, have made her susceptible to critics on all sides of the political spectrum. President Trump has derisively called her “Pocahontas.”

“There’s also discomfort on the left and among some tribal leaders and activists that Warren has a political blind spot when it comes to the murkiness surrounding her story of her heritage, which blew up as an issue in her victorious 2012 Massachusetts Senate race,” writes The Boston Globe‘s Annie Linskey.

The InsideHook Newsletter.

News, advice and insights for the most interesting person in the room.