Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she will force a vote Wednesday on a bipartisan resolution to terminate the national emergency declaration Donald Trump is using to impose sweeping tariffs.
The announcement came during a press call with former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra and a panel of economic policy experts who repeatedly warned of a coming recession. Warren said the Senate is expected to vote Wednesday and called on her Republican colleagues to reject Trump's use of tariffs.
"Will they stand up for the American people and vote yes, or will they continue bending the knee to Donald Trump and vote no?" she posited. "Senators have the power to fight back — if we don't, Donald Trump and his team will continue the chaos and corruption and the American people will pay for it with higher prices, higher unemployment and a faltering economy."
The
Another attendee on the call, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, expressed concern for the economy, predicting that the U.S. is veering toward a recession exacerbated by Trump's policies.
Focusing on household indicators of distress, Chopra flagged credit and debit card data showing a sharp socioeconomic status divergence: high-income consumers are still spending, particularly on travel, while lower-income households are pulling back.
He said he was troubled by what he interprets as a slowdown in consumer spending outside the top 10% of earners, declines in store card purchases and rising delinquency in auto loans. The resumption of student loans have also been a drag on economic vital signs, Chopra said.
"Take a look specifically at things like store cards [like] Synchrony and their earnings, you're seeing material declines in spending," Chopra said. "As the restart of federal student loan payments has gone forward, we are now seeing — for the first time in a long time — a reduction in average FICO scores. We're also seeing high levels not seen since before the great financial crisis, of the percentage of consumers who are making the minimum payment on their credit card, entering into a treadmill of debt."
Asked about growing public anxiety over deposit safety, Senator Warren said confidence in FDIC insurance — a bedrock of the American banking system — was under threat from Donald Trump's attacks on financial regulators. She warned that Trump, along with Elon Musk, were "taking a chainsaw" to institutions like the FDIC, undermining decades of public trust.
"Donald Trump and his co-President Elon Musk are taking a chainsaw to our financial regulators, including the FDIC, and putting at risk the confidence that the American people have built over decades in knowing that that insurance program will work and the bank supervisors will keep a close eye on all of the financial institutions," Warren told the audience. "FDIC insurance security doesn't happen on its own, it happens because those regulators are strong and independent and because they have enough people to be able to do the oversight that it's necessary, and Donald Trump is trying to take all of that away."
The former CFPB director also warned of rising levels of uninsured deposits — especially at major banks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, according to call data from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, which sets standards for the examination of financial institutions. Chopra says the elevated uninsured levels are a sign of significant risks to both households and small businesses.
"Some of it may be that you are seeing people withdraw from their investment accounts or their brokerage accounts, or they're just pulling money from other places and parking it," Chopra estimated. "I am encouraging people to make sure that they are putting funds in multiple accounts, or to the extent that they can expand their limit at the same account by opening … a short term CD or a joint account. I am worried about it, and also the volume of uninsured deposits in the system is still a huge concern."
Chopra also called for Congress to pass legislation expanding deposit insurance for low- or no-interest accounts, often used for business transactions.
Deposit Insurance reforms have been an area of rare bipartisan consensus since the March 2023 banking crisis laid bare the risks of elevated uninsured deposits at firms and their associated run risk. Earlier in April, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
