Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren attended Re/code’s 2015 Code Conference on May 26, where she let loose a passionate indictment of the state of affairs in Washington, DC. Big banks “stay in the ear of enough of the folks in Washington, that it has made it almost impossible to get any kind of change,” she said. “The only way we get change is when enough people in this country say, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m fed up, and I’m not going to do this anymore.’”

The most pressing issues in need of change, she said, include the need to pass a “meaningful infrastructure bill,” restructuring student-loan debts, and raising adequate funding for the National Institute of Health (NIH). If those seem like “wonky” priorities to you, think again: “We have to make these issues salient, and not just wonky.”