Warren was silenced by Senate Republicans on Tuesday but bolstered by supporters, showing herself once more as a figurehead for Democrats

Elizabeth Warren arrived on the Senate floor to deliver a speech that on a typical day of debate might have gone unwatched, lost in the worthy public affairs television archives of C-Span.

Elizabeth Warren won't be silenced – and neither will American women | Jessica Valenti Read more

Instead, she left as the de facto face of opposition to Donald Trump, cementing herself once more as a figurehead among Democrats in search of a leader.



The rancor over Trump’s cabinet nominees has played out dramatically in Washington, as Senate Democrats have gone to great lengths – from boycotting committee votes to holding the floor of the chamber overnight – to slow the president as he assembles his administration.



Few have been as fierce in their criticism as Warren, whose stand against attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions late on Tuesday confirmed her once again as an unflinching Trump attack dog.



Stopped in mid-speech by Republican leaders, she left the chamber and turned to Facebook Live to read a letter written 30 years prior by Coretta Scott King, in which the widow of Dr Martin Luther King Jr warned of Sessions’s civil rights record as she opposed his nomination at the time for a federal judgeship.



“Mr Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge,” Warren quoted King as writing in the 1986 letter addressed to the Senate judiciary committee.



By silencing Warren, Republicans confirmed the Massachusetts senator as the principal standard bearer for the Democratic party as it sifts the wreckage of its stunning losses in the 2016 election. Her overnight status as leader of the resistance, will also bring its reward in political donations as she prepares to fight for re-election to the Senate in 2018.

For the more machiavellian observers of Washington politics, the elevation of Warren helps Republicans. One strategist quickly suggested it was “delusional” to imagine she had broad appeal, and suggested Trump would like to face her in a 2020 presidential race because she is reviled on the right almost every bit as much as Hillary Clinton.

Warren, who arrived in the Senate in 2013, quickly rose as a progressive icon for taking an aggressive stand against Wall Street, but she ignored calls to stand as a challenger to establishment favorite Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.



Despite the emergence of a “Draft Warren” campaign from Democratic supporters in 2016, the senator instead eventually joined hands with Clinton, a former rival, and embraced the role of Trump’s sharpest challenger.

While others feared his rage, she tangled with him on Twitter and rebuked him in public appearances. As one of Clinton’s top surrogates on the campaign trail, Warren viciously attacked Trump, who had nicknamed her “Pocahontas”, a slur aimed at her claim of Native American ancestry.



Perhaps most memorably, she transformed Trump’s slight of Clinton as a “nasty woman” into a unifying catchphrase, warning the Republican nominee: “Nasty women fight back.”



“She gets under his thin skin like nobody else,” Clinton said of Warren during a speech in New Hampshire. “I expect if Donald heard what she said, he’s tweeting like mad.”



At the time, Warren was regarded first as a potential pick for Clinton’s running mate and later a top contender for a post in the Democratic nominee’s eventual cabinet.



By January, after Clinton’s defeat, she found herself attending Trump’s inauguration – although the Planned Parenthood scarf she wore signalled her refusal to accept his agenda.



Speculation that she might challenge Trump in 2020 already accompanies her every move, notably her intense grilling of his cabinet nominees.



There was an acute exchange over student debt between Warren and billionaire Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation as Trump’s education secretary was forced over the line on Tuesday.

She baited Tom Price, the nominee for health secretary, into refusing to offer a firm commitment as to whether he would cut popular government programs Medicare and Medicaid.



And Warren, not unlike Trump, has used the reach of Twitter to harness her populist message.



She has a new book due out in April, This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class, which has fueled speculation about her ambitions. Although Warren began work on the book well before Trump’s election, it will focus on his administration’s agenda.



“America’s once-solid middle class is on the ropes, and now Donald Trump and his administration seem determined to deliver the knockout punch,” Warren said in a statement on her book.



“At this perilous moment in our country’s history, it’s time to fight back – and I’m looking for more people to join me.”



In a moment when millions of marchers are galvanized in opposition to Trump, Warren stands out as an elected Democrat willing to fight. She faces a re-election campaign in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats must hope their fightback becomes tangible. In a letter to supporters announcing her intention to seek a second term, Warren foreshadowed “smears and rightwing attacks” from Trump, Republican leaders, GOP mega-donors such as the Koch brothers and Wall Street.



Warren will be a prime target for Republicans despite representing a comfortably blue state. A recent poll of Massachusetts voters suggested her future opponent may have an opening.



When asked if Warren deserved re-election, 46% said it was time to “give someone else a chance” compared with 44% who said she should get another term.



The late-night stand against Sessions might help to bolster Warren’s popularity. The hashtag #LetLizSpeak quickly trended during the Senate showdown, followed by another show of support as social media users flooded Twitter the morning after with the hashtag #ShePersisted.



Warren’s moment also appeared to instantaneously repair relations with progressives who had been upset by her vote in favor of Ben Carson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of housing and development.



Warren confronted frustrated liberals in a Facebook post acknowledging their disappointment: “OK, let’s talk about Dr Ben Carson.”



She defended her decision to support the retired neurosurgeon, maintaining she still held “serious, deep, profound concerns” about his inexperience and disagreed with many of his public statements, but said she had extracted written promises from him on issues ranging from homelessness to fair housing laws.

Warren urged supporters to stay in the fight and keep speaking up, adding: “Unlike the new administration, I don’t believe in ignoring or silencing people who disagree with the choices I make or the votes I take.”

As Warren dominated the conversation on Wednesday, Clinton tweeted her support, writing: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted. So must we all.”