Democrat Warren kicks off 2020 run, ignoring ancestry row

Democrat Elizabeth Warren has officially kicked off her 2020 White House run with a full-throated pledge to defend working Americans, unbowed by a row over her Native American ancestry that has threatened to nip her campaign in the bud.

"This is the fight of our lives," she told cheering supporters in gritty Lawrence, Massachusetts, against "a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else."
But for now it is unclear how badly damaged Warren is by the stubborn controversy over her claim to Native American roots -- a claim Trump has seized upon to belittle her, mocking her as "Pocahontas."
The matter reared its head again this week when The Washington Post published what it said was an official 1980s document in which Warren listed her race as "American Indian."
But he also cautioned that "it's still very, very early" to speculate on "how it harms her, or doesn't harm her."
"I will never give up on you," she said. "I am in this fight all the way." -
She called for "big, structural change" in America that would reach beyond new US leadership -- though she called the Trump administration "the most corrupt in living memory."
Warren tried in her speech to appeal to a broad ethnic coalition, saying, "We must not allow those with power to weaponize hatred and bigotry to divide us."