Katie Porter

In March 2020, she used five minutes of questioning to get the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert R. Redfield, to agree to use its legal authority to make testing for the COVID-19 virus free for all Americans.

Porter later attended Harvard Law School, where she was the Notes editor for the Harvard Women’s Law Journal. She studied under current U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, and graduated magna cum laude with her Juris Doctor in 2001.

In March 2019, Porter introduced the "Help America Run Act" (H.R.1623), a bill that would allow people running for the House or Senate to use campaign contributions to pay for healthcare premiums, elder care, child care and dependent care. The bill passed the House in October 2019 and moved on to the Senate for a final vote.

She has also attracted attention for her questioning on the House Financial Services Committee. In March 2019, her questioning caught Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan contradicting what his corporate lawyers were arguing in court, in that statements he had previously made pledging transparency were "corporate puffery", according to documents lawyers submitted. In April 2019, Porter drew attention for her questioning of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon about how a Chase bank teller should make up a $567 shortfall between her monthly budget and her paycheck. In May 2019, she asked Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson about "REOs", real-estate owned properties, which he confused with Oreo cookies. She also asked Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Kathy Kraninger to solve some math problems about annual percentage rates on payday loans, which Kraninger declined to do.

In the 2018 elections, Porter ran for the United States House of Representatives against two-term incumbent Republican Mimi Walters in California's 45th congressional district . Porter defeated Walters to become the first Democrat to represent the 45th district or its predecessors since it was created in 1983. Her victory was part of a Democratic sweep of Orange County, long reckoned a bastion of suburban conservatism. For the first time since 1936, the Democrats took all four previously held Republican seats (including Porter's) in Orange County. They now hold all seven seats in the county.

In March 2012, California Attorney General Kamala Harris appointed Porter to be the state's independent monitor of banks in a nationwide $25 billion mortgage settlement. As monitor, she oversaw the banks' implementation of $9.5 billion in settlement reforms for Californians.

Porter did not accept corporate PAC money in her bid for Congress. She was endorsed by End Citizens United, a political action committee seeking to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Porter has cited an overhaul of campaign finance laws and protection of voting rights as legislative priorities.

Porter clerked for Judge Richard S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Little Rock. She practiced with the law firm of Stoel Rives LLP in Portland and was the Project Director for the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges' Business Bankruptcy Project. Porter was Associate Professor of Law at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas School of Law. In 2005, she joined the faculty of the University of Iowa College of Law as an associate law professor, becoming a full professor there in 2011 before joining the faculty as a tenured professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law in 2011.

Porter married Matthew Hoffman in 2003, with whom she has three children. During her campaign, she said her marriage was marked by physical and mental abuse. According to Porter, her husband punched her, shoved her one-year-old daughter across the kitchen, threatened to kill himself, and hurled profane insults at her family. The couple divorced in 2013, and Porter is now a single mother with custody of their children.

Katherine Moore Porter (born January 3, 1974) is an American law professor, attorney, and politician serving as the U.S. Representative for California's 45th congressional district since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first Democrat to be elected to represent the district, which covers much of south-central Orange County, including Irvine, Tustin and Lake Forest along with large slices of Anaheim and Laguna Niguel. Porter attended Harvard University and Yale University; she most recently taught at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Porter was born on January 3, 1974, and grew up in a small farming community in Iowa. Her father was a farmer-turned-banker. Her mother Liz was a founder of Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting.