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The tales that matter on cash and politics within the race for the White Home
US vice-president Kamala Harris will be the undisputed frontrunner for the Democratic celebration’s presidential nomination, however regardless of being within the public eye for many years her place on some key coverage areas is unclear.
Harris was first elected as district lawyer of San Francisco in 2003. She later served as attorney-general of California earlier than being elected to the US Senate in 2017. She ran a shortlived presidential marketing campaign of her personal earlier than being chosen as Joe Biden’s operating mate in 2020. Since then she has targeted on supporting Biden’s agenda moderately than articulating her personal.
Here’s what we find out about the place she stands on 5 key coverage points:
International coverage
This is without doubt one of the few areas the place Harris has supported Biden however sometimes sought to stake out her personal positions. As vice-president, she has more and more represented the US and Biden himself at main conferences of world leaders, together with the Munich Safety Convention and, extra not too long ago, final month’s Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland.
However in latest months she has additionally began to diverge from Biden, most notably in her statements relating to the struggle between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In March, she known as for an “fast ceasefire” given the “immense scale of struggling” there. This can be a marked distinction with the president, who has lengthy been a staunch supporter of Israel and backed Benjamin Netanyahu’s struggle effort regardless of a frosty relationship between the 2 males.
Biden and Harris are anticipated to satisfy the Israeli prime minister when he involves Washington later this week to handle a joint session of Congress, although the precise timings of the conferences haven’t been set as Biden stays sick with Covid-19 at his house in Delaware.
Economics
One of many Biden administration’s largest priorities has been reining in sky-high costs within the aftermath of the pandemic. Harris has been a staunch supporter of the president’s efforts to scale back inflation and this weekend stated bringing down the value of petrol and different every day prices was a “prime precedence”.
Harris has additionally championed Biden’s landmark laws to spice up infrastructure funding and speed up the pivot to wash vitality. As vice-president she has additionally targeted her efforts on the so-called “care economic system”, together with increasing entry to reasonably priced childcare and help to senior residents.
Earlier than changing into vice-president, Harris spearheaded housing-related initiatives within the senate, together with a proposal to present tenants paying greater than 30 per cent of their gross earnings on hire refundable tax credit. She additionally backed tax credit for individuals making lower than $100,000 and pushed for rich Individuals to pay extra in taxes to fund a rise in instructor salaries.
On commerce, she has been extremely vital of Donald Trump’s plans to impose across-the-board tariffs if re-elected, arguing that the levies will damage shoppers. She has insisted she is “not a protectionist Democrat”, though she has opposed previous commerce offers — together with then-president Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership — due to a scarcity of adequate environmental protections.
Abortion
Harris has lengthy been a champion of reproductive rights, and after the 2022 US Supreme Courtroom choice to strike down Roe vs Wade, which had for many years enshrined the constitutional proper to an abortion, she turned the Biden administration’s main voice calling on Congress to cross a brand new regulation guaranteeing entry to the process for ladies throughout the nation.
Abortion was a successful problem for Democrats on the poll field within the 2022 midterm elections and subsequent off-year elections. As an 81-year-old Catholic man who previously supported abortion restrictions, Biden was usually seen as a clumsy messenger on the difficulty. However Democrats consider Harris, who stands to be the primary feminine president if elected, may very well be a standard-bearer on the difficulty heading into polling day.
Regulation and order
Harris had an extended profession as a prosecutor earlier than she turned a senator. Her file as a “powerful on crime” public lawyer attracted the ire of some progressive activists when she first ran for president in 2020. However her positions on regulation and order, policing and points regarding racial justice seem to have shifted over time and she or he has moved to the left, in keeping with many within the Democratic celebration, in recent times.
As a senator and later a presidential candidate, Harris pushed for marijuana legalisation and felony justice reform, together with actions to scale back the variety of people who find themselves incarcerated for nonviolent offences.
Within the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, she helped introduce laws that will have made it simpler to prosecute cops and crack down on police misconduct.
Immigration
Harris’s tenure as vice-president has been undermined by Biden’s early choice to present her the duty for addressing the foundation causes of migration to the US in Latin America. This made her the image for one of many administration’s largest political vulnerabilities: the surge of migrants on the US-Mexico border.
Harris stumbled by early media interviews on the topic, and got here below widespread criticism, together with from members of her personal celebration, for not visiting the border till a number of months after she took workplace.
However the blame has shifted in latest months and Harris backed the bipartisan border safety deal that was later torpedoed by Trump, who was loath to present the White Home a political win in an election yr. The invoice would have allotted tens of billions of {dollars} to hiring extra border safety brokers and asylum officers, and closed the US-Mexico border if the variety of crossings hit a seven-day common of 5,000, or 8,500 in a single day.
Further reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington
