Kamala Devi Harris born October 20, 1964 is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States since 2021, serving with President Joe Biden. She is the first female vice president, making her the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as both the first African American and the first Asian American vice president. Harris is the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 2024 United States presidential election.
Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. She began her law career in the office of the district attorney (DA) of Alameda County, before being recruited to the San Francisco DA’s Office and later the city attorney of San Francisco‘s office. In 2003, she was elected DA of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and reelected in 2014. Harris served as the junior U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021.
Early life :
Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biologist who arrived in the United States from India in 1958 to enroll in graduate school in endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley. A research career of over 40 years followed, during which her work on the progesterone receptor gene led to advances in breast cancer research.
Harris’s father, Donald J. Harris, arrived in the U.S. from Jamaica in 1961, also enrolling in UC Berkeley and specializing in development economics. The first Black scholar to be granted tenure at the Department of Economics in Stanford University, he now has emeritus status there. Kamala Harris’s parents married each other in 1963.
In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was described as “an able prosecutor on the way up”
In 2002, Harris ran for District Attorney of San Francisco,[40] running a “forceful” campaign[41][42] and differentiating herself from Hallinan by attacking his performance.[43] Harris won the election with 56% of the vote, becoming the first person of color elected district attorney of San Francisco.[44] She ran unopposed for a second term in 2007.[45]
Within the first six months of taking office, Harris cleared 27 of 74 backlogged homicide cases.[46] She also pushed for higher bail for criminal defendants involved in gun-related crimes, arguing that historically low bail encouraged outsiders to commit crimes in San Francisco. SFPD officers credited Harris with tightening the loopholes defendants had used in the past.[47] During her campaign, Harris pledged never to seek the death penalty,[48] and kept to this in the cases of a San Francisco Police Department officer, Isaac Espinoza, who was shot and killed in 2004,[49][50] and of Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member who was accused of murdering a man and his two sons in 2009.[51][52]
Harris created a Hate Crimes Unit, focusing on hate crimes against LGBT children and teens in schools,[53] and supported A.B. 1160, the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act.[54] As District Attorney, she created an environmental crimes unit in 2005.[55] Harris expressed support for San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy of not inquiring about immigration status in the process of a criminal investigation.[56] In 2004, Harris created the San Francisco Reentry Division.[57] Over six years, the 200 people graduated from the program had a recidivism rate of less than 10%, compared to the 53% of California’s drug offenders who returned to prison within two years of release.[58][59][60]
In 2006, as part of an initiative to reduce the city’s skyrocketing homicide rate, Harris led a citywide effort to combat truancy for at-risk elementary school youth in San Francisco.[61] In 2008, declaring chronic truancy a matter of public safety and pointing out that the majority of prison inmates and homicide victims are dropouts or habitual truants,[62] she issued citations against six parents whose children missed at least 50 days of school, the first time San Francisco prosecuted adults for student truancy.[63] Harris’s office ultimately prosecuted seven parents in three years, with none jailed.[64] By April 2009, 1,330 elementary school students were habitual or chronic truants, down 23% from 1,730 in 2008, and from 2,517 in 2007 and 2,856 in 2006.[64]
Attorney General of California (2011–2017)
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In the 2010 general election, Harris defeated Republican Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley.[65][66] She was sworn in on January 3, 2011; she was the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian American to hold the office of Attorney General in the state’s history.[67] In February 2014, Harris announced her intention to run for reelection.[68] On November 4, 2014, Harris was reelected against Republican nomine Ronald Gold with 57.5% of the vote to Gold’s 42.5%.[69]
In 2011, Harris obtained two of the largest recoveries in the history of California’s False Claims Act over excess state Medi-Cal and federal Medicare payments.[70][71] In 2012, she leveraged California’s economic clout to obtain better terms in the National Mortgage Settlement against the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers.[72] Harris worked with Assembly Speaker John Pérez and Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg in 2013 to introduce the Homeowner Bill of Rights, considered one of the strongest protections nationwide against aggressive foreclosure tactics.[73] In 2013, she declined to authorize a civil complaint against OneWest Bank, owned by an investment group headed by Steven Mnuchin (then a private citizen);[74] Harris was later criticized for accepting a donation from Mnuchin.[75] In 2015, Harris obtained a $1.2 billion judgment against for-profit Corinthian Colleges for false advertising and deceptive marketing targeting vulnerable, low-income students and misrepresenting job placement rates to students, investors, and accreditation agencies.[76]
Harris opposed California’s ban on affirmative action[77] and filed an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas asking that the Court “reaffirm its decision that public colleges and universities may consider race as one factor in admissions decisions.”[78][79]
In February 2012, Harris announced an agreement with Apple, Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Research in Motion, and Facebook to mandate that apps sold in their stores display prominent privacy policies informing users of what private information they were sharing, and with whom.[80][81] In 2015, Harris secured two settlements with Comcast totaling $59 million over allegations that it posted online the names, phone numbers and addresses of tens of thousands of customers, and discarded paper records without first omitting or redacting private customer information.[82]
In November 2013, Harris launched the California Department of Justice‘s Division of Recidivism, Reduction, and Reentry.[83] Her record on wrongful conviction cases as attorney general has been criticized by academics and activists.[84] After the 2011 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Plata declared California’s prisons so overcrowded they inflicted cruel and unusual punishment, Harris fought federal supervision, saying, “I have a client, and I don’t get to choose my client.”[85] In September 2014, Harris’s office argued unsuccessfully in a court filing against the early release of prisoners, citing the need for inmate firefighting labor.[86]
After being elected, Harris declared her office would not defend Prop 8, a state constitutional amendment providing that only marriages “between a man and a woman” are valid,[87] and in February 2013 she filed an amicus curiae brief arguing Prop 8 was unconstitutional.[88] Harris later justified her decision not to defend the law by saying, “It would be inappropriate for a state on the verge of bankruptcy to use all those resources to defend a law found to be unconstitutional.”[89] In 2014, Harris co-sponsored legislation to ban the gay and trans panic defense in court,[90] which passed.[91] She appealed a federal ruling in favor of an imprisoned transgender woman‘s request for gender-affirming surgery to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,[92] arguing that psychotherapy[93] and feminizing hormone therapy were sufficient medical treatment,[94] although she said she ultimately pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to change its policy.[95] In 2019, Harris said she took “full responsibility” for briefs her office filed in this case and others involving trans inmates’ access to gender-affirming surgery.[96]
In 2011, Harris urged criminal penalties for parents of truant children, allowing the court to defer judgment if the parent agreed to a mediation period to get their child back in school. Critics charged that local prosecutors implementing her directives were overzealous in their enforcement and Harris’s policy adversely affected families.[97]
Harris prioritized environmental protection as attorney general, first securing a $44 million settlement to resolve all damages and costs associated with the Cosco Busan oil spill.[98] In the aftermath of the 2015 Refugio oil spill, she toured the coastline and directed her office’s resources and attorneys to investigate possible criminal violations.[99] From 2015 to 2016, Harris secured multiple multi-million-dollar settlements with fuel service companies Chevron, BP, ARCO, Phillips 66, and ConocoPhillips to resolve allegations they failed to properly monitor the hazardous materials in their underground gasoline storage tanks.[100][101][102] In summer 2016, automaker Volkswagen AG agreed to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle a raft of claims related to so-called Defeat Devices used to cheat emissions standards on its diesel cars.[103]
In 2012, Harris announced that the California Department of Justice had improved its DNA testing capabilities, clearing California’s DNA backlog for the first time.[104] In 2015, she conducted a 90-day review of implicit bias in policing and police use of deadly force. In April 2015, Harris introduced the first-of-its-kind “Principled Policing: Procedural Justice and Implicit Bias” training to help law enforcement officers overcome barriers to neutral policing and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the public.[105] The same year, the California Department of Justice became the nation’s first statewide agency to require all its police officers to wear body cameras.[106] In 2016, Harris announced a patterns and practices investigation into purported civil rights violations and use of excessive force by the two largest law enforcement agencies in Kern County, California.[107]
In 2016, Harris’s office seized videos and other information from the apartment of an antiabortion activist who had made secret recordings and then accused Planned Parenthood doctors of illegally selling fetal tissue.[108][109]
In 2011, Harris created the eCrime Unit within the California Department of Justice, a 20-attorney unit targeting technology crimes.[110] In 2015, several purveyors of so-called revenge porn sites based in California were arrested, charged with felonies, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.[111][112] In 2016, Harris announced the arrest of Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping, alleging that 99% of Backpage’s revenue was directly attributable to prostitution-related ads, many of which involved victims of sex trafficking, including children.[113]
During her term as attorney general, Harris’s office oversaw major investigations and prosecutions targeting transnational criminal organizations for their involvement in violent crime, fraud schemes, drug trafficking, and smuggling.[114] In 2012, Harris signed an accord with the attorney general of Mexico, Marisela Morales, to improve coordination of law enforcement resources targeting transnational gangs selling and trafficking human beings across the San Ysidro border crossing.[115]
On May 15, 2015, Harris received a Doctor of Laws from the University of Southern California.[116][117] On May 13, 2017, she received a Doctor of Humane Letters from Howard University,[118][119] where she gave a commencement address.[120]
U.S. Senate (2017–2021)
Election
After more than 20 years as a U.S. senator from California, Senator Barbara Boxer announced on January 13, 2015, that she would not run for reelection in 2016.[121] Harris announced her candidacy for the Senate seat the next week.[121] She was a top contender from the beginning of her campaign.[122]
The 2016 California Senate election used California’s new top-two primary format, where the top two candidates in the primary advance to the general election regardless of party.[122] On February 27, 2016, Harris won 78% of the California Democratic Party vote at the party convention, allowing her campaign to receive financial support from the party.[123] Three months later, Governor Jerry Brown endorsed her.[124] In the June 7 primary, Harris came in first with 40% of the vote and won with pluralities in most counties.[125] Harris faced representative and fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez in the general election.[126] It was the first time a Republican did not appear in a general election for the Senate since California began directly electing senators in 1914.[126]
On July 19, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Harris.[127] In the November 2016 election, Harris defeated Sanchez with over 60% of the vote, carrying all but four counties.[128] After her victory, she promised to protect immigrants from the policies of President-elect Donald Trump and announced her intention to remain Attorney General through the end of 2016.[129][130]
Tenure and political positions
2017
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On January 28, after Trump signed Executive Order 13769, barring citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days, she condemned the order and was one of many to call it a “Muslim ban”.[131] She called White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly at home to gather information and push back against the executive order.[132]
In February, Harris spoke in opposition to Trump’s cabinet picks Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education[133] and Jeff Sessions for United States Attorney General.[134] In early March, she called on Sessions to resign, after it was reported that Sessions, who had previously said he “did not have communications with the Russians”, spoke twice with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.[135]
In April, Harris voted against the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.[136] Later that month, she took her first foreign trip to the Middle East, visiting California troops stationed in Iraq and the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, the largest camp for Syrian refugees.[137]
In June, Harris garnered media attention for her questioning of Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, over the role he played in the May 2017 firing of James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[138] The prosecutorial nature of her questioning caused Senator John McCain, an ex officio member of the Intelligence Committee, and Senator Richard Burr, the committee chairman, to interrupt her and request that she be more respectful of the witness. A week later, she questioned Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, on the same topic.[139] Sessions said her questioning “makes me nervous”.[140] Burr’s singling out of Harris sparked suggestions in the news media that his behavior was sexist, with commentators arguing that Burr would not treat a male Senate colleague in a similar manner.[141]
In December, Harris called for the resignation of Senator Al Franken, writing on Twitter, “Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere.”[142]
2018
In January, Harris was appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee after Franken resigned.[143] Later that month, she questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for favoring Norwegian immigrants over others and for claiming to be unaware that Norway is a predominantly white country.[144][145]
In May, Harris heatedly questioned Nielsen about the Trump administration family separation policy, under which children were separated from their families when their parents were taken into custody for illegally entering the U.S.[146] In June, after visiting one of the detention facilities near the border in San Diego,[147] Harris became the first senator to demand Nielsen’s resignation.[148]
In the September and October Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Harris questioned Brett Kavanaugh about a meeting he may have had regarding the Mueller Investigation with a member of Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by Donald Trump‘s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz. Kavanaugh was unable to answer and repeatedly deflected.[150] Harris also participated in questioning the FBI director’s limited scope of the investigation of Kavanaugh regarding allegations of sexual assault.[151] She voted against his confirmation.
Harris was a target of the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts.[152]
In December, the Senate passed the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act (S. 3178), sponsored by Harris.[153] The bill, which died in the House, would have made lynching a federal hate crime.[154]
2019
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Harris supported busing for desegregation of public schools, saying, “the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school.”[155] She viewed busing as an option to be considered by school districts, rather than the responsibility of the federal government.[156]
Harris was an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a plan to transition the country towards generating 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030.[157]
In March 2019, after Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, Harris called for U.S. Attorney General William Barr to testify before Congress in the interests of transparency.[158] Two days later, Barr released a four-page “summary” of the redacted Mueller Report, which was criticized as a deliberate mischaracterization of its conclusions.[159] Later that month, Harris was one of 12 Democratic senators led by Mazie Hirono to sign a letter questioning Barr’s decision to offer “his own conclusion that the President’s conduct did not amount to obstruction of justice”, and called for an investigation into whether Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report and his statements at a news conference were misleading.[160]
On May 1, 2019, Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.[161] During the hearing, he remained defiant about the misrepresentations in the four-page summary he had released ahead of the full report.[162] When asked by Harris whether he had reviewed the underlying evidence before deciding not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, Barr admitted that neither he, Rod Rosenstein, nor anyone in his office had reviewed the evidence supporting the report before making the charging decision.[163] Harris later called for Barr to resign, accusing him of refusing to answer her questions because he could open himself up to perjury, and saying his responses disqualified him from serving as U.S. attorney general.[164][165] Two days later, Harris demanded again that the Department of Justice inspector general Michael E. Horowitz investigate whether Barr acceded to pressure from the White House to investigate Trump’s political enemies.[166]
On May 5, 2019, Harris said “voter suppression” prevented Democrats Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum from winning the 2018 gubernatorial elections in Georgia and Florida; Abrams lost by 55,000 votes and Gillum by 32,000. According to election law expert Richard L. Hasen, “I have seen no good evidence that the suppressive effects of strict voting and registration laws affected the outcome of the governor’s races in Georgia and Florida.”[167]
In July, Harris teamed with Kirsten Gillibrand to urge the Trump administration to investigate the persecution of Uyghurs in China by the Chinese Communist Party; in this question she was joined by Senator Marco Rubio.[168]
In November, Harris called for an investigation into the death of Roxsana Hernández, a transgender woman and immigrant who died in ICE custody.[169][170]
In December, Harris led a group of Democratic senators and civil rights organizations in demanding the removal of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller after emails published by the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed frequent promotion of white nationalist literature to Breitbart website editors.[171]
2020
Before the opening of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump on January 16, 2020, Harris delivered remarks on the floor of the Senate, stating her views on the integrity of the American justice system and the principle that nobody, including an incumbent president, is above the law. She later asked Senate Judiciary chairman Lindsey Graham to halt all judicial nominations during the impeachment trial, to which Graham acquiesced.[172][173] Harris voted to convict Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.[174]
Harris worked on bipartisan bills with Republican co-sponsors, including a bail reform bill with Rand Paul,[175] an election security bill with James Lankford,[176] and a workplace harassment bill with Lisa Murkowski.[177]
2021
Following her election as Vice President of the United States, Harris resigned from her seat on January 18, 2021,[178] before taking office on January 20, and was replaced by California Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
Harris had been considered a top contender and potential front-runner for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president.[184] In June 2018, she said she was “not ruling it out”.[185] In July 2018, it was announced that she would publish a memoir, a sign of a possible run.
During the first Democratic presidential debate in June 2019, Harris scolded former vice president Joe Biden for “hurtful” remarks he made, speaking fondly of senators who opposed integration efforts in the 1970s and working with them to oppose mandatory school bussing.[191] Harris’s support rose by between six and nine points in polls after that debate.[192] In the second debate in August, Biden and Representative Tulsi Gabbard confronted Harris over her record as attorney general.[193] The San Jose Mercury News assessed that some of Gabbard’s and Biden’s accusations were on point, such as blocking the DNA testing of a death row inmate, while others did not withstand scrutiny. In the immediate aftermath of the debate, Harris fell in the polls.[194][195] Over the next few months her poll numbers fell to the low single digits.[196][197] Harris faced criticism from reformers for tough-on-crime policies she pursued while she was California’s attorney general.[198] In 2014, she defended California’s death penalty in court.[199]
Before and during her presidential campaign, an online informal organization using the hashtag #KHive formed to support Harris’s candidacy and defend her from racist and sexist attacks.[200][201][202] According to the Daily Dot, Joy Reid first used the term in an August 2017 tweet saying “@DrJasonJohnson @ZerlinaMaxwell and I had a meeting and decided it’s called the K-Hive.”[203]
On December 3, 2019, Harris withdrew from the 2020 presidential election, citing a shortage of funds.[204] In March 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden for president.[205]
Vice presidential campaign
In May 2019, senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed the idea of a Biden–Harris ticket.[206] In late February 2020, Biden won a landslide victory in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary with the endorsement of House whip Jim Clyburn, with more victories on Super Tuesday. In early March, Clyburn suggested Biden choose a black woman as a running mate, saying, “African American women needed to be rewarded for their loyalty”.[207] In March, Biden committed to choosing a woman for his running mate.[208]
On April 17, 2020, Harris responded to media speculation and said she “would be honored” to be Biden’s running mate.[209] In late May, in relation to the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests and demonstrations, Biden faced renewed calls to select a black woman as his running mate, highlighting the law enforcement credentials of Harris and Val Demings.[210]
On June 12, The New York Times reported that Harris was emerging as the front-runner to be Biden’s running mate, as she was the only African American woman with the political experience typical of vice presidents.[211] On June 26, CNN reported that more than a dozen people close to the Biden search process considered Harris one of Biden’s top four contenders, along with Elizabeth Warren, Val Demings, and Keisha Lance Bottoms.[212]
On August 11, 2020, Biden announced he had chosen Harris.[213] She was the first African American, the first Indian American, and the third woman after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin to be the vice-presidential nominee on a major-party ticket.[214] Harris is also the first resident of the Western United States to appear on the Democratic Party’s national ticket.[215]
Harris became the vice president–elect after Biden won the 2020 presidential election.[216] After the major networks called the election for Biden and Harris, Harris was recorded calling Biden, saying: “We did it! We did it, Joe. You’re going to be the next President of the United States.” The video became one of the ten most-liked tweets of 2020.[217] Biden and Harris were jointly named Time Person of the Year for 2020.[218]
Vice presidency (2021–present)
After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Harris assumed office as vice president on January 20, 2021.[219] She is the United States’ first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history, and the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.[220][221] She is also the second person of color to hold the post, preceded by Charles Curtis, a Native American and member of the Kaw Nation, who served under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933.[222] Harris is the third person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to reach one of the highest offices in the executive branch, after Curtis and President Barack Obama.
Inauguration
Harris was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 2021, on two Bibles held by her husband, one belonging to Regina Shelton, a person important to her and her sister Maya Harris, and another belonging to former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor administered the oath of office to Harris at 11:40 a.m., with 20 minutes remaining in Vice President Mike Pence‘s term. Sotomayor became the first woman to administer an inaugural oath twice after she administered Biden’s at his 2013 swearing-in. Harris recited the following:
I, Kamala Devi Harris, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. [So help me God.]
Her first act as vice president was swearing in her replacement, Alex Padilla, and Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who were elected in the 2021 Georgia runoff elections.[223]
Tenure
When Harris took office on January 20, 2021, the 117th Congress‘s Senate was divided 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats;[224] this meant that Harris had to be frequently called upon to exercise her power to cast tie-breaking votes as president of the Senate. Harris cast her first two tie-breaking votes on February 5. In February and March, Harris’s tie-breaking votes were crucial in passing the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package proposed by Biden, since no Senate Republicans voted for it.[225][226] On July 20, Harris broke Mike Pence‘s record for tie-breaking votes in the first year of a vice presidency[227] when she cast the seventh tie-breaking vote in her first six months.[228] She cast 13 tie-breaking votes during her first year in office, the most tie-breaking votes in a single year in U.S. history, surpassing John Adams, who cast 12 votes in 1790.[228][229] On December 5, 2023, Harris broke the record for the most tie-breaking votes cast by a vice president, casting her 32nd vote, exceeding John C. Calhoun, who cast 31 votes during his nearly eight years as vice president, in less than half the time.[230][231] On November 19, 2021, Harris served as acting president from 10:10 to 11:35 am EST while Biden underwent a colonoscopy.[232] She became the first woman, and the third person overall, to assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency under Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.[233][234]
As early as December 2021, Harris was identified as playing a pivotal role in the Biden administration owing to her tie-breaking vote in the evenly divided Senate as well as her being the presumed front-runner in 2024 if Biden did not seek reelection.
Foreign policy
Harris met with French president Emmanuel Macron in November 2021 to strengthen ties after the contentious cancellation of a submarine program.[254] A subsequent meeting was held in November 2022 during Macron’s visit to the U.S., resulting in an agreement to strengthen U.S.–France space cooperation across civil, commercial, and national security sectors.[255]
In April 2021, Harris said she was the last person in the room before Biden decided to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, adding that Biden had “an extraordinary amount of courage” and “make[s] decisions based on what he truly believes … is the right thing to do.”[256] National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Biden “insists she be in every core decision-making meeting. She weighs in during those meetings, often providing unique perspectives.”[253] Harris assumed a “key diplomatic role” in the Biden administration, particularly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after which she was dispatched to Germany and Poland to rally support for arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia.[257]
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Harris meeting Yoon Suk Yeol in Goddard Space Flight Center, in 2023
In April 2023, Harris visited Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and agreed to work to strengthen the space alliance between the United States and South Korea. “We renew our commitment to strengthen our cooperation in the next frontier of our expanding alliance, and of course that is space,” Harris said at a joint news conference with Yoon
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In November 2023, Harris pledged that the Biden administration would place no conditions on U.S. aid to Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza.[259] In March 2024, she criticized Israel’s actions during the Israel–Hamas war, saying, “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks…This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in.