Harris

Tiffany Hsu, NY Times - Vice President Kamala Harris has been campaigning for president for three days. And she is already facing disinformation and abuse of a far different caliber than President Biden ever has... Here are the facts behind several conspiracy theories and misleading claims about Harris that have spread widely in recent days.

Harris’s heritage — her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica — has once again become catnip for conspiracy theorists. Some claimed, falsely, that Harris was an “anchor baby” who was disqualified from seeking the presidency. Her parents’ immigration status is irrelevant to her eligibility to run; she was born in California and is a citizen. Other social media users said that Harris was “not Black” or “not Black enough.” She has repeatedly discussed her pride in her Indian and Black roots, including in her autobiography, in interviews and in speeches at Howard University, her alma mater and a historically Black school....

Harris was a prosecutor for three decades before being elected as California’s attorney general, where she investigated for-profit colleges and helped secure a multibillion-dollar relief settlement for homeowners affected by the foreclosure crisis. After handily winning election to the Senate in 2016, she was known for her courtroom-style questioning in hearings. The recent claims of her lack of qualifications largely ignored Trump’s nonexistent government experience when he first ran for office....

From Saturday to Monday, posts on X referring to claims that Harris “slept her way to the top” garnered nearly 40.3 million impressions — a 44,000 percent increase from the prior two-day period, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research group.The sexist insinuations point in part to her brief relationship in the 1990s with Willie Brown, who was 60 and the speaker of the California Assembly when Harris was 29 and rising in the Bay Area legal scene. He appointed Harris to two well-paid state board positions and introduced her to his political connections.

When she was campaigning to be San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003, her opponents repeatedly commented on her link to Brown — references that she told The New York Times in 2019 were “frustrating” and “designed to degrade, frankly, the conversation about why we needed a new D.A.”  MORE

Maine Public Radio -  As Biden’s vice president, Harris has remained in lockstep with the president on policy, including his steadfast commitment to the security of Israel.  “Vice President Harris has gone even a step further in taking a leadership role in condemning the horrific sexual violence that was perpetrated by Hamas,” said Halie Soifer, who served as national security adviser to Harris in the Senate and now runs the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

“I attended an event at the White House just last month where she was the leading voice from the White House in drawing attention to Hamas's use of rape as a weapon of war on that horrific day," Soifer said.Though the substance of what Harris has said is similar to Biden, when she speaks about the conflict, the vice president differs in tone, particularly in describing what she has called the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.“What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating,” Harris said during a speech in Selma, Ala., last March. “We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.”

Roll Call -  Expected Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been an outspoken proponent of abortion access and maternal health during her time in Washington, but her Senate record demonstrates a wide range of health policy passions, from telemedicine to enforcing consumer protection laws... \

\In the Senate, Harris spent much of her time focusing on mental health, telemedicine and drug pricing. Harris was an early proponent of telehealth — even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Senate, she introduced legislation that would make it easier for Medicare beneficiaries to receive mental health telehealth services and to help mental health professionals repay their student loans faster. Although neither of those bills advanced out of committee, Congress has eliminated restrictions on telehealth coverage through the end of 2024, and lawmakers are considering making the changes permanent.  

Harris also led Senate efforts to curb racism among health care workers and reduce racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. She introduced two bills to increase non-bias training for health care providers during the pandemic and track race and ethnicity data when it came to COVID-19. She focused much of her Senate health policy work on maternal health — especially Black maternal health, as Black women are two to three times more likely to die of pregnancy complications than white women, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During her time in the Senate, she introduced several bills aimed at curbing the maternal mortality crisis in the United States, most notably as a co-sponsor of the “momnibus” measure, a package of 13 bills aimed at improving maternal health, with a focus on Black women...

In 2022, as vice president, Harris announced a nationwide Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis. She played a key role in the Biden administration’s push for states to expand Medicaid postpartum coverage from two to 12 months, creating “birthing friendly” hospital designations and launching the maternal mental health hotline.

When she ran for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, Harris co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill before introducing her own version that included private insurance. The walk-back was met with criticism from progressive voters.