Where Kamala Harris Stands on Key Policy Issues

Written by Jacob Burg, Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, she has been defining her political platform in real time.

Because he entered the presidential election late and without a written platform, She curates her positions through public statements. Sometimes those positions align with President Joe Biden’s, sometimes they diverge, and often they differ from her previous positions.

“I think the only advantage Harris has is that there are less than 100 days to go,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told The Epoch Times. Given that short time frame, it may be easier for her to introduce her policy positions than it is for her political opponents to define her.

Below is a summary of her current positions on key issues, compared to her previous statements and Biden’s policies.

Abortion

Harris has made abortion a key issue in her campaign, often comparing herself to former President Donald Trump, who appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Like Biden, Harris supports federal legislation to restore the nationwide abortion protections provided by Roe v. Wade.

“When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedoms, I will sign it as President of the United States.“, Harris told attendees at the Atlanta rally on June 30.

As a senator from California, Harris co-sponsored a bill to ban states from imposing restrictions on abortion and voted against a bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

In 2019, she advocated that “states and localities with a history of violating Roe v. Wade” must obtain approval from the Justice Department before implementing abortion laws or practices.

American Border

Harris’ position on the border has changed compared to 2020. During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris said the country should “think about starting over” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for investigating and deporting illegal immigrants, a position she now rejects.

“Immigrants are part of the American fabric,” she wrote in 2019, promising to implement immigration reform.

In June 2021, she told migrants in Guatemala: “Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders.”

Now Harris, like Biden, sees the influx of illegal immigrants as part of a global migration crisis as well as a humanitarian problem.

Yet she is beginning to distinguish herself by talking more about border control.

Referring to her time as California’s attorney general, she said in July: “In that job, I walked with law enforcement through underground tunnels between the United States and Mexico at that border. I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels, and human traffickers who were coming into our country illegally.”

Harris subsequently criticized Trump for speaking out earlier this year against a bipartisan border security bill that was subsequently defeated twice in the Senate. She vowed to revive the legislation if elected.

Harris’s record as vice president on the border has been the subject of controversy of late, particularly over the extent to which she played a role in securing the border.

Biden appointed Harris as the unofficial border czar in March 2021 to “address the root causes of migration through a strategy to confront the instability, violence and economic uncertainty that are currently driving migrants from their homes.”

Later that year, Harris announced $115 million in public and private funding to reduce global migration by reducing economic insecurity, combating corruption, promoting human rights, combating gang activity, and reducing sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence.

Israel-Hamas war

Harris has repeatedly reaffirmed her support for Israel and condemned Hamas and the October 7, 2023, attack. Both Biden and Harris support a two-state solution in the region.

However, after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 25, she said that Israel must always be able to defend itself, but that “the way it does it matters.”

“I have also expressed to the Prime Minister my grave concerns about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the deaths of far too many innocent civilians,” Harris said, reiterating December 2023 comments that Israel “must do more to improve the situation”.

Harris appears more willing to take Israel to task for its treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza.

“She was willing to criticize Netanyahu’s policies while he was in the room. So I think she’s willing to take the risk of maybe taking a different approach to those policies,” Patricia Crouse, a political science professor at the University of New Haven, told The Epoch Times.

Ukraine-Russia War

Biden favors continued military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine for its war with Russia, seeing it as crucial to preventing further aggression against allies in Europe. The president struck a deal with NATO allies in June to support Ukraine “until it prevails,” providing military support into the next decade.

Harris has not disputed that position.

During a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February, Harris said it is in the “strategic interest of the United States to continue our support.”

In June, she announced that the US was releasing more than $1.5 billion in aid to “strengthen Ukraine’s energy sector, address humanitarian needs, and enhance citizen security.”

Supreme Court

Harris supports Supreme Court reform, but has changed her position since 2020.

During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris seemed receptive to the idea of expanding the Supreme Court. “Everything is on the table” to address the “crisis of confidence” in the court, she told Politico in March 2019.

Two months later, she said she was open to “conversation” about increasing the number of judges, Bloomberg reported.

Harris, however, issued a statement endorsing Biden’s recently proposed reforms to the court, which include 18-year terms and a judicial ethics code that would be enforceable under the law. The proposal does not include increasing the number of justices.

“There is a clear crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and one decision after another that has overturned long-standing precedent.“, Harris said in a statement on July 29.

She said the reforms are needed to restore public confidence in the courts.

Police

As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris called for tough sentences for gun violence offenders, requiring a minimum 90-day jail sentence for possession of a concealed or loaded weapon and vowing “zero tolerance.”

Harris’s views on policing changed in 2020. During an interview on the radio program “Ebro in the Morning,” Ms. Harris said the “defund the police” movement was “right” to call out the funds being spent on police departments instead of on community services, including education, housing and health care.

After joining Biden’s campaign later that year, she rejected the idea of defunding the police.

During the October 2020 vice presidential debate, she called for criminal justice reform, a ban on the use of chokeholds and neck holds by police, a national registry for police officers who break the law, and the decriminalization of marijuana.

Gun rights

Harris has made “gun freedom” a consistent focus of his campaign speeches.

At a press conference on April 11, Ms. Harris said she supports the Second Amendment but wants “reasonable gun safety laws.”

She has since defined that as a ban on the sale of so-called assault weapons to civilians, universal background checks and the introduction of “red flag laws.”

The Biden administration also supports requiring safe storage of guns and ending immunity from prosecution for gun manufacturers. Harris has not challenged those positions so far.

According to Bloomberg, Harris supported a mandatory buyback program for military-grade assault weapons in 2019, but she no longer publicly advocates for it.