Tracking Kamala Harris’ Policy Changes: A Comprehensive List of Key Issues That Have Flipped

Vice President Kamala Harris could “play politics” by letting her subordinates take the lead in implementing major policy changes, rather than imposing them herself, according to a Republican strategist.

Unnamed officials have announced Harris’ new positions on key issues she previously supported during her 2019 presidential campaign, including fracking and Medicare for All. However, Harris herself has not yet publicly commented on these changes in position.

While it appears as though Harris’ campaign is pursuing a revised agenda, a political strategist told Fox News Digital that “anonymous campaign staffers in the background don’t take positions on public policy, but candidates and elected officials do.”

Dallas Woodhouse, state director of American Majority-North Carolina, a nonprofit conservative education organization, said Americans should assume that every position Harris took during her previous presidential campaign and the positions the Biden-Harris administration has taken are exactly the same as the position she takes now, “until she declares otherwise.”

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Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris waits to speak during a campaign rally at United Auto Workers Local 900 on August 8, 2024 in Wayne, Michigan. Kamala Harris and her newly elected running mate Tim Walz are campaigning across the country this week. (Andrew Harnik)

“The American public will never accept that a candidate changes all the positions he held a few years ago without thoroughly examining and explaining them,” he added.

1. Fracking

Harris said she would ban fracking if elected during her first presidential campaign — a key point with a critical voting bloc in swing states like Pennsylvania.

“There is no question that I support a ban on fracking. I have a history of being on this issue,” Harris said in 2020.

Republicans, including former President Trump, have used her past comments on the issue to smear her in several campaign ads since she began her 2024 campaign.

However, campaign officials for the Democratic candidate now say Harris will not ban fracking if she is elected president.

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz appear together onstage during a campaign event at the Liacouras Center at Temple University on August 6, 2024 in Philadelphia, Penn. (Andrew Harnik)

2. “Medicare for all”

Harris released a “Medicare for All” plan during her 2019 presidential campaign, writing that her goal was to “end these senseless attacks on Obamacare” and that she believes “health care should be a right, not a privilege only for those who can afford it. That’s why we need Medicare for All.”

“The idea is that everyone gets access to healthcare. And you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, getting approved by them, going through the paperwork and all the delays that can entail. Let’s eliminate that,” Harris wrote in 2019.

Additionally, then-Senator Harris co-sponsored the Medicare for All Act of 2019 for Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).

Despite her previous support, a campaign aide told Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy that Harris will not raise the issue of Medicare-for-all this campaign.

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Colin Reed, a Republican strategist, former campaign manager and co-founder of South and Hill Strategies, expressed skepticism about the credibility of Harris’ recent policy shift.

Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at United Auto Workers Local 900 on August 8, 2024 in Wayne, Michigan. (Andrew Harnik)

“When Vice President Harris ran for the White House five years ago, she was a sitting U.S. senator and former attorney general of the largest state in the country. In other words, a very gifted person with enough time on the national stage to form opinions on the big issues,” Reed told Fox. “The idea that she could, in the course of five changes, just change her tune in the blink of an eye on a series of important, big issues defies all credibility.”

Reed highlighted her change to “Medicare For All,” which he said would “cost $44 trillion — more than our entire national debt of $35 trillion.”

“Either she was wrong then, or she is playing a political game now. Voters will notice that when she decides to answer questions in a non-scripted setting.”

Fox News Digital has asked Harris’ campaign whether she plans to personally announce her new positions on key issues, but has not yet received an initial response.

Former President Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana, on Friday, August 9. (AP/Rick Bowmer)

Harris advisers told Axios that “Harris doesn’t want to be completely defined by the Biden-Harris history” and published a report saying she is trying to distance herself from Biden on several issues, including his economic policies.

3. No tax on tips

Under the current Biden-Harris Internal Revenue Service, taxpayers must report all of their tips as income on their tax returns. She initially supported measures that would allow the IRS to track and tax employee tips, even casting a tie-breaking vote in 2022 to pass legislation increasing IRS funding for this purpose.

However, Harris recently announced that she supports eliminating taxes on tips for service workers — an idea floated by Trump earlier this summer to positive response.

“We will continue our fight for working families in America,” Harris said at a recent campaign rally. “Including a minimum wage and eliminating tip taxes for service and hospitality workers.”

4. The border crisis

Vice President Kamala Harris has previously supported rolling back Trump-era border policies, but is now taking a stronger stance on the the southern border crisis this election cycle.

As record numbers of migrants crossed the border in 2022, Harris said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the border is secure.”

Shortly after, Harris was criticized by border state Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who told CNN that “the border is not secure.”

A group of more than 100 migrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally storm a border wall on Thursday, March 21, 2024. In the process, the migrants assault members of the Texas National Guard before being stopped by the border wall. (James Breeden for New York Post/Mega)

However, Harris has used her recent rallies to convince voters that strong border security is a top priority for her 2024 campaign.

Harris is also investing in a new narrative, recently releasing a campaign ad about the border, titled “Tougher.”

“Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime. As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling guns and drugs across the border,” a narrator says. “As vice president, she sponsored the toughest border enforcement law in decades. And as president, she will hire thousands of additional border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.”

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“It’s hard to fix the border, and so is Kamala Harris,” the ad reads.