Kamala Harris took office as the first African-American woman Vice President of the United States – USA and Canada – International

Kamala Harris will break one of the highest glass ceilings this Wednesday when she takes the oath as the first vice president of the United States, leading the way for the most diverse White House in history.

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As a running mate to President-elect Joe Biden, she helped end the turbulent government of Donald Trump. During the campaign, Harris confronted him for his chaotic handling of the pandemic, the racial injustice riots and his tough anti-immigration measures.

Harris, 56, enters the White House after having traveled a unique path. She was the first African woman to be elected attorney general in California and the first woman of South Asian descent in the Senate.

As vice president, she will be one step away from leading the United States. Given that the 78-year-old Biden is expected to serve only one term, Harris would be uniquely positioned to win the nomination for the Democratic Party presidency four years later.

“Even if I am the first woman in office, I will not be the last,” Harris said in a Nov. 7 speech, the first after US networks cast Biden and Harris as the winners over Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump bitterly contested the results, stating without evidence that Democrats only won because of massive voter fraud. During the campaign, the president attacked Harris.

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In fact, He called it a “monster” after his October vice presidential debate with Pence. When questioned by reporters, Harris brusquely cut off the president: “I do not comment on your childish statements.”

While Harris responded fiercely during the campaign, in the past two months she swung back to the plans she and Biden have been unveiling to help struggling families and fix a shaky economy.

“The first 100 days of the Biden-Harris administration will focus on getting this pandemic under control, ensuring that vaccines are distributed equitably and free of charge to all,” he declared on Tuesday last week.

Decisive

While the vice president’s job is often viewed as ceremonial,
Harris will also have a powerful decisive role in the United States Senate.

Thanks to two surprising Democratic second-round victories this month in Georgia, the Senate will be evenly split: 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.

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That means Harris can spend considerable time on Capitol Hill acting as the swing vote on a number of important issues., from judicial nominees to Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

Both of Harris’s parents are immigrants. His father came to the United States from Jamaica and his mother, now deceased, from India. Their lives were marked by the narrative of the “American dream”.

Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, then a hotbed of civil rights and antiwar activism.

She graduated from Howard University in Washington, an icon of black culture in the United States, and that was the beginning of a brilliant career as a prosecutor, which led to her being elected twice as a district attorney in San Francisco and then California Attorney General in 2010.

But her speech that she was a “progressive prosecutor” has been questioned by critics who say he fought to uphold wrongful convictions and opposed reforms in California, such as a law that urged the attorney general to investigate shootings in which the police were involved.

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However, his work was key to gathering a base and having resonance to launch a successful candidacy to reach the Senate in the 2016 campaign, becoming the second African woman to be elected to the Upper House.

Her tenure as attorney general allowed her to get closer to Beau Biden, the former vice president’s late son, who held the same position as her in Delaware and died of cancer in 2015.

“I know how much Beau respected Kamala and her work, and to be honest with you, that weighed in my decision (to choose her),” Biden said during his first appearance with Harris as running mates.

“I’m talking”

Harris is charismatic and can quickly go from her warm smile to the inquisitive prosecutorial style that made her famous. Excerpts from his 2017 questioning of then-attorney general Jeff Sessions during a Senate hearing on Russia went viral.

Harris also clashed with Biden during the first debate between Democratic candidates for the then-senator’s opposition to a 1970s program to incorporate minority children into predominantly white schools to fight segregation.

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“There was a girl in California who was part of the second class to be integrated into a public school and was taken on the bus to that school every day,” Harris said, referring to transporting the children to white school neighborhoods. “And that girl was me,” added the former senator.

During her only debate against Vice President Mike Pence, Harris raised her hand as he tried to interrupt her. “Mr. Vice President, I am speaking, I am the one speaking“he snapped at Pence, managing to silence him.

Biden also uses her image of a modern woman. Harris has no biological children, but claims her role as the mother of the children of her partner, attorney Douglas Emhoff, who was also active in the presidential campaign.

Emhoff will become America’s first “second gentleman” and the first Jewish spouse of a vice president of the United States.

AFP

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