If she’s elected president, Kamala Harris pledges to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called “un-American” during the Trump administration.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    4 months ago

    Why it matters: It’s the latest example of Harris flip-flopping on her past liberal positions such as supporting Medicare for All and banning fracking — proposals that aides say she now is against.

    Driving the news: In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last week, Harris said she would sign the recent bipartisan border security bill — which Trump had ordered his allies to kill, fearing it would help Democrats in the November elections.

    Flashback: In declaring her candidacy in her first run for president in 2019, Harris called the wall Trump’s “medieval vanity project” that wasn’t going to stop transnational gangs from entering the U.S.

    He told Axios that Harris wasn’t involved in the months-long negotiations: “We never saw any vice president staff here. … She was a Johnny-come-never.”

    Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from Harris’ home state of California, opposed the bill and said it “fails to provide relief for a single Dreamer, a single farmworker, a single essential worker or long-term resident.”

    Zoom in: Beyond embracing the bipartisan bill, Harris’ campaign has portrayed her as an immigration hardliner in ads.

    The bottom line: Like the wall itself, Harris’ changes on border policy reflect how Trump has shifted the political debate on immigration during the past decade.