Lawyer Kamala Harris is rewriting the history of the United States. She is currently the vice president in President Joe Biden’s administration, making her the first woman ever to hold that position. She will run for president as a Democratic candidate in the November elections, making her only the second woman to win the nomination of a major party.
Harris, who will celebrate her sixtieth birthday on October 20, has a real chance to become not only the first female president, but also the first person with South Asian ancestry to hold the presidency. Earlier, she became only the second black senator, the first with Indian and Jamaican roots.
A native of Oakland, California (October 20, 1964), she is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, an economics professor, and a doctor involved in breast cancer research. She studied political science, economics and law at Howard University in Washington and the University of California. She began her career at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office before moving to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the City Office there. In 2011, she was elected Attorney General of California.
Harris experienced professional success, for example, after she managed to reach an out-of-court settlement with five major banks after the crisis in 2008. At that time, thousands of people in California were about to lose their homes because they were unable to pay their mortgages. Harris managed to negotiate a $12 billion bailout from the banks.
In 2016, she was elected as a senator for California, she took office in January 2017. As a senator, she strongly opposed the restrictive immigration decrees of then-President Trump. Among other things, he accused her of “supporting animals from MS-13”. The acronym refers to the Central American gangster group Mara Salvatrucha, which Trump has often used as an argument to fight illegal migration. In the campaign, Harris advocated the legalization of occasional use of marijuana or the mandatory distribution of children of different races to schools in other districts in order to support racial diversity.
In 2019, she sought the Democratic nomination for the US presidential election. In December 2019, she withdrew from the race (officially due to lack of funds) and supported the candidacy of Joe Biden. Biden, who won the Democratic primary to become the presidential candidate, then chose her as his vice presidential running mate. Biden then won the presidential election in November 2020, in tandem with Harris, defeating the Republican candidate and then-President Donald Trump, whose co-candidate was Vice President Mike Pence. In January 2021, she took the vice presidential oath at Biden’s inauguration, becoming the first woman to hold that office in US history. In November 2021, she then became the first woman in American history to act as head of state for a few hours – this happened when Biden underwent an examination under anesthesia at the hospital and handed over his powers to Harris for the time being.
For this year’s elections, it was long expected that BIden would defend the presidency, he also won the primaries of the Democratic Party. However, Biden faced harsh criticism for his candidacy, primarily due to his advanced age and deteriorating health. In July of this year, Biden gave up his candidacy and recommended that Harris become the Democratic presidential candidate. She subsequently stated that she would seek the presidential nomination, which she later won when 99 percent of the congress delegates supported her in an online vote. Harris then announced that she had chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate.
Harris has been married to attorney Douglas Emhoff since 2014. The couple has no children together, but the husband has two children from a previous relationship. After his wife became vice president, Emhoff left his career to support his wife’s efforts. As “the first gentleman of the USA”, Emhoff is committed to the benefit of his wife and also fulfills social obligations. Emhoff is also the first Jewish partner a vice president or president of the United States has ever had.
Source: www.tyden.cz
