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For the past nearly two months, all eyes have been on Vice President Kamala Harris. Ever since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21 and endorsed Harris to replace him, the momentum has been building for the assumed Democratic nominee. The #KHive, coconut-pilled, brat energy online over the summer was staggering, much like the vibrancy and enthusiasm at Harris's first 2024 presidential rally.
All this is to say, Democrats have been hyped. And that's especially true for Black women, says Laurie Bertram Roberts, the founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. Bertram Roberts was one of 44,000 Black women and people of color to immediately jump to drum up support for Harris.
Following many Dems' largely hopeless sentiments after the first presidential debate, the juxtaposition was stark ahead of the Sept. 10 debate between Harris and former president Donald Trump. It was a political vibe shift, according to Bertram Roberts. "I'm almost surprised by how excited people are getting," they said. "My friend groups are all talking about it, and on Facebook, I'll scroll and it's just Kamala everywhere."
And after the Sept. 10 presidential debate, Taylor Swift generated even more enthusiasm and buzz when she officially endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket in a post on Instagram. "I'm voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them," Swift wrote. "I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos."
It makes sense that so many people are excited, especially women. Harris would be the first woman president and the first woman of color. She has a history of speaking up about issues that especially impact women and people who can get pregnant. Here's what her candidacy could mean for them.
Laurie Bertram Roberts is the founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund.
Lisa Lerer is a New York Times national political correspondent and co-author of "The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America."
Laurel Elder, PhD, is a professor of political science at Hartwick College who's researched women in politics and policies that impact parenthood and reproductive health.
Biden promised repeatedly that, if re-elected, he'd restore Roe v. Wade-era abortion protections, after the landmark ruling that had legalized abortion across the US was overturned in 2022. At the Sept. 10 debate, Harris promised to continue that fight. She said that if she were president and Congress passed a law to reinstate the protections under Roe, she would "proudly sign it into law."
She also attacked Trump's role in appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court, adding that she'd talked to women on the campaign trail who had been personally impacted by state abortion bans. "I have talked with women around our country. Do you want to talk about 'this is what people wanted'? A pregnant woman who wants to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot?" Harris said. "She didn't want that. Her husband didn't want that."
She also used the example of survivors of rape or incest lacking access to abortion. "Understand what that means: a survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next," she said.
Harris has a strong record of advocating for reproductive rights. Ever since Roe fell, "Harris has been the administration's main messenger when it comes to fighting for abortion rights and has spoken about the issue in more assertive terms than any presidential candidate in history," says journalist and author Lisa Lerer. "What we've seen is that Harris is a far more comfortable and skilled messenger when it comes to talking about abortion rights than Biden. She was the first presidential candidate to visit an abortion clinic, which she did during a stop in Minnesota earlier this year. And she's driven the issue from the White House, conducting high-profile meetings with state legislators, activists, and physicians."
As Bertram Roberts notes, this is a 180 from how Biden spoke about abortion. Although his policies were in line with what Harris would likely do if elected, the Catholic president had a hard time discussing the issue. "At the debate, he got handed, on a silver platter, an opportunity to talk about abortion rights — and he just whiffed," Bertram Roberts says. Hartwick College professor Laurel Elder, PhD, also points to the fact that Biden historically didn't use the word "abortion" much (though he did so eventually). He spoke about it publicly so infrequently that people on the internet were keeping a count of how many times he said abortion.
As for what Harris specifically would do about the state of abortion access in the role — especially now that 21 states have banned or restricted abortion nationwide — it may not be so different from what we've experienced under the Biden-Harris administration. Democrats have already tried to pass legislation restoring abortion rights nationally but haven't been able to do so because of the lack of support in the House and Senate. "There's no magic bullet to bring back Roe," Lerer adds. "Restoring federal abortion rights requires winning broad support in the Senate, which will be impossible if Democrats lose control of the chamber."
Bertram Roberts hopes that if elected, Harris might change the conversation entirely, going beyond "bringing back Roe," which they say was so easily undercut. "I'd really like her to say: 'Enough with the bringing back Roe — it was the floor, not the ceiling.' I'm interested to see how she talks about real ways to make abortion rights a reality again for people."
In the elections since Roe fell, voters have already shown their support for abortion rights at the polls — in 2022, there was an expected "red wave" of Republican wins that never came, and many people believe that was due to people coming to the polls with abortion rights in mind, says Ally Boguhn, communications director at Reproductive Freedom For All. She and Dr. Elder believe a Harris ticket could energize voters on the issue even more. And if they come out for Harris, that means they're also coming out to vote for other down-ballot Democrats.
Harris has long drawn attention to Black maternal health and maternal mortality in general, at a time when rates are shockingly high by any standard, especially among Black women. In 2022, there were 22.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, which is double or triple the rates of similar "high-income" countries. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Colorado have estimated that these maternal death rates will rise as more abortion restrictions are put into place.
In the past, Harris's stance on health care in general has been framed as somewhere between moderate and progressive Democrats — so not quite Bernie Sanders, but she is a staunch supporter of expanding programs like the Affordable Care Act. While in the Senate, she introduced the Maternal CARE Act and the Black Maternal Health Omnibus Act, which would have provided significant additional resources to help with the crisis — including investing in everything from health care to housing to nutrition, all factors that can impact maternal health, and providing extra support for moms with mental health conditions and veterans.
"She's done the work on figuring out: why are Black women dying in childbirth and what can we do?" Bertram Roberts says of Harris. "She's worked on legislation on that before, even though it didn't get passed. She helped craft it. During her presidential run, she had a policy platform piece about Black maternal health and she was the only one. She was the first one to have something to say on that, and I expect that to continue from her — I'm hopeful."
Affordable childcare is a major concern for voters in the upcoming election, and while Biden failed to highlight the administration's plans in the presidential debate, he pledged to cut childcare costs and increase the childcare tax credit. Since announcing her candidacy, Harris has already promised to pass policies for paid family leave and government-funded child care — two provisions that were previously dropped from Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
If Harris wins, beyond what it would mean for pregnant people, it could also potentially help issues that impact parents in general, Dr. Elder says: "Her positions don't seem so different than Joe Biden's in terms of providing affordable childcare and trying for paid family leave."
Dr. Elder says we can likely expect Harris to speak about "stereotypical women's issues" like childcare, families, women's health care, and reproductive rights. "Even if she doesn't talk about these issues more — though I think probably she will talk about them more than Biden would have — I think they're gonna get more attention because she's a woman and because people still, rightly or not, associate a certain set of issues with women."
She adds: "Her candidacy is changing what this election is going to be about."
No matter how you spin it, Harris's nomination has made history for women and women of color, and Dr. Elder believes she can change what it means to be a leader in general. During the Sept. 10 debate, Harris herself acknowledged that, promising a new generation of leadership. "It's time to turn the page," she said.
"The precedence of presidents is still so masculinized," Dr. Elder says. "When people think of the presidents, they reportedly think of a lot of traits that are historically associated with masculinity — assertiveness and strongness," she says. "This makes it challenging for a woman to navigate this terrain — but, it also allows us to change our conceptions of what power is."
Bertram Roberts believes that she's already shown how she can be a strong leader.
"She's very good at breaking down arguments — before there was Katie Porter, there was Kamala Harris — there were constant clips of her on the Senate floor questioning people like Brett Kavanaugh," Bertram Roberts says. "She's not scared of people, or of making hard arguments. And we need that right now."
Kamala Harris pressed a forceful case against Donald Trump on Tuesday in their first and perhaps only debate before the presidential election, repeatedly goading him in an event that showcased their starkly different visions for the country on abortion, immigration, and American democracy.
The Democratic vice president provoked Trump with reminders about the 2020 election loss that he still denies, delivered derisive asides at his false claims, and sought to underscore the Republican former president’s role in the Supreme Court’s overturning of a national right to abortion two years ago. Trump tore into Harris as too liberal and a continuation of Biden’s unpopular administration, as he launched into the sort of freewheeling personal attacks and digressions from which his advisers and supporters have tried to steer him away.
Less than two months from Election Day and hours before the first early ballots will begin to be mailed Wednesday in Alabama, the debate offered the clearest look yet at a presidential race that has been repeatedly upended.
Harris’ performance by nearly every measure seemed to be the opposite of President Joe Biden’s in June, with sharp, focused answers designed to showcase the contrast between her and Trump, whereas Biden at times was muddled, halting, and incoherent. Harris used her body language and facial expressions to confront Trump and express that she found his answers ridiculous, amusing, or both — a pronounced change from Biden’s slack-jawed expression when Trump attacked him.
Harris appeared intent on casting herself as a relief for voters seeking a break from Trump’s acerbic politics — a contrast highlighted as Trump appeared to be set on his back foot by her needling.
In one moment, Harris turned to Trump and said that as vice president, she had spoken to foreign leaders who “are laughing at Donald Trump,” and said she had spoken to military leaders, “and they say you’re a disgrace.”
As Trump, 78, again questioned her racial identity, the 59-year-old Harris, the first woman, Black person, and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president, pointedly gestured to Trump and responded, “I think the American people want better than that, want better than this.”
Trump in turn tried to link Harris to the still-unpopular Biden, questioning why she hadn’t acted on her proposed ideas while serving as vice president. Trump also focused his attacks on Harris over her assignment by Biden to deal with the root causes of illegal migration.
“Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years,” he said.
Harris promised tax cuts aimed at the middle class and said she would push to restore a federally guaranteed right to abortion overturned by the Supreme Court two years ago. Trump said his proposed tariffs would help the U.S. stop being cheated by allies on trade and said he would work to swiftly end the Russia-Ukraine war — though he twice refused to say he believed it was in America’s interest for Ukraine, which bipartisan majorities in Congress have backed, to win the war.
Trump again denied that he lost to Biden four years ago, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of his loss based on false or unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. He tried to reverse the question of threats to American democracy and suggested criticism of him could be linked to the assassination attempt he survived in July.
“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” he said. “They talk about democracy, I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy.”
Trump has in recent days ramped up his threats of retribution if he returns to the White House, saying he would prosecute lawyers, donors, and other officials whom he deems to “cheat” in the election.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said, “So let’s be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.”
Her campaign ended the debate by expressing openness to another meeting in October — and welcomed an endorsement from megastar Taylor Swift, who labeled herself a “ childless cat lady ” in a dig at Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as she encouraged her fans to vote.
Harris defends shifts to the center, puts abortion front and center
Harris sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism.
Asked about her changing positions on several issues, she twice repeated a phrase she has used to try to explain it away, saying, “My values have not changed.”
Trump, meanwhile, quickly went after Harris for abandoning some of her past liberal positions and said: “She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.” Harris smiled broadly and laughed.
Harris, in zeroing in on one of Trump’s biggest electoral vulnerabilities, laid the end of a federally guaranteed right to abortion at Trump’s feet for his role in appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving more than 20 states in the country with what she called “Trump abortion bans.”
Harris gave one of her most impassioned answers as she described the ways women have been denied abortion care and other emergency care since that ruling, and said Trump would sign a national abortion ban if he wins.
Trump declared it “a lie,” and said, “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”
The Republican has said he wants the issue left to the states.
Trump, who is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House, continued to call Harris a “Marxist” and said, “Everyone knows she’s a Marxist.”
Harris’ eyebrows shot up and she made an amused face, bringing her hand to her chin and staring at him.
Trump leaned on familiar falsehoods and signaled a shift in Ukraine
Trump attacked Harris for the inflation seen under the Biden-Harris administration, a major liability for the vice president. He quickly turned his answer to warning about immigrants coming into the country — one of the subjects he’s focused on most heavily in his campaign.
He called his proposed tariffs a straightforward way to make other countries pay up for what he has long argued is an imbalance that hurts the U.S. Harris called the tariffs an effective national sales tax. Trump reacted swiftly and called that “an incorrect statement.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump has leaned on illegal immigration, an issue that has bedeviled Biden and Harris with rising numbers of illegal border crossings and the arrivals of thousands of people needing shelter in Democratic-led cities. He accused Democrats of abetting large numbers of unauthorized crossings — though they have dropped in recent months in part due to new asylum restrictions by the Biden administration.
But as he often does in his rallies and on his social media account, Trump reeled off a series of falsehoods or unproven claims about migrants. One of those claims was a debunked rumor that Trump and his allies have spread online in recent days, alleging Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town are hunting and eating pets. Officials in Springfield, Ohio, say they have no evidence of that happening.
“Talk about extreme,” Harris said after Trump talked about dogs and cats being eaten.
Harris’ expressions filled their split-screen
As the debate opened, Harris walked up to Trump’s lectern to introduce herself, marking the first time the two had ever met, since Trump skipped her 2021 inauguration. “Kamala Harris,” she said, extending her hand to Trump, who received it in a handshake — the first presidential debate handshake since the 2016 campaign.
Trump has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes and falsely claiming that Harris, who attended a historically Black university, hid her race during her career.
“I read where she was not Black,” Trump said when asked about comments questioning Harris’ race, adding a minute later, “and then I read that she was Black.” He seemed to suggest her race was a choice, saying twice, “That’s up to her.”
“I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be a president who has consistently throughout his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,” Harris responded.
While Tuesday’s meeting might be the last time the candidates cross paths on the debate stage, they may cross paths again Wednesday when they both mark the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Harris, Trump and Biden plan to all be at ground zero in lower Manhattan and the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. Harris and Biden will also visit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, later in the day for a ceremony there.
Trump at one point launched into an attack on Biden, questioning his mental acuity by making the claim that Biden “doesn’t even know he’s alive.”
Harris quickly tried to turn it around to make Trump look less than sharp.
“First of all, I think it’s important to remind the former president, you’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me,” she said.
An estimated 67.1 million people watched the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a sharp increase from the June debate that eventually led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
The debate was run by ABC News but shown on 17 different networks, the Nielsen company said. The Trump-Biden debate in June was seen by 51.3 million people.
Tuesday’s count was short of the record viewership for a presidential debate, when 84 million people saw Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s first faceoff in 2016. The first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 reached 73.1 million people.
With Harris widely perceived to have outperformed Trump on Tuesday night, the former president and his supporters are sharply criticizing ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. The journalists waded into on-the-fly fact-checks during the debate, correcting four statements by Trump.
No other debates are currently scheduled between the two presidential candidates, although there’s been some talk about it and Fox News Channel has publicly offered alternatives. CBS will host a vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Tuesday’s debate stakes were high, to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden’s withdrawal from the race after his performance was widely panned.
Opinions on how ABC handled the latest debate Tuesday were, in a large sense, a Rorschach test on how supporters of both sides felt about how it went. MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an “excellent” job — only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said, “This is how you know they’re complete s—-.”
While CNN chose not to correct any misstatements by the candidates during Trump’s debate with Biden in June, ABC instead challenged statements that Trump made about abortion, immigration, the 2020 election and violent crime.
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
CONTEXT
Vice President Kamala Harris surprised some viewers during her debate with Donald Trump when she said that she’s a gun owner, raising the fact to counter her Republican opponent’s accusation that she wants to confiscate firearms.
“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners,” Harris said, referencing her running mate. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”
Harris previously talked about owning a gun in 2019 during her first campaign for president.
“I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” Harris previously said. “I was a career prosecutor.”
At the time, her campaign said that Harris purchased a handgun years earlier and kept it locked up. A spokesperson did not provide any additional details when asked on Tuesday.
The exchange about gun ownership came as Trump tried to paint Harris, who started her political career as a San Francisco district attorney, as radically liberal.
“She is destroying our country,” he said. “She has a plan to defund the police. She has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun. She has a plan to not allow fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”
Harris rebutted each of Trump’s allegations, adding that he should “stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
Walz, the Minnesota governor, has also talked about gun ownership and boasted of his marksmanship.
Republicans frequently describe Democrats as a threat to the Second Amendment, while Democrats describe their proposals as common sense measures to protect public safety.
Harris has called for implementing universal background checks and expanding red flag laws to take away guns from people who are deemed dangerous or unstable. She also wants to ban so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.