Kamala harris is sworn into history.
Former prosecutor will hold balance of power in Senate
WASHINGTON • Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States on Wednesday, stepping into history as the highest-ranking woman in American history.
The moment reflected a historic rise at a time of historic crises. Harris, the 56-year-old daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the office.
She was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the nation’s highest court, a calculated choice from a former senator from California who has highlighted women of colour during her career.
Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, stepped out of her motorcade to a gathered crowd that included allies such as Hillary Clinton, who nearly broke the glass ceiling for women in the nation’s highest offices four years sooner, and recent adversaries, including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the subject of one of her most-talked-about interrogations on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Harris, clad in a suit of purple designed by Black designers John Rogers and Sergio Hudson, took the oath of office on two Bibles. One belonged to civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice and a fellow Howard University graduate whom Harris, a former prosecutor, saw as a hero. The second belonged to Regina Shelton, a neighbour who was a second mother to Harris and her younger sister, Maya. Harris took her Senate oath on Shelton’s Bible in January 2017. Joe Biden administered that oath.
Earlier in the day, Harris and Emhoff joined the Bidens, Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others at St. Matthew of the Apostle church for a prayer service. They joined the Bidens in a motorcade to the Capitol, where Harris was sworn in shortly before the new president.
Harris’s term was historic from the moment she finished the oath, but she has the potential to be one of the most consequential vice presidents in American history. Democrats and Republicans each hold 50 seats in the U.S. Senate and, as the president of the Senate, Harris holds the tiebreaking vote. The Democratic lean means the Biden-harris administration has a clearer path to enacting legislative priorities, including an expansion of federal health-care subsidies, a comprehensive immigration overhaul and a tax increase on the wealthy.
One of Harris’s first official acts will be to swear in three new Democratic senators: Alex Padilla, her replacement as senator from California and the first Latino to hold the position; and new Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, whose victories in a pair of runoffs knotted the chamber. At 33, Ossoff will be the youngest senator sworn in since Biden, who was 30 when he first took office in 1973.
Harris was one of more than two dozen Democrats who had vied to unseat President Donald Trump. She began the Democratic primary as an on-paper favourite, drawing one of its biggest crowds — more than 20,000 people — to her campaign launch in front of City Hall in Oakland, Calif.
But her campaign foundered, largely because of her inability to dislodge Biden’s base of support.
By December 2019, she was out of money and exited the race before a single ballot was cast.
At 78, Biden is the oldest president in the nation’s history, which thrusts additional importance on the person who would serve in his stead. Biden has said he considers himself a “transition candidate,” a label he cemented when he vowed to pick a woman as his running mate and interviewed more than a dozen.
But as the nation simmered with racial strife following the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, liberal activists and congressional leaders pressured Biden to select a Black woman.
Harris has known Biden for years, and was close with his late son Beau, who was the attorney general for the state of Delaware when Harris held the same post in California.
Despite the connection, Harris launched an attack on Biden at the first Democratic debate over his nostalgic talk about working with two segregationists senators.
She also took Biden to task for his opposition to mandatory busing.
Biden’s wife, Jill, described that moment as being “like a punch to the gut,” and it added drama to Biden’s months-long search for a running mate.
But Biden and Harris publicly made up, and aides to both say they have worked in tandem throughout the transition. Both say she will be a key partner in his administration, much as Biden was to President Barack Obama. She often spoke alongside Biden at transition events, a constant presence by design in a way past vice presidents have not been.
Tuesday night, it was Harris who offered remarks to the nation as part of a brief memorial service for those lost to COVID-19. Her family — some White, some Black, stepchildren and beloved grandnieces — gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial ahead of time, snapping selfies that embodied the kind of modern American experience Harris has come to represent.
BIDEN IS THE OLDEST PRESIDENT IN THE NATION’S HISTORY.