During an appearance Sunday in Chicago, former Vice President Kamala Harris said President Trump’s war on Iran “has made America weaker.”
“He is the first president, Republican or Democrat since World War II, to not concern himself [with] the importance of America’s alliances, our friendships and America’s responsibility to uphold standards such as sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Harris told a crowd at the Power Rising Summit, a convening of Black women harnessing their collective wisdom to create an actionable agenda.
The conversation happened at the Soul Sunday Brunch on the final day of the three-day event at the downtown Hilton Chicago. She was interviewed by summit founder Leah Daughtry, CEO of the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee.
Harris said the country’s involvement in the war in Iran, a “war the American people don’t want,” is a result of Trump “just getting persuaded by” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu.
She said Trump’s actions have “caused us to become more unreliable and to lose our influence to then be able — imperfect, though, we certainly are flawed — to talk about matters of human rights around the world.”
The Biden-Harris administration was not free of criticism regarding human rights. In March, Axios reported that a hidden DNC report found that the Biden administration’s position on the war in Gaza cost Harris the 2024 election.
Within Trump’s first three months in office, his administration purged the U.S. Agency for International Development, cutting 83% of its programs, including water purification programs in war-torn Sudan.
Harris said “there’s going to be a whole lot of debris” in this administration’s wake. But she cautioned the public “against talking about rebuilding with any sense of nostalgia about how things were, because even before, they weren’t working so well for a lot of folks.” To that end, she urged the room full of Black women to harness the power of their vote to demand change ahead of the upcoming elections.
“I think it’s OK for us to be a bit transactional, too, and to say I’m gonna get mine also,” she said. “And so don’t count on me to be a voter and be the backbone of the Democratic Party.”
Around 90% of Black women voters supported Harris’ candidacy in the 2024 presidential election after a similar percentage supported former President Joe Biden and Harris as vice president in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
Harris said political strategists “count on” Black women’s motivations to vote, which are rooted in the fact that “they will always remember the blood that was shed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. … ‘I will vote because it is my duty for all that paved the path for me to be here.’ ”
Harris said she’s taken a listening tour across North and South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi in recent months. She met a Black single mother in Jackson, Miss., and went grocery shopping with her. Stretching her $150 budget to feed her three children and herself, the mother asked Harris whether lawmakers “saw” when they made decisions that would impact her and her family.
“This is America,” Harris said. “The work of the leaders here is always going to be about keeping it real, speaking truth, and then lifting up these stories to persuade and to fight for and demand that we do better.”
Looking ahead to this November’s midterm elections, Harris said “it’s gonna be so difficult” for the Democrats to win, but that the path includes “a vision for affordable child care, affordable health care, affordable housing and … a vision that is about actually getting this stuff done.”
Harris criticized leaders, including Democrats, who are in office and “preserving their title at the expense of actually getting anything done.
“And then when you try to look at what they’ve actually done to move the needle, you’re left wanting,” she said. “And so part of the work has to be accountability.”
In 2028 and beyond, Harris said she believes that “America is, can be and will be ready for a woman to be president of the United States.” Harris said earlier this month that she’s “thinking about” another run. If elected, she would become the first woman to hold the office, adding to a list of firsts throughout her career: The first Black person and first woman to be elected as California’s Attorney General, and the first woman and first Black person to be Vice President of the United States.
“There are still certain myths about what a woman can and cannot do in spite of what she actually does,” Harris said. “My mother sat me down to say that, for me to get ready for what it would mean to run, and she followed that up by saying it’s a myth.”