Democratic Party nominee and current sitting Vice President Kamala Harris recently pledged to continue spending hundreds of millions of dollars on building the border wall between the US and Mexico. Harris once called the Trump-era policy “un-American,” but has now recently indicated that she, like current President Biden, will continue funding for the wall. In October of last year, Biden used executive action to defy Texas law to continue border wall construction at all costs.
During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Harris pledged to sign a bipartisan border security bill that the Biden administration pushed, which, as Harris bragged, was endorsed by the US Border Patrol. The bill requires hundreds of millions of unspent funds to be used to continue the construction of Trump’s border wall project.
This statement comes in the context of repeated attacks by Trump’s campaign, accusing Harris and the Biden administration of being too soft on immigration and border security.
Democrats once expressed horror at Trump’s plan to “Build That Wall”, as his 2016 campaign slogan went. Trump’s Executive Order 13767, signed in 2017, which inaugurated the wall, drew condemnation and mass protest throughout the country.
This is one of the most recent, but by no means the only, example of Harris moving away from progressive policies. Harris co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation while she was a California Senator back in 2017, but now has abandoned the policy for universal health coverage. Harris also walked back an endorsement on a ban on fracking once she became Biden’s running mate in 2020.
Harris’s campaign website has yet to include a single policy proposal beyond descriptions of herself and running mate Tim Walz, however, as her past flip flopping has indicated, she has become comfortable with moving in a more conservative direction depending on her political needs.
