Kamala Harris

Harris took on voting rights as a personal cause at the start of the administration and was tasked with leading the Biden administration’s efforts to protect voting rights in the face of numerous state efforts to restrict access to the ballot following the 2020 election.

She was at the center of a messy policy fight in June 2021 in the Senate, where a federal voting rights bill was being negotiated by a partisan group of members and ultimately failed.

She has highlighted organizations that work towards expanding voting rights, especially for Black voters, and her and Biden continue to call for Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, which has been dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled House.

Harris was tasked with focusing on the root causes of migration at the start of the administration, giving her the issue of immigration as a major part of her portfolio.

She had a rocky opening to her tenure as vice president when she stumbled over her messaging on migration, telling migrants from Central American countries “do not come, do not come,” in a speech in Guatemala on her first foreign trip in June 2021.

Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s economic agenda has been focused on small businesses. She takes on working with small businesses in underserved communities and spearheads federal investments in them.

She has touted that in the first two years of the Biden administration, more entrepreneurs have applied to start small businesses than in any other two-year stint in history.

Links environmental governance to economic prosperity.

The vice president is the leading voice of the Biden administration on reproductive rights issues. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she has spearheaded the response effort and traversed the country to meet with advocates and local lawmakers.

She has given speeches and held rallies in key states, from Arizona to North Carolina, about the impact of restrictive abortion laws and regular calls for voters to back Democrats in November so they can codify Roe.

The vice president personally has taken on former President Trump on reproductive rights issues in various rallies, arguing that he is “gaslighting” Americans when he says he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban in another potential term.