Kamala Harris’s policy positions, where she stands on key issues

A: Harris has strongly rejected efforts to restrict abortion access, including a national ban, blaming Trump for the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade that she says created a “horrific, heartbreaking reality” and urging Congress to pass a national law codifying abortion rights. She has made championing reproductive health a centerpiece of her vice presidency and her 2024 presidential campaign.

A: Harris calls climate change an existential threat and says the United States needs to act urgently to address it. As a presidential candidate in 2019, she released a $10 trillion climate plan that calls for investing in renewable energy, holding polluters accountable, helping communities affected by climate change and protecting natural resources. As California attorney general, she prosecuted oil companies for environmental violations. As vice president, she was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided about $370 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below their 2005 levels by the end of this decade.

A: Harris voted for the First Step Act, which reduced some prison sentences and allowed some prisoners early release, as a senator in 2018, along with most Democrats. At the time, she said far more reforms were needed but said the bill was “a first step to right the wrongs” that exist in the criminal justice system.

A: Harris wants to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, according to her campaign, but she has yet to release detailed policy proposals. She has taken the Biden administration stance on Social Security, supporting a measure to reinstate the payroll tax on earned income above $400,000. She has also said she would as president allow Medicare to accelerate negotiations on prescription drug prices, which are part of the administration’s existing efforts to lower drug costs. In 2019, she co-sponsored a bill to expand Social Security by extending the payroll tax. She proposed a Medicare-for-All plan during her 2020 presidential bid, but she is not pursuing such a policy now.

A: Harris has touted the Biden administration’s student-loan forgiveness plan for tens of millions of borrowers. She previously pledged that she and Biden would “do much more to build on” their debt forgiveness policies and has said she envisions a future where public servants such as teachers do not have to “struggle with the burden of student-loan debt,” but she has not elaborated on what her policies would be if elected. She also helped announce the Biden administration’s forgiveness of all loans borrowed by students at Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain that was found to have engaged in predatory practices after an investigation and lawsuit by Harris when she was California attorney general.

A: Kamala Harris is President Joe Biden’s vice president. A senator in 2020, she cast a vote to certify the election.

A: The Biden-Harris administration has called China in some areas the leading national security threat to the United States, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, accusing the country of stealing U.S. intellectual property and flooding the U.S. market with cheap exports.

A: When running for president in 2020, Harris promised to close private immigration detention centers, limit deportations and fight for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States. She now says she wants to sign into law the tough border compromise that Congress was unable to pass in 2024 after Donald Trump objected to it. That bill would have closed loopholes in the asylum process, given the president greater authority to shut down the border when crossings are high and limited parole of migrants, which allows them to temporarily enter the United States. Her 2024 campaign team has said that her position on border crossings is the same as the Biden administration's, and that “unauthorized border crossings are illegal.” At the Democratic National Convention in August, she reiterated: “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”