Paging through intelligence reports just weeks after she was sworn in as vice president, Kamala Harris was struck by the way two female foreign leaders were described. The reports used adjectives that, in her view, were rarely used to describe male leaders.
Harris, the first woman to hold her office, ordered up a review that scrutinized multiple years of briefing reports from various intelligence agencies, looking for possible gender bias.
The study found some questionable word choices but no widespread pattern, according to a senior intelligence official, one of five who requested anonymity to discuss the review. (None would disclose the words flagged by Harris because the reports were classified.)
Still, the exercise had an impact: Intelligence officials added a new training class for analysts on how to judge and assess female foreign leaders, according to another official.
The episode proved to be a preview of Harris’ priorities. The vice president put questions about gender and race at the center of many policy discussions in her office, aides and former administration officials said. Throughout her career, she pushed for policies aimed at systemic disparities and often used her bully pulpit to speak about what she saw as injustices.
While Harris’ allies describe this as a defining feature of her vice presidency — one that separates her from her predecessors, including Democrats — she is not running on this part of her record.
As she appeals to moderate voters and tries to defy Donald Trump’s claims that she represents “the radical left,” Harris is emphasizing her broadest policies: abortion rights, entrepreneurship, help for homebuyers and tax relief for families with children. She rarely talks explicitly about how she would use government to address racism and sexism — and only sparingly mentions her own status as potentially the first woman, first Asian American and first Black woman to hold the presidency.
“She learned that if she wanted to be president of the United States, she would have to walk a very delicate tightrope when it came to race and gender,” said Leah Wright Rigueur, a political historian and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. “And that is exactly what we have seen from her.”
Yet a close examination of her tenure in Washington shows Harris’ interest was steady. As vice president, she promoted an expansion of Medicaid coverage of post-pregnancy care, noting the elevated health risks for Black and Native American women, as well as rural women. She lobbied for billions in funding community banks that serve disadvantaged areas and frequently lend to people of color.
During the pandemic, she repeatedly asked her vice presidential staff for demographic breakdowns on COVID vaccination recipients and pressed the administration’s health officials to address gaps, according to two former administration officials.
She pushed the federal bureaucracy to incorporate concerns about equity into routine business — so much so that her advisers seldom briefed her on domestic policies without having prepared a ready answer about their impact on women, Black and Hispanic people and other racial minorities.
“She was always interested in race and gender,” said one former aide who requested anonymity because of lack of authorization to speak publicly. “We all knew it was really important to her, so we would proactively add that to her briefings. She didn’t have to ask for it.”
Harris’ aides object to any implication that she is narrowly focused on women and racial minorities, saying she is concerned about any overlooked group, including low-income Americans of any race or ethnicity.
In the final stretch of this presidential campaign, as she has struggled to win over Black male voters, Harris unveiled a policy package she said would help them build wealth. A prime feature was subsidized loans for entrepreneurs to start new businesses. Although her aides say the program would be available to borrowers of any race, critics assailed the proposal as favoritism to Black men and questioned its constitutionality.
Her late-stage play prompted one interviewer, radio host Charlamagne tha God, to ask Harris whether politicians downplay their efforts to help Black people because it is a bad campaign strategy.
“I don’t know that that’s true,” she said. “I am running to be a president for everybody, but I am clear-eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities, and I am not going to shy away from that.
“It doesn’t mean my policies are not going to benefit everybody, because they are,” she said.
Senate priorities
Asked about Harris’ top policy interests, people who have worked closely with her do not mention immigration — an early, high-profile assignment from Biden that brought her sustained criticism, including from some Democrats.
But former and current administration officials often note her work on community banks, maternal health care and lead pipe removal. All were issues that she first addressed as a senator from California, then again as a vice president.
Harris co-sponsored a Senate bill to funnel billions of dollars to banks and credit unions that target distressed communities, saying the money would help Black and Latino entrepreneurs who lack access to financial credit. She often mentioned a neighbor who ran a nursery school she attended as a personal connection. “Since I was a child, I have known that small business owners hold the community together,” she said recently.
Harris’ proposal made its way into the first pandemic aid bill, signed by Trump. It allocated $12 billion for these specialized financial institutions, the biggest investment ever, according to the Treasury Department.
The program was top of mind for Harris in November 2020 when she interviewed Wally Adeyemo for the job he now holds as deputy Treasury secretary.
“The first issue the vice president raised with me was, how do we get more funding into the network,” Adeyemo said. “We spent at least half of my interview, I’d say, talking about this specific issue.”
Harris pushed to distribute the money quickly. She later worked to secure another $6 billion from another federal agency and to enlist private corporations to bolster the institutions with deposits, Adeyemo said.
The COVID relief bill passed in 2021 offered Harris another opportunity to advocate for a top priority: lowering maternal mortality rates. The law offered states federal matching funds if they expanded Medicaid coverage of postpartum care to 12 months instead of two.
Harris, who had introduced several maternal health care bills in Congress, urged her staff to create a plan to promote the new funding and pressure state governments to accept it.
The data on maternal mortality and injuries “was shocking to her,” said Michael Fuchs, Harris’ deputy chief of staff at the time. “She drove this issue.”
She hosted at least four White House roundtables or other events on maternal health care, inviting health professionals, lawmakers and women who had suffered from poor treatment. She convened what she said was the first ever full Cabinet meeting on the topic.
Harris stressed that Black women were two to three times as likely as white women to die of pregnancy-related causes and that Native American women were twice as likely. “We know the primary reasons why: systemic racial inequities and implicit bias,” she said at one event.
Forty-six states now offer the broader coverage, compared with just three in 2021.
Harris got similarly involved in the rollout of the Biden administration’s multibillion-dollar program to replace lead pipes. In appearances in Milwaukee; Pittsburgh; Newark, New Jersey; and elsewhere, Harris singled out certain plans as national models, noting that those at the highest risk of lead poisoning “are invariably communities of color and poor communities.”
Erik D. Olson, an adviser with the political action arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he saw Harris repeatedly press experts and local officials on how to speed up removal efforts on the ground.
“She was very interested in the details,” he said. “She called herself a nerd.”
Riling Republicans; challenging the spy agencies
Harris’ attention to equity at times triggered blowback, particularly as Republicans sought to cast diversity, equity and inclusion work as “wokeness” run amok.
In fall 2022, after a hurricane swept through Florida and elsewhere, she noted that minority and low-income communities face disproportionate risks for harm from extreme weather conditions.
“We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity,” she said at a forum in Washington.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., accused Harris of trying to direct disaster aid based on race. It was a distortion of her remarks, yet it became a Republican talking point that the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had to rebut, saying that hurricane relief was available to all.
Harris’ concerns extended to foreign affairs, where her questions about possible gender bias in briefing reports reached the attention of Avril Haines, the nation’s first female director of national intelligence.
Harris’ request for a review by the intelligence agencies was earlier reported by The Washington Post, but the results of the examination have not previously been reported.
A specific class now teaches intelligence analysts how to better assess the context in which women leaders operate and the possible impact of gender on their career paths, decision-making and policy choices, according to a U.S. official.
And briefing reports on foreign leaders are now regularly checked for potential gender bias, a senior intelligence official said.
Harris also wanted more intelligence reporting on how gender inequalities in various nations weaken their national security, according to two senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. She paid particular attention to Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean — regions that have been overlooked in mainstream foreign policymaking, one of them said.
In Manila, she met with Filipina human rights activists. In Seoul, South Korea, female business leaders.
In Ghana, where she met female entrepreneurs in March 2023, she announced $1 billion in federal and private funds to help empower African women economically.
Her message there was the same as to U.S. audiences. “When we lift up the economic status of women,” she said, “all of society benefits.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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