CNN
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Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview printed Monday, criticized a suggestion made final week by Republican Rep. Byron Donalds that Black households had been “collectively” throughout the Jim Crow period of racial segregation.
Politico stories that the vice chairman referred to as up the outlet to weigh in on former President Donald Trump’s announcement that he’ll choose a operating mate at subsequent month’s Republican conference. She largely withheld touch upon particular person prospects, Politico stated, although she did pointedly criticize Donalds, who’s amongst these thought of a possible operating mate for Trump.
“It’s sadly yet one more instance of any individual out of Florida attempting to erase or rewrite our true historical past,” Harris stated, referring to the state’s interventions underneath Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis into Black historical past curriculums. “I went to Florida final July to name out what they had been attempting to do to interchange our historical past with lies. And apparently there’s a by no means ending move of that popping out of that state.”
Donalds’ feedback, which come as Trump’s marketing campaign seeks to make inroads with non-White voters, had been made at an occasion in Philadelphia with Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt, one other Black Republican supporter of the previous president.
“You see, throughout Jim Crow, the Black household was collectively,” Donalds stated on the occasion final week, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “Throughout Jim Crow, extra Black folks weren’t simply conservative — as a result of Black folks have at all times been conservative-minded — however extra Black folks voted conservatively,” he stated.
Within the interview with Politico, the vice chairman contrasted the Biden administration’s place on abortion with these of the possible GOP vice presidential nominees.
“Everybody on that record has supported a Trump abortion ban of their state or has referred to as for a nationwide ban. … Actually, many voted this week in the Senate in opposition to the proper to contraception. That’s how far down the highway they’re,” stated Harris, who has led the White Home’s messaging marketing campaign within the wake of the Supreme Courtroom’s determination in 2022 to overturn the federal proper to an abortion.
As vice chairman, Harris has beforehand waded into tradition warfare points, traveling to Florida last year to slam Florida Republicans after the state Board of Training revised requirements for educating Black historical past.
Through the go to final July, Harris highlighted requirements that, in accordance with a doc posted to the state’s Division of Training web site, require instruction for center schoolers to incorporate “how slaves developed abilities which, in some cases, might be utilized for his or her private profit.”
“We all know the historical past. And allow us to not let these politicians who’re attempting to divide our nation win” Harris stated on the time. “They’re creating these pointless debates. That is pointless to debate whether or not enslaved folks benefited from slavery. Are you kidding me? Are we speculated to debate that?”
The vice chairman has typically served because the administration’s messenger on an array of hot-button points. Final month she was deployed to Jacksonville, Florida, just hours after a controversial ban on most abortions after six weeks of being pregnant went into impact within the state, ratcheting up the Biden marketing campaign’s message blaming Trump for strict abortion restrictions being adopted throughout the nation within the wake of the Supreme Courtroom’s determination.
In April, she traveled to Tucson simply days after a state Supreme Courtroom ruling upholding a Civil Warfare-era ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.