DALLAS — Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday urged Texans to help reelect Joe Biden in order to protect freedoms that she said are under assault by Republican extremists.
“Right now we have so-called leaders, extremists ... who are on a full-on attack against hard-won freedoms,” Harris told supporters at a North Dallas fundraiser. “We must stand up for what we believe in as a country.”
Harris, the first woman to serve as vice president, said bolstering freedoms and promoting equal rights are critical. She is also the first Black and South Asian person to serve as vice president.
“We are a nation that has been committed to understanding the strength that comes from expansion,” she added. “But now we are looking at so-called leaders who have, as a national agenda, the objective of restricting rights in America.”
Harris said extremists, including those in Texas, have been assaulting reproductive rights and voting rights, and discriminating against the LGBTQ community and making wrongheaded decisions about banning books.
“The highest court in our land just took a Constitutional right that had been recognized from the women of America,” she said of the June 24, 2022, Supreme Court ruling ending nearly a half-century of recognition that women have a constitutional right to end a pregnancy, until the fetus becomes viable outside the womb. “One does not have to abandon their faith, or more deeply held beliefs, to agree the government should not be telling her what to do.”
She reflected on books being banned across the country in the name of parental rights in education. “Anybody remember reading 1984?” she asked. “Welcome to 2023.”
Harris thanked the crowd for supporting the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 and helping Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
She pointed to the administration’s work to reduce prescription drugs costs and secure critical infrastructure improvements as evidence that elections matter.
“This is the environment in which we come together,” she said. “This is the environment in which we live and are prepared to fight for all that is right.”
The closed-door donor reception is part of a series of fundraisers the Biden-Harris team has planned ahead of the deadline for mid-year campaign finance reports. Such early campaign finance numbers are used to measure enthusiasm as the 2024 presidential race looms.
Biden has four such stops this week, in California, Maryland, Illinois and New York.
As part of her Dallas trip, Harris also had a sit-down with MSNBC’s Joy Reid for a special edition of The ReidOut focused on “the abortion landscape post-Roe.”
The vice president has been the administration’s point person on abortion rights. She’s met with reproductive rights activists as they try to keep the issue in the forefront of the 2024 elections. Since the end of the Roe era nearly a year ago, the Biden administration has tried to expand access to abortion drugs.
In Dallas, Harris met with old and new Texas friends. The fundraiser was hosted by Dallas businessman Randy Bowman and his wife, Dallas lawyer Jill Louis.
Louis and Harris attended Howard University together and are sorority sisters. Harris said Bowman and Louis are extensions of her family.
Some of the well-known Democrats attending the rally included former U.S. Trade representative Ron Kirk, former Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, and former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez.
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