Sounding a lot like a candidate for something, Kamala Harris returned to her old stomping ground of San Francisco tonight to warn Americans the apparent chaos of Donald Trump‘s Project 2025 fueled agenda is a ruse to distract from the long-lasting wounds being inflicting on the body politic, civil society and the Constitution.
“Instead of an administration working to advance our highest ideals, we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals,” the former VP said Wednesday to the the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala of Trump’s attacks on the Constitution and the “greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history.”
“Let us not be duped into thinking everything is chaos,” the 2024 candidate added at the Bay Area city’s Palace Hotel. “It may feel like that. But understand: What we are, in fact, witnessing is a high velocity event. Where a vessel is being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making.”
Speaking to a very friendly crowd at big-ticket sold-out event for the Democratic female candidate training organization, keynote speaker Harris called out the rule of law flouting Trump on the 101st day of his current administration.
In a remarks much sharper than often seen on the 2024 campaign trail, Harris heaped scorn on Trump’s “agenda to slash public education, an agenda to shrink government, and then privatize its services, all while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us.” Garnering applause from the crowd filled with past, future and current candidates, the one-time POTUS candidate also took swipes at the Elon Musk-led DOGE gutting of the government, the cruel deportation policies that sweep up children and American citizens, the floundering economy, collapsing guardrails. Advocating the power of the people, Harris predicted a constitutional crisis that many believe is already here. Looking for the upside, Harris also praised the judges, protesters and progressives politicians like Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), Rep, Maxwell Frost (D-FL) and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)who have stood up to the MAGA administration over the past 100 days.
Warming up to her subject and her old rival’s shortcomings, Harris asserted that Trump and his crowd have a “narrow, self-serving vision of America where they: punish truth tellers, favor loyalists, cash in on their power, and leave everyone else to fend for themselves.” Looking outside American’s borders, on the day Ukraine inked a minerals deal under pressure from the USA for more military aid against Russia, the ex-vice president added: “All while abandoning allies and retreating from the world.”
“And folks, what we are experiencing right now is exactly what they envision for America. We are living in their vision of America. And this is not a vision that Americans want.”
Even with polls finding Trump’s approval rating at just 42%, Harris bluntly told the EMERGE audience: “Things are probably going to get worse before they get better.”
Sounding a lot like her stump speeches of last year’s election, Harris’s anti-Trump remarks at the EMERGE gala were her strongest since leaving office in January. Wednesday’s speech clearly shows the ex-VP does not see her defeat on the national stage last November as the end of her public career.
In fact, it may be the start of a new chapter – and not just for the inevitable deep pocket deal for her inevitable memoir.
If Harris really is going to enter the Golden State’s 2026 governor’s race, the speech tonight reveals a bit about her agenda. With it roots in grassroots politics, and its aim on a New American Majority, EMERGE exactly the type of group the former California Attorney General and Senator will need to build a campaign infrastructure around.
To that electoral end, the speech at EMERGE comes on the same day that the increasingly unpopular Trump tried to blame the downturn in the GNP from his tariffs policy on predecessor Joe Biden. Those false assertions by Trump were uttered during a fawning cabinet meeting that often seemed drawn straight from the boardroom scenes in The Apprentice reality show, North Korea or a SNL cold open – which ever one is worst
That gathering was one day after an ill-informed Trump had a contentious 100-days interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran. Tuesday also saw Trump hold less than full celebration rally in Michigan and put some tariff relief in place for car manufacturers. At his cabinet meeting Wednesday, as well as issuing more legal threats against the New York Times for reporting he didn’t like, the president also told American children they didn’t need so many toys and retaliatory tariffs from China would stop American adults from buying so much stuff “we don’t need.”
On a more personal level to Harris herself, her words Wednesday came just over 24 hours after her husband Doug Emhoff (who was at the EMERGE event tonight) was pinked slipped by Trump from the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, along with other Biden appointees.
The most strapping pushback against MAGAland by Harris since Trump was sworn back in as POTUS, tonight’s fighting words are not the first time the ex-Veep has spoken out the past 100 days. At the same time, unlike the seemingly reticent three living Democratic ex-POTUS’, Harris has been doing a bit more than merely pulling the political fire alarm since Trump 2.0 began.
In February, a month after she and President Biden exited the White House, Harris spoke at the NAACP Image Awards and warned of “the shadows gathering over our democracy.” Earlier this month the ex-VP made a not quite spontaneous appearance at Leading Women Defined Summit in Orange County. Trying out some lines she used tonight like “courage is also contagious,” Harris on April 3 decried organizations and corporations that are “capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats.”
On both those occasions, like tonight, Harris had the air of a politician contemplating a second act not a retreat.