'Don't get in our way,' Harris urges in speech at Howard University

In her first remarks since her running mate announced their reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris blasted the U.S. Supreme Court and Republican lawmakers who are restricting access to reproductive health care across the country in a speech at her alma mater, Howard University.

“These extremist so-called leaders would dare to tell us what is in our own best interest. Well I say, I trust the women of America. I trust the people of America,” Harris said to the crowd. “So don’t get in our way because if you do, we’re going to stand up, we’re going to organize and we’re going to speak up and we’re going to say we’re not having that, we’re not playing that!”

At one point Harris did something rarely seen from the vice president, grabbing the microphone and walking around the stage as she lambasted attacks on abortion. Aides say she had an outline on the podium but that the vast majority of the more than 20 minute speech was off the cuff.

“They're also saying they're going to ban abortion. Six weeks into a pregnancy? Well, clearly most of them don't even know how a woman's body works because most women don't even know they're pregnant at that stage of a pregnancy,” Harris said to a raucous applause.

For Harris, the event was a bit of a homecoming. The first vice president to hail from a historically Black college or university spoke to a packed auditorium of students and reproductive rights advocates on Howard’s campus in Washington, D.C., to multiple standing ovations and shouts of “H-U!” She responded: “You know!”

Attendees who’d seen Harris speak before say she felt like a different speaker Tuesday: That she was laid back in a way they hadn’t seen before and tied that to her being in the same auditorium that she had freshman orientation in.

“I feel like when she's around Howard students, she feels at home. She feels comfortable around us because unlike the outside world, we don't judge her,” freshman student Jomalee Smith said. “She is one of our heroes. When she's here, she sees kids that look up to her. So, of course she's going to be comfortable, be herself, walk around, crack jokes in the middle of a sentence.”

Alencia Johnson, a former Biden campaign senior adviser, said she hopes the administration (and campaign) takes Harris’ performance and the reception as proof positive they need to make sure they let her loose during the next 18 months.

“It’s clear abortion is a key issue for not just women, but young people and Black people of all ages given the packed auditorium with less than 2 days’ notice,” Johnson said. “And Vice President Harris is the perfect messenger in this moment in history. She was on fire. When they let her loose, especially on abortion, she connects with voters in a way many electeds can’t.”

The event also is an extension of Harris’ leading the administration’s push to protect reproductive access since POLITICO reported on the draft opinion that eventually became the 2022 Dobbs decision dismantling a federal right to abortion.

And administration aides say the choice to have the vice president speak about abortion to a group of young Black people at her alma mater was no accident. Though Harris had just one line about the reelection, (“I stand here, proud to run for reelection with President Joe Biden … so we can finish the job”), for the crowd, the impending fight was undergirding her appearance.

“What I saw was an experienced prosecutor who knows the case in front of her and capably prosecuted that case in front of this audience today,” EMILY’s List president Laphonza Butler said. “I'm excited about this reelection because that is the vice president that America is going to get a chance to get to know for the first time because she didn't get to do it during the pandemic."

In the first campaign video announcing his reelection campaign, Harris was featured largely throughout, a rarity for vice presidents and proof that the president will be leaning on his second-in-command during the campaign. It was also a not-so-veiled jab at the naysayers who doubt how close the two are and whether Biden sees her as an asset to his campaign.

Parts of Harris’ speech harkened to elements of the message Biden shared in that video about their reelection being about issues of freedom and democracy. Since the Dobbs decision, Harris has worked to tie the conversation of abortion access to a larger fight about privacy and the dismantling of democracy in the United States. On Tuesday, she said it was part of “an extremist plan to take this to a national agenda.”

“This agenda includes attacking your very right and freedom to express your voice through your vote at the ballot box,” she said. “Don't think it's not a national agenda when they start banning books to stand in the way of teaching America's full history so the truth can be spoken. Standing for ideas that say that people cannot openly love the people they love — you know what's happening with teachers down in Florida.”