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What would Kamala Harris do as president? Her record on policy issues

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Kamala Harris has received over $200 million of donations, some from Democrat billionaires, and many more from first time donors. It’s not going to be easy for Republicans to beat her in November with her huge advantage in fundraising. But, one thing we can do right now is to take a look at her record on issues, and then share these stories with our friends and family members.

Here’s the first article from Daily Signal:

The “Biden Accountability Tracker” presents a list of “disturbing and harmful actions,” including “each significant policy decision made, executive action taken, or regulation promulgated by the administration that hurts the American people,” the organization’s letter to lawmakers explains.

“Our organization has kept a rolling record of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration since 2021, from reversing Trump-Pence border policies, to pushing an expensive and burdensome climate agenda, failing to protect women’s sports, and using the FDA to make the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone available by mail,” Teller told The Daily Signal. “Kamala Harris owns each and every one of these failings, along with her own record from her time as California attorney general and as a senator.”

“It is clear her policies are left of Biden and that she has it out for conservatives and the freedom-loving community,” Teller added.

Teller’s reference to Harris’ having it out for conservatives touched on the vice president’s record from her time as California attorney general. For example, Harris directed her office to search the home of pro-life investigative journalist David Daleiden, who had exposed Planned Parenthood officials’ selling aborted baby body parts for profit. She prepared a legal case against Daleiden, which her successor as California attorney general—now Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra—brought against the pro-life journalist.

Harris also demanded sensitive donor information from two conservative organizations, Americans for Prosperity and the American Freedom Law Center, after her office had leaked sensitive donor information and after some on the Left had launched a video game in which players acted out a shooting at Americans for Prosperity headquarters.

If you look through that issue tracker, you’re bound to find something to convince an independent voter not to vote for Harris. Stuff like climate regulation (which caused our energy prices to skyrocket) and open borders (which caused housing prices to increase due to a shortage of housing) should be of interest to anyone.

Here are a few more of Kamala Harris’ specific actions, reported by the Daily Signal:

A newly resurfaced memo put out by Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign outlines her plan to “fundamentally transform” the criminal justice system by reducing penalties for criminals.

In 2019, Harris promised to end cash bail, get rid of court-ordered fines, expunge the records of some felons, discontinue federal mandatory minimum sentences, and to place greater federal scrutiny on local police departments, according to a memo resurfaced Thursday by the Washington Free Beacon.

[…]“It is long past time to re-envision public safety by strengthening and supporting our communities and drastically limiting the number of people we expose to our criminal justice system,” the memo reads. “As president, Kamala will fundamentally transform how we approach public safety.”

And ending cash bail, which has already been tried in many Democrat cities:

“Excessive cash bail disproportionately harms people from low-income communities and communities of color,” Harris’ 2019 memo reads. She characterized cash bail systems as “criminalizing poverty” and vowed to end them.

Ending cash bail has led to a backlash in some major cities, with New Yorkers in February 2022 overwhelmingly supporting tightening bail laws following an increase in crime, the New York Post reported. The Texas Organizing Project, a George Soros-backed nonprofit that opposes cash bail, bonded out a man who allegedly went on to murder six people and shoot three others in December 2023.

I remember that she’s a big supporter of “defunding the police” as well, but that’s not all:

She also supported restoring voting rights to all those who have served criminal records, per the memo, and advocated for more federal oversight of local police departments, citing alleged “racial profiling” and “excessive force.”

The now-vice president proposed a “National Police Systems Review Board” that “would collect data and review police shootings and other cases of severe misconduct,” according to the memo. She also promised to provide the Department of Justice with resources to provide grants to fund greater scrutiny of officers who shoot suspects and pledged to reinstate an executive order restricting the sale of certain military equipment to police departments.

So, it’s not enough for her that unvetted illegal immigrants are coming into the country in droves. She looks at the taxpayers who pay her salary, and she thinks “I side with the killers and the rapists against those taxpayers – my job is to help the killers and the rapists, and not the taxpayers who pay my salary”. Do you think that independents would care about that? I think they would.

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Teacher wins case after being fired for not using student’s pronouns

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Good news! I saw an article in the Daily Signal about a teacher in Virginia who was fired for not using a student’s preferred pronouns. Well, the teacher sued the school board, and it went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court! Finally, after 5 years of litigation, the school board capitulated and agreed to settle the case for $575, 000. Let’s have some happy news for a change!

Here’s the article from Daily Signal:

In 2018, one of Vlaming’s female students at West Point High School began identifying as a transgender male. Although Vlaming consistently used the student’s preferred name, the French teacher carefully avoided using third-person pronouns so as not to violate his own religious beliefs.

That courtesy wasn’t good enough for West Point’s school board and school administrators. When Vlaming refused to use preferred pronouns, they fired the teacher for “creating a hostile learning environment.”

That’s right. Vlaming wasn’t fired for what he said. He was fired for what he didn’t—and couldn’t—say.

Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom and a local attorney, Vlaming sued in state court in 2019, asserting claims under Virginia law and the Virginia Constitution.

[…]The majority decision, written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, was a landmark victory for religious freedom and free speech. The state Supreme Court held that the Virginia Constitution protects religious exercise—not just religious speech—unless it threatens the public’s safety or order.

I thought this part was interesting:

In so ruling, the state’s highest court rejected U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s highly criticized majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith. That decision gutted religious freedom when a challenged law could be considered both neutral and generally applicable to everyone.

A lot of people name Antonin Scalia when asked who the most conservative SCOTUS Justice is, but I always say Clarence Thomas. He’s the best, and I wish we had 9 of him on the Supreme Court. Scalia inconsistent, just like Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

More:

The court also ruled for Vlaming on his claim of compelled speech. Merely “objectionable” or “hurtful” speech, it emphasized, poses no threat to public safety or order.

Vlaming’s refusal to use preferred personal pronouns based on his Christian religious beliefs thus was protected even if others subjectively took offense to his silence, Kelsey wrote in the opinion.

[…]“[I]f liberty means anything at all,” Kelsey wrote, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. … All the more, it means the right to disagree without speaking at all.”

Seeing the writing on the wall, the West Point School Board finally relented. In a settlement finalized Monday, the board agreed to pay Vlaming $575,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees. It also agreed to expunge Vlaming’s firing from his employment record.

And this part I really liked – the school board changed their policy to match the law of Virginia:

And for good measure, the school board took the initiative and changed its policies to conform to new educational policies from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, which protect free speech and parental rights.

Can you imagine how much it must cost to fight a case like this for 5 years, though? This is why I am so careful about saving money for the case where I get sued. I have to do with a lot less goodies day by day. It’s a real struggle to say yes to a board game here, or a Steam game there. Instead, I like to put money into savings, in the case where someone like this female student decides to sue me like this for not saying the things that she demands that I say.

It’s shocking that I have to live like this in America, but leftists are dangerous people. They have no mercy on those that cause them to feel bad. It doesn’t bother them at all to take someone’s job if that person refuses to play along with their woke delusions. I guess that’s better than using violence, but honestly, leftists are often using violence to get their way as well. It’s quite a scary time to be alive.

What I’ve done, to mitigate the risk, is just avoided talking to people who are likely to be offended. And that’s just people who are in the traditional Democrat voting groups, like the young unmarried female student in the story. They’re just not safe to talk to. Their first instinct when confronted with normal, moral Christian men is to drag them to court, and have the court punish good men for their moral and spiritual convictions.

I don’t like that I have to censor myself and stop doing the things that I want to do, just because leftists are offended. And since society seems to side with them over me – dragging Christians into court because we take the Bible seriously – I’ve learned just not give them the same friendliness and openness that I give to more moral and trustworthy people. I wouldn’t tell Stalin what I really think, and I wouldn’t want to be Stalin’s friend. Stalin is not a good person. Stalin is not safe to make friends with.

I just want to make one general point about this social trend of letting young secular leftists attack Christian men because society is offended by moral leadership and spiritual leadership. Society is fine with Christian men paying taxes. They love when Christian men protect and provide for women. But they DO NOT want those same men to lead anyone morally and spiritually. And I’m going to tell you right now – Christian men are tired of being used by society as ATMs. We are not interested in dating and marriage unless our leadership is respected.

The more that good Christian men see society trashing us for our desire to lead on moral and spiritual issues, the less interested we are in getting married and raising children. We are not interested in just paying the bills, and letting the feelings-oriented people, and their allies in the courts, trample all over us. We will opt out of that.

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Which side of the abortion rights debate is backed by scientific evidence?

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Once upon a time I didn’t know much about the case for abortion rights or the case for the right to life of unborn children. My reason for not reading much about it is that I thought that it was kind of a subjective issue. But, I started a project to read 1-2 books on every conceivable topic, including one on abortion. Lo and behold, it turned out that one side did have the backing of science.

This article from The Public Discourse explains: (links removed)

The following are typical examples—only three of the many, many we could cite. These are from standard texts by embryologists, developmental biologists, and microbiologists:

“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).” Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition.

“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.” Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, Cell Tissue Research.

“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte” (emphasis added; Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition.

The genetically distinct part is key – this unborn child is has a different DNA signature (a human signature) than either the mother or the father. Nothing will be added or taken away from this new signature as the unborn child grows. It never changes.

More:

These authorities all agree because the underlying science is clear. At fertilization—or, more precisely, when the sperm (a male sex cell) fuses with the oocyte (a female sex cell, more commonly referred to as an egg)—each of them ceases to be, and a new entity, one that is both genetically and functionally distinct from either parent, is generated. This new entity, initially a single totipotent cell, then divides into two cells, then (asynchronously) three, then four, eight, and so on, enclosed all the while by a membrane inherited from the oocyte (the zona pellucida), which then dissolves during implantation, allowing for continued growth in the direction of maturity as a member of the species. Even prior to implantation, however, these cells and membrane function as parts of a whole that regularly and predictably develops into the more mature stages of a complex human body.

How do we know that the result of sperm-oocyte fusion is a new entity, rather than a continuation of the oocyte? We know that a new entity exists because, once the sperm penetrates the oocyte, a completely new trajectory of biological development commences. The biological activity of an oocyte is directed toward successful fertilization; the biological activity of sperm is directed toward penetration of an oocyte. The biological activity of the new entity that results when sperm and oocyte fuse, however, is directed toward nothing less than the development of a mature human organism, distinct from either parent. Further, this new entity’s activities are directed not by instructions from the mother’s body, as some people wrongly suppose, but by its own unique set of instructions, especially the blueprint for development contained in its unique genetic material. The mother’s body recognizes the zygote and then the embryo as an entity distinct from itself. In fact, the embryo must send out chemical signals to prevent the mother’s immune system from attacking it. The embryo also emits chemical signals that induce changes in the lining of the mother’s uterus to enable successful implantation.

If this embryo is provided a suitable environment, nutrition, and protection from deliberate attack, serious injury, or disease, it will develop to the mature stage of a human organism. Thus, from the zygote stage onward this distinct, new organism has all of the internal resources—in its genetic and epigenetic structure—needed to develop itself (or, rather, himself or herself, since in the human sex is determined from the very beginning) to the mature stage of a human organism. At no point after fertilization—implantation, gastrulation, birth, puberty, etc.—does a fundamental change in biological trajectory occur. These subsequent stages of development are simply the unfolding of the zygote’s inherent dynamism toward human organismal maturity. This shows that the zygote already is a human organism—a member of the species Homo sapiens—albeit at an early stage of his or her development.

So, since I like to win arguments with science, I just took the side of the debate that was backed by science. I really hate to lose debates, you know. I really like to cite scientific evidence when I’m debating.

The crime of abortion, it seems to me, is that you are depriving a human being of his or her future, because of your convenience right now. Human beings don’t have the right to take away the futures of other human beings because they want to be unburdened by the results of their own actions. We shouldn’t resort to violence in order to escape responsibility for our own actions. In almost every case, (except to save the life of the mother), killing the unborn child isn’t justified. It’s actually very scary to me that anyone would think that hurting other people was a reasonable response to one’s own diminished happiness. How did we ever get to a place in society when people don’t think that taking responsibility to care for the unborn child is morally better than killing the unborn child? It’s a baby for goodness sake. We ought to be serious about setting up our lives and controlling ourselves so that we never hurt an unborn child.