Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the American Federation of Teachers’ 88th National Convention on July 25, 2024 in Houston, Texas. The American Federation of Teachers was the first labor union to endorse Harris for president since announcing her campaign. (Photo by Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
Vice President Kamala Harris — the likely 2024 Democratic presidential nominee — outlined on Thursday some of her “vision of the future” while touting the administration’s education record in her keynote address to the American Federation of Teachers national convention in Houston.
Harris has quickly drawn the support of major unions like the AFT in the fast-moving four days since President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race and passed the torch to her. The unprecedented move could make the 59-year-old the first woman to serve as president if formally nominated and elected in the race against GOP nominee former President Donald Trump.
“Today, we face a choice between two very different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, and the other focused on the past, and we are fighting for the future,” Harris said to an enthusiastic crowd of teachers at the convention.
“In our vision of the future, we see a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead — a future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every senior can retire with dignity, and where every worker has the freedom to join a union,” she said.
Harris also took jabs at the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a nearly 900-page proposal that sets forth a sweeping conservative agenda if Trump is elected — calling it a “plan to return America to a dark past.”
Despite Trump distancing himself from the platform, some former members of his administration helped write it.
Harris said Trump and his allies want to “cut Medicare and Social Security, to stop student loan forgiveness for teachers and other public servants … They even want to eliminate the Department of Education and end Head Start.”
She also boasted about the administration’s student loan forgiveness, which has now provided almost $169 billion in debt relief to nearly 4.8 million borrowers, according to the Department of Education.
Harris also blasted “extremists,” saying to the teachers that while they “try to create safe and welcoming places where our children can learn, extremists attack our freedom to live safe from gun violence.”
“We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books,” she added.
The Trump campaign sent out a statement on Thursday reiterating his education platform, including civil rights investigations into any race-based discrimination, firing “radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and instituting funding boosts for schools that do things like implement the direct election of school principals by parents.
Harris promised that she and Biden would sign the PRO Act into law, which would offer protections for workers when unionizing or collectively bargaining.
The AFT, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, threw its support behind Harris shortly after she declared her intent to earn the Democratic nomination.
Harris, who said she is a “proud product of public education,” thanked AFT’s 1.8 million members for their service to the country.
“From the public service workers and higher education faculty, to the school bus drivers and the custodians, to the school nurses and our teachers — you all do God’s work educating our children,” Harris said.
She’s also received the support of some of the country’s biggest labor unions, and the National Education Association, the largest labor union, endorsed Harris this week.
Some of those recent endorsements include the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known as AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME and the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.
Meanwhile, the prominent union UAW has not endorsed Harris as of Thursday.
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