Vice President Kamala Harris has abandoned yet another leftwing policy she previously supported, this time on plastic straws and climate change.
When Harris ran for president in 2020, she expressed support for banning plastic straws.
“I think we should,” Harris responded when asked whether she would ban plastic straws at a 2019 CNN town hall focused on climate change.
On Thursday, however, a Harris campaign official said the Democratic nominee no longer supports such a ban.
“She doesn’t support banning plastic straws,” the campaign official toldAxios.
“She cast the tie-breaking vote on the most consequential legislation to combat climate change and create clean energy jobs in history, and as President, she is going to be focused on expanding on that progress,” the official said.
“She joked even then about how crappy paper straws are and the need to come up with better eco-friendly alternatives,” the Harris campaign official added.
Harris has reversed a slew of positions and even adopted some that were first embraced by former President Donald Trump’s campaign since becoming the de facto Democratic nominee for president in July.
On Monday, Harris announced she would keep U.S. Steel under domestic ownership during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. Back in January, Trump said he would block the sale of U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest steelmaker.
Harris also blindsided Democrats last month when she adopted Trump’s viral “no tax on tips” proposal, announcing that she supported eliminating taxes on service workers’ tips.
Trump supporters had promoted the policy by writing “no tax on tips” on restaurant receipts to encourage service workers to vote for Trump. Trump himself wrote the message on a receipt when he tipped $500 during a visit to a Philadelphia cheesesteak restaurant.
The Harris campaign also announced Friday that she supports a $6,000 child tax credit. That announcement came just days after Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, said he would support doubling the child tax credit to $5,000.
She has also reversed her stance on Medicare for All and mandatory gun buyback programs, her campaign saying she no longer supports those proposals.
Harris also reversed another energy position, saying she no longer wants to ban fracking, something she supported in 2019.
Her campaign has also dodged the issue of electric vehicle mandates, refusing to say whether she wants to require car makers to build only electric or hydrogen vehicles by 2035, something she supported during her 2020 campaign.
“Will the real Kamala Harris please stand up? These are major policy reversals that will impact millions of families so we deserve to know the reasons behind why Kamala Harris can’t seem to go more than a week without a major flip-flop,” said Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power The Future, an organization that promotes energy research.
“Cowardly hiding behind campaign staff statements tells us all we need to know: if elected, Kamala Harris will do nothing but hide from major decisions,” Turner said.
Broadly, Harris has been light on details about her policy agenda this election cycle, with critics noting that her official campaign website still does not lay out her policies.
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