Former Vice President Kamala Harris made her highly anticipated return to the public stage Wednesday in San Francisco, delivering her first major speech since losing the 2024 presidential election to President Trump in the city where her political rise began.
Harris gave the keynote address at the 20th anniversary gala for Emerge America, an organization that assists Democratic women in running for office.
In her speech, which comes on the heels of Mr. Trump’s 100th day in office, Harris took aim at her former opponent, saying that “instead of an administration working to advance America’s highest ideals, we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals.”
Harris said that the Trump administration and his allies are “counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. They are counting on the notion that if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others.”
Harris called Mr. Trump’s trade war the “greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history,” describing the president’s tariffs as “reckless.”
Harris said the tariffs instituted by the Trump administration have “hurt workers and families by raising the cost of everyday essentials and are paralyzing “American businesses, large and small, forcing them to lay off people, to stop hiring or pause investment decisions.”
She later added that “the tariffs, as I predicted, are clearly inviting a recession.”
“But please, let us not be duped into thinking everything is chaos. It may feel like that,” Harris said. “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.”
Harris also touched on Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying “it is not OK to detain or disappear American citizens without due process.”
The Trump administration has faced ongoing controversy over the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who the Justice Department has admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
The Department of Homeland Security last week also sent a 2-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with her mother, who is undocumented.
The former vice president praised “the courage of judges to uphold the rule of law in the face of those who would jail them,” a reference to the federal arrest of a Wisconsin judge last week accused of obstructing immigration agents.
Harris ended her speech by acknowledging that “things are going to get worse before they get better,” but called on Americans to “stand together” and “gear up for the hard work ahead.”
“Always remember: This country is ours. It doesn’t belong to whoever is in the WhiteHouse. It belongs to you. It belongs to us. It belongs to we the people.”
The former vice president focused her speech on criticizing the Trump administration, stopping short of announcing a run for California governor or any other office.
With Gov. Gavin Newsom terming out of the governor’s office in 2026, Harris’ name has been floated as a possible candidate to become California’s next chief executive. Some polling has shown Harris garnering strong support for a run.
Harris has mostly kept a lower profile since the election. She was in attendance at Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Earlier in April, Harris attended the Leading Women Defined Summit event and gave a talk that possibly hinted at some of the themes she may expand on in Wednesday’s speech.
“We’re seeing people stay quiet. We are seeing organizations stay quiet. We are seeing those who are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats,” Harris said.
