Kamala Harris resigns from Senate seat on Monday



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Aides said Harris has already started the process of her resignation, after advising California Gov. Gavin Newsom of her intention and sending her formal indications that she would resign on Monday. Harris will not be giving a farewell speech in the Senate, due to the schedule.

Harris won his seat in November 2016 and was sworn in in January 2017. At the time, Harris was Attorney General of California.

The incoming vice president spoke to Padilla before he took office, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Harris made history throughout her career, becoming the first black woman in California to become a senator.

In her victory speech in November, she acknowledged the hard struggle women have faced to exercise their civil rights and penetrate the upper echelon of American politics, nodding to the women who came before her as the Former Representative Shirley Chisholm and the Young Girls Who Will Come After Her.

“While I may be the first woman to occupy this office, I won’t be the last,” Harris said. “Because every little girl who looks tonight sees that this is a land of possibilities.”

From now on, Harris will preside over the same chamber from which she will resign, becoming Speaker of the Senate.

With the Democratic double victories in two rounds of the Georgia Senate and a highly polarized Congress, Harris will have the power to push any legislation, judicial appointments and Cabinet appointments languishing on party lines above the threshold and take the lead. deserves to have helped to pass the priorities of the administration. As President of the Senate, she will vote for the tiebreaker.

But Harris associates say they are hopeful Harris doesn’t have to sever many ties.

“We believe that the issues Congress will need to address are bipartisan issues that are important to the American people,” an aide said.

President-elect Joe Biden rolled out his top legislative priority this week, announcing a $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that includes direct payments to Americans. Biden stressed that he wanted this to be the first issue taken up by Congress after its inauguration on Jan.20.

During a press call with reporters announcing the resignation, Harris’s aides highlighted the first time she worked at Capitol Hill in 1984. She interned for California Senator Alan Cranston during her second. year of college at Howard University, a historically black university.

“I loved going to work – it felt like the epicenter of change, even as an intern sorting mail,” Harris wrote in a tweet from his Senate account in January of last year. “I now work in the exact Senate office where I was interned once.”

Assistants on the appeal described what they saw as Harris’ legislative victories, including the introduction of his Maternity Care Act, the first Senate bill to specifically address racial disparities in matters of maternal mortality, according to a fact sheet, as well as several bipartisan efforts like the Anti-Lynching Act co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, as well as his bill on Election Security with Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma.

Harris will be sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday, according to a Harris aide. The elected vice president will take the oath using two Bibles; one previously owned by a former neighbor and family friend of Harris, Regina Shelton, and one that belonged to Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, the aide said.

When asked who she would think of, Harris repeatedly told her late mother Shyamala Gopalan.

“I’m going to think of my mom, who’s looking from the sky,” Harris told NPR this month.

CNN’s Dan Merica and Eric Bradner contributed to this report.

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