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CHICAGO - One month after taking over as the Democratic frontrunner for the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted her party's presidential nomination, delivering the most significant speech of her political career.
In a 40-minute speech that marked the climax of the four-day Democratic National Convention at Chicago's United Center, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to forge "a new way forward" if elected to succeed President Biden.
Harris cautioned Americans against reinstating former President Trump, the Republican nominee, to power.
Harris made history in 2020 as the first woman elected vice president. This month, she made history once more as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to secure a major party's presidential nomination. If she wins in November, Harris could become the nation's first female president.
Throughout the vice president's address, Trump frequently used social media to target his 2024 rival.
Former President Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, gestures during a campaign rally at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame in Asheboro, North Carolina, on August 21, 2024. (Photo by PETER ZAY/AFP via Getty Images)
As Harris discussed her early years, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, "A lot of talk about childhood—let's focus on the Border, Inflation, and Crime!"
Moments later, as Harris pledged in her speech that building the middle class would be "a defining goal of my presidency," Trump pointed to her three and a half years as vice president under the Biden administration and asked, "Why didn’t she address the issues she now complains about?"
As anticipated, Harris devoted part of her address to highlighting reproductive rights, a topic that has galvanized and mobilized Democrats since the Supreme Court's conservative majority overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision two years ago, which had legalized abortion nationwide.
She argued that "Donald Trump selected members of the United States Supreme Court to strip away reproductive freedom."
She also addressed border security, an issue that Trump and other Republicans have relentlessly criticized the Biden administration for amid the surge of migrants over the past three and a half years.