Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States on Wednesday, stepping into history as the highest-ranking female politician in American history.
As the world watched and worried and hoped, Harris raised her right hand, face steeled as it was through so many hearings and debates that it became her signature stare.
Then, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor read “so help me God,” the stoicism broke.
“So help me God,” Harris repeated, overcome with a smile as her sister, Maya, broke into tears behind her.
She hugged her husband. She found Joe Biden waiting, shaking his fists in triumph.
Then she walked back to her seat and into history.
The moment reflected a historic rise at a time of historic crises.
Harris, the 56-year-old daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent to hold an office that has been previously occupied solely by White men.
She was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the nation’s highest court, a calculated choice from a former senator from California who has highlighted women of color during her career.
The weight of the history Harris made — and what it took for her to make it — were ever-present Wednesday.
From the moment Harris stepped out of her motorcade, she and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were escorted by Eugene Goodman, the Black Capitol police officer who held off a mostly White mob of rioters during the attempted siege of that complex last week.
Goodman also escorted her to the balcony where she took the oath.
She stepped out to a gathered crowd that included allies such as Hillary Clinton, who nearly broke the glass ceiling for women in the nation’s highest offices four years sooner, and recent adversaries, including Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the subject of one of her most-talked-about interrogations on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As she walked into the ceremony, she stooped to kiss her niece. She bumped fists with Barack Obama, the first Black man to serve as president.
She shared a few words with Mike Pence, her predecessor, who called Harris to congratulate her earlier this week, even as President Donald Trump refused to do so.
Harris’s term was historic from the moment she finished the oath, but she has the potential to be one of the most consequential vice presidents in American history.
Democrats and Republicans each hold 50 seats in the U.S. Senate and, as the president of the Senate, Harris holds the tie-breaking vote.
The Democratic lean means the Biden-Harris administration has a clearer path to enacting legislative priorities, including an expansion of federal health-care subsidies, a comprehensive immigration overhaul and a tax increase on the wealthy.
One of Harris’s first official acts will be to swear in three new Democratic senators: Alex Padilla, her replacement as senator from California and the first Latino to hold the position; and new Georgia Sens.
Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, whose victories in a pair of runoffs knotted the chamber. At 33, Ossoff will be the youngest senator sworn in since Biden, who was 30 when he first took office in 1973.
Harris was one of more than two dozen Democrats who had vied to unseat President Donald Trump.
She began the Democratic primary as an on-paper favorite, drawing one of its biggest crowds — more than 20,000 people — to her campaign launch in front of City Hall in Oakland, Califonia.
(Washington Post)
