Kamala Harris has dropped her proposal to ban plastic straws.
“We need to ban plastic straws,” the vice president said during a CNN town hall meeting in 2019.
But her campaign says the Democratic candidate has changed her mind and “does not support a ban on plastic straws.”
Some commentators have suggested the move may be intended to ward off further attacks by the Trump campaign.
Vice President Kamala Harris
Reuters
“She voted in the runoffs on the most significant bill in history to fight climate change and create clean energy jobs, and as president she will be focused on expanding on that progress,” a Harris campaign official told Axios.
“Even then she was joking about how awful paper straws were and that we needed to come up with more environmentally friendly alternatives.”
The Trump campaign has been highlighting the policy for some time: “Kamala Harris has a liberal, radical background in California long before she became vice president. She wants to eliminate plastic straws,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told NBC News.
Many US cities, including Seattle, Washington DC and Malibu, have already banned single-use plastic straws, and they have also been banned in the UK and parts of the EU.
The latest on the 2024 White House race
Harris has dropped her proposal to ban plastic straws.
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Democratic presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris
Reuters
Harris has made some policy shifts in the past few months of the campaign, saying in late August that she no longer wants to ban fracking, something she had said during the 2020 primary.
The change in position is seen as improving her chances of winning the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, home to oil and gas drilling.
She told CNN that she now believes it’s possible to “grow and expand a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” The Democratic candidate maintained in the interview that even though some of her policies have changed, her “values haven’t changed.”
Her team, through an anonymous aide, said she no longer supports “Medicare for All” and a mandatory gun buyback program, two policies she campaigned on during the 2020 campaign.
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has endorsed Harris.
Reuters
Meanwhile, Harris said the endorsement by Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, a former congressman, was a “courageous” move to put country above party.
“In the 248-year history of our country, there has never been a greater threat to our country than Donald Trump,” said Cheney, who served as vice president under Republican President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009.
“I’m honored to have their support. It’s okay, if not crucial, to put country above party,” Harris said.
