Kamala Harris pitches vision for future in Houston speech to teachers

HOUSTON (CN) — Vice President Kamala Harris stopped in Houston on Thursday to give the keynote speech at the biennial national convention for the American Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union in the country and the first labor organization to endorse her after she announced her presidential bid this week.

AFT president Randi Weingarten posted on X on Wednesday that the union’s 1.8 million members “are all in for Kamala Harris. We are fully committed to this fight: united, mobilized and ready to vote in this year’s election.”

Harris returned the support throughout her speech to convention attendees Thursday. “To the members of AFT, I thank you for your service to our nation. From the public service workers and higher education faculty to the school bus drivers and custodians to the school nurses and our teachers, you all do God’s work educating our children," she said.

“It is you who have taken on the most noble of work, which is to concern yourself with the well-being of the children of America, and I thank you for that. And I thank you also for your support over the years and for being the first union to endorse me this week.”

She opened her speech by thanking President Joe Biden, who announced Sunday he would no longer seek a second term and laid out his reasons in an Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday evening.

“Over the past three and a half years, and over his entire career, Joe has led with grace, strength, bold vision, and deep compassion. And as he said, in the next six months, he will continue to fight for the American people. And I know we are all deeply, deeply grateful for his continued service to our nation," Harris said.

Throughout her speech, Harris took Trump and the Republicans to task over Project 2025, a “presidential transition project” of conservative and right-wing policies that would reshape the federal government and give the executive branch sweeping powers — and turn the United States into a theocracy — should Donald Trump win in November. She quipped to Weingarten, “Randi, can you believe they put this thing in writing? Nine hundred pages in writing!”

But beyond that quip, Harris’ comments about the plan took a much more concerned tone.

“Project 2025 is a plan to return America to a dark past. Donald Trump and his extreme allies want to take our nation back to failed trickle-down economic policies, back to union busting, back to tax breaks for billionaires. Donald Trump and his allies want to cut Medicare and Social Security, to stop student loan forgiveness for teachers and other public servants. And I say, to AFT, they even want to eliminate the Department of Education and end Head Start, which would take away preschool from hundreds of thousands of our children.

“America has tried these failed economic policies before. But we are not going back. We are not going back!”

Harris used the speech to reiterate her policy goals, from getting the Protecting the Right to Organize Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed to restoring reproductive rights and protecting LGBT+ rights. But she also called on voters to take action in November.

“We each, in our country, face a question. That question being, ‘What kind of country do we want to live in? A country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?’ The beauty of our democracy is that we each have the power to answer that question when we vote. And when we vote, we make our voices heard," she said.