What a Kamala Harris Presidency Could Mean for Science
Experts say Kamala Harris, the daughter of a cancer researcher, will bring a lifelong understanding of science to the presidency.
United States Vice President Kamala Harris arrives on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on July 22, 2024. President Biden has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to serve in his place in the November election.
Brendan Smiarowski/AFP via Getty Images
After President Joe Biden wrapped up his reelection campaign on Sunday, he and other senior Democratic politicians voiced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris, who is widely expected to face off against former President Donald Trump this November, though that could change before the Democratic presidential nominee is officially selected in August.
here, Nature We speak with policy analysts and researchers about how a Harris Administration will impact science, health, and the environment.
Background in Science and Justice
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Health and science have been a part of Harris’ life since she was young, and she cites her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a leading breast cancer researcher, as a major influence in her life, who died of cancer.
Harris has focused much of her career on criminal justice, serving as San Francisco’s district attorney for seven years and then California’s attorney general for six years before being elected to the state’s U.S. senator in 2017.
As a senator, Senator Harris co-sponsored efforts to improve workforce diversity in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) fields. She introduced legislation to help underrepresented students gain jobs and work experience in STEM fields. During her 2020 Democratic presidential nomination run, she also proposed a plan to invest $60 billion to fund historically black colleges and universities and strengthen black-owned businesses.
As vice president, Harris oversaw the National Space Council, which is tasked with advising the president on U.S. space policy and strategy. Under her leadership, the council has focused on international cooperation, including the Artemis program, which aims to send astronauts to the moon.
It is not yet clear who Harris will choose as her running mate if she receives her party’s nomination, but one possible candidate is Arizona Senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly, who would bring decades of experience in science and engineering to the role.
Healthcare and Drug Prices
During the 2020 Democratic primary, Harris was to the left of Biden on health care policy: She supported universal health care, for example, with a role for private insurers, while Biden preferred to tweak the existing system he helped build as vice president.
It remains to be seen whether Trump will embrace these progressive health policies or choose a path that is more appealing to independents and moderate voters, said Alina Salgannikov, director of women’s health policy at KFF, a health policy research organization based in San Francisco, Calif. “I expect Trump will be very vocal about preserving and upholding Obamacare, which is also a priority for the Biden campaign,” she said.
The Biden-Harris Administration has also made drug pricing a key priority by capping insulin prices and authorizing the use of “march-in rights,” which allow the government to weigh in on the pricing of innovations created with public funds. In 2019, Harris co-sponsored legislation that would create an independent agency to determine appropriate drug prices.
Peter Maberdach, director of the drug access program at Public Citizen, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., praised these efforts and said he hopes they will continue under a Harris administration. “The Biden-Harris administration has been the strongest we’ve ever been in taking on exorbitant drug prices and putting the country on the long road to drug affordability,” he said.
Women’s Health
Harris has been a more vocal advocate for abortion rights than Biden: Last December, she launched a national tour to advocate for reproductive freedom and became the first U.S. vice president to visit abortion providers.
This is a big issue for US voters, with 63% of the population believing abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Pew Research Center poll in Washington DC. Support for abortion rights is thought to have helped drive key Democratic victories over the past year, after they were significantly limited by the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. “The fact that she’s willing to talk about this is going to be huge, because this is a winnable issue for Democrats,” says Melissa Murray, a reproductive rights expert at New York University in New York City. “I think this is a big differentiator between the two parties, and whoever can articulate that case to the American people will be in a stronger position.”
Vice President Harris’ approach to reproductive justice isn’t limited to access to contraception or abortion, Murray noted. She has advocated for maternal health issues more broadly and has emphasized the need to combat implicit bias against black women in health care. This approach “takes seriously the needs of women of color who have been arguably more severely affected by attacks on reproductive freedom, as we’ve seen in the two years since Dobbs,” Murray said.
Climate and Environment
Leah Stokes, a climate policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said Harris has long been a champion for climate and environmental justice action. As San Francisco’s district attorney and then California’s attorney general, Stokes said, Harris became an advocate for communities on the front lines of fossil fuel pollution. Harris followed a similar path as a senator from 2017 to 2021, working on public health and environmental issues.
If she wins in November, Harris is expected to maintain both the momentum and the unprecedented investments Biden has put into U.S. climate action, including more than $1 trillion in funding for clean energy and climate change over 10 years, a legislative achievement that many energy experts say could significantly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades.
“Harris and Biden are aligned on climate change, and that’s exactly what we need,” Stokes said. “We’re so close to our 2030 goal that we can’t afford another four years of backtracking.”
