page_title: Kamala Harris
section_title: 2018
hierarchical_section_title: Kamala Harris / U.S. Senate (2017–present) / Tenure / 2018
caption_attribution_description: English: When I think about @repjohnlewis, and all the folks who marched from Selma to Montgomery, I am always inspired by their resilience, by their strength, and by their fight for America to achieve her ideals.
context_page_description: Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from California since 2017. She is the Democratic vice presidential nominee for the 2020 election.
  Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, before being recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco's office. In 2003, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014.
  She defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election to become the second African-American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the United States Senate. As a senator, she has advocated for healthcare reform, federal descheduling of cannabis, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, a ban on assault weapons, and progressive tax reform. She gained a national profile for her pointed questioning of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings.
context_section_description: In January, Harris was appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee after the resignation of Al Franken. Later that month, Harris questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for favoring Norwegian immigrants over others and claiming to be unaware that Norway is a predominantly white country.
  In April and May, Harris questioned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook's misuse of users' data and whistleblower Christopher Wylie on reports that Cambridge Analytica misappropriated the data from 87 million Facebook users to suppress the votes of African Americans and the extent to which Facebook violated the privacy of its users.
  In May, Harris heatedly questioned Secretary Nielsen about the Trump administration family separation policy, under which children were separated from their families when the parents were taken into custody for illegally entering the U.S. In June, after visiting one of the detention facilities near the border in San Diego, Harris became the first senator to demand Nielsen's resignation.
  In the September and October, Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Harris questioned Brett Kavanaugh about a meeting he may have had regarding the Mueller Investigation with a member of Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by the President's personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz. Kavanaugh was unable to answer and repeatedly deflected. Harris also participated in questioning the FBI director's limited scope of the investigation on Kavanaugh regarding allegations of sexual assault. She voted against his confirmation.
  Harris was a target of the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts.
  In December, the Senate passed the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act (S. 3178), sponsored by Harris. The bill, which died in the House, would have made lynching a federal hate crime.
caption: Harris in Selma, Alabama, in 2018
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