What did Kamala Harris accomplish as vice president?

Harris has attempted to distinguish herself from both Biden and Trump

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last updated 2 April 2025

For former Vice President Kamala Harris, one of the most defining features of her 2024 presidential campaign was her track record as second-in-command. Looming questions about what Harris had accomplished lingered from the time she announced her candidacy to the day she admitted defeat. Her opponents and undecided voters continued to press her as Harris' camp repeatedly pointed out that for her four-year stint as VP, she took the lead on several critical issues while Biden focused his efforts elsewhere.

Here are some of Harris' most noteworthy accomplishments as America's 49th vice president.

Abortion has become a central issue for Democrats following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn federal abortion rights. Harris spent much of the 2022 midterms appealing to voters with promises to prioritize and protect reproductive rights. Since Roe fell, she has "been subtly making herself the voice with a megaphone no one can ignore," said Philip Elliott at Time, adding that Harris has met with lawmakers from at least 18 states to discuss the issue. As Biden announced his 2024 candidacy, Harris gave a fiery speech at a reproductive freedom rally at her alma mater, Howard University. She blasted "extremist so-called leaders" for passing restrictive abortion bans.

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This year, Harris continued to put abortion at the forefront of her work. In March 2024, she toured a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota that provides abortion services. The White House said it was the first time in U.S. history that a president or vice president has visited a clinic that provides abortion services. The tour was the sixth stop on her "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour, which she started in January to "push for more abortion access in the wake of the overruling of Roe v. Wade," said NBC News.

Biden tapped Harris in the early months of their term to spearhead efforts to address the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. It took her months to make her first and only visit to the area, and the delay elicited backlash from lawmakers on both sides. Her trip to Guatemala and Mexico was ultimately overshadowed by an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News where she "awkwardly downplayed the urgency" of the visit, The Washington Post said. Since then, Harris has borne the brunt of the criticism from Republicans as the border crisis worsens; Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent multiple buses of asylum seekers from the border to the VP's home in protest.

After withstanding the intense backlash of her perceived inaction, Harris is still attempting to address the root causes of the immigration problem. Her Central America Forward initiative has "yielded more than $4.2 billion in private sector commitments" to support creating local jobs and other measures to slow the flow of mass migration, CNN said last year. Some experts have lauded Harris' ability to secure the investments "as her most visible action in the region to date but have cautioned about the durability of those investments over the long term," CNN said.

Harris still has an uphill battle ahead of her to reverse public opinion about her work, or lack thereof, on the border. In January 2023, the Border Patrol union lambasted her lack of progress. "If you were given a job two years ago with the explicit goal of reducing illegal immigration, and then you sit around and do nothing while illegal immigration explodes to levels never seen before, you should be fired and replaced," the union said on X.

Harris was also at the forefront of the administration's pursuit to codify voting rights protections. She pushed for Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which would have extended the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and required federal approval for some local election law changes. The VP "dove into" the "chance to make her mark on a hugely important issue," Eugene Daniels said in Politico. To further that goal, Harris "helped craft political coalitions with civil rights leaders, built outside pressure on Congress, and engaged privately with lawmakers." Ultimately, her work "hit a brick wall" when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and now-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) rejected proposed changes to Senate procedures to stop a Republican filibuster.

Harris has maintained a relatively low profile since the 2024 election and her transition out of the role of VP. She does have her eye on her next move, however, and is supposedly seriously considering running for governor of California. At a pre-Oscars party in March, Harris was asked when she would decide whether she was jumping into the governor’s race, and she indicated that she would have an answer by the end of the summer. However, an "antsy field of Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls" has started putting pressure on her to decide, Politico said. After weeks of silence, "her potential rivals are starting to chafe at being trapped in their current purgatory — a calcified contest with major funders and interest groups staying on the sidelines."

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Theara Coleman has worked as a staff writer at The Week since September 2022. She frequently writes about technology, education, literature and general news. She was previously a contributing writer and assistant editor at Honeysuckle Magazine, where she covered racial politics and cannabis industry news.