What Kamala Harris’s historic bid for the US presidency means for science

The daughter of a scientist and a supporter of diversity in STEM, Harris’s prospects have stirred optimism among scientists.

After US president Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign on Sunday, he and other senior Democratic politicians threw their support behind vice-president Kamala Harris. Although the situation could change between now and the official selection of the Democratic candidate for the presidency in August, she is widely expected to face off against former president Donald Trump this November.

Here, Nature talks to policy analysts and researchers about what a potential Harris administration might mean for science, health and the environment.

A background in science and justice
Health and science have been a part of Harris’s life since an early age: her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who Harris cites as a major influence, was a leading breast-cancer researcher who died of cancer.

Much of Harris’s career has centered on criminal justice – she served as the district attorney for San Francisco for seven years and then California’s attorney general for six years until 2017 when she was elected as a US senator for the state.

As senator, Harris co-sponsored efforts to improve the diversity of the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) workforce. She introduced legislation to aid students from underrepresented populations to obtain jobs and work experience in STEM fields. And as a candidate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, she proposed a plan to invest $60 billion to fund historically Black universities and bolster Black-owned businesses...

... Climate and environment

Harris has long promoted action on climate as well as environmental justice, says Leah Stokes, a climate-policy researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a district attorney in San Francisco and then attorney general for the state of California, Harris became a champion for communities on the front lines of fossil fuel pollution, Stokes says. Harris followed a similar path with work on public health and the environment as a senator from 2017-2021.

If she prevails in November, Harris is expected to maintain both the momentum and the unprecedented investments that Biden has injected into the climate movement in the United States. This includes upwards of US$1 trillion in funding for clean energy and climate change over a decade, a legislative accomplishment that many energy experts say could sharply reduce US greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades....