Kamala Harris’ life has been filled with milestones.

Her elementary school class in the 1970s was the second one to integrate Berkeley schools.

Harris was the first woman elected as San Francisco’s district attorney.

She was the first woman to be elected as California’s attorney general.

She was the first person of color to be elected to the U.S. Senate from California.

She was first woman elected vice president of the United States.

Now, with President Biden announcing Sunday that he will step aside as the Democratic presidential nominee and endorsing Harris, she is close to becoming the party’s Democratic nominee for president.

The Times has been covering Harris extensively for two decades. Here is an overview of her story from our pages.

California roots

From Oakland to Canada and back, with inspiration from India

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about sexual violence.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

Political beginnings

A prosecutor with an ambition for Bay Area politics

• Harris got her start in Bay Area politics and law enforcement. She prosecuted murder, rape, assault and drug cases at the Alameda County district attorney’s office in Oakland from 1990-98.
• San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan had hired Harris in 1998 to lead his career-criminal unit. She ended up running against him and winning in 2003. The campaign was bruising, with critics citing her relationship with San Francisco’s colorful and controversial Mayor Willie Brown. Her record as a prosecutor included some progressive policies but other ones that critics would later say were too “tough on crime.”

• In 2010, Harris moved to statewide politics, defeating Republican Steve Cooley for attorney general.

  

  Tony West, left, and Kamala Harris look up the poll results with family Maya Harris, Meena Harris and parents Frank and Peggy Harris on Nov. 2, 2010, in San Francisco.

  (San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Imag)

• As attorney general, she started implicit-bias training for law enforcement, and as district attorney she launched a program that enabled first-time nonviolent offenders to get their charges dismissed if they finished job training. Critics have faulted her, though, for working in court to uphold California’s death penalty, despite her personal opposition, and for her threats to jail parents of chronically truant schoolchildren.
  In 2016 The Times editorial board praised Harris for being willing to stand up to the little guy as attorney general. AG. But it issued this warning: “Harris has at times seemed more focused on her political career than on the job she was elected to do. She has been too cautious and unwilling to stake out a position on controversial issues, even when her voice would have been valuable to the debate.”
• Harris got national attention for her efforts to have courts overturn California’s ban on gay marriage and allow same-sex couples to legally marry.

A picture of Kamala Harris at an Oakland campaign office in 2019.

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

National stage

Breaking barriers with a rise to Washington

• Her next move was the 2016 race to replace the retiring Barbara Boxer as U.S. senator. With Democrats dominant in California, it came down to a history-making battle between her and Southern California’s Loretta Sanchez. When Harris won, The Times declared that she tore “down a color barrier that has stood for as long as California statehood.”
• In 2019, she began her campaign for U.S. president. Early on she built strong momentum, drawing a crowd of roughly 20,000 to a lavish Oakland rally. She raised $1.5 million in just 24 hours. She boasted a string of endorsements from California politicians.
• But her campaign slowly sputtered. As The Times reported in March 2019, the fall “stems in part from Harris’ failure to present a compelling case for her candidacy beyond her background as a prosecutor, her buoyant personality and a deep contempt — shared by others in the contest — for President Trump.”
• In December, she suspended her campaign. The Times called it a “lackluster end to an initially soaring presidential bid premised on the California senator’s personal biography and prosecutorial acumen. Ultimately, her run foundered with a muddled purpose, campaign infighting and an inability to sustain support from vital Democratic voting blocs, particularly African Americans.”

Sen. Kamala Harris kick-starts her presidential campaign at a rally in her hometown of Oakland on Jan. 27, 2019.

(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

• Biden locked in the nomination, but there was no guarantee he would pick her as his running mate. Some felt the Biden team was angry at her treatment of him during the campaign. But Biden ended up selecting Harris. The Times said at the time: “In many ways, Harris is a safe pick — broadly popular in the Democratic Party and well acquainted with the rigors of a national campaign. But her selection also carries symbolic heft in this moment when race relations are at top of mind for voters.”
• Harris held her own during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence and serving as an effective surrogate. The Times reported “Those who have spoken with Harris say she sees the changes — in style, in her approach to campaigning, in the faces surrounding her — worth the goals she now pursues: replacing Trump with Biden and becoming the first female vice president in history.”
• Harris was elected as the nation’s first female vice president (and first person of color to be vice president) in November 2020.

President Biden speaks from the Roosevelt Room earlier this month with Kamala Harris beside him.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

Vice president

Struggling to find her footing in a big job

• Harris made history when she took office, but her term has been marked by successes and struggles.
• After her first year in office, The Times offered this assessment: “Harris has struggled to tell her own story, leaving others to fill the void. Conservative media have attacked her while mainstream outlets have published a string of stories about low morale and high staff turnover in her office. Like many vice presidents, Harris is learning how hard it is to define herself as a No. 2.
• She was handed a difficult assignment in those early months: Leading diplomatic efforts to curb migration from Central America. There were early controversies, such as when she told would-be immigrants not to come to the United States. As the immigration issue has become hot in the 2024 race, Harris faces tough questions about her role in Biden policies.
• Democrats worried about Harris’ lackluster poll numbers as they considered a leader of the party after Biden. “Harris has become a source of tension among Democrats, as growing worries over Harris’ political stature collide with concerns that any move to sideline her would alienate the voters needed to win elections and undercut the party’s promise of equity,” The Times wrote in 2021.
  Some fear Harris was shrinking in the job. “Caution has long been a hallmark of Harris’ political career, and the subservient nature of the vice presidency, as well as the scrutiny of Biden loyalists sensitive to the merest hint of personal ambition, reinforce that inclination,” Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak wrote in 2021.
• After the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade, Harris emerged as a leading voice in protecting reproductive rights.

Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage in Orlando, Fla., at the 20th Quadrennial Convention of the Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on Aug. 1, 2023.

(Joe Burbank / Associated Press)

• Barabak in early 2024 rated her this way: “Harris finally seems to have found her footing in a role to which she is accustomed and adept: prosecuting attorney.”
• Harris has endured unprecedented levels of hate on social media. “Research shows that Harris may be the most targeted American politician on the internet, one who checks every box for the haters of the fever swamps: She’s a woman, she’s a person of color and she holds power,” The Times found.
• Before Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Harris was still struggling to present herself as a successor. “More than three years into the oldest president in history’s first term, his understudy has failed to win over a majority of voters or convince them that she is ready to step in if Biden falters, according to polls,” The Times reported in April.
• Harris’ star rose as Democrats began to call on Biden to step aside and end his reelection campaign. She had remained publicly supportive of Biden, even as calls for her to replace him at the head of the ticket grew louder.

Former President Donald Trump has surpassed President Biden’s longtime fundraising lead, according to donation filings from June.

Republicans hauled in $66 million throughout the month, propelling Trump’s campaign past the current president’s. June saw the GOP’s biggest monthly haul since 2020, according to the Washington Post.

The latest data comes after Trump’s campaign boasted of out-raising Biden for most of the summer. Trump’s campaign announced in early July that it and the Republican National Committee hauled in a staggering $331 million during the April through June second quarter of 2024 fundraising, topping the massive $264 million raked in by the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee over the same period.

And the former president’s campaign spotlighted that it had $284.9 million in its coffers as of the end of June, compared to $240 million for Biden.

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Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign teeters against waves of Democratic lawmakers calling on him to withdraw.

Even Biden’s nominal allies in Congress have failed to give him ringing endorsements. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., repeatedly saying on Saturday that he’s “our nominee” but he also had a “big decision to make.”

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Warren also seemed to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris being the replacement if Biden did step down, singing her praises as an ideal candidate to prosecute the Democratic case against former President Trump.

“Joe Biden is our nominee, and he has a really big decision to make. Joe Biden has been a transformational president,” Warren told MSNBC, going on to praise his record. “I am deeply grateful to Joe Biden for all that he has accomplished.”

Warren seemed to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris being the replacement if Biden did step down, singing her praises as an ideal candidate to prosecute the Democratic case against former President Trump. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

In the face of mounting numbers of Democrats calling on him to step down for fear he’ll lose to Trump, Biden has repeatedly insisted he is staying in the race. Yet Warren, sounding like reportedly skeptical former Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this month, appeared to give Biden yet another off-ramp.

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“Joe Biden is our nominee. As I said before, he has a really big decision to make,” she said. “But what gives me a lot of hope right now is that if President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris who is ready to step up, to unite the party, to take on Donald Trump, and to win in November. Remember, 80 million people voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020.”

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at the White House on July 14, 2024 in Washington, DC.  ( Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Warren’s interview came on the heels of Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Jon Tester, D-Mont., calling for Biden to leave the race this week, joining dozens of House Democrats, Fox News Digital previously reported. 

Fox News’ David Rutz and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report 

President Biden’s initiative to establish Supreme Court term limits and an enforceable ethics code could help restore much needed public trust in the court. Just as importantly, it’s a reminder that we need not surrender to a court that has aggrandized itself at every turn.

The president’s proposals will require congressional approval, and that in turn highlights the role every American can play in reining in a court that has tilted into ideological activism: The key is what we do on Nov. 5. You were probably taught that the justices have the final say on our laws, but in reality that power belongs to voters.

To start, there is no question that the court would be better off with term-limited justices who can no longer play politics with the timing of their retirements, and with an ethics code that has teeth and could eliminate even the appearance of impropriety in the justices’ behavior.

But the president should be asking for more — congressional action that responds specifically to the alarming decisions issued by the court’s current conservative supermajority.

Its most dangerous ruling, delivered on July 2, was its holding that Donald Trump enjoys “presumptive” immunity from criminal prosecution based on his “official acts.” The upshot is that the court, not a jury of ordinary Americans, will likely get to make the final call on Trump’s accountability for his 2020 election falsehoods and schemes.

In another sweeping decision, the court set aside four decades of precedent and arrogated power long held by federal agencies. Instead of deferring to, say, the Environmental Protection Agency on the technical how-tos of applying laws like the Clean Water Act, the court claimed that it should have the final say — expertise and democratic accountability be damned.

The court similarly substituted its judgment for the otherwise apparent meaning of federal statutes by upending what constitutes a “machine gun” and obstruction of official proceedings. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her dissent from the latter ruling, the majority had to do “textual backflips to find some way — any way” — to get to its preferred outcome. In doing so, it blocked a crucial gun safety measure and narrowed the basis for charging those involved with the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.

Fortunately, as supreme as the Supreme Court is, it doesn’t have to be the final word on these cases. The court gets to interpret the law, but we voters, through our representatives, decide what that law is.

For those who object to the current court’s power grab, that means showing up at the polls this year and voting for a Democratic majority in Congress, despite reasonable, good-faith disagreements with President Biden and his party. Those concerns will matter little if an unaccountable Supreme Court continues to aggrandize itself at the people’s expense.

Here’s how a Democratic majority could push back.

In the presidential immunity case, one worry is that even if lower courts deem much of Trump’s Jan. 6 conduct to have been unofficial, and thus subject to prosecution, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices will simply band together to reverse that determination.

And yet Article III of the Constitution allows Congress to make “exceptions” from the Supreme Court’s power to hear appeals. A reestablished Democratic House majority could pass a law declaring the lower court’s ruling final, and a Democratic majority in the Senate could do the same by voting for a one-time suspension of the filibuster, just as the Republican majority did when it confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

As for the court’s takeover of deference to federal agencies, a Democratic majority in Congress could amend the Administrative Procedure Act to unambiguously grant agency experts the benefit of the doubt on reasonable regulations. Likewise, a Democratic Congress could enact legislation to override the court’s aberrant interpretations of laws regulating machine guns and defining the obstruction of official proceedings.

If voters in November keep the court in mind as they mark their ballots, they can not only undo this term’s most harmful decisions, but also send a forceful message to the power-hungry justices: The highest court in the land can either have the final word on the hard cases that divide us, or it can lurch the law far to the right. But it can’t do both.

Aaron Tang is a law professor at UC Davis and a former law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor. He is the author of “Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court — and How We Can Fix It.” @AaronTangLaw.”