Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign hired a new climate director who has frequently said the effects of climate change are part of what’s stopping her from having children.

Camila Thorndike, who previously worked in the Senate managing the climate portfolio of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was given the title of climate engagement director for the Harris for President campaign in September 2024, according to her LinkedIn page. 

Prior to joining the Harris campaign, Thorndike said on several occasions that she considers climate change a factor when deciding whether to have kids.

“I was 15 when I first saw the climate ‘hockey stick’ graph. I realized that this skyrocketing arrow of temperature would take place in my lifetime. All of the big milestones of life that I was looking forward to would be in the context of this big global crisis. It led to the question of whether or not to have kids – which is still a big question for me – where I would put down roots, what my family would do,” Thorndike said in 2018 when she was the D.C. campaign director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

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Again in November 2019, Thorndike described it as an “ethical question that keeps me up at night.”

“I have always been someone who enjoys children and loves the idea of a family, and that’s why I have wrestled with this, because my logical mind and the facts of the future I can see bearing down on us are not supportive of the life I would want for them,” she told Yahoo News at the time. 

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During an appearance on the “My Climate Journey” podcast in August 2022, a show hosted by Jason Jacobs and Cody Simms for people seeking to better understand climate change, Thorndike again made a connection between the decision to have children and what it might look like in the future amid climate change. 

“I plotted my own lifetime against that and realized that around the time that I would, especially, be considering having kids or whatever, in around my 30s, we would start to see the escalation of this crisis. And so that was when I realized that, at the time, the grownups were not coming to save us and my generation would have to fight to take the wheel.”

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks at a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia, on Aug. 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Featured in a Washington Post article about whether people should not have kids due to climate change, the new Harris campaign official said she worried about her potential kids “suffering” from climate-related issues.  

“It’s coming partly from a place of love for my hypothetical child,” she said. “I want to protect them from suffering. Not that life is ever free from suffering, but what of the joys and peace and goodness that make me happiest to be alive will be accessible in 20, 30, 40 years?”

Harris acknowledged this idea during a discussion at the “Fight for Our Freedoms” event in September 2023.

“I’ve heard young leaders talk with me about a term they’ve coined called ‘climate anxiety,’ which is fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children, whether it makes sense for you to think about aspiring to buy a home,” Harris said in a clip that has resurfaced since she became the 2024 Democratic nominee.

A clip of the comment, shared by Donald Trump Jr. in July, prompted backlash from critics of Harris.

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who is now former President Trump’s running mate, wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something. Really weird stuff.”

“Shamala is an extinctionist. The natural extension of her philosophy would be a de facto holocaust for all of humanity!” wrote billionaire and X owner Elon Musk on his platform. 

Ms. Harris wants to enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law now that the Supreme Court has overturned it.

“When I am president of the United States, I will sign a law restoring and protecting reproductive freedom in every state,” she wrote in July. To do that, she would need not just Democratic majorities in Congress but also 50 senators willing to get rid of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

Ms. Harris said last year that she and President Biden envisioned a law mirroring Roe. As modified by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Roe broadly protected the right to abortion until a fetus could survive outside the womb but allowed bans after that point so long as they had exceptions for medical emergencies. “We’re not trying to do anything that did not exist before June of last year,” she told CBS News.

As a senator, she was a sponsor of a bill called the Women’s Health Protection Act that would have gone somewhat further than Roe by prohibiting some state-level restrictions, such as requiring doctors to perform specific tests or to have hospital admitting privileges in order to provide abortions. She reiterated her support for it in 2022.

She also argued, while running for president in 2019, that states with a history of restricting abortion rights in violation of Roe should be subject to “pre-clearance” for new abortion laws, meaning those laws would have to be federally approved before they could take effect. Her campaign did not respond to a request to confirm whether she would still support this if Congress codified Roe. (Without such codification, the proposal is moot.)

In the absence of congressional majorities capable of codifying Roe, Mr. Biden’s cabinet took administrative actions to try to limit the effects of state abortion bans, and Ms. Harris has indicated support for those actions.

The Department of Health and Human Services told hospitals in 2022 that a law pertaining to emergency rooms, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, obligates doctors to perform an abortion if they believe it is needed to stabilize a patient. (That guidance is subject to legal challenges on which the Supreme Court has so far declined to rule.) In April, the same department announced a rule to shield many abortion patients’ medical records from investigators and prosecutors.

Foreign Affairs Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul said he still intends to haul in Antony Blinken on the Afghanistan withdrawal even after his sprawling report was completed, and will hold him in contempt of Congress if he does not comply. 

“This was a catastrophic failure of epic proportions,” the Texas Republican told reporters on Monday. “This is a disgrace. I will hold him in contempt if that’s what it takes to bring him before the American people.”

“Secretary Blinken refuses to take one day out of this month to come before the [Gold Star] families.” 

McCaul’s comments came on the heels of a 350-page report he released Monday on the withdrawal that the committee worked on for much of the past nearly two years of the Republican majority. 

It laid much blame on the State Department and detailed how State officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them.  

McCaul subpoenaed Blinken last week, saying he must appear before the committee by Sept. 19. 

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State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel shrugged off the committee’s threats. 

“The majority isn’t truly interested in legislating on Afghanistan policy. If they were, they would have sought to speak to the secretary long ago,” he told reporters Monday. 

“They would have sought to speak to him to get his input as they make this report,” he said. “Instead they waited until the report was completely finished to come back to us.” 

In May, McCaul asked Blinken to appear at a hearing in September on the committee‘s report on its investigation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The State Department failed on several occasions to provide a date for Blinken to appear before lawmakers, McCaul said.

But the State Department said Monday Blinken had testified before House and Senate committees 14 times on the withdrawal, including four times before the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

McCaul also hinted that he believes there should still be a small contingency of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

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“We cannot see now into Afghanistan except through over the horizon, which doesn’t work. We can’t see Russia, China and Iran, either, because of this tragic failure of foreign policy,” he told reporters.

“We can’t see all of ISIS gathering in the Korazhan region of Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, making their way to the United States of America. That is what they did to us,” the chairman went on. 

“They embolden the unholy alliance of Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah and Kim Jong Un,” he said, referring to the leaders of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, standing with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, right, speaks during a news conference at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024.  (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The Biden administration has long claimed the president’s hands were tied by the Doha agreement negotiated under President Trump that laid out a deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. But the new report detailed how the Taliban had failed to hold up their end of the deal, absolving the U.S. of any obligation to adhere to it. 

“​Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he came to office, abide by the flawed agreement and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, extend the war, and see a much smaller contingent of American troops back in combat with the Taliban,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. 

“He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal all the way into the summer. And we, as a nation are safer for it. Any and every discussion about what happened in Afghanistan has to start right there. Sadly, the report does not dwell on it.”

The damning report claims that while US military personnel were drawing down their footprint in the nation, the State Department was growing theirs. 

And according to the report, U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson was on vacation the last week of July and the first week of August 2021. He promptly hightailed it out of the country on a flight ahead of his staff in mid-August. He allegedly had COVID-19 at the time and forced a foreign service officer to take his COVID test so he could get on the plane.

Taliban fighters celebrate the third anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)

Patel defended Wilson, but did not deny the allegations. 

“I’m just not going to get into a tit-for-tat with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but what I can say is that it is not my understanding that he was on vacation at the beginning of August. Beyond that, I will just echo what I said previously about Ambassador Wilson, that this is an esteemed individual, a decorated Foreign Service officer.” 

He claimed the GOP-led report chose “scandal over substance” and called it a “collection of cherry-picked comments… designed to paint an inaccurate picture of this administration’s efforts. 

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He claimed the withdrawal was carried out in a way that was consistent with department policy. “The drawdown in Kabul was conducted in a manner which is consistent with our departments and our country’s standards and protocols when faced in those circumstances.” 

He said he did not have a headcount on how many Americans are still in Afghanistan, but touted the more than 18,000 Afghan special immigrant visas (SIVs) for the U.S.’s Afghan allies, such as interpreters, that were processed in 2023.