US democracy under attack like never before: Kamala

Washington, January 28 

Indian-origin Senator Kamala Harris has launched her 2020 presidential bid on Sunday with a scathing criticism of President Donald Trump’s policies, saying that the US is at an “inflection point” in the history due to the attack on democracy like never before.

Harris, 54, who was elected to the Senate in 2016, announced her run for presidency last week. She has been voted on top of the list of Democratic leaders aspiring to defeat Trump in the November 2020 election.  

Harris, the second African-American woman elected to the US senate, has drawn comparisons to Barack Obama since early in her political career. 

“We are at an inflection point in the history of our nation. We are here because the American dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before,” she said.

“When we have leaders who bully and attack a free press and undermine our democratic institutions, that’s not our America,” she said, without mentioning Trump’s name.

She criticised “the arrogance of power” she saw in wealthy bank executives after the foreclosure crisis, and said that Americans needed to be honest about the country’s problems with racism, sexism, anti-semitism and transphobia.

She also emphasised unity, praising “the amazing spirit of the American people” and pledging her desire to be a president, echoing former president Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, “Of the people, by the people, and for all people.”  

Pointing to Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, his policies at the border, and his decision to shut down the government in a failed attempt to get funding for his controversial plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, she said: “People are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other. But that is not our story. That is not who we are. We are better than this.”  

Recollecting the fighting spirit of her Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who migrated to the US from Tamil Nadu for studies, Harris told a cheering crowd in her hometown of Oakland, California, that this was not going to be an easy election pitted against an incumbent like Trump. Harris spoke of an America where “we welcome refugees” and denounced President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border as a “medieval vanity project”. 

Asserting that she running to fight for an America where the economy works for working, Harris promised education and healthcare for all. Harris was the first African-American and Indian-American attorney of California, before being elected as the US Senator. — PTI

I’m targeted for being Hindu: Tulsi Gabbard

• Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has hit back at critics who accuse the Democratic presidential hopeful of being a “Hindu nationalist”, saying questioning her commitment to America while not probing non-Hindu leaders creates a “double standard” that can only be rooted in “religious bigotry”
• Gabbard, the four-term lawmaker said from Hawaii, wrote an op-ed for the Religious News Services on Sunday, describing the campaign against her, supporters and donors as “profiling and targeting of Hindu Americans and ascribing to them motives without any basis”
• In the hard-hitting piece, Gabbard, the first Hindu elected to the US Congress, noted that she has been accused of being a Hindu nationalist. “Tomorrow will it be Muslim or Jewish Americans? Japanese, Hispanic or African Americans?” she asked 

4 women Democratic leaders in race

• So far four women Democratic leaders have entered the 2020 presidential race. Apart from Kamala Harris, the three others are Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii
• All of them have to pass through a grilling presidential primary beginning next January, the winner of which would be announced in the Democratic National Convention in July 2020. The nominee would challenge incumbent Trump, a Republican, in the presidential election in November that year