Harris calls on Hispanic leaders in Chicago to unite against ‘extremist’ policies

Vice President Harris used an appearance at a Latino conference in Chicago to urge Hispanic leaders to unite against extremism, bashing GOP-led states for actions on immigration, reproductive rights and book bans.

Harris said at the UnidosUS 2023 Annual Conference that “extremist so-called leaders have a blueprint to attack hard-won freedoms and rights and to do it state by state as part of their national agenda.”

“Across our nation, extremist so-called leaders demonize, target and attack immigrants,” she said.

Harris pointed to a new law in Florida that requires companies to determine an employee’s immigration status and puts penalties on hiring undocumented immigrants. The vice president called it “a law designed to make people live in fear.”

She called out Texas for the barrier in the Rio Grande River designed to block migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The Justice Department later Monday sued Texas over the barrier, seeking to compel Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to remove it.

“We see reports that authorities have pushed children and pregnant women who crossed the Rio Grande back into the river,” she said, adding it’s “inhumane, outrageous, and un-American.”

Harris also noted some GOP-led states have enacted stricter abortion laws since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year and cited efforts targeting voting rights, the LGBTQ community and a push to enact book bans.

“And for these extremists, that was not enough,” Harris said. “They now push forward revisionist history, they push propaganda, they suggest that enslaved people benefited from slavery — as they insult us in an attempt to gaslight us. Well, we will not have it. We will not have it,” she said.

Harris has leaned into something of a traditional attack dog role in recent months, heading to states like Florida and Tennessee to fight what the White House views as extreme policies.

She went to Florida last week after The Sunshine State passed controversial new educational guidelines for how issues like slavery should be taught in schools, denouncing “extremists” who she said were pushing “propaganda” on children.

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