Kamala Harris U-turns on plastic straw ban
Click here to view this content.
Kamala Harris has said she no longer wants a ban on plastic straws in a policy U-turn.
In 2019, the Democrat presidential nominee had told a CNN town hall meeting: “We do need to ban the plastic straws.” But her campaign has now said she has changed her mind and “doesn’t support banning plastic straws”.
“She cast the tie-breaking vote on the most consequential legislation to combat climate change and create clean energy jobs in history, and as president, she is going to be focused on expanding on that progress,” a Harris campaign official told Axios.
“She joked even then about how crappy paper straws are and the need to come up with better eco-friendly alternatives.”
The move may be intended to prevent further attacks from the Donald Trump campaign, which has previously highlighted the policy.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser in the Trump campaign, told NBC in July: “Kamala Harris had a long, liberal, radical record in California well before she even became vice-president. I mean, heck, she wants to get rid of plastic straws, for goodness’ sake.”
A number of US cities have already banned single-use plastic straws, including Seattle, Washington DC, and Malibu. They have also been banned in the UK and in parts of the EU.
Ms Harris has been criticised for changing her position on a number of key issues since being nominated.
Her team has said – via anonymous aides – that she no longer supports Medicare for All or mandatory gun buy-back programmes, both of which she called for during her 2020 Democratic primary campaign.
Last month, Ms Harris also revealed that she no longer wants to ban fracking, another position she held during the 2020 primary race.
The change is likely to increase her chances of winning the swing state of Pennsylvania, a hotbed for oil and gas drilling, and she told CNN she now believed it was possible to “grow and increase a thriving clean-energy economy without banning fracking”.
Ms Harris insisted during the interview that her “values have not changed”, even if some of her policy ideas have.
