Kamala Harris slams Trump’s ‘unconstitutional demands’ in SF speech
In her most outspoken public remarks since leaving the White House, former Vice President Kamala Harris applauded those pushing back against President Donald Trump’s policies in a San Francisco speech Wednesday night.
Her remarks were the most pointed against Trump since she faced him on the campaign trail. Just over 100 days into his administration, she warned of a potential “constitutional crisis” where America’s system of checks and balances fails to stop presidential overreach.
“If that happens, the one check, the one balance, the one power that must not fail, is the voice of the people,” she said to thunderous applause.
She urged the roughly 500 Democratic attendees to “lock it in” by organizing, running for office and pushing back against the Republican president, who has deported legal U.S. residents and so far ignored multiple judicial orders to return them.
“Instead of the administration working to advance America’s highest ideals,” she said, “we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals.”
But she repeatedly emphasized that the nation’s rich and powerful only hold so much power.
“President Trump, his administration, and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. They are counting on the notion that if they make some people afraid, it will have a chilling affect. But what they’ve overlooked is that fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious,” she said. “Courage is contagious.”
Harris also commended “the courage of Americans” protesting DOGE-ordered staffing cuts to the Social Security Administration and fighting the administration’s attempts “to detain and disappear American citizens or anyone without due process.”
She also praised judges and universities for “defying unconstitutional demands” by Trump, and thanked elected officials including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Sens. Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen and Cory Booker for “speaking with moral clarity about this moment.”
Harris described the rollout of Trump’s policies as the “swift implementation of an agenda decades in the making.” She also slammed his tariffs as “the biggest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history” and “clearly inviting a recession.”
Is Harris running for governor?
She spoke Wednesday night at the 20th anniversary gala of Emerge America, which helps recruit and train Democratic women around the country to run for state and local office. The organization was founded by Andrea Dew Steele, a San Francisco activist and fundraiser who helped Harris win her first election as San Francisco District Attorney in 2003.
President and CEO A’shanti Gholar praised Harris as “one of the main inspirations for our work and why Emerge exists.”
The Wednesday night speech, which Harris delivered at the Palace Hotel, marked the first time Harris spoke publicly in her former Bay Area home since losing the presidential race in November.
“It’s wonderful to be home,” she said as she took the stage, grinning to a standing ovation and rousing applause.
Harris did not comment on a potential bid for California governor. She is considering a run to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom next year and has given herself a deadline to decide by the end of the summer.
The field is already crowded with candidates but Harris’ name ID and fundraising network would catapult her to the front of the pack should she decide to run. Numerous polls have given Harris, who has previously won statewide elections for Senate and Attorney General, a strong advantage over other declared candidates.
The field so far includes Democrats Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis, former Rep. Katie Porter, former Senate Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Controller Betty Yee and Superintendent of Public Schools Tony Thurmond.
Republicans Chad Bianco, the Sheriff of Riverside County, and Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, have also declared their candidacy.
In a statement Wednesday night after Harris’ speech, Hilton called on her to “stop dilly-dallying.”
“You were a disaster as a presidential candidate; you’d be defending the disaster of a Democrat rule in California,” he said. “I can’t wait to have a real policy debate with you. Let’s do it!”
Porter and Kounalakis — a close friend of Harris and fellow Emerge alum — attended the gala event.
Also in attendance were Barbara Lee, the mayor-elect of Oakland, Ken Martin, the newly elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Heidi Hall, a Nevada County supervisor challenging Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley.
Harris, an Oakland native, has made history throughout her political career, serving as the first South Asian U.S. Senator and the first woman elected vice president. If she ran and won the race for California governor, she would also become the first woman to serve in the state’s highest office.
But, as Harris recalled Wednesday, it all started in the Bay Area with Emerge.
“It is so wonderful to be home and to be back and to celebrate this extraordinary organization, which is an organization of so many exceptional leaders,” she said. “Those who found the courage to run for office and those who support Emerge.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 9:41 PM.
