Can This Country Return to Old-School Journalism?

posted by Laura Hollis at Townhall 

When I worked at the University of Illinois, I had the great fortune to befriend Ron Yates, who was then the dean of the College of Communications (later the College of Media).

Ron is an old-school journalist. He was educated and began his career at a time when the profession was known for serious (sometimes life-threatening) investigative work and a passion for finding the truth.

He received his degree in journalism from the University of Kansas, where he was editor of the award-winning student newspaper. In his senior year, he was invited to Chicago to interview with the Chicago Tribune, along with only two other college students from across the U.S. At the interview, Ron says, all three were asked what they wanted to be. One young man said, "I want to be a movie critic." That man was Gene Siskel. The other said, "I want to be a columnist." That was Clarence Page. Ron said, "I want to be a foreign correspondent."

All three got their dream jobs.

In the many years Ron worked for the Tribune, he covered some of the most harrowing global events of the 20th century, including the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon, the collapse of Cambodia to the communist Khmer Rouge regime, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China. He received numerous awards for his work and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times, including in 1976, the year he lost to Sydney Schanberg from The New York Times, who won for his coverage of the fall of Phnom Penh. (Schanberg's story was made famous by the Academy Award-winning film, "The Killing Fields," in which his character was played by Sam Waterston. Oh, the stories Ron tells about that!)
I've been writing about the media's role in massive propaganda campaigns for several years now. I decided to contact Ron after watching the most recent Orwellian media makeover: The press is now telling the public that new Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was never really the "border czar," despite President Joe Biden having bestowed those responsibilities upon her and despite that being the title the media themselves have used the past three years.

I wanted Ron's take on the state of modern journalism in the United States. His assessment, as you might expect, was scathing.

He started by telling me about a recent Reuters poll that asked residents from 46 different countries about their trust in media. "Do you know where the United States came in?" he asked. "Dead last. Only 29% of Americans trust the media. Even post-communist countries like Romania and the Czech Republic are better!"

Americans don't trust the press, Ron explained, because they know that media personalities are twisting facts to fit their preferred political narrative and suppressing information that doesn't. "We're being gaslit. For three and a half years, we all watched Biden decline, but we were being told, 'He's sharp as a tack.'"

Yates identified several causes of the problem: First, journalism schools are no longer teaching their students the craft. "When I was in school," he explained, "what was pounded into our heads was to be as objective as possible. Subvert your own biases; if you don't, you just become a propagandist." He compared this with today's journalism graduates, who "don't think it's their job to report the news; they think it's their job to get people to make the 'right' choices."

Second, Yates bemoaned the loss of the traditional newsroom. "Young journalists had mentors who helped them weed opinions out of news articles," he said. "Accuracy was so important. If you continued to include your opinion or inaccuracies, you were fired."

He also pointed out the current distorted balance of political viewpoints.

"In 1971, when I started," Ron said, "26% of reporters identified as Republicans, 35% as Democrats, and the rest as 'independents' or unaffiliated. Today, 71% of reporters identify as Democrats, about 25% as independents or 'moderates.' Only 4% identify as Republicans or conservatives." He attributes much of this shift to the leftward lurch of higher education. "Ninety percent of the faculty at a lot of universities are leftists, and this is just as true of journalism schools."

Finally, Yates says, the organization responsible for monitoring the profession -- the Society of Professional Journalists -- isn't doing its job. Ron directed me to the SPJ Code of Ethics page, which admonishes journalists to "seek truth and report it," "be accurate and fair," "label advocacy and commentary" and hold "those with power accountable."

"Today's media doesn't do any of that," Yates stated. "The SPJ needs to hold their feet to the fire, and they're not doing it."

Ron was blunt about the challenges to Americans trying to get the facts.

"It's not going to be easy," he said. "We have information overload. Media outlets -- from both political sides -- are not dealing in truth, so the onus falls upon the consumer, who has to look at what the liberal outlets are saying and what the conservative outlets are saying and decide for themselves what the truth is. But most of the people you see on TV aren't trained journalists; they just give their opinions. And the average American can't tell the difference between opinion and journalism."

Getting Real About Reparations by Roger D. McGrath

 Historian Roger D. McGrath takes issue with the fundamental argument of The 1619 Project.

SINS OF OMISSION

The call for slavery reparations is reverberating throughout the land once again. It will be entertaining to watch the Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 position themselves on this topic. They must know the very idea is irrational and entirely impractical, but at the same time they will worry that one candidate or another will endorse the idea and leave them outflanked. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has already introduced a bill that would create a commission to study the issue of reparations. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren likes the idea of reparations not only for American blacks but also, not surprisingly, for American Indians. She must be counting on her share of the largesse for her possible 1/1024th Cherokee heritage. 

California Sen. Kamala Harris thinks reparations might be a course of action to help lift blacks out of poverty. Former Texas Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, like Cory Booker, wants a commission to study the issue. Former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro is out in front of them all, declaring monetary reparations should be issued to those who have slave ancestors. “If under the Constitution we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property?” he asked CNN host Jake Tapper. 

There’s a tacit assumption in all this: The U.S. government—i.e., the American taxpayer— is the one who should be paying the reparations. The U.S. government, however, never owned any slaves. Moreover, the U.S. government fought a war, though not initiated to abolish slavery, which ended the evil practice. The casualty figures for the Union forces are staggering, upwards of 400,000 killed and probably 300,000 wounded. Now descendants of these dead and maimed soldiers are, through taxation, supposed to pay descendants of the slaves freed by those same soldiers.

Black slavery was established in North America long before there was a United States. The U.S. didn’t come into being until 1788 when the Constitution was ratified. People who talk about “250 years of slavery,” whether they know it or not, are not talking about the United States. Slavery existed in the United States for only 77 years. Before that was the brief period of the Confederation government and the Continental Congress, and before that we were the British North American colonies. 

The 250-year claim comes from the sale of a handful of African slaves in 1619 in the British colony of Virginia. 

The slaves were sold by the captain of an English privateer, sailing under Dutch authority, which intercepted and captured a Portuguese slave ship in the Caribbean en route from Africa to Mexico. 

The captain knew better than to try to sell the slaves at an island port in the Caribbean and instead sailed north to Virginia. But this was not a typical event. 

European slavers normally purchased slaves at a port in equatorial West Africa from a tribal chieftain in exchange for rum and other European trading goods. Africans most often were enslaved as a consequence of losing a war to a more powerful tribe or being captured in a raid—or being sold by their own families to cover debts. 

One could say European slave traders, and later Americans, who were engaged in the despicable business never enslaved anyone but merely changed the location of enslavement. Logic would therefore suggest that reparations be sought from the descendants of the more powerful tribes of equatorial West Africa, who attacked and enslaved their weaker neighbors mercilessly.

The best evidence suggests Africans had been enslaving each other for thousands of years by the time Europeans arrived on African shores. By then, Arabs had been trading for slaves from equatorial West Africa for several hundred years. Instead of loading slaves onto ocean-going ships, Arab slavers took them up the Niger River or on overland trails to Timbuktu, the point of departure for caravans that crossed the Sahara Desert to Egypt and other points east. 

Europeans transported slaves in the opposite direction, westward across the Atlantic to South America, especially Brazil, and to the Caribbean and Central America. Only a small minority of the slaves came to the British North American colonies.

Yet, the largest population of blacks in the Western Hemisphere today is in the U.S.
There’s a reason for that. The voyage to Brazil was relatively quick and easy, making slaves there fairly inexpensive, which meant they were expendable. The opposite was the case for the voyage to Virginia. Slaves were expensive and became more so when American participation in the international slave trade was ended in 1808, as required by the Constitution. 

Slaves were far better fed, clothed, housed, and treated medically on these shores than they were in other places, particularly Brazil, simply because an owner would lose a bundle of money should a slave die. None of this is to condone or justify slavery in the American colonies or later in the U.S., but it is to say that the treatment of slaves varied greatly in the Americas, and given the abominable institution, the planters of the Old South were generally far more concerned with the welfare of their slaves than were their counterparts elsewhere. 

This concern did not extend to white laborers, who were hired when a job was considered too exhausting or too dangerous for a black slave. Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of New York’s Central Park, traveled throughout the South on the eve of the Civil War and was surprised to find, again and again, that Irishmen were used instead of slaves for the work of draining swampland, felling trees, digging ditches, quarrying rock, and clearing forests because “it
was much better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment.” 

At a landing on the Alabama River, Irish deckhands caught and stowed heavy bales of cotton after they had come hurtling down a long chute from a towering bluff. 

When Olmstead asked why slaves were not doing the work, the ship’s captain replied, “The niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!” 

The death rate among Irish laborers was shocking and had been for several decades before Olmstead toured the South. The New Basin Canal, which connected New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain, was built by Irish labor during the 1830’s. The Irish workmen dug the canal with hand shovels, excavating more than half a million cubic yards of earth. Lacking dynamite, they used axes to fell huge bald cypress trees along the route. 

They were paid $20 a month and given room and board. Tyrone Power, a famous Irish actor of the period, visited his countrymen and described the scene in 1834, saying he found:…hundreds of fine fellows labouring here beneath a sun that at this winter season was at times insufferably fierce, and amidst a pestilential swamp whose exhalations were fetid to a degree scarcely endurable even for a few moments … mid-deep in black mud … bearing burdens it made one’s shoulders ache to look upon; exposed meantime to every change of temperature, in log huts, laid down in the very swamp. … 

Here they subsist on the coarsest fare … often at the mercy of a hard contractor, who wrings his profits from their blood. More than 10,000—some estimates put the number as high as 30,000—Irish workers died in the process. They died of cholera. They died of yellow fever. They died of alligator attacks. They died of water-moccasin bites. They died in accidents. 

They were buried where they fell, often in mass graves. White privilege. 

Meanwhile, there were more than a quarter-million free blacks in the South and nearly 4,000 of them were slave masters who owned more than 20,000 black slaves. 

William Ellison, only one of several hundred black slaveholders in South Carolina, owned 63 slaves as recorded in the U.S. Census of 1860. In Charleston, 125 free blacks were slaveholders, and in Charleston City, the port city for Charleston, the largest owner of slaves was a black woman. 

Black partners Justus Angel and Mistress Horry owned 84 slaves each and were notorious for slave trading. In neighboring North Carolina, 69 blacks were slaveholders. 

The most prominent of them was John Stanley, who owned three plantations and 163 slaves. One of dozens of black slavemasters in Maryland, Nat Butler owned a farm but made his real money from slave trading. He lured runaway slaves to his farm and then, depending on the size of the reward, either returned them to their owner or sold them to plantations in the Deep South. 

The largest concentration of black slave owners was in Louisiana. Marie Metoyer owned 287 slaves and more than 1,000 acres of land. The widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards had 152 slaves working their sugar plantation. Antoine Dubuclet had 100 slaves on his sugar plantation. 

Cotton planter Auguste Donatto owned 70 slaves, as did Antoine Decuire. Verret Polen owned 69. Dozens of other blacks owned 30 or more slaves. Every one of the 13 states and most of the major cities that would become part of the Confederacy had substantial numbers of black slave-owners. New Orleans by both numbers and by proportion had the most. A staggering 28 percent of free blacks in the Crescent City owned slaves. With the Civil War imminent, free blacks in New Orleans pledged their support of the Confederacy, declaring: 

The free colored population of Louisiana… own slaves, and they are dearly attached to their native land… and they are ready to shed their blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana. … They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought in 1814-1815. Black slavemasters are omitted from most textbooks in American history or mentioned only as having bought a family member to free him. That occurred, but only in a minority of cases. 

Moreover, if that were the intention of the black slaveholder, why was the family member not immediately manumitted but instead listed as a slave in census data? Also, regularly omitted in discussions of American slavery is the person who established the precedent for it all: Anthony Johnson. He was one of those slaves sold in 1619 in Virginia. By law, though, he was sold as an indentured servant. 

When he had served his term of indenture, he was freed and awarded with land. He became a successful tobacco farmer and bought indentured servants, both black and white, to work his land. When he refused to release black field hand John Casor from indenture, a white neighbor, for whom Casor wanted to work, supported Casor in suing for his freedom. 

Johnson argued Casor had never signed a contract of indenture but had always been a slave, and therefore Johnson was under no obligation to release him. In 1654 the court decided in Johnson’s favor, making him—a former black slave from Africa—the first legal slaveholder in the American colonies. If blacks owned thousands of black slaves so, too, did American Indians. 

By the middle of the 1700s, various tribes, especially the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast, began to acquire black slaves. By the end of the century the Cherokee owned nearly a thousand and the Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw several thousand more. The numbers grew sharply during the early nineteenth century. When the tribes were removed to Indian Territory, mostly during the 1830s, they took thousands of black slaves with them. Accompanying the Cherokee on their “Trail of Tears” were some 2,000 black slaves. 

They were put to work on Cherokee farms in the new tribal home, raising cotton, corn, and garden crops, and tending hogs and cattle. “As far as they are able … even the very poor Indians will manage to get possession of one or two negroes to perform their heavy work,” noted Henry C. Benson, a Methodist minister to the newly relocated Indians. “Indians are known to cherish an invincible disgust for manual labor.” The tribes enacted their own slave codes that grew progressively harsher as the years of the 19th century passed. 

The Cherokee constitution of 1827, for example, prohibited slaves from owning property, selling goods, marrying Indians, voting, or consuming alcohol. The Cherokee subsequently adopted laws that prohibited teaching blacks to read, instituted the death penalty for a slave who raped a Cherokee, and prohibited free blacks from living within the Cherokee Nation. 

Slaveholders were given great latitude in dealing with their chattel property. While some masters were lenient, others were brutal. One Cherokee buried a slave alive as punishment for robbery. Other slaves were beaten to death or maimed as punishment. 

After a black slave killed his Choctaw master in a conspiracy of sorts, the slave and his aunt, also a slave, were tied to a wood pile and burned to death. The Five Civilized Tribes cooperated fully with the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, whether this meant returning slaves to white owners or to Indian slavemasters. 

In 1842, in an organized action, some 20 black slaves stole firearms and ran away from their Cherokee owners. Stealing horses and mules along the way, they headed south into the Creek Nation and were joined by another 15 runaway slaves. The combined group came upon a white man, James Edwards, and his Delaware Indian sidekick, Billy Wilson, who were returning some runaway slaves to the Choctaw—and killed them both. 

Meanwhile, a force of Cherokee and Creek, in an unusual instance of cooperation, were hot on the runaways’ trail. They captured them near the Red River. Five of the slaves were later found guilty of the murders of Edwards and Wilson and put to death. The rest were returned to their owners. What punishment they suffered is unknown.During the antebellum decade, slavery reached its peak among the Five Civilized Tribes. 

The Cherokee, numbering only about 20,000 themselves, owned nearly 5,000 black slaves; the Choctaw 2,500; the Creeks 2,000; and the Chickasaw and Seminole about a thousand each. To protect their slave property, the Five Civilized Tribes, except for a few dissident factions, sided with the Confederacy when the Civil War erupted. “The war now raging,” declared the Cherokee, “is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States.” 

Nearly 20,000 Indians from the Five Civilized Tribes served in more than a dozen Indian units in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The more prominent of the units included the Cherokee Mounted Rifles, the Thomas’ Legion of Eastern Cherokee, the Cherokee Cavalry, the Chickasaw Cavalry, the Chickasaw Infantry, the Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, the Choctaw Cavalry, the Creek Mounted Volunteers, and the Seminole Mounted Volunteers. In 1864 the Indian Cavalry Brigade was organized and commanded by Cherokee Nation leader Brig. Gen. Stand Watie. Watie did not surrender his brigade until June 1865, making him the last Confederate general to surrender.

American Indians not only served in the Confederate Army but also in the Confederate Congress. One of several to serve in both was Elias Cornelius Boudinot. He was a lieutenant colonel in the army, fighting in the battles of Pea Ridge, Locust Grove, and Prairie Grove, as well as the Cherokee delegate to Congress.

The 13th Amendment, ratified during the fall of 1865, abolished slavery in the U.S. as a whole but not among the Five Civilized Tribes. Although the Indians were “under the protection of the United States,” it was unclear how the Constitution applied to them. As a consequence, blacks remained as slaves in Indian Territory until July and August 1866 after the U.S. government had negotiated new treaties with the individual tribes that included specific clauses prohibiting slavery. Even then, some slaveholders among the Five Civilized Tribes didn’t comply until 1867.

Unfortunately, these complexities and uncomfortable facts of slavery in the United States are unknown to the majority of Americans today. I suspect those now talking about reparations are among them.

 

X22, And we Know, and more- August 2nd

 

Concerns raised about new Canadian Army trucks

 The US has bought the same vehicle !!!

$400,000 per vehicle eh? 

Initial training by the Canadian Army is expected to begin later in August and the Light Tactical Vehicles should all be in Latvia by October

The Canadian Forces says it remains confident that its newest army vehicle will meet all its needs despite concerns raised by U.S. officials that the trucks lack protection, are too cramped and have had problems with cracked engines and steering loss.

Canada is spending almost $36 million for 90 Light Tactical Vehicles for Canadian Army personnel deployed to Latvia. The vehicles, being built in the United States by General Motors Defense, are based on the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 pickup truck and have also been bought by the U.S. military.

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In 2020 and 2022, though, Pentagon test officials raised concerns about the vehicle, warning that it was not operationally effective for combat missions against near-peer threats.

Other deficiencies highlighted included engine cracks and steering loss and that the truck was so cramped the soldiers couldn’t reach their weapons.

A test report noted the lack of ballistic protection, also pointing out that, due to the design, “personal weapons were not easily accessible on the move, degrading the ability of the squad to quickly react to enemy actions and ambushes.”

During the U.S. testing, the vehicles proved to be so ineffective that troops ditched their trucks and proceeded on foot to accomplish their missions, the U.S. defence website Task and Purpose reported in 2022.

Despite the concerns, the U.S. Army decided to proceed with buying the vehicles, countering that improvements had been made.

Sonia Taylor, spokeswoman for General Motors Defense, said the issues raised in the 2022 test report were specific to the harsh and extreme testing environment in Yuma, Ariz.. All those issues were addressed with the U.S. Army and a new vehicle was produced for testing, she added in an email.

“There were no mission failures or system aborts from the last round of testing, and GM Defense received a full-rate production decision from the (U.S.) Army, validating our manufacturing and engineering processes,” Taylor wrote.

National Defence spokesperson Frédérica Dupuis told the Ottawa Citizen that the vehicle had a proven record with NATO and that an off-the-shelf design was needed by Canada to ensure quick delivery to soldiers.

“As with current and future vehicle fleets, DND works very closely with manufacturers so that vehicles not only meet requirements, but also operate as intended and are safe for our members to use,” Dupuis added in her email.

Dupuis said the vehicles, which share 90 per cent commonality with the Chevrolet Colorado, were selected for their unique combination of high payload capacity and off-road mobility.

A number of Canadian soldiers pointed out on social media that Latvia, where the vehicles are to be used, sometimes gets frigid temperatures and snow, but they noted the vehicles had no protection from the elements.

The Ottawa Citizen asked questions about protecting the troops from the cold and elements and whether there was an enclosure for the vehicles to protect soldiers. Neither National Defence nor the Canadian Army would answer those questions.

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In its original news release, issued July 23, the Canadian Forces said the light forces equipped with the new trucks would be able to carry enough cargo, weapons and combat supplies to be self-sufficient for 72 hours.

The contract also includes integrated logistics support and up to two years of spare parts for the fleet, as well as an option to buy up to an additional 18 trucks.

A request for proposals was issued to industry in the spring for the Light Tactical Vehicles. Only one bid was received, Public Services and Procurement Canada spokeswoman Michèle LaRose confirmed.

Initial training by the Canadian Army is expected to begin later in August and the Light Tactical Vehicles should all be in Latvia by October.

Canadian Army commander Lt. Gen. Michael Wright said the investment in the new trucks was not only improving the service’s operational readiness, but was “also enhancing its deterrence posture on the eastern flank of NATO.”

The Canadian Forces noted that, although the contract was with GM Defence Canada of Oshawa, Ont., the vehicles would actually be made by GM Defense LLC and would come from Concord, N.C.

The life expectancy for the new fleet is estimated at 15 years.

All About Kamala Harris' Sister Maya Harris

 Vice President Kamala Harris and her sister Maya were born in California

By 

Stephanie Kaloi

 

 

Updated on August 2, 2024 

Many people are more than familiar with Vice President Kamala Harris’ story: She was born in Oakland, Calif., by a Jamaican American father and Indian American mother who divorced when she was young. Her parents were both politically active and often took Kamala along with them while they attended civil rights marches — and the family was always joined by Kamala’s younger sister, Maya Harris.

Like her sister, Maya also pursued a career in law. After graduating from Bishop O’Dowd High School in San Francisco, Maya gave birth to her daughter, Meena Harris, in October 1984. Maya then attended the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford Law School, where she met her husband Tony West.

Maya later told Stanford Lawyer Magazine that her parents were a huge part of why she studied law in the first place. “Their activism and what they were striving to achieve was what we talked about at the dinner table,” she said. “I knew at a very early age that I was going to one day have a career that would allow me to work for social justice and focus on improving the quality of people’s lives.”

Kamala Harris' Parents: All About Her Mom Shyamala Gopalan and Dad Donald J. Harris

She went on to assist her sister’s political campaigns — first Kamala's 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney and most recently her 2020 bid for the presidency — and also worked as a senior policy advisor for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Now, Maya will be there to support Kamala after she won the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination in a virtual role call vote that took place ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August.

Here is everything to know about Kamala Harris’ sister, Maya Harris.

They have always been very close

Kamala Harris and Maya Harris. 

Kamala Harris Instagram

Kamala and Maya grew up close, moving around between the Midwest, California and Quebec during their formative years. They stayed with their mother when their parents divorced in the early 1970s.

“We forged a bond that is unbreakable,” Kamala told The Washington Post of Maya in 2019. “When I think about it, all of the joyous moments in our lives, all of the challenging moments, all of the moments of transition, we have always been together.”

Kamala and Maya are both lawyers

Kamala Harris, Maya Harris, and Douglas Emhoff after the California Senator launched her presidential campaign in 2019. 

Scott Strazzante/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty

Both Harris sisters are lawyers. Kamala received her bachelor’s degree from Howard University and her juris doctor from UC Berkeley; Maya earned her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and her law degree from Stanford. Maya was also raising her daughter, Meena, while she finished her college degrees.

Maya also met her husband, Tony West, while in law school. The pair later shared that neither thought they would become lawyers when they were young, but they both knew law careers would propel them to achieve their greater goals. West told Stanford Lawyer Magazine, “It was such an enriching, positive experience for me. ... Of course the best thing that came out of law school was that I met my wife.”

Maya gave birth to her daughter Meena shortly after high school

Maya Harris and Meena Harris. 

Meena Harris Instagram

Maya’s daughter Meena is a well-known figure, especially after the success of the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign. As the founder and CEO, Meena has shared that she is “both humbled and proud” of the brand’s success.

Maya became pregnant with Meena during her senior year of high school, and she often took her toddler to class or on-campus protests while she was also enrolled in law school. Maya later recalled to E! News that she was often “juggling work, juggling school, you know, wanting to be the math mom and drive on the field trip.”

It’s clear that Maya made things work, and Meena told the outlet that she was trying to raise her own daughters, Amara and Leela, the same way her mother raised her. “I think I'm borrowing and replicating and trying to carry on that legacy of how I was raised,” Meena told the outlet.

Maya officiated Kamala’s wedding in 2014

Maria J. Avila/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty 

Maya was on hand to participate in Kamala’s 2014 wedding to Doug Emhoff in a crucial way: She officiated their ceremony! Kamala and Emhoff were married at the courthouse in Santa Barbara, Calif. Meena also read Maya Angelou’s poem “Touched by an Angel” at the ceremony.

All About Kamala Harris' Husband, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff

Her daughter wrote a book about Kamala and Maya

Meena Harris, Kamala Harris, and Maya Harris. Meena Harris/Twitter

In 2020, Meena published the kids’ book Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, which was based on the vice president and her sister. HarperCollins Publishers described the book as “a beautiful, empowering picture book about two sisters who work with their community to effect change.”

Maya is also politically engaged

Maya Harris speaks onstage at 'Women Rule: The L.A. Summit' on June 5, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. 

Emma McIntyre/Getty

Like her older sister and parents, Maya is also politically active. In addition to assisting Kamala’s 2003 campaign for San Francisco DA and her 2020 campaign for president, Maya also worked as a senior policy advisor for Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential run. Maya and Clinton weren’t well acquainted before she took the position, but they soon became fast friends as well as colleagues.

As Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta told Talking Points Memo: “Hillary really trusted [Maya’s] instincts. Maya would cut through the bulls---, brief her quickly and give her something to think about.”

She has been open about her lupus diagnosis

Tony West, Maya Harris, and Amara Ajagu in Washington, DC before the Inaguration in 2021. 

Maya Harris Instagram

In 2020, Maya wrote an essay for The Atlantic about her lupus diagnosis. Maya was first diagnosed with the condition while she was in college and kept it private for three decades. In fact, Maya decided to open up to the public about her experience with lupus after President Donald Trump suggested that hydroxychloroquine, a drug commonly used to control lupus symptoms, be used to prevent COVID-19 — despite its efficacy being entirely unproven.

Maya wrote, “When the president of the United States decided to hype — as a coronavirus treatment — the primary medication used for controlling lupus, he put an already disadvantaged group of patients in even greater jeopardy.”