Vice President Kamala Harris has appeared to flip-flop on yet another policy position: electric vehicle mandates.
In a recent “fact check” email, a campaign spokesperson wrote that Harris “does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” a reversal of her previous positions on the issue.
🚨Just in: Kamala Harris campaign says she doesn't support an Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate. pic.twitter.com/FekkYoMP9U
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) August 27, 2024
In addition to supporting the Green New Deal, which included EV mandates, Harris also sponsored a bill during her time as a U.S. senator that sought to create a "national zero-emission vehicle standard," which would have required all passenger vehicles to be electric by 2040. Meanwhile, Harris ran on a platform as a presidential candidate in 2019 that called for mandates to phase out gas-powered vehicles even sooner, in 2035. After the Biden-Harris ticket won in 2020, Harris also pledged that all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles would be "zero-emission" by 2030. (Fox News)
Harris said in an interview with CNN last week that her “values have not changed,” even if her policy positions on some issues have.
"You mentioned the Green New Deal,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time."
But when Axios asked Harris to clarify her position, her campaign ultimately declined to comment.
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New: the Harris campaign wrote in an email that she “does not support an electric vehicle mandate.”
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) September 4, 2024
I asked if that meant she would veto or sign the bill she co-sponsored in 2019 w/ such a mandate for manufacturers.
The campaign declined to commenthttps://t.co/ogOwDdDD99
The Harris campaign sent out an email saying Kamala is against electric vehicle mandates…@AlexThomp of Axios emailed back asking if she would veto *her own bill* that included an electric vehicle mandate…
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) September 4, 2024
They declined to comment.
This is why she’s not doing interviews. pic.twitter.com/SeLKsp9tUi