FULL SPEECH: Kamala Harris formally accepts her party's nomination for president at DNC

thank good evening thank you thank you thank thank you thank you thank you everyone thank you thank you thank you thank you all thank you all okay we got to get to some business we got to get to some business okay thank you all okay thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you please thank you please thank you so very much thank you everyone thank you everyone thank you okay let's get to business let's get to business all right so let me start by thanking my most incredible husband Doug for being an incredible partner to me an incredible father to Cole Ella and happy anniversary douge I love these so very much to our President Joe Biden when I think about the path that we have traveled together Joe I am filled with gratitude your record is extraordinary as history will show and your character is inspiring and Doug and I love you and Jill and are forever thankful to you both and to coach Tim Walls you are going to be an incredible vice president and to the delegates and everyone who has put your faith in our campaign your support is humbling so America the path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected but I'm no stranger to unlikely Journeys so my mother our mother shamala Harris had one of her own and I miss her every day and especially right now and I know she's looking down smiling I know that so my mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone traveling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would Cure breast cancer when she finished school she was supposed to return home to a traditional arranged marriage but as fate would have it she met my father Donald Harris a student from Jamaica they they fell in love and got married and that act of self-determination made my sister Maya and Me growing up we moved a lot I will always remember that big Mayflower truck packed with all our belongings ready to go to Illinois to Wisconsin and wherever our parents' jobs took us my early memories of our parents together are very joyful ones a home filled with laughter and music artha coold train and miles at the park my mother would say stay close but my father would say as he smiled run CA run Don't Be Afraid don't let anything stop you from my earliest years he taught me to be Fearless but the harmony between my parents did not last when I was in elementary school they split up and it was mostly my mother who raised us before she could finally afford to buy a home she rented a small apartment in the East Bay in the bay in the bay you either live in the Hills or the Flatlands we lived in the flats a beautiful workingclass neighborhood of firefighters nurses and construction workers all who tended their lawns with pride my mother she worked long hours and like many working parents she leaned on a trusted Circle to help raise us Mrs Shelton who ran the daycare below us and became a second mother Uncle Sherman Aunt Mary Uncle Freddy Auntie Chris none of them family by Blood and all of them family by love family who taught us how to make gumbo how to play chess and sometimes even let us win family Who Loved Us believed in us and told us we could be anything and do anything they instilled in us the values they personified community faith and the importance of treating others as you would want to be treated with kindness respect and compassion my mother was a brilliant 5 foot tall brown woman with an accent and as the eldest child as the eldest child I saw how the world would sometimes treat her but my mother never lost her cool she was tough courageous a Trailblazer in the fight for Women's Health and she taught Maya and me a lesson that Michelle mentioned the other night she taught us to never complain about Injustice but do something about it do something about it that was my mother and she taught us and she always she also taught us and she also taught us and never do anything half asked and that is a direct quote a direct quote I grew up immersed in the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement my parents had met at a civil rights Gathering and they made sure that we learned about civil rights leaders incling including the lawyers like th Good Marshall and con constant Baker Motley those who battled in the courtroom to make real the promise of America so at a young age I decided I wanted to do that work I wanted to be a lawyer and when it came time to choose the type of law I would pursue I reflected on a pivotal moment in my life you see when I was in high school I started to notice something about my best friend Wanda she was sad at school and there were times she didn't want to go home so one day I asked if everything was all right and she confided in me that she was being sexually abused by her stepfather and I immediately told her she had to come stay with us and she did this is one of the reasons I became a prosec cutor to protect people like Wanda because I believe everyone has a right to safety to dignity and to Justice as a prosecutor when I had a case I charged it not in the name of the victim but in the name of the people for a simple reason in our system of justice a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us and I would often explain this to console survivors of crime to remind them no one should be made to fight alone we are all in this together and every day in the courtroom I stood proudly before a judge and I said five words kamla Harris for the people and to be clear and to be clear my entire career I've only had one client the people and so on behalf of the people on behalf of every American regardless of party race gender or the language your grandmother speaks on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely Journey on behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with people who work hard chase their dreams and look out for one another on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America and with this election and and with this election our nation our nation with this election has a precious fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness cynicism and divisive battles of the past a chance to chart a new way forward not not as members of any one party or faction but as Americans and let me say I know there are people of various political views watching tonight and I want you to know I promise to be a president for all Americans you can always trust me to put country above party and self to hold sacred America's fundamental principles from the rule of law to free and fair elections to the peaceful transfer of power I will be a President Who unites us around our highest aspirations a president who leads and listens who is realistic practical and has common sense and always fights for the American people from the courthouse to the White House that has been my life's work as a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland California I stood up for women and children against predators who abuse them as Attorney General of California I took on the big Bank delivered $20 billion for middle class families who faced foreclosure and helped pass a homeowner Bill of Rights one of the first of its kind in the nation I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges for workers who are being cheated out of their wages the wages they were due for seniors facing elder abuse I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings who threaten the security of our border and the safety of our communities and I will tell you these fights were not easy and neither were the elections that put me in those offices we were underestimated at practically every turn but we never gave up because the future is always worth fighting for and that's the fight we are in right now a fight for America's future fellow americ Americans this election is not only the most important of Our Lives it is one of the most important in the life of our nation in many ways Donald Trump is an unserious man but the consequences but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious consider consider not only the chaos and Calamity when he was in office but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes when he failed he sent an armed mob to the United States capital where they assaulted Law Enforcement Officers when politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help he did the opposite he fanned the flames and now for an entirely different set of crimes he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans and separately and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse and consider consider what he intends to do if we give him power again consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assault to those law enforcement officers at the capital his explicit intent to jail journalists political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy his explicit intent to deploy our active duty military against our own citizens consider consider the power he will have especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from Criminal prosecution just imagine Donald Trump with no guard rails and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your your life not to strengthen our national security but to serve the only client he has ever had himself and we know and we know what a second Trump term would look like it's all laid out in Project 2025 written by his closest advisors and its sum total is to pull our country back to the past but America we are not going back we are not going back we are not going back we are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare we are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act when insurance companies could deny people with pre-existing conditions we are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our Public Schools we are not going to let him end programs like head that provide preschool and child care for our children America we are not going back and we are charting and we are charting a new way forward forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class because we know a strong middle class has always been critical to America's success and building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency and I'll tell you this is personal for me the middle class is where I come from my mother kept a strict budget we lived within our means yet we wanted for little and she expected us to make the most of the opportunities that were available to us and to be grateful for them because as she taught us opportunity is not available to everyone that's why we will create what I call an opportunity economy an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed whether you live in a rural area small town or big city and as president I will bring together labor and workers and small business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies to create jobs to grow our economy and to lower the cost of everyday needs like Health Care and housing and groceries we will provide access to capital for small business owners and entrepreneurs and Founders and we will end America's housing shortage and protect Social Security and Medicare now compare that to Donald Trump because I think everyone here knows he doesn't actually fight for the middle class not he doesn't actually fight for the middle class instead he fights for himself and his billionaire friends and he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt and all the while he intends to enact what in effect is a national sales tax call it a trump tax that would raise prices on middle class families by almost $4,000 a year well instead of a trump tax hike we will pass a middle class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans friends I believe America cannot truly be prosperous unless Americans are fully able to make their own decisions about their own lives especially on matters of heart and home but tonight in America too many women are not able to make those decisions and let's be clear about how we got here Donald Trump handpicked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom and now he brags about it in his words quote I did it and I'm proud to have done it end quote well I'll tell you over the past two years I've traveled across our country and women have told me their stories husbands and fathers have shared theirs stories of women miscarrying in a parking lot developing sepsis losing the ability to ever again have children all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients couples just trying to grow their family cut off in the middle of IVF treatments children who have survived sexual assault potentially being forced to carry a pregnancy to term this is what's happening in our country because of Donald Trump and understand he is not done as a part of his agenda he and his allies would limit access to birth control ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress and get this get this he plans to create a national anti- abortion coordinator and force states to report on women's miscarriages and abortions simply put they are out of their minds and one must ask one must ask why EX exactly is it that they don't trust women well we trust women we trust women and when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive Freedom as president of the United States I will proudly sign it into law in this election many other fundamental freedoms are at stake the freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools communities and places of worship the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis and the freedom that unlocks all the others the freedom to vote with this election we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the freedom to vote Act and let me be clear and let me be clear after decades in law enforcement I know the importance of Safety and Security especially at our border last year Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades the border patrol endorsed it but Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal well I refuse to play politics with our security and here is my pledge to you as president I will bring back the bipartisan Board of security bill that he killed and I will sign it into law I know I know we can live up to our proud Heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system we can create an earned Pathway to citizenship and secure our border and America we must also be steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad as vice president I have confronted threats to our security negotiated with foreign leaders strengthened our alliances and engaged with our brave troops overseas as commander and chief I will ensure America always has the strongest most lethal fighting force in the world and I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families and I will always honor and never disparage their service and their sacrifice I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence that America not China wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen not abdicate our Global Leadership Trump on the other hand threatened to abandon NATO he encouraged Putin to invade our allies said Russia could quote do whatever the hell they want 5 days before Russia attacked Ukraine I met with president zalinski to warn him about Russia's plan to invade I helped mobilize a Global Response over 50 countries to defend against Putin's aggression and as president I will stand strong with Ukraine and our Nao allies with respect to the war in Gaza President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done and let me be clear and let me be clear I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7 including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival at the same time what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating so many innocent lives lost desperate hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again the scale of suffering is heartbreaking President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure the hostages are released the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity security freedom and self-determination and know this I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran backed terrorists I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump who are rooting for Trump because you know they know they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors they know Trump won't hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself and as president I will never waver in defense of America's security and ideals because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs so fellow Americans fellow Americans I I love our country with all my heart Everywhere I Go Everywhere I Go in everyone I meet I see a nation that is ready to move forward ready for the next step in The Incredible Journey that is America I see an America where we hold fast to The Fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world that here in this country anything is possible that nothing is Out Of Reach an America where we care for one another look out for one another and recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us that none of us none of us has to fail for all of us to succeed and that in unity there is strength you know our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America talking about how terrible everything is well my mother had another lesson she used to teach never let anyone tell you who you are you show them who you are America let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for freedom opportunity compassion dignity fairness and Endless Possibilities We Are The Heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world and on behalf of our children and our grandchildren and all the those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty we must be worthy of this moment it is now our turn to do what Generations before us have done Guided by optimism and Faith to fight for this country we love to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth the privilege and pride of being an American so let's get out there let's fight for it let's get out there let's vote for it and together let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary Story Ever Told thank you God bless you and may God bless the United States of America thank you all vice president kamla Harris making the case before this convention hall in Chicago and in front of the nation millions of Americans watching tonight Democrats Republicans Independence a thin slice of undecided voters in a divided America