Vice President Kamala Harris stepped up her attacks on former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday as she said in Dallas that Mr. Trump would round up his political enemies, deport peaceful protesters and terminate the Constitution in a second term.
“Consider: Donald Trump has openly vowed if re-elected he’ll be a dictator on day one, that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country and even, and even and I quote, ‘terminate’ the United States Constitution,” Ms. Harris said.
Ms. Harris has been harshly critical of Mr. Trump in the past, but at campaign events in the last two days, as an increasing number of Democrats question whether President Biden has the ability to beat Mr. Trump in November and the acuity to serve another four years, she has been far more explicit about the dangers she sees in a Trump second term. Ms. Harris has emerged as a top replacement for Mr. Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket should he drop out of the race.
In Dallas, Ms. Harris tried to attach Mr. Trump to Project 2025, a policy and staffing blueprint assembled by dozens of conservative groups for the next Republican administration. Among the platform proposals include replacing many federal civil servant jobs with political appointees who would be loyal to the president.
Ms. Harris accused Mr. Trump of adopting the project, which would shrink the Department of Education and cut programs like Head Start, the federal program for preschool children from low-income families.
“Let us be clear, this represents an outright attack on our children, our families and our future,” Ms. Harris told roughly 20,000 people at an event for Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority of which Ms. Harris is a member.
Project 2025, which is led by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is not Mr. Trump’s official campaign platform, and the former president has recently sought to distance himself from it. But the plans were developed by some of Mr. Trump’s former advisers who are likely to be involved in a potential second term, and many of the policies in Project 2025 mirror Mr. Trump’s official platform, Agenda 47.
In a statement, Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, accused “Team Biden” of “fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people.”
With Mr. Biden mired in controversy after his disastrous debate performance two weeks ago, Mr. Trump has increasingly taken aim at Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump has dubbed her “Laffin’ Kamala Harris” and intentionally mispronounces her name at campaign events. Ms. Harris’s recent sharp rebukes of Mr. Trump come to the relief of many Democrats who felt she was too cautious and scripted when she first came to the White House.
But while political momentum is building for Ms. Harris, she is also navigating a difficult balancing act in not spotlighting the messaging limitations of her boss.
On Wednesday in Dallas, the crowd gasped when Ms. Harris first mentioned Mr. Trump’s name about midway through her speech. She noted that he had appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who joined the majority in overturning Roe v. Wade.
Sonia Southerland, a 69-year-old member of the sorority, said she was struck by how Ms. Harris explained the stakes of the election, specifically his potential plans for a second term.
“We can take that message back to our communities,” Ms. Southerland said, “back to our families, back to our big and little girls, and help them to understand what is happening in this country at this moment.”
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