Vice President Kamala Harris is vowing to protect health care access and U.S. manufacturing jobs following House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) admissions that Republicans are considering repealing major laws if they take power and Donald Trump wins the presidential election.
“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said Monday at an event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, per NBC News. “When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table.”
When asked a follow-up question about the Affordable Care Act, the law establishing the program widely known as Obamacare, Johnson confirmed there would be “no more Obamacare” under a second Trump term. On Friday, he also floated repealing the CHIPS Act, which provided for major investments in electronics manufacturing, when a student journalist asked him about it, before reportedly apologizing and claiming he misheard the question.
Harris sharply denounced both of these ideas during a campaign stop Saturday in Wisconsin.
“I want to speak to the comments that have been recently made by the speaker of the House,” she told reporters in Milwaukee. “It is just further evidence of everything that I’ve actually been talking about for months now about Trump’s intention to implement Project 2025.”
Trump has denied any connection to Project 2025, a conservative playbook that proposes the abolishment of entire federal agencies and the replacement of untold civil servants with Trump loyalists. But many who helped draft it are still part of Trump’s orbit.
“We have talked repeatedly about their intention to get rid of the Affordable Care Act — now, to get rid of the CHIPS Act,” Harris said Saturday. “Let’s talk about manufacturing, which is a critical issue for many of the states that will make the difference in this election.”
The CHIPS Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, but was celebrated as a bipartisan measure meant to boost competitiveness over China. It set aside $52 billion to strengthen the domestic computer chip sector, and helped usher in a domestic manufacturing boom.
Harris reiterated she intends to continue supporting those kinds of investments, generating “good union jobs.”
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“That is the way we are going to win the competition with China for the 21st century,” Harris said, “and that is the kind of leadership that America deserves in their president.”