The Two Weeks That Changed Kamala Harris’s Vice Presidency

Good evening! Yesterday, former President Donald Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over her racial identity , which is something she rarely talked about before a key moment in the spring of 2023. I asked my colleague Erica Green , a White House correspondent, to tell us how Harris’s little-noticed moves in that period reshaped her vice presidency and laid the groundwork for her campaign against Trump. — Jess Bidgood

On March 28, 2023, while Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Ghana, she made a decision that surprised members of her staff.

They had worked for weeks on remarks for her to deliver in the country, part of a visit to deepen America’s ties with the continent, but Harris changed the plan. Instead, she decided to do something unusual: She talked about her lineage and its impact on her life.

“This continent, of course, has a special significance for me personally as the first Black vice president of the United States of America,” she said.

The decision to invoke her personal story was a shift for Harris, who had grown guarded about her life after enduring personal attacks.

The episode was part of a two-week period last year — though it flew a little under the radar — in which Harris came to reintroduce herself to the public and, more specifically, the coalition of Democrats she would need to win the White House.