Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris said when she was running for president in 2020 that she thought plastic straws should be banned, but now she's changed her mind, her campaign said Thursday.
"She doesn't support banning plastic straws," a campaign official told Axios, the outlet reported Friday. "She joked even then about how crappy paper straws are and the need to come up with better eco-friendly alternatives."
However, the unnamed official pointed out that the vice president's actions for the environment have been substantial, despite changing her mind on the plastic vs. paper straw debate.
"She cast the tie-breaking vote on the most consequential legislation to combat climate change and create clean energy jobs in history, and as President, she is going to be focused on expanding on that progress," the official said.
Plastic straws are banned in many parts of the country, with concerns growing about plastics polluting oceans and waterways.
In the summer of 2018, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws. One year later, Harris said during a CNN town hall that she agreed that the straws should be banned.
Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign has ridiculed her support of a plastic straw ban, using it as a way to cast her as a left-leaning San Francisco liberal.
Harris said in her CNN interview last month that her "values have not changed," but she's shifted her policy stances on several matters, not just on straws.
The vice president no longer supports Medicare for All or programs for buying back guns, two proposals she backed during her 2020 race.
She told CNN in August she also no longer wants to ban fracking because she now believes "we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy" without taking that step.
Harris has also changed her stance on the border, promising that she will sign a bill that would continue building Trump's border wall.
However, just a few years ago, she was calling the wall "un-American" and said she would not vote to fund one "under any circumstances."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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