Kamala Harris’ wealth comes mostly from her and her husband’s investments, records show
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff descend from Air Force Two at Delaware National Air Guard base in New Castle, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. (ERIN SCHAFF/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, she released 15 years of her personal tax returns, the most of any 2020 presidential candidate. The disclosure offers a glimpse into how Harris, who has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race, became a millionaire as a public servant.
After Harris, in 2014, married Doug Emhoff, who was then an entertainment lawyer, her net worth increased significantly due to the couple’s combined assets, a review of her tax records and financial disclosures shows.
Before then, Harris’ income came mostly from her public salaries as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California.
Before she was married, the highest annual income reported by Harris was in 2010, when she reported earning $263,000. The next year, when she became attorney general, her reported income dropped to less than $160,000 a year in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
After marrying Emhoff — whose clients have included retail giant Walmart and health care company Abbott Labs, as well as a Malibu real estate agent who found fame on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — Harris’ income went up significantly.
As a high-profile attorney for one of the world’s largest companies, Emhoff earned more than $1 million per year and held dozens of investments and stocks, according to financial documents reviewed by ABC News.
In 2014, Emhoff owned shares of at least 30 stocks from companies including Home Depot, St. Jude Medical, Comcast, and American Express, according to his statement of economic interest, a form required for California employees.
After Harris announced she would run for U.S. Senate in 2015, Emhoff sold off many of his stocks, including CVS Health and Oracle. Harris won her Senate seat in 2016.
From 2015 until 2019, Emhoff reported dozens of publicly traded investments known as “excepted investment funds,” according to annual reports filed by Harris when she was a senator.
As Harris’ profile grew, so did her earnings. According to a 2018 annual report filed by Harris, she received an advance of more than $300,000 for her memoir, The Truths We Hold, and she and Emhoff reported a gross joint income of $1,889,156 that year, according to tax returns.
Before Harris assumed the vice presidency in 2021, Emhoff announced in December 2020 that he would leave his law firm. He joined Georgetown University’s law school as a member of faculty, where he has earned nearly $200,000 per year.
As a result of the move, the couple’s income dropped significantly, from more than $3 million in 2019 to about $450,000 in 2023.
Nevertheless, with their real estate assets and pension, Forbes estimates Harris and Emhoff’s net worth to be about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2021. Property records reviewed by ABC News show Harris sold her Washington, D.C., condo in 2021 for $1.85 million, and the couple currently owns a house in Brentwood, California, that Emhoff purchased in 2012 for $2.7 million.
If Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, she will face former President Donald Trump, who has long fought to keep his tax records private.
Forbes, in its most recent accounting, estimates Trump’s net worth to be $5.9 billion, which an earlier breakdown said consists of $2.5 billion mainly from his real estate properties, clubs and resorts, plus the value of his share of Truth Social’s parent company, minus the $540 million in legal liabilities from his civil trials over the last year.
(NEW YORK) — An outage caused by a software update distributed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered a wave of flight cancellations at several major U.S. airlines – but the disruption was most severe and prolonged at Delta Airlines.
In all, the carrier canceled more than 2,500 flights over a period that stretched from last Friday, when the outage began, into the middle of this week.
The U.S. Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Delta this week over its uniquely severe flight disruptions.
“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Tuesday in a post on X.
In a statement on Tuesday, Delta said it is fully cooperating with the investigation. “Across our operation, Delta teams are working tirelessly to care for and make it right for customers impacted by delays and cancellations as we work to restore the reliable, on-time service they have come to expect from Delta,” the company said.
The company also issued an apology on Wednesday for the outage-related problems.
“Please accept our sincere apologies for the disruption to your recent travel plans caused by a vendor technology outage affecting airlines and companies worldwide,” the airline said in a statement.
“It’s a surprise that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like Delta would allow this to happen,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News.
“I’m hopeful that the worst is behind us now. While we can breathe a sigh of relief, I think a lot of people are understandably nervous about flying Delta,” Harteveldt added.
Delta did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
Airline and cybersecurity experts spoke to ABC News about what made the CrowdStrike outage so disruptive, and why it took days for Delta to resume normal service.
What made the CrowdStrike outage so disruptive for Delta
The CrowdStrike outage was so impactful because of the severity of the IT failure and the scale of its reach within the internal operating systems at Delta, experts told ABC News.
“For a company such as Delta, they rely on countless partner services for everything from scheduling pilots and planes to providing meal service and snacks to allowing customers to select their seats,” David Bader, a professor of cybersecurity and the director of the Institute of Data Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told ABC News.
“The CrowdStrike bug disrupted many of those critical services that keep the airline running at full capacity,” Bader added.
Mark Lanterman, the chief technology officer at the cybersecurity firm Computer Forensic Services, said the outage resulted from a faulty software update initiated by CrowdStrike. The resulting computer bug interrupted core services because of the degree to which CrowdStrike pervades the Delta operating systems, he added.
“The CrowdStrike update is deep inside the operating system. When that was installed, there was bad code inside of this update. And when Windows came across the bad code, it panicked and it crashed,” Lanterman said.
The outage, which affected CrowdStrike clients that use Windows operating systems, disrupted a critical system that ensures each flight has a full crew, Delta said in a statement on Monday.
“Upward of half of Delta’s IT systems worldwide are Windows based,” Delta said.
Why did it take days for Delta to resume normal service?
The reason for the prolonged recovery from the outage was because the CrowdStrike update disruption required a manual fix at each individual computer system, experts told ABC News. While each fix can be completed in no more than 10 minutes, the vast number of Delta’s digital terminals required significant manpower to address, expert said.
“This isn’t a fix that could be done automatically; IT resources can’t just sit at a computer and push out an update and everything is fixed,” Lanterman said. “It took so long because Delta has a lot of computers and likely they have limited IT resources to go from computer to computer.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the airline acknowledged the challenge posed by the manual fix requirement.
“The CrowdStrike error required Delta’s IT teams to manually repair and reboot each of the affected systems, with additional time then needed for applications to synchronize and start communicating with each other,” Delta said.
(WASHINGTON) — Consumer prices rose 3.0% in June compared to a year ago, extending a monthslong stretch of progress in the fight to slow price increases. The latest inflation reading outperformed economists’ expectations.
Inflation has cooled for four consecutive months, reversing a surge in prices that took hold at the outset of 2024.
Price increases have slowed significantly from a peak of more than 9%, but inflation remains more than a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%.
The prices increases last month marked a slowdown from the 3.3% rate recorded in May.
Despite the cooldown of prices in recent months, the Federal Reserve has opted to keep its benchmark interest rate highly elevated. The Fed Funds rate remains between 5.25% and 5.5%, matching its highest level since 2001.
A further reduction of inflation could heighten pressure on the Fed to move forward with a set of interest rate cuts that the central bank forecasted late last year.
Speaking to House members in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell touted “modest further progress” in the fight to slow price hikes over recent months.
Still, he added, the Fed will not lower interest rates until it has “gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%.”
While the economy has proven resilient this year, recent performance suggests that high interest rates have begun to slow activity.
A jobs report released on Friday showed that the economy added a robust 206,000 jobs in June. However, downward revisions for hiring over the previous two months brought the three-month average to its lowest level since January 2021. The unemployment rate has ticked up this year from 3.7% to 4.1%.
Economic output has slowed markedly at the outset of 2024, though it has continued to grow at a solid pace.
Interest rate cuts would lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, potentially triggering a burst of economic activity through greater household spending and company investment.
But the Fed risks a rebound of inflation if it cuts interest rates too quickly, since stronger consumer demand and higher wages could lead to an acceleration of price increases.
On the other hand, recent data suggesting an economic slowdown heightens the risk of keeping interest rates too high for too long, since the borrowing costs could ultimately tip the economy into a recession.
The Fed is guided by a dual mandate to keep inflation under control and maximize employment. Addressing lawmakers at the Capitol on Wednesday, Powell said recent progress in the fight against inflation has allowed the central bank to bring greater attention to its role in employment.
“Elevated inflation is not the only risk we face,” Powell told lawmakers on Wednesday. If the Fed opts to lower interest rates “too late or too little,” he added, it could “unduly weaken economic activity and employment.”
(WASHINGTON) — On the road to the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump’s views on electric vehicles (EVs) have offered two different visions of America’s automotive future.
Harris has been vocally supportive of the administration’s push to expand access and manufacturing of EVs in the U.S., while Trump has pledged to undo those policies.
Earlier this week, however, Trump appeared to soften his staunch anti-EV views when he spoke to Tesla CEO Elon Musk on X.
“You do make a great product,” Trump said to Musk, referring to Tesla vehicles. “That doesn’t mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details … your product is incredible.”
Before his conversation with Musk, the former president had maintained that electric vehicle production and sustainable energy sources are bad for the economy. He has vowed on “day one” to repeal the Biden-Harris administration’s sustainable energy policies in favor of domestic oil production.
“I will end the electric-vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration,” Trump told the audience at the Republican National Convention in July.
Biden-Harris pro-EV policies
While there is no federal electric vehicle mandate, the Biden-Harris administration has issued regulations calling on automakers to reduce emissions produced by their fleets, including by producing more electric and hybrid vehicles.
The administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act – which Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass in Congress – marks the largest climate investment in United States history.
The legislation aims to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and channels $370 billion into wind, solar, battery and electric vehicle production over the next 10 years.
Through the Inflation Reduction Act, candidate Harris has advocated for substantial investments in domestic electric vehicle car manufacturing, including funding for charging stations, and offering consumer incentives to buy EVs.
In May, Harris traveled to Detroit, Michigan, where she announced $100 million for small- and medium-sized auto manufacturers to upgrade their facilities for EV production.
“This investment will help to keep our auto supply chains here in America,” Harris said then, “which strengthens America’s economy overall and will keep those jobs here in Detroit.”
If elected, Harris is expected to continue advocating for eco-friendly fuel and emissions standards, increase funding for research and development for EV technology, and focus on leveraging EV industry growth to create more jobs.
An ABC News request to the Harris campaign for comment about their EV plans was not immediately returned.
EV sales impact on economy, climate
More Americans are starting to embrace EVs. Sales of electric cars and trucks last year totaled 1.4 million in 2023, up from 1 million in 2022, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced in January.
“The progress that’s been made is phenomenal,” Albert Gore III, executive director of the nonprofit coalition Zero Emission Transportation Association, told ABC News. “The United States has been a leader in electric vehicle manufacturing and also has really been a leader in a lot of good policymaking with regard to investment in every part of the EV and battery supply chain.”
Gore also noted that electric vehicles can have a significant impact on the economy, saying, “There’s a huge amount of opportunity.”
The industrial Midwest, Southwest and Southeast already have seen investment and job opportunities in the production of minerals and battery components for EVs. Georgia, Nevada, Texas, Ohio and Kansas have grown as domestic hubs for battery manufacturing, while Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and Arizona have risen as leaders in EV manufacturing.
“So a lot of really exciting economic opportunity in these places, and oftentimes it’s multiple parts of the supply chain,” Gore added.
Last month, the Biden administration awarded nearly $2 billion in grants to General Motors, Stellantis and other automakers to expand electric vehicle manufacturing in eight states, including key election swing states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
“It’s really important that we create a transportation system where our cars are made by union workers with good jobs, which we’re starting to do courtesy of the Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act,” Craig Segall, former deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board and current vice president of Evergreen Action, a nonprofit climate change advocacy group, told ABC News.
“We must stabilize the climate and America should lead that effort,” Segall added.
Segall believes a Harris-Walz White House promises a continuation of the Biden administration’s push for EV manufacturing, and a chance to further those goals.
“When I think about what we could have at the end of her first term, I think we’re talking about much clearer skies and much healthier communities,” Segall said.
Because they have zero emissions, electric vehicles typically have a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars, even when accounting for the electricity used for charging, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Obstacles to EV sales in the U.S.
Despite the push by carmakers and government officials, the EV market in the U.S. is still small compared to sales of gas-powered vehicles. Of the roughly 286 million cars on the road in 2023, just 9.3% were electric vehicles, according to Experian Automotive’s Market Trends report.
“The EV market is currently going through a bit of a rough patch,” Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds, told ABC News.
Caldwell explained that consumers’ hesitancy to buy electric vehicles largely surrounds the charging infrastructure, range, prices, and battery longevity.
“In order for its buyer base to evolve from early adopters to mainstream consumers, EVs will likely rely on continued government support to hit volume sales targets across all brands,” Caldwell said. “Even with the enthusiastic backing of a fresh presidential administration, enacting such a dramatic shift in the vehicle market is a massive undertaking and the politically charged rhetoric surrounding EVs will likely place extra pressure on any new policy decisions.”
In order to combat consumer hesitancy, electric vehicles need to be offered at every price range, according to Alan Jenn, an assistant professor at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.
“In order to see EVs get even more mainstream than they are now, we want to see a larger release of vehicles in segments that are more affordable,” Jenn told ABC News.
The average transaction price for electric cars in June 2024 was $56,371 versus gas-powered vehicles at $48,644, according to Kelley Blue Book.
Segall believes a Harris presidency could bring federal investments and further tax credits to lower the costs of EVs.
Currently, the government offers tax credits up to $7,500 for eligible new electric vehicles and up to $4,000 for eligible used electric vehicles, according to the Department of Energy.
“They’re really well placed to stop paying for gas forever right now, and that’s only going to be a better story,” Segall said.