Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday delivered remarks at the International Association of Fire Fighters legislative conference, kicking off a day in which she took on a prominent role at a number of events in Washington.
Harris made what was billed by the White House as a “surprise drop-by” to the IAFF conference at the Hyatt Regency in Washington to meet with the union’s leadership and deliver remarks.
The IAFF – which has headquarters in Washington and Ottawa, Ontario and represents more than 340,000 full-time professional fire fighters and paramedics, according to its website – began its 2024 conference on March 3. It is scheduled to run through March 6.
The vice president praised the members in attendance, telling those in the packed hotel ballroom that they have “answered a calling to protect people in their most dire moments of need.”
"Yours is not just a profession, it is a calling,” the vice president said. “You each take an oath to save lives, to empower people to know that there are people who care about them. Your work is on behalf of some people that will not never know your name.”
“But you have answered a calling to serve,” she continued. “You have answered a calling to protect people in their most dire moments of need.”
Harris went on to speak about the health risks that firefighters face on the job, noting she attended “every firefighter memorial in the state of California” when she served as its attorney general.
“I spoke at hose memorials, I met with the families who grieved a firefighter that they lost, most often because of some form of cancer,” she said.
“We’ve still not done enough as a nation to give you the equipment and the resources you need,” she said.
The vice president brought the crowd to its feet when she spoke about the Biden administration’s efforts to work with IAFF “to do what we need to do in terms of giving now $720 million for SAFER and AFG grants and funds” – which help firefighters obtain resources and fund fire departments and volunteer firefighter organizations.
“This is personal to us,” she said of herself and the president.
The vice president’s stop at the IAFF conference came just ahead of her highly anticipated meeting with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's wartime Cabinet, who is in Washington this week at the dissent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Associated Press reported.
With President Joe Biden spending the day at Camp David as he prepares to deliver his election year State of the Union address to the nation on Thursday, Harris took the lead on meeting with Gantz, who is also sitting down with other top U.S. officials while in Washington.
A readout of the meeting from the White House noted Harris reiterated the belief that Israel has the right to defend itself while expressing “deep concern about the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the recent horrific tragedy around an aid convoy in northern Gaza.”
Last week, dozens of Palestinians were killed during an encounter with Israeli troops – an event Biden on Friday called “tragic and alarming.”
The vice president, according to the readout, also expressed the need for a cease-fire and hostage release deal that the U.S. is in the thick of trying to iron out, to move forward, calling on Hamas to accept the terms.
She also urged Israel to help facilitate the flow of more humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
“The President and I have been very clear that Israel has a right to defend itself, that we have got to make sure that innocent civilians aren’t being killed, and that we’ve got to get these hostages out,” Harris told reporters after her remarks at the IAFF conference on the message she would bring into the meeting with Gantz. “And that is one of the highest priorities that, right now, we have.”
The meeting and her remarks come one day after she made waves for offering a forceful call for an “immediate cease-fire for at least six weeks” in the Israel-Hamas war while marking the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma.
“I’ll tell you, the President has been an extraordinary leader in getting us to this point that we have the six-week deal,” the vice president told reporters on Monday. “And so, Hamas needs to do its thing, as I talked about yesterday in Selma.”
Asked if her assertive stance displayed on Sunday meant there was any daylight between her and the president, who has faced backlash from some on the left for his support of Israel, Harris said the pair “have been aligned and consistent from the very beginning.”
“I will tell you that it is important that we all understand that we’re in a window of time right now where we can actually get a hostage deal done,” she told reporters on Monday. “We all want this conflict to end as soon as possible, and how it does matters.”