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Following the election of Joe Biden as U.S. president in the 2020 election, Harris assumed office as vice president of the United States on January 20, 2021.She is the United States’ first female vice president, the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history, and the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president..

Upon taking office on January 20, 2021, the 117th Congress’s Senate was divided 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats; this meant that Harris had to be frequently called upon to exercise her power to cast tie-breaking votes as president of the Senate. Harris cast her first two tie-breaking votes on February 5, 2021. In February and March, Harris’s tie-breaking votes were crucial in passing the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package proposed by Biden, since no Republicans in the Senate voted for the package. 

On July 20, 2021, Harris broke Mike Pence’s record for tie-breaking votes in the first year of a vice presidencywhen she cast the seventh tie-breaking vote in her first six months and cast 13 tie-breaking votes during her first year in office, the most tie-breaking votes in a single year in U.S. history, surpassing John Adams who cast 12 votes in 1790. On December 5, 2023, Harris broke the record for the most tie-breaking votes cast by a vice president casting her 32nd vote, exceeding John C. Calhoun, who cast 31 votes during his nearly eight years as vice president, in less than half the time. 

On November 19, 2021, Harris served as acting president from 10:10 to 11:35 am EST, while President Biden underwent a colonoscopy. She became the first woman, and the third person overall, to assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency under Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. As early as December 2021, Harris was identified as playing a pivotal role in the Biden Administration, owing to her tiebreaking vote in the evenly divided Senate as well as her being the presumed frontrunner in 2024 if Biden was not to seek reelection.On March 24, 2021, Biden named Harris to work with Mexico and Northern Triangle nations to curb the current flow of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border and develop a long-term solution. 

Harris conducted her first international trip as vice president in June 2021, visiting Guatemala and Mexico in an attempt to address the root causes of an increase in migration from Central America to the United States. During her visit, in a joint press conference with Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei, Harris issued an appeal to potential migrants, stating “I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come.” Her work in Central America led to creation of task forces on corruption and human trafficking; a women’s empowerment program, and an investment fund for housing and businesses. 

 

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