In a lavish puff piece for the cover of Time magazine, California Sen. Kamala Harris lies yet again about her past policing of the parents of truant children.
“The system was not responding to what was in my mind a crisis,” Harris told Time. “We improved attendance by over 30%. No parent ever went to jail. It was about what I could do, in my limited capacity, based on the position I had.”
No parent ever went to jail? Pants on fire. Four Pinocchios. An intentional and brazen lie that’s already been debunked before.
Harris has often leaned on the stipulation that as district attorney of San Francisco, her office’s policy of subjecting the parents of truant children to prosecution didn’t result in anyone going to jail. But what her framing ignores is her crucial sponsorship of SB 1317, a state bill making truancy a misdemeanor and modeled specifically on her office’s policy. As a result of that bill, which then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law while Harris still was district attorney, multiple parents across California were absolutely jailed. Furthermore, arrests escalated while Harris served as the state’s attorney general, and she did nothing to stop them.
Unfortunately, Time‘s Molly Ball offered no pushback to this in her piece.
It’s true that prior to the passage of SB 1317 her office’s policy had not directly resulted in anyone going to jail. But the very bill she sponsored while still district attorney most certainly did, and as attorney general it happened increasingly often. Harris is a cop and a liar, and it’s no small wonder why she’s trailing for the 2020 nomination behind the mayor of the nation’s 308th largest city.
