During a stop in Pleasant Prairie, Vice President Kamala Harris pitched the Biden administration’s $65 billion investment in high-speed internet as an effort to drive the creation of U.S. jobs and boost American manufacturing.
Harris’ tour and remarks at Sanmina’s Pleasant Prairie plant Thursday came on the heels of an announcement from Finland-based Nokia that it will partner with the company to manufacture broadband network electronics there, creating 200 jobs.
Harris linked the announcement to the administration’s efforts to build broadband infrastructure in the U.S., saying she and the president knew the investment would drive demand for products made here.
“High-speed internet is not a luxury, but a necessity,” Harris said, adding: “Bidenomics is working.”
According to the White House, Nokia’s partnership with Sanmina will make it the first telecom company to begin manufacturing broadband electronics products in the U.S. when production begins in 2024.
“For far too long, our economy has not worked for working people,” Harris said. “So when President Biden and I took office, we decided to invest in the working people of America.”
Meanwhile, state GOP Chair Brian Schimming said the visit “will be nothing more than a failed attempt at damage control.”
During the trip from the Milwaukee airport to Pleasant Prairie, the motorcade passed a dozen or so pro-Trump demonstrators, according to a pool report. Some held signs complaining about the Mexican border and that “Bidenomics failed America.”
“Wisconsin households know that ‘Bidenomics’ is more than they can afford,” Schimming said. “The sales pitch won’t land for Wisconsin families who are worried about decreasing real wages, the humanitarian crisis at the border, rampant crime, and disarray overseas.”
It is Harris’ fourth visit to Wisconsin since taking office in 2021. This stop took her to what has become a swing county in the southeastern corner of the state. Once reliably blue, Donald Trump carried Kenosha County in 2016 and 2020. Meanwhile, Dem Gov. Tony Evers narrowly lost the county last fall, even as he won statewide by 3.4 percentage points.
During the 2020 campaign, Trump traveled to the county after violent protests in downtown Kenosha after a white police officer shot a Black man.
In her speech, Harris touted her “Wisconsin cred,” pointing to the time she spent in Madison as a child. She said there have been 140,000 jobs created in Wisconsin since she and Biden took office, pointing to investments such as EV chargers along I-94 and plans to upgrade bridges along John Nolen Drive in Madison.
Addressing a fundraiser in Milwaukee following the Pleasant Prairie visit, Harris slammed “feckless so-called leaders” who won’t call it a false choice to say “you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.”
“We’ve got work to do, in terms of being that role model that we have been for the world,” Harris said, according to a pool report. “When you’re a role model, people watch what you do to see if it matches what you say.”
Harris also knocked Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban that was “written before the elevator was invented.”
She warned there is a “full-on attack against fundamental rights and freedoms and liberty.”
“We must organize and we must stand strong and stand united in the face of these attacks, to stand for what is right and the foundational principles of who we are as a country,” she said.
Watch Harris’ remarks in Pleasant Prairie here.
Note: This article was update Aug. 4 with coverage of the Milwaukee fundraiser.
