Kamala Harris goes viral for learning TikTok dance before S.F. speech
The Oakland native delivered a sobering speech at San Francisco's Palace Hotel during the Emerge America 20th anniversary gala on Wednesday, April 30. But first, she met up with content creator Kenneth Walden to let loose before she began.
A viral video posted to Walden's social media accounts shows him teaching the former vice president the popular 'Boots on the Ground' line dance, inspired by Georgia-born singer 803Fresh's 2024 song of the same name. It has divided audiences, with some deeming Harris' attempt 'cringe' while others lament her presidential loss.
'Alright, here we go' Walden shouted as they stepped-side-to-side and ran through the dance, the two of them laughing and high-fiving in excitement. 'I knew you would get it.'
The original video has received more than 661,000 likes on TikTok as of Friday, May 2, and the clip has been re-circulated by a variety of other accounts on X, Instagram and TikTok.
'Living her best life. I feel you madam president,' commented Instagram user @bernoidrussell.
'This connection is powerful. Thank you for always giving us hope,' wrote @cindy.hollibaughvallelunga.
Others, however, weren't as charmed by Harris' dance moves.
'What a joke' wrote @samsonoptionvivi, while @kpetoney expressed gratitude that Harris didn't win the election, noting that 'Foreign leaders would eat her alive.'
This isn't the first time Harris has received mixed feedback for dancing in public. Throughout her presidential campaign, various clips of her showing off her moves circulated online evoking similar criticism for being unserious. Nonetheless, the discourse hasn't stopped her from enjoying a good tune.
Another video posted to Walden's accounts shows Harris flicking open the rainbow fan as the line, 'Where them fans at?' plays, shifting her weight to one leg and striking a pose as off-camera voices cheer her on.
'VP Kamala Harris is the Uncontested champion with the fan,' the caption reads.
Walden also interviewed Harris in a few additional clips shared to his Instagram account, asking her how she plans to uplift Black women and how she maintains Black joy in the public eye.
'I have a husband who is here right now,' she said. 'And an incredible circle of friends who are family, and family,' she said. 'I think it's just important to be with those people who love you and care about you, and get you.'
In her 18-minute speech Wednesday evening, Harris criticized Trump's administration on his 100th day back in office. She has yet to announce her future plans since losing the 2024 election, but many have speculated that she may join the race for California Governor.
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Miami Herald
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All were dismissed as part of a campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion from the military and restore what Hegseth has described as a 'warrior ethos.' Hegseth also recently withdrew the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael 'Buzz' Donnelly to lead the Navy's 7th Fleet in Japan -- its largest overseas force -- amid reports in conservative media that seven years earlier the admiral had allowed a drag performance to take place on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. The decision not to promote Sims, who is white, seems unrelated to any issues of race or gender. Rather, the general's career seems to have become tangled up in broader suspicions about leaks and a mistrust of senior military officers that have defined much of Hegseth's first six months on the job. Hegseth, a former Fox News host and an Iraq War veteran, came to the Pentagon with little managerial experience. 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Miami Herald
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ICE data shows that about 31% of the immigrants arrested across the L.A. region from June 1 to June 26 had criminal convictions, 11% had pending criminal charges and 58% were classified as 'other immigration violator,' which ICE defines as 'individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action.' The L.A. region's surge in arrests of noncriminals has been more dramatic than the U.S. as a whole: Arrests of immigrants with no criminal convictions climbed nationally from 57% in April to 69% in June. Federal raids here have also been more fiercely contested in Southern California - particularly in L.A. County, where more than 2 million residents are undocumented or living with undocumented family members. 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As White House chief adviser on border policy Tom Homan put it: 'If you're in the country illegally, you got a problem.' Still, things did not really pick up until May, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered ICE's top field officials to shift to more aggressive tactics: arresting undocumented immigrants, whether or not they had a criminal record. Miller set a new goal: arresting 3,000 undocumented people a day, a quota that immigration experts say is impossible to reach by focusing only on criminals. 'There aren't enough criminal immigrants in the United States to fill their arrest quotas and to get millions and millions of deportations, which is what the president has explicitly promised,' Bier said. 'Immigration and Customs Enforcement says there's half a million removable noncitizens who have criminal convictions in the United States. Most of those are nonviolent: traffic, immigration offenses. It's not millions and millions.' By the time Trump celebrated six months in office, DHS boasted that the Trump administration had already arrested more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants. '70% of ICE arrests,' the agency said in a news release, 'are individuals with criminal convictions or charges.' But that claim no longer appeared to be true. While 78% of undocumented immigrants arrested across the U.S. in April had a criminal conviction or faced a pending charge, that number had plummeted to 57% in June. In L.A., the difference between what Trump officials said and the reality on the ground was more stark: Only 43% of those arrested across the L.A. region had criminal convictions or faced a pending charge. Still, ICE kept insisting it was 'putting the worst first.' As stories circulate across communities about the arrests of law-abiding immigrants, there are signs that support for Trump's deportation agenda is falling. A CBS/YouGov poll published July 20 shows about 56% of those surveyed approved of Trump's handling of immigration in March, but that dropped to 50% in June and 46% in July. About 52% of poll respondents said the Trump administration is trying to deport more people than expected. When asked who the Trump administration is prioritizing for deporting, only 44% said 'dangerous criminals.' California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have repeatedly accused Trump of conducting a national experiment in Los Angeles. 'The federal government is using California as a playground to test their indiscriminate actions that fulfill unsafe arrest quotas and mass detention goals,' Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom told The Times. 'They are going after every single immigrant, regardless of whether they have a criminal background and without care that they are American citizens, legal status holders and foreign-born, and even targeting native-born U.S. citizens.' When pressed on why ICE is arresting immigrants who have not been convicted or are not facing pending criminal charges, Trump administration officials tend to argue that many of those people have violated immigration law. 'ICE agents are going to arrest people for being in the country illegally,' Homan told CBS News earlier this month. 'We still focus on public safety threats and national security threats, but if we find an illegal alien in the process of doing that, they're going to be arrested too.' Immigration experts say that undermines their message that they are ridding communities of people who threaten public safety. 'It's a big backtracking from 'These people are out killing people, raping people, harming them in demonstrable ways,' to 'This person broke immigration law in this way or that way,'' Bier said. The Trump administration is also trying to find new ways to target criminals in California. It has threatened to withhold federal funds to California due to its 'sanctuary state' law, which limits county jails from coordinating with ICE except in cases involving immigrants convicted of a serious crime or felonies such as murder, rape, robbery or arson. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department requested California counties, including L.A., provide data on all jail inmates who are not U.S. citizens in an effort to help federal immigration agents prioritize those who have committed crimes. 'Although every illegal alien by definition violates federal law,' the U.S. Justice Department said in a news release, 'those who go on to commit crimes after doing so show that they pose a heightened risk to our Nation's safety and security.' As Americans are bombarded with dueling narratives of good vs. bad immigrants, Kocher believes the question we have to grapple with is not 'What does the data say?' Instead, we should ask: 'How do we meaningfully distinguish between immigrants with serious criminal convictions and immigrants who are peacefully living their lives?' 'I don't think it's reasonable, or helpful, to represent everyone as criminals - or everyone as saints,' Kocher said. 'Probably the fundamental question, which is also a question that plagues our criminal justice system, is whether our legal system is capable of distinguishing between people who are genuine public safety threats and people who are simply caught up in the bureaucracy.' The data, Kocher said, show that ICE is currently unable or unwilling to make that distinction. 'If we don't like the way that the system is working, we might want to rethink whether we want a system where people who are simply living in the country following laws, working in their economy, should actually have a pathway to stay,' Kocher said. 'And the only way to do that is actually to change the laws.' In the rush to blast out mugshots of some of the most criminal L.A. immigrants, the Trump administration left out a key part of the story. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, its staff notified ICE on May 5 of Veneracion's pending release after he had served nearly 30 years in prison for the crimes of assault with intent to commit rape and sexual penetration with a foreign object with force. But ICE failed to pick up Veneracion and canceled its hold on him May 19, a day before he was released on parole. A few weeks later, as ICE amped up its raids, federal agents arrested Veneracion on June 7 at the ICE office in L.A. The very next day, DHS shared his mugshot in a news release titled 'President Trump is Stepping Up Where Democrats Won't.' The same document celebrated the capture of Phan, who served nearly 25 years in prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder. CDCR said the Board of Parole Hearings coordinated with ICE after Phan was granted parole in 2022. Phan was released that year to ICE custody. But those details did not stop Trump officials from taking credit for his arrest and blaming California leaders for letting Phan loose. 'It is sickening that Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass continue to protect violent criminal illegal aliens at the expense of the safety of American citizens and communities,' DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
