President Joe Biden is delivering a speech at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin on Monday for the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The event had been postponed earlier this month after former President Trump’s unprecedented assassination attempt and Biden’s COVID-19 diagnosis.
After his trip to Austin, the President is coming to Houston later Monday to honor the former U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who passed away on July 19 at 74 while battling pancreatic cancer.
“I had the honor of working with her during her nearly 30 years in Congress,” President Biden said in a statement, “No matter the issue– from delivering racial justice to building an economy for working people– she was unrelenting in her leadership.”
In her statement about the Democratic congresswoman, VP Kamala Harris wrote that Jackson Lee served “as a judge in Houston, a member of the Houston City Council, and a member of the United States Congress,” and her work has “improved the lives of millions of Americans.”
Harris, the current Democratic presidential nominee, will also come to deliver an eulogy to Jackson Lee at a Celebration of Life Service in Houston on Thursday, according to a press release. It will be the third time Harris is in Texas this month and the second time back in Houston.
Last week, the VP was briefed on Hurricane Beryl in Houston on behalf of President Biden before attending the American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) national convention in the city last Thursday. The AFT was the first union to endorse Harris as a presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott expressed disappointment with the Vice President’s visit on social media.
He posted on X last Thursday saying, “Kamala Harris flew to Houston for a political rally, but couldn’t trouble herself to go a few hundred miles more & see the damage she caused to our border. She refused to mention Jocelyn Nungaray who was recently killed by illegal immigrants in Houston.”
Jocelyn Nungaray was a 12-year-old from Houston who was sexually assaulted and murdered in June by two illegal immigrants. Harris had been tasked by President Biden to tackle illegal immigration and the border crisis in March 2021. She went to El Paso, Texas in June 2021 as her first and only border trip so far.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) also released a joint statement condemning President Biden and VP Harris for not going to the border and addressing its security during their visits.
“This is yet another insult to the brave men and women who’ve stepped up to defend our southern border while the Biden-Harris administration refuses to do so and to the families who have lost loved ones at the hands of cartels and deadly drugs like fentanyl. We would be more than happy to host them at the border so they can see the devastating consequences of their failed policies – not some sterilized version of the truth,” the senators wrote in the statement.
