New Delhi: Republican Nikki Haley entered the 2024 President race Tuesday. Presently, she is the only challenger to former US President Donald Trump in the run-up to the elections. The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador announced her candidature in a video, calling for a ‘generational change’ in the Republican party.
“Get excited! Time for a new generation! Let’s do this,” she wrote on Twitter.
In the video, Haley pledged to take on countries perceived as a threat to America, as well as in-house adversaries. “Some people look at America and see vulnerability. The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history. China and Russia are on the march. They all think we can be bullied, kicked around,” said Haley.
“You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels,” she added.
Who is Nikki Haley?
Born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa to immigrant Indian-Sikh parents, Haley’s father was a professor at Punjab Agriculture University. She was first elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2004 and subsequently held the position for three terms. She was appointed as the 29th US representative to the United Nations by Donald Trump.
In 2010, she was elected governor of South Carolina, and was the southern state’s first female governor – winning relection in 2014.
One of her most well received acts as governor was in 2014 when Haley signed a bill ordering the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds following the killing of nine Black worshipers at the Emanuel AME Church by a white supremacist. The confederate flag is a fraught subject, said to be representative of slavery.
Haley also comes with a concrete stance on immigration.“We must fix our broken immigration system. That means stopping illegal immigration and it means welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries,” she said in 2016. The same year, Haley was also named one of Time’s 100 most influential people.
She “plans to lean into cultural issues, denouncing Democrats for pushing ‘socialism’ in government and ‘wokeism’ in schools, while citing her own biography as the daughter of Indian immigrants,” says a report in the New York Times.
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