Kamala Harris lost in a landslide last year.
Now she's pushing one of the most radical ideas yet.
And Kamala Harris just called for lowering the voting age to 16 – and her reasoning has Ron DeSantis firing back.
Kamala Harris spent the months after her humiliating November defeat in damage control mode.
Her book tour turned into a disaster, with fellow Democrats openly frustrated she wouldn't go away.
Foreign media hammered her for covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline while American voters watched her try to rewrite history.
Harris pushes radical voting age change with climate anxiety excuse
Harris sat down for an interview on The Diary Of A CEO podcast and dropped a bombshell that left conservatives fuming.¹
"I think we should reduce voting age to 16," Harris declared.¹
Her justification? Generation Z suffers from "climate anxiety."
Harris explained that Gen Z, which she defined as Americans between 13 and 27, "have only known the climate crisis."¹
She rattled off a list of grievances this generation faces — missing substantial education during the pandemic, uncertain job prospects, and fears about affording homes that could be "wiped out by extreme weather."¹
The former Vice President even claimed young people coined the term "climate anxiety" to describe fears that prevented them from having children.¹
"If they're voting right now at 16 and up, they're going to be talking about the importance of climate," Harris said.¹
She argued teenagers would focus on artificial intelligence's impact on the workforce and affordable housing if given the vote.¹
Harris framed her proposal as responding to the two "centers of power" in politics — groups that vote most and people who write the biggest checks.¹
The irony wasn't lost on critics who remembered Harris burned through $1.5 billion in five weeks, courting celebrity endorsements from Oprah to Taylor Swift while pretending to champion "the people."
DeSantis shuts down Harris's climate anxiety argument
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wasted no time demolishing Harris's reasoning.
"No," DeSantis posted on X.²
"Also, suffering from 'climate anxiety' is not exactly an argument for lowering the voting age," he added.²
DeSantis hit the nail on the head.
Harris's entire case rested on teenagers being stressed, underpaid, and obsessed with climate change — not civic knowledge, maturity, or understanding the responsibilities that come with voting.
The Governor's pushback highlighted the obvious contradiction in Harris's position.
She wants 16-year-olds voting but previously demanded raising the gun purchasing age to 21.
Back in 2022, Harris posted that the Senate needed to "raise the age to purchase guns from 18 to 21."³
So teenagers aren't mature enough to exercise their Second Amendment rights but are ready to shape election outcomes?
Harris also previously admitted what Democrats really think about young voters.
"What else do we know about this population, 18 through 24?" Harris said in a resurfaced clip.
"They are stupid. That is why we put them in dormitories."
That statement makes her current push for 16-year-old voters even more transparently political.
Democrats see voting age as partisan power grab
Harris didn't stumble into this position accidentally.
Lowering the voting age has been a Democrat dream for years because they know younger voters skew Left.
In 2019, 125 House Democrats and one Republican voted to lower the voting age in federal elections.⁴
Multiple states saw Democrat-led efforts to enfranchise 16 and 17-year-olds in local elections.
Vermont overrode a Republican Governor's veto to allow 16-year-olds to vote in municipal elections.⁵
Several Maryland cities and California municipalities adopted similar measures for school board or local elections.⁵
New Jersey Democrats promised to push legislation allowing 16-year-olds to vote in school board races statewide.⁶
The pattern is clear — Democrats push these changes wherever they control state legislatures because they believe it gives them an electoral advantage.
Harris's "climate anxiety" excuse just puts a pseudo-intellectual veneer on what's really a partisan power play.
Young voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2022 midterms, which is why Republicans like Jesse Watters suggested raising the voting age to 21 after those results.⁷
But 2024 told a different story that should terrify Democrats.
Trump made massive gains with voters under 30, winning young men 56% to 44% while Harris underperformed with the entire age group compared to Biden's 2020 numbers.⁸
Harris won just 54% of young voters — the first time since 2008 a Democrat Presidential candidate failed to hit the 60% threshold with this demographic.⁸
Trump's gains were especially pronounced in swing states, with Michigan seeing a 24-point drop in youth support for Democrats.⁸
Constitutional reality check on Harris's fantasy
Harris can pitch this idea all she wants from her podcast tour.
It's not happening.
Changing the national voting age requires a Constitutional amendment, which needs approval from two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.
The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971 during the Vietnam War — when the argument was if you're old enough to be drafted, you're old enough to vote.
That made sense.
Harris's climate anxiety excuse doesn't come close to meeting that bar.
DeSantis and other Republicans will fight this tooth and nail in states where they have power.
Florida under DeSantis passed multiple election integrity measures that Democrats claimed made voting harder, including restrictions on ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting.⁹
The idea that Florida or other Republican-controlled states would voluntarily lower the voting age is laughable.
Harris can keep pushing this on her book tour while Democrats lose more ground with the very young voters they're desperate to capture.
Trump proved in 2024 that authenticity and addressing real concerns about the economy beats Democrat panic about climate change every single time.
¹ Fox News, "Former Vice President Kamala Harris wants the voting age to be lowered," October 30, 2025.
² Ron DeSantis, X post, October 30, 2025.
³ Vice President Kamala Harris Archived, X post, 2022.
⁴ Civic Innovation Center, University of Maryland, "The Case for the 16-Year-Old Vote," accessed October 31, 2025.
⁵ Fox News, "Teens, Democrats continue push to lower voting age to 16," July 6, 2023.
⁶ New Jersey Monitor, "Democrats push to lower voting age to 16 for school board races," October 7, 2024.
⁷ Truthout, "GOP Election Bill in Florida Aims to Make It Harder for Gen Z to Vote," April 6, 2023.
⁸ NPR, "Biden won big with young voters. This year, they swung toward Trump in a big way," November 8, 2024.
⁹ Democracy Docket, "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' Record on Voting Rights," September 19, 2023.
