Harris rejects DeSantis challenge to debate slavery, Florida academic standards

Vice President Kamala Harris returned to Florida Tuesday and continued to take aim at the state's widely panned new Black history curriculum standard that suggests enslaved people learned skills that could later benefit them.

"Right here in Florida, they plan to teach students that enslaved people benefitted from slavery," Harris said in remarks at a Women's Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church convention in Orlando. "They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, in an attempt to divide and distract our nation with unnecessary debates."

The state board last month unanimously approved the new standards, including a portion of "benchmark clarifications," one of which calls for the instruction of "how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

"And now they attempt to legitimize these unnecessary debates with a proposal that most recently came in of a politically-motivated roundtable," Harris added.

On Monday, DeSantis sent a letter to Harris, obtained by ABC News, inviting her to visit Tallahassee and discuss the state's new standards, while also attacking the Biden administration for taking "cheap" shots. The invitation also would have included Dr. William Allen, one of the architects of the new history curriculum.

"One would think the White House would applaud such boldness in teaching the unique and important story of African American History," DeSantis wrote in the letter. "But you have instead attempted to score cheap political points and label Florida parents 'extremists.' It's past time to set the record straight."

Harris on Tuesday shot back without mentioning DeSantis by name, eliciting applause from the audience.

"Well, I'm here in Florida, and I will tell you, there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery," she said.

In a sit-down interview on Friday with "ABC News Live Prime" anchor Linsey Davis, the vice president said it was "ridiculous" she has to say enslaved people did not benefit from slavery.

"This is just a matter of whether one chooses to speak fact and truth or not, and it's pretty much that simple" Harris told Davis.

Tuesday's trip to Florida is Harris's second to the Sunshine State is the past two weeks. Harris made a previously unscheduled stop in Jacksonville on July 21 to rail against the new standards just two days after they were approved.

This summer, Harris has logged many miles crisscrossing the country and going on offense on many political battle fronts, including on the issue of abortion rights.

On Friday, moments before various Republican presidential candidates appeared in the state, across town in Des Moines, Iowa, Harris lambasted abortion bans, including one in the state.

"How dare these supposed leaders, these supposed leaders have decided they're in a better position to tell her what's in her best interest than she is to know," she said.

Iowa GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a six-week abortion ban just two weeks earlier.

"We have a responsibility not only to protect the unborn in law, but to change the destructive culture of abortion that still exists in a post-Roe world," Reynolds said in statement at the time of the signing.

Harris was also deployed to North Carolina in June to cap the Biden administration's week-long effort to center abortion rights in the political debate and deliver remarks exactly one year after the Supreme Court overruled its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.

In her remarks, Harris also took aim at the state's 12-week abortion ban that would into effect a week later, and those like it.

Harris told the crowd in Charlotte that since the Court's decision women were suffering the consequences of "laws that in design and effect have created chaos, confusion, and fear. Laws that have denied women of our country care even when their life and health were at risk."

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who represents parts of Orlando in the Florida Legislature, said Harris's distinction as the first woman and first Black and South Asian vice president makes her the ideal face of the administration's fight.

"I think she fits in all these intersections that are under attack right now and she can really offer that -- not just that clear opposition, but a clear vision for the future," Eskamani told ABC News.

Harris also appears to be having more success at galvanizing Democrats' base than President Joe Biden.

A New York Times/Siena College poll out Tuesday found that six percent more Democrats would be more enthusiastic if Harris led the ticket compared to Biden, 26% to 20%.

The critical bloc of independent voters the president needs to attract in what will likely be another close election were twice as likely to view a Harris nomination enthusiastically than a Biden one, at 16% and 8% respectively, the poll also found.

ABC News' Hannah Demissie, Ben Gittleson, Will McDuffie and Olivia Osteen contributed to this report.