Anyone over the age of 30 may have thought Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter was trolling her when she posted a bizarre message on Instagram the day after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election race.
‘Kamala IS brat,’ she wrote on Sunday to her 315,000 followers.
Believe it or not, coming from a GenZer, that’s quite the compliment.
And in many ways, 25-year-old Ella Emhoff, the heavily tattooed and unapologetically uni-browed daughter of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, epitomizes the Gen-Z liberal: She runs a knitting club, advocates for transgender rights and doesn’t shave her armpits.
She picked up on the ‘Brat’ theme from British pop sensation Charli XCX, who also posted Sunday that ‘Kamala IS brat’.
The term is the title of Charli’s latest album and, by her own definition, means ‘you’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.’
The singer’s post has already been viewed a whopping 52 million times, and Harris’s nascent presidential team appears to be ecstatic over it – even re-branding their official campaign Twitter account with Brat-themed fonts and colors (lime green).
Clearly then, Ella Emhoff knows a trend when she sees one.
However, her stepmom would be wise to keep a close watch on the other fads that Ella seems to have expressed an affinity with – not least troubling reactions to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
On November 4, just weeks after Hamas’s murderous invasion, Emhoff shared a fundraising link for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) in the ‘bio’ of her Instagram account.
PCRF is a self-described humanitarian group that purports to provide relief to ordinary Gazans – but, Middle East experts and members of Congress say most of their raised funds have likely ended up in the hands of terrorists.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, was among those shocked by Emhoff’s backing of the PCRF.
‘It’s of tremendous concern and I find it abhorrent,’ spat Van Drew (R-NJ), who explained that donations sent into Gaza in November 2023 were at risk of being siphoned off by Hamas. ‘To be honest with you, I am kind of stunned by [Emhoff’s post]. It’s disturbing to the maximum degree.’
Emhoff deleted the fundraising appeal within days but, apparently, she didn’t learn from her mistake.
In March this year, she posted a link encouraging donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) – despite the fact that the Biden administration had dramatically cut off funding to the group nearly two months before.
‘The United States is extremely troubled by the allegations that 12 UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel,’ a State Department spokesman had explained in January.
Embarrassingly for Biden’s Veep, the post provoked the ire of the Executive Director of a nonprofit United Nations watchdog ‘UN Watch’, who urged Emhoff to ‘read our reports showing how UNRWA teachers and school principals systematically promote and encourage Jihadi terrorism and the slaughter of Jews.’
Emhoff’s page no longer displays the UNRWA endorsement.
Nonetheless, these were troubling findings for a woman now in the running to become America’s next First Daughter – and especially one who’s not without influence of her own.
Emhoff splashed onto the scene at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration – hailed as an instant style sensation as she appeared in a $5,000 Miu Miu tweed coat, bedazzled with orange crystals.
The look went viral and The New York Times gushed that Emhoff was the ‘fashion world’s latest influencer-in-waiting.’
From there her star status climbed.
Shortly after the inauguration, Emhoff was signed by the IMG Models agency and has since worked for high-end fashion brands from Mulberry to Prada.
By August 2022, Emhoff had been lauded in a Harper’s Bazaar ‘Icon issue’ as part of ‘a rising generation of stars — people 30 years old or younger — who are making an impact on the world through their ideas and their art.’
In September that year, she made her most daring showing yet: strutting down the runway during New York Fashion Week, boldly baring one breast in a barely-there green scarf. She paired the unique ‘top’ with black leather matrix gloves, a matching leather miniskirt and strappy stilettos. Her fashion celebrity had been cemented.
Off the runway, Ella has turned her passion for art into a side hustle with her ‘Soft Hands Knit Club’ – a monthly meeting for like-minded hipsters to craft together… at $60 per person.
Ella’s art studio is in Brooklyn. Fans on social media once branded her ‘The First Daughter of Bushwick’ for her personification of the community’s eccentric vibe.
She hosts her quirky club at The Standard Hotel in New York’s East Village – and public records show she has owned a hip $1.2 million two-bedroom ‘loft-like’ apartment in lower Manhattan since November 2022.
Ella has also been a keen activist since she, at the age of nine, rallied alongside her family against a 2008 California ballot proposition intended to ban same-sex marriage. The measure passed but it was later overturned by the courts.
In 2020, she announced that she would support ‘For the Gworls’ – a black, transgender-led collective that raises money to pay for gender-affirming surgeries and help black trans people with rent.
And while Ella has never publicly spoken about her own sexuality, she began dating GQ editor Sam Hine in February 2021 – when she was 22 and he was 27.
Hine and Ella finessed their way onto the roster for Paris Fashion Week events in June of 2021, including a star-studded dinner at the opulent Ritz Paris, where the pair wined and dined alongside supermodel Bella Hadid and fashion elite.
Days later, the couple was spotted on board a $2,400 per day yacht as they vacationed in St. Tropez in southern France. Clad in skimpy swimsuits – they were photographed kissing and clutching wine glasses.
Despite her teeny bathing suit, Ella decided to go au naturale and let her body hair flow freely – even raising her arms to proudly show off her ungroomed armpit hair.
Ella is also, noticeably, pro-unibrow – and wants everyone else to be too!
‘When I was younger I would pluck my middle brow area, but I recently stopped and it’s amazing,’ she told Vogue in a behind-the-scenes interview from Paris Fashion Week 2021. ‘I think everyone should just embrace their little unibrows,’ she said.
Perhaps Ella’s seemingly supreme self-confidence is no surprise, raised in sunny Los Angeles, California to her father and film producer Kerstin Emhoff, Ella enjoyed one of the most privileged upbringings money can buy.
As a hot-shot entertainment lawyer, and before putting his career on temporary hold when he became Second Gentleman, her father earned more than a million dollars a year, raising his children in a $5 million four-bedroom home in the posh Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles – home to the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and LeBron James.
He sent Ella to the self-styled ‘independent and progressive’ $51,000-a-year Wildwood School in Los Angeles, before paying for her to jet off to New York’s $50,000-per-year Parsons The New School of Design to study fine arts with a focus on textiles. She graduated in 2021 and stayed in New York City.
Ella’s parents divorced in 2008 when she was just 9 – and Kamala married Doug six years later. Ella and her brother Cole, now 29, coined the nickname ‘Momala’ for their new stepmother.
While her father is a practicing Jew, Ella has made it clear that she does not share his faith.
In 2020, she declined to participate in a prominent Jewish newspaper’s profile of Jewish Americans in public life.
‘Ella is not Jewish,’ her spokesman said. ‘Ella truly has no qualms with the faith, but she does not want to speak on behalf of Judaism, as she does not celebrate herself.’
As for her relationship with Kamala, both Ella and her brother Cole have nothing but nice words for their ‘Momala’.
Doug Emhoff introduced his teenagers to their new stepmom just two months after they started dating – and, according to Harris, she has since developed a close bond with them.
‘They are brilliant, talented, funny kids who have grown to be remarkable adults,’ Harris wrote in a personal essay for ELLE in 2019. ‘I was already hooked on Doug, but I believe it was Cole and Ella who reeled me in.’
In an interview with the New York Times in 2021, Ella and Cole spilled on Harris’ relationship with their father.
‘Doug and Kamala together are like almost vomit-inducingly cute and coupley. I’m like, ‘When is this going to wear off?’ said Cole.
Ella agreed.
‘It’s so insane,’ she told the Times. ‘It’s like the honeymoon phase forever. Like, the rest of the world gets to see it on social media, but we live that.’
Overall, she described her blended family as ‘very healthy’ with a ‘cool dynamic’.
But when it came to her new life in the public eye, Ella confessed to a bit of a shock.
‘This is like, we’re really in it. We’re learning the behind the scenes. We’re learning policy,’ she said.
Now, as her stepmother eyes the Oval Office, Ella may have even more learning to do.