Kamala's niece Meena Harris celebrates controversial Algerian boxer who beat women for Olympic gold

Kamala Harris’ niece Meena Harris celebrated Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s gold medal win, the welterweight fighter that had been embroiled in controversy over the course of the Paris Olympics over previously failing gender eligibility testing at the 2023 world championships. Meena is a children's book author whose works have featured her mother and aunt as well as stories about ambition for girls.

"Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics. So happy for her," Harris wrote on Instagram in a post on Friday, alongside photos of the Algeria fighter’s celebrations after the gold medal match against China's Yang Liu.

In Friday’s gold medal bout, all five judges ruled 10-9 in Khelif’s favor in each of the three rounds of fighting. Earlier in the bracket, Khelif’s fight against Italy’s Angela Carini went viral on social media after Khelif's opponent forfeited just 46 seconds into the first round. Italian coach Emanuele Renzini told reporters after the fight that Carini didn’t want to continue the fight after being punched hard in the nose by Khelif, saying, "After one punch she feel big pain." Khelif won that fight by ABD, meaning "abandoned."

Khelif, as well as the Taiwanese featherweight boxer Lin Yu-Ting who also won gold, were disqualified from the 2023 world championships by the International Boxing Association after officials announced that they had failed their gender eligibility tests. The IBA stated at the time that the athletes had "pretended to be women" and had "XY chromosomes." Ahead of the 2024 Olympics, the IOC withdrew recognition of the Russian-led sport organizing body over a failure to fulfill conditions set by the IOC in 2021. The IOC installed the Paris Boxing Unit to oversee the sport for the 2024 Olympic Games. USA Boxing terminated its relationship with the IBA in 2023, citing "ongoing failures of IBA leadership."

The IOC stated that both fighters had met the criteria to compete in Paris and stated that both athletes’ passports state that they are women. Both athletes competed at the Tokyo Olympics, and neither have ever identified as transgender. However, there has been concerns about their biological sex after they tested as having male chromosomes.

Ahead of Khelif's semi-final bout, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach defended the organization’s decision to allow the two athletes to fight. "We have two boxers who were born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as women," Bach said.