Harris resigns from Senate before inauguration

US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Monday resigned from the Senate, two days before her inauguration alongside President-elect Joe Biden.

"I would like to thank the people of California for the honor of serving them in the US Senate over the past four years," Harris wrote in her resignation letter sent to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Newsom had selected California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to serve out the rest of Harris' term that ends in 2022.

Harris also sent a video message via Twitter, saying she had applied to be a Senate intern in the office of then-senior Senator from California, Alan Cranston, while she was a sophomore at Howard University in 1984.

"I got chosen to be one of her interns. Who would have known, so many years later, I would actually run the office where I was once a student watching the incredible work a senator can do," she said.

Read Kamala Harris breaks barriers as America's next vice president

"... the vice presidency is the only office in our government that belongs to both the executive branch and the legislative branch," she also wrote in her farewell letter.

Harris, a Democrat, will have the power to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. She noted in her letter there has been 268 tie-breaking votes by a vice president in US history.

She will be the first female vice president in US history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.