nomination

WASHINGTON — As Kamala Harris eyes a possible 2028 presidential bid, there is little outward enthusiasm among her biggest 2024 backers to fund a repeat performance, adding to uncertainty about the former vice president’s prospects in what is sure to be a crowded primary field.

The Times reached out to more than two dozen top donors to the biggest pro-Harris super PAC in 2024. Several of them said they do not plan to support her should she choose to run, or declined to talk about her. Others did not respond.

“I don’t think it’s a helpful narrative [for 2028] to start with the 2024 hangover,” said one fundraiser for Harris’ 2024 campaign, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “There is an enormous appetite for new blood — something fresh, something that really represents the future, not the past.”

That narrative is poised to present Harris’ biggest challenge if she decides to run — particularly if it jeopardizes her ability to pull in crucial funding. Though few in the party want to criticize Harris, few appear inclined to endorse her, and conversations about her prospects often come down to one thing: Democrats’ anxiety about winning.

“She’s run, she’s lost, so the question’s going to be, is there somebody that gives Democratic voters more of a sense that they could win?” said Dick Harpootlian, a longtime South Carolina Democratic strategist. “That’s what all of us are looking for. We want to win in ‘28.”

The chatter among party elites appears at odds with recent polling in Harris’ favor, including in April’s Harvard Center for American Political Studies/Harris Poll, which showed Harris leading the Democratic field with support from 50% of Democrats.

The former vice president has also been met with enthusiasm from audiences in a series of recent speaking stops — including when she told a friendly crowd at a New York conference in April that she “might” run for president.

Harris remains undecided about whether to mount a run, according to a person familiar with her thinking, who said Friday she has been focused on boosting Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, meeting voters and delivering messages about the economy and affordability.

If she were to run, Harris would expect a crowded primary field to split donors and would be aware of the need to overcome the perception of skeptics, this person said — but noted that 2028 would afford a very different dynamic than the circumstances under which she took the nomination in 2024.

“There’s a bit of a ‘doth protest too much’ quality to some of these complaints about the idea of her running,” said the person close to her. “It may be a backhanded way of acknowledging that she’d be quite formidable if she decided to get in.”

Speculation about whether Harris would run again — and whether she should — has swirled since her truncated 2024 campaign ended in defeat to Donald Trump. Harris’ decision not to run for California governor in a wide-open race was broadly viewed as signaling presidential ambitions, and she reentered the public eye with the publication of a book about the 2024 campaign and an associated speaking tour.

Last month, Harris gave her strongest signal yet that she could seek the party’s nomination again, telling the Rev. Al Sharpton at a gathering of his civil rights organization in New York that she was “thinking about it.”

“I know what the job is and I know what it requires,” Harris said at the time.

Harris’ 2024 loss to Trump and failure to capture any battleground states — after entering the race late following President Biden’s exit — was bruising for Democrats. The defeat is lingering longer for some top donors than it did after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, making them extra wary, said one Democratic political consultant.

“Especially in the donor class, everyone feels burnt,” he said. “People just want to turn the page.”

The Times contacted top donors to Future Forward, the Democratic super PAC that spent the most to back Harris in the 2024 election. All the donors contacted gave at least $1 million and some acted as bundlers for the campaign, soliciting big checks from other donors in addition to their own contributions.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, who gave $1 million to Future Forward in 2024, said he hoped to support a different Californian.

“Gavin is the candidate who can motivate both the left and the center,” Hastings told The Times, referring to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

A bundler for both Harris and Biden said it comes down to who can give Democrats the best chance to succeed.

“I think it is too early to pick a favorite in the 2028 race, but Kamala Harris will not be my candidate,” this person said. “I don’t think she would appeal to a swing voter, and we need swing voters to win.”

Others, including a few party leaders, deflected questions by citing a focus on this year’s midterm elections. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who last year praised Newsom’s presidential prospects during a visit by the governor, said Tuesday that Democrats should be zeroed in on 2026.

“I’m not thinking about 2028, and if she were to call me I wouldn’t talk to her about it,” Clyburn told The Times when asked about Harris’ chances.

Enthusiasm for Harris and skepticism about her viability in 2028 aren’t mutually exclusive, said the former Harris fundraiser.

“A lot of people love her and also don’t think that she is the answer for 2028,” the fundraiser said.

The attitudes of the donor class and political elite may be at odds with those of regular Americans, particularly Black and working-class voters, the Democratic political consultant said. Few of the possible candidates have the potential to excite Black voters the way Harris does, he said.

If a candidate, whether Harris or someone else, makes a successful case that they can win, Black voters will be “strategic and optimistic enough” to rally around whoever it is, said Keneshia Grant, a Howard University political scientist.

But, she said, “I don’t think that they are going to take well to work by elites or the donor class to sideline Harris if there is no clear, reasonable, exciting, Obama-level, yes-we-can candidate instead of her.”

In recent weeks, Harris has spoken at a fundraiser in South Carolina, a party luncheon in Michigan and a dinner in Arkansas. On Thursday, she was in Nevada to rally Democrats ahead of the midterm primary.

She also joined other likely 2028 contenders at the Colorado Speaker Series in Denver and Sharpton’s conference, accepted an award from the nonprofit Public Counsel at a Los Angeles gala and addressed the National Women’s Law Center gala in Washington to a warm reception, as did Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

“She was inspiring, she was hopeful, she pushed back on Trump,” said Jay Parmley, chair of the Democratic Party in South Carolina, where Harris spoke at a party-hosted fundraiser in Greenville on April 15.

South Carolina, a key primary state, could help unlock Harris’ path to the nomination. If Black voters there boosted her to a win, she could build early momentum.

But Parmley said he believed she would have to “get over” the hurdle of convincing voters that she can beat the GOP.

“I don’t think it’s a given she wins here without work,” Parmley said. “She’s going to have to really visit with voters and work just like everybody else.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos in Washington contributed to this report.

Casey Means speaks during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing on her nomination to be surgeon general on February 25. On Thursday, President Donald Trump pulled her nomination. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

April 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the nomination of Casey Means for surgeon general and replaced her with Dr. Nicole Saphier.

Means, a medical doctor, is a Make America Healthy Again activist who doesn’t have an active medical license.

Saphier is a working radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a former Fox News contributor.

Trump announced the appointment on Truth Social.

“Nicole is a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments. She is also an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans. Dr. Nicole Saphier will do great things for our Country, and help, ‘MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN,'” the president posted.

Means’ nomination had stalled in the Senate. In February, she answered senators’ questions about vaccines, psychedelics and abortion pills.

Trump blamed Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician, because he had refused to say if he would support Means.

He said, in a separate post: “Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!”

In January, Trump endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., for the Louisiana Republican primary against Cassidy.

When reporters asked Cassidy about Trump blaming Means’ failed nomination on him, Cassidy said, “I can promise you, there are multiple people on the committee who decided to vote no,” Politico reported.

WASHINGTON — President Trump says he’s nominating Fox News Channel contributor Nicole Saphier for surgeon general after Casey Means’ path forward stalled in the Senate over questions about her experience and her stance on vaccines.

In a social media post Thursday, the Republican president said Saphier is “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment.”

Senators of both major political parties grilled Means on her vaccine stance and other health topics during a tense confirmation hearing, deepening doubts about her ability to secure the votes she needs for the role.

Earlier Thursday, Trump on social media commended Means as “a strong MAHA Warrior,” also criticizing the “intransigence and political games” from GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who interrogated Means about vaccines during the hearing.

The withdrawal of Means’ nomination to be the next U.S. surgeon general is a blow to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his movement, which championed Means for the role as the country’s top doctor despite her nontraditional path in medicine and some controversial past remarks on vaccines and other health topics.

The withdrawal comes after tense exchanges between Means and lawmakers of both parties threw into question whether she could secure enough votes to advance out of the Senate health committee. Her nomination had languished since her confirmation hearing in late February, even as activists from Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement orchestrated a push to support her bid by surging phone calls to Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who had both indicated reservations with the pick.

In nominating Means last May, Trump sought to hire a close ally of Kennedy as the nation’s doctor. Means, a Stanford-education physician whose disillusionment with the healthcare system led to her career as an author and entrepreneur, promotes ideas popular with the MAHA movement, including that Americans are overmedicalized and that diet and lifestyle changes should be at the center of efforts to end widespread chronic disease.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve said Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”

The comments underscore the challenge faced by Warsh, 56, a financier and former member of the Fed’s board of governors whom Trump named in January to replace the current Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell. Democrats on the committee accused Warsh of flip-flopping on interest rates over the years, supporting higher interest rates under Democratic presidents and advocating rate cuts during Trump’s time in office. Investors are watching the hearing closely to see how Warsh balances Trump’s demands with worsening inflation, as the war in Iran pushes up the price of gasoline.

Higher inflation typically leads the Fed to raise rates, or at least keep them unchanged, rather than cut them. When the Fed changes its key rate, it can affect mortgages, auto loans and business borrowing.

Yet Warsh’s account was challenged by Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, who said that Wall Street Journal reporting last year found that Trump had urged Warsh to reduce borrowing costs.

“Who’s lying here? Is it you or the president?” Gallego asked.

“I think those reporters need better sources,” Warsh responded.

For all the back and forth, the hearing didn’t appear to advance Warsh’s nomination, which has been delayed by a Justice Department investigation into the Fed and Powell, over brief testimony Powell gave last June before the same panel about a building renovation.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the committee, reiterated Tuesday he wouldn’t vote for Warsh until the investigation is dropped. With the committee closely divided and all Democrats opposed to his nomination, Tillis’ opposition is enough to bottle it up in committee.

“We have got to get rid of this investigation,” Tillis said, “so I can support your nomination.”

Tillis has previously said that all seven Republicans on the committee have signed a letter stating that Powell did not commit a crime when he testified before the panel last June. Federal prosecutors, led by U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro, are investigating his testimony for potential perjury, though a judge said last month they offered no evidence to support the charge when he threw out subpoenas Pirro had issued.

Prosecutors from her office as recently as last week sought access to the Fed’s building project but were turned away, revealing that the Trump administration has not reversed course despite opposition from members of his own party that are essential to Warsh’s confirmation.

In his opening remarks, Warsh told the Senate Banking Committee that one of his top goals would be to fight inflation, which remains elevated at 3.3% annually.

“Congress tasked the Fed with the mission to ensure price stability, without excuse or equivocation, argument or anguish,” Warsh said. “Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it.”

Warsh would be in a tough spot if confirmed. Inflation is worsening, making it much harder for the Fed to implement the interest rate cuts Trump so desperately seeks. The conflict could also slow the economy, as well as hiring. And if Warsh ultimately becomes chair, he may very well find his predecessor, Powell, still sitting on the Fed’s governing board, an uncomfortable arrangement that hasn’t occurred since the late 1940s.

Warsh said the Fed’s political independence is “essential,” and that the central bank wasn’t threatened when “elected officials — presidents, senators, or members of the House — state their views on interest rates.” Trump has repeatedly urged Powell to cut the Fed’s key rate from its current level of about 3.6% to as low as 1%, a view almost no economist shares.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that Trump has not just stated his opinions on rates, but has sought to fire a Fed governor and is investigating Powell.

“The Senate should not be aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s illegal takeover of the Fed by installing his chosen sock puppet as chair,” she said Tuesday.

Warren also noted that Warsh has not disclosed all of his financial holdings, which include investments in startups and private companies, or the size of those financial stakes. For example, Warsh has said he has holdings in SpaceX and Polymarket, but has not said how large those investments are.

Warren charged that Warsh is not in compliance with ethics requirements. Warsh argued that the Office of Government Ethics has signed off on his plan to sell all his assets within 90 days of his confirmation.

The turmoil could make a potential transition from Powell to Warsh an unusually turbulent one for the world’s most pivotal central bank, which has historically experienced smooth transfers of power. Should the change in leadership prove particularly bumpy, it could unnerve markets and lift longer-term interest rates.

Powell’s term as chair ends May 15. He said last month that he would remain as chair until a successor is named. Powell also is serving a separate term as a member of the Fed’s governing board that lasts until January 2028. Fed chairs typically leave the board when their terms as chair end, but Powell said last month he would remain on the board, even if a new chair is approved, until the investigation is dropped.

Trump said he would fire Powell if he attempted to remain at the Fed. Yet Trump’s previous attempt to remove a Fed governor, Lisa Cook, has been tied up in court. During oral arguments in January, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court appeared to lean toward leaving Cook at the Fed.

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, to be the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a social media post, Trump described Schwartz as “incredibly talented” and said, “She is a STAR!”

The Atlanta-based CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats, has been in turmoil since Trump returned to office more than a year ago, with a succession of mostly temporary leaders.

The agency is overseen by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had promised not to change the nation’s vaccination schedule. But shortly after taking office, Kennedy said he was going to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule and went on to attempt a substantial rewrite of vaccine recommendations for kids. Some of those efforts were put on hold recently by a federal judge.

The administration’s first pick to run the CDC was former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon, but his March 2025 Senate confirmation hearing was canceled an hour before it was to begin. Weldon said at the time that he’d been told not enough senators were willing to vote for him.

The White House then moved on to Susan Monarez, who had been serving as the CDC’s acting director. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but she was ousted in less than a month. Trump administration officials said she wasn’t aligned with their agenda so they terminated her.

Several key CDC scientific leaders resigned in protest, saying Monarez’s dismissal dashed their hopes that a CDC director would be able to guard against political meddling in the agency’s scientific research and health recommendations.

Since then, there’s been a revolving door in agency leadership, with the short-term role of acting director being passed from one Washington-based Health and Human Services official to another. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has been overseeing the CDC the past several weeks.

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday, Kennedy said the new CDC team was “extraordinary.”

“I think this new team is really going to be able to revolutionize CDC and get it back on track,” he said.

Schwartz holds multiple academic credentials, including both medical and law degrees. Her career has largely been spent in military uniform, including in a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard where she oversaw the organization’s system of 41 clinics and 150 sick bays.

She later served as deputy surgeon general, where she helped lead uniformed medical and health professionals posted at the CDC and government health agencies that serve the general public.

Schwartz could not be reached for comment.

Trump also announced the appointment of Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart executive, as CDC deputy director and chief operating officer. Dr. Jennifer Shuford, Texas health commissioner, was named the CDC’s deputy director and chief medical officer. And Dr. Sara Brenner, a former Food and Drug Administration administrator, was designated as a senior counselor for public health to Kennedy.

In a social media post Thursday, Kennedy congratulated Schwartz and the other appointees and said he looks “forward to working together to restore trust, accountability, and scientific integrity” at the CDC.

But Aaron Siri, a lawyer and ally of Kennedy in attacking vaccines and pharmaceutical companies, criticized Schwartz’s selection. In a social media post, Siri lambasted Schwartz’s past promotion of vaccinations and said “she lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC.”

Schwartz’s nomination comes as Dr. Casey Means, Trump’s pick for another key health-related role, U.S. surgeon general, has had difficulty getting confirmed.

Means’ languishing nomination after appearing for a confirmation hearing in February reflects the skepticism that lawmakers of both parties have expressed toward the direction in which Kennedy has taken his department.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.