US President Donald Trump has revoked Secret Service protection for Kamala Harris, the Democratic former vice-president and his rival in the 2024 election, a senior White House official said on Friday. The move, which will take effect on Monday, comes as Harris gears up for a book tour to promote her account of her three-and-a-half-month-long presidential race against Trump last year, which ended in defeat. Although vice-presidents are typically afforded six months of Secret Service protection after leaving office, former president Joe Biden had extended that time period for Harris by another year — a decision that Trump overruled.
Trump has used his powers to limit both Secret Service protection and security clearances against some of his fiercest critics and political opponents, including both Democrats and Republicans. Trump had already revoked the security clearance for Harris, which allowed her to access sensitive and classified information, earlier this year. He did the same for a larger group of former officials, including Biden, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton — who ran against him in 2016 — and Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser. A spokesperson for Harris told The Washington Post the former vice-president was “grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety”. Harris’s book tour is set to begin in late September in New York City. .
She has described her memoir 107 Days as “a candid and personal account of my journey — the shortest presidential campaign in modern history”. The campaign was punctuated by violence, which has been a feature of US politics in recent years. Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania and was later targeted by a gunman in Florida. In 2021, Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol and called for the execution of his vice-president Mike Pence. A group of men in 2020 also tried to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer. Trump won last year’s White House race by prevailing in all important battleground states and winning the electoral college by a wide margin of 312 to 226. In the national popular vote, however, the result was closer, with Trump winning 49.8 per cent against 48.3 per cent for Harris. Harris has ruled out running for governor in her home state of California next year but is still considering whether to launch a new presidential bid in 2028.
