Harris accuses Trump of 'wholesale abandonment' of American ideals in major post-election speech

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Former Vice President Kamala Harris used a high-profile speech to sharply criticize President Donald Trump amid speculation about whether she will mount another presidential campaign or opt to run for California governor.

In her most extensive public remarks since leaving office in January following her defeat to Trump, Harris said Wednesday she’s inspired by Americans fighting Trump’s agenda despite threats to their freedom or livelihood.

“Instead of an administration working to advance America’s highest ideals, we are witnessing the wholesale abandonment of those ideals,” Harris said a day after Trump reached 100 days in office.

Before Wednesday, Harris had barely mentioned Trump by name since she conceded defeat to him in November.

In a 15-minute speech, she spoke to the anxiety and confusion that have gripped many of her supporters since Trump took office but discouraged despair.

“They are counting on the notion that if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others. But what they have overlooked is that fear is not the only thing that’s contagious,” Harris said. “Courage is contagious.”

Trump went after Harris in a campaign-style rally Tuesday marking his 100th day in office. He sarcastically called her a “great border czar" and a “great candidate" and repeated some of the applause lines he routinely delivered during the campaign.

Until Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket last summer, Trump said, “I knew nothing about her."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday, “I think I speak for everyone at the White House: We encourage Kamala Harris to continue going out and do speaking engagements.”

Harris cautioned Americans against viewing Trump’s administration as merely chaotic, casting it instead as a “high-velocity event,” the culmination of extensive work on the right to remake government.

“A vessel is being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making," Harris said. “An agenda to slash public education. An agenda to shrink government and then privatize its services. All while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us.”

Harris chose a friendly audience for her return to the political arena, addressing the 20th anniversary gala for Emerge America, an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office. It grew in part from Harris’ run for San Francisco district attorney in the early 2000s.

The speech was delivered below luminous chandeliers in a gold-trimmed ballroom in the landmark Palace Hotel.

Harris is ramping up her public presence as Democrats nationally search for a path forward after November's election, in which Republicans also won control of Congress. While a slate of high-profile Democrats — from governors to businessmen — seek leadership roles within the party, the former vice president retains unique influence and would reshape any future race she chooses to enter.

She praised Democrats who have been especially prolific in criticizing Trump, name-dropping lawmakers diverse in their ideology and style: Sens. Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy and Bernie Sanders along with Reps. Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But she did not take a stand in one of her party's central divides, neither calling for mass mobilization like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker or questioning Democratic positioning on key issues like California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“I’m not here tonight to offer all the answers,” Harris said. “But I am here to say this: You are not alone and we are all in this together.”

But she warned that things will probably get worse before they get better.

“The one check, the one balance, the one power that must not fail is the voice of the people,” she said.

Harris, a former state attorney general and U.S. senator from California, has not discouraged speculation that she might enter the race to replace the term-limited Newsom, himself a potential contender for president. And she has not ruled out another run for the White House.

She did not address her future Wednesday.

She continues to fundraise, using a joint committee that includes Harris for President, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties. The committee, the Harris Victory Fund, reported having about $4.5 million on hand at the end of March, according to federal records.

In recent fundraising emails, Harris has been blunt about the need for Democrats to unify ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Democrats need to “organize and stop Trump’s agenda while electing Democrats everywhere,” she wrote in recent emails. “There has never been a more important time for a strong Democratic Party — one that is willing to stand up to Donald Trump, Elon Musk and what they are doing to this country.”

The event marks a homecoming of sorts. Harris lives in Los Angeles but she is from the San Francisco Bay Area, where her political career is rooted. For her first major speech since the election, she chose familiar terrain and a friendly, in some ways familial, crowd.

Lisa Gotbhi, a health care executive in San Francisco, said Harris' loss last year was a “shock," but “she’s a voice we need and a leader we need. Let’s get back in the fight.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris delivers the keynote speech at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Former Vice President Kamala Harris delivers the keynote speech at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Former Vice President Kamala Harris delivers the keynote speech at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Former Vice President Kamala Harris delivers the keynote speech at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks before signing the desk drawer in her ceremonial office, a long-standing tradition for Vice Presidents, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildlife crews are no longer actively searching for two juvenile gray wolves who were part of a pack that killed dozens of cows and calves last summer in Northern California’s Sierra Valley, an official said Tuesday.

The two wolves were members of the Beyem Seyo pack that in 2025 killed or injured at least 92 calves and cows in a seven-month period, according to a report released last week by two researchers with the University of California, Davis.

Wolves in the state are protected under California law and the federal Endangered Species Act. Under former President Joe Biden, officials said they planned a first-ever national recovery plan for wolves, but President Donald Trump’s administration ended that initiative in November.

In October, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it had euthanized four gray wolves — three adults and a juvenile — from the Beyem Seyo pack after “an unprecedented level of livestock attacks across the Sierra Valley” by a single wolf pack since the canids returned to the state. It also said it planned to capture and relocate the remaining two wolves to wildlife facilities to prevent their behavior from spreading to other wolves in California.

Gray wolves primarily prey on wild animals like deer and elk, not livestock, but the pack became used to killing cows and calves, the department said.

“These wolves had become habituated to preying on cattle, a feeding pattern that persisted and was being taught to their offspring which would leave to form their own packs and could teach them the same cattle-preying behavior,” the department said at the time.

But following weeks of searching for the remaining two wolves, officials have “reduced efforts to capture” them, Katie Talbot, CDFW Deputy Director of Public Affairs, said in a statement.

“Despite best efforts from CDFW’s expert wolf biologists and law enforcement officers, we have not been able to find or get close enough to these young wolves to safely capture them,” Talbot said.

“We remain hopeful our continued remote monitoring will allow for sightings that will lead to safe capture of these juveniles," she added.

Talbot said that CDFW crews will be working this week on capturing wolves and collaring them throughout the state, including in the Sierra Valley.

Wildlife officials tried for months to prevent the pack from attacking farm animals by using drones, nonlethal bean bags, installing flags or rope to deter them and having officers in the field 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but their efforts failed.

“The efforts that the (CDFW) made were tremendous and heroic but it was too late.” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.

She said that cattle ranchers in the area should have been taking proactive prevention measures for years, including increased human presence around the cattle, keeping the livestock bunched up instead of letting them loose on large grazing pastures, and calving at the same time of year that deer and elk are birthing so wolves have a source of wild prey.

“Ranchers in California have been on notice that wolves were coming since late December 2011, when we got our first wolf. They have been on notice they would establish packs since 2015,” when the first pack was confirmed in Siskiyou County, Weiss said.

Gray wolves were eradicated in California early in the last century because of their perceived threat to livestock, with the last known native wolf killed in 1924 in Lassen County. Since their reintroduction in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they’ve proliferated throughout the West. The recovering population has meant increasing conflict with ranchers.

“It was a horrible summer here for everybody and the emotional strain was probably worse than the financial strain for most people. They did the right thing. We couldn’t go on living the way we were living,” said Rick Roberti, a cattle rancher in Plumas County and president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, who lost several animals.

Economist Tina Saitone and researcher Tracy Schohr said in UC Davis’ quarterly agricultural economics update released Friday that the Beyem Seyo pack killed more livestock than the entire wolf population of Montana killed in 2024 and the killings of farm animals by the wolves in Wyoming in 2023.

In Montana, the state’s 1,100 wolves killed 54 domestic animals in 2024, and Wyoming’s 352 wolves killed 49 livestock in 2023, the scientists said.

In California, about 70 gray wolves were responsible for 175 livestock kills between January and October of last year, with the Beyem Seyo pack responsible for half of the killings, according to CDFW data.

Roberti said the attacks on livestock in Plumas and Sierra counties left many ranchers angry. He said he would like to see certain areas in the state declared “special zones” where people are allowed to hunt wolves that attack livestock.

“We’re pretty much in unison about thinking that it would help if we started taking out the ones that are just killing cattle and are too habituated to man or they’re not afraid of us,” he said.

The predators are a long way from recovery, Weiss said, adding that killing them is not a long-term solution.

“The scientific literature is pretty conclusory that killing wolves to resolve conflicts with livestock is not a solution. It can actually be counterproductive. It can result in there being more conflicts with livestock," she said.

FILE - This remote camera image provided by the U.S. Forest Service shows a female gray wolf and two of the three pups born in 2017 in the wilds of Lassen National Forest in northern California on June 29, 2017. (U.S. Forest Service via AP, File)