The Democratic 2024 nominee advised The Associated Press in an interview on Friday (October 17, 2025) that she stays involved with Democrats on Capitol Hill, encouraging them to keep up their calls for that President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional majority deal with looming spikes in Affordable Care Act medical insurance premiums.
“The Republicans management the House. They management the Senate. They management the White House. They are in cost, and they’re answerable for the shutdown,” she mentioned.
Democrats, she mentioned, “are doing the suitable factor by standing up for working individuals and never permitting the Republicans to hold a tax reduce for the wealthiest individuals in our nation on the backs of working individuals in America”.
It was only one instance of Ms. Harris utilizing her e-book tour to induce Democrats to guide a constant, aggressive resistance to Mr. Trump whereas on the identical time recommitting to reaching working and middle-class voters who supported the Republican or stayed dwelling final November.
Over the course of the day, Ms. Harris sat down for an hour-long dialog with 5 black school college students, spoke to the AP and held two e-book discussions in Alabama’s largest metropolis. Paid ticketholders crammed downtown Birmingham’s Alabama Theatre, the place Ms. Harris mentioned her marketing campaign, the Democratic Party and the course of the nation with radio host Charlamagne tha God.
Through all of it, Ms. Harris projected the aura of celebration elder and future candidate. She expressed concern for the nation’s path and outright incredulity over a lot of Mr. Trump’s actions. When VIP ticketholders advised her in a photograph line how disillusioned they’d been by her loss, she performed it ahead.
“We’ve obtained work to do,” she mentioned repeatedly. “Keep preventing.”
On stage and to the AP, she praised her celebration’s “deep and broad bench” and even referred to as for reducing the nation’s voting age to 16 to carry extra younger individuals into the political course of.
Harris indicators she’s not completed
Ms. Harris, 60, maintained she has made no determination about her personal political future. But she made clear that working once more in 2028 continues to be on the desk and that she sees herself as a participant within the celebration and a voice within the nationwide discourse.
“I’m a frontrunner of the celebration,” she advised the AP. “I take significantly that duty and responsibility that I really feel”, because the earlier nominee. That “contains travelling the nation speaking and principally listening with people,” she mentioned, and “getting people able to combat within the midterms” in 2026.
Ms. Harris’s aides confirmed she’s going to assist Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia with digital occasions, fundraising appeals and robocalls. She additionally just lately headlined a fundraiser for North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper, a former Governor and Ms. Harris’s longtime good friend.
Later this month, she plans to marketing campaign for California’s “Yes on Prop 50”, the poll measure that may permit a Democratic-led redraw of the State’s congressional districts to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas and different Republican-controlled States.
Authenticity will likely be key for Democratic candidates
Ms. Harris, who was unusually blunt in her e-book “107 Days” about her opinions on a variety of political figures, was extra circumspect on Friday (October 17, 2025) when requested to evaluate different main Democrats.
“We need to get away from this concept of ‘Who is the one?’. There are many ways in which I feel will likely be efficient when individuals are genuine unto themselves,” she mentioned when requested about her fellow Californian, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and his latest social media mockery of Mr. Trump.
She named U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Brittany Petterson, D-Colo., however didn’t elaborate. “Every voice and each perspective” can resonate with sure voters, she mentioned.
Ms. Harris rejected standard political knowledge that she misplaced partially due to Republicans’ sustained assaults on cultural and social points, particularly transgender points. She mentioned economics, notably inflation, was the larger issue.
“There are a good quantity of people that voted for Donald Trump as a result of they believed what he mentioned, which is that he was going to carry down costs,” she mentioned. “Sadly, he lied to them.”
Economic arguments matter most
With costs nonetheless excessive and wealth gaps rising, Ms. Harris mentioned, “We’ve obtained to do a greater job of coping with the rapid wants of the American individuals.” She praised the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments however mentioned that household-level insurance policies resembling youngster tax credit, household go away and first-time homebuyer credit ought to have come earlier than a sweeping infrastructure program and the CHIPS semiconductor manufacturing regulation.
Even with a sharper financial message, Ms. Harris acknowledged structural challenges for Democrats: the proliferation of false data and what she described as conservatives’ assault on democracy.
She rejected the thought of “low-information voters”, saying the issue is definitely an abundance of misinformation and disinformation that makes it more durable to achieve many citizens. She mentioned that the Democrats should penetrate these silos quite than presume anybody is a misplaced trigger.
“They need to be heard,” she mentioned.
Backsliding on civil rights
Onstage, Ms. Harris described a “reversal” of the Civil Rights Movement. She lamented that the Supreme Court may eradicate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects political district boundaries drawn to make sure minority communities can elect candidates of their alternative.
Without that regulation, nonwhite illustration — particularly black illustration within the South — may diminish significantly, from Congress to native college boards and municipal councils.
“How can we are saying at this second in time that the Voting Rights Act and Section 2 haven’t any objective?” Ms. Harris mentioned to the AP.
The difficulty carried particular resonance given the venue. The Voting Rights Act was handed in 1965 after Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights leaders marched from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. A later Supreme Court case out of Mobile led Congress to make clear its intent with Section 2 of the regulation. And it was a Shelby County, Alabama, case that the Supreme Court utilized in 2013 to intestine the regulation’s requirement that the U.S. Justice Department approve election procedures in native jurisdictions with a demonstrated historical past of discrimination.
Besides the pending Supreme Court case, Ms. Harris mentioned she has adopted Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants, together with statements from prime Mr. Trump adviser Stephen Miller and different Republicans suggesting the U.S. owes its identification to white European settlers.
“Just taking a look at it by way of their phrases, they’re race-baiting, they’re scapegoating,” she mentioned. But she stopped wanting saying that the administration is being pushed by a white nationalist ideology: “I can not fake to know what’s of their head.”
Ms. Harris mentioned on Friday (October 17) that she by no means doubted former President Joe Biden’s capacity to serve, even when he ended his reelection bid due to issues about his age. That’s completely different, she defined, than discussions about whether or not the 82-year-old may have served one other time period.
“He and I’ve been taking part in telephone tag, really, within the final couple of days,” Ms. Harris advised the AP when requested whether or not she nonetheless talks to Mr. Biden, who’s present process prostate most cancers remedy. “I’d invite everybody to say a prayer if that is what you do for his well-being and well being proper now.”
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