United States President Donald Trump has revoked Secret Service protection for his political opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, White House officials have told several news agencies.
The change revealed on Thursday means that Harris will lose protection from the federal law enforcement agency on September 1, according to the reports.
Former vice presidents are typically afforded six months of Secret Service protection upon leaving office, but former President Joe Biden had quietly signed a directive extending protection for his deputy shortly before his term ended in January.
The move came at a particularly charged time in US politics, with Trump facing two assassination attempts in the lead-up to the November 2024 vote.
Harris had replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate in the final stretch of the race, challenging Trump for 107 days before her election loss.
The removal of protection comes shortly before Harris, who has kept a low profile since her resounding defeat, is set to begin a book tour later this year. That will see her appear at several public events.
Harris, the former attorney general of California and the first woman and woman of colour to serve as vice president, has said the book will give a “behind-the-scenes account” of her mad-dash campaign, which followed Biden’s ill-fated decision to stand for a second term despite mounting concerns over the octogenarian’s advanced age.
Kirsten Allen, a senior adviser to Harris, struck a diplomatic tone in responding to the move.
“The vice president is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety,” she said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Others were less forgiving, with some critics pointing to Trump’s caustic attacks on Harris on the campaign trail, which included deriding Harris as a “radical” and “extremist” and invoking several anti-Black tropes.
That, coupled with Trump’s pardoning of supporters who took part in political violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, has piqued concerns of retaliation.
“He’s spent months pardoning his supporters and green-lighting political violence,” Tanisha Long, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based community organiser, wrote on X.
“He created his own personal lynch mob of bigots and then cancelled Secret Service protection for Kamala Harris.”
Trump had previously revoked security clearance from other political foes and former allies, including his former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
US authorities had previously said Bolton, who has become a prominent critic of Trump, was the subject of an Iranian assassination plot.
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