White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her role at the end of August, President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

The president, in a post on Truth Social, said Leavitt is departing to spend more time with her family, but will remain one of his “top outside advisors” and an “influential voice within the Republican Party.”

“Karoline has been one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office,” Trump wrote.

Leavitt’s departure comes on the heels of a leave of absence this summer after the May birth of her second child, Viviana. She returned to the White House last month.

Leavitt gave birth to her first child, Niko, during the 2024 presidential campaign, returning to work quickly when the president was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Leavitt, in a post on X, described the job as “the honor and adventure of a lifetime,” but said she had decided to step away to devote her time to being a mom.

“The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary,” she said, “and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life.”

Trump, in his post, called it “a decision I totally understand and respect!”

Leavitt has served as White House press secretary since the start of the second Trump administration. During Trump’s first term, she interned in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence while in college before becoming associate director, eventually joining the White House press team as assistant press secretary under then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

As press secretary, she has been widely praised on both the left and the right for being an effective communicator for the president in the White House briefing room. She earned a reputation for her tough but friendly banter with the press in that format.

The White House did not immediately answer questions about who will succeed Leavitt as press secretary and the timeline for replacing her.

Trump had four press secretaries during his first term: Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and McEnany.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week publicly rejected President Donald Trump’s latest Gaza peace plan.

The Trump administration can live with it — for now.

The administration says it’s less concerned with what Netanyahu says than what the Israeli Defense Forces do. A U.S. official, who, like others in the story, was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said that the administration was initially “disappointed” that Israel responded to the 15-point peace proposal by ramping up attacks in Gaza — but is pleased that it has since eased its assault.

Now, the administration is willing to give the Israeli prime minister some leeway to message the peace plan in the way he needs to, the official said. There is broad understanding that he is two months from a tough reelection — and needs to please his own hard-right allies to win. Few expected the president’s roadmap to be wholesale embraced, even as Trump on Truth Social trumpeted it as a “major milestone” in the conflict.

“We recognize the complexities that come from the Israeli elections, and we’re obviously going to give Bibi a space to try and navigate that,” the official said. But in turn, “they need to give us a little bit of space in terms of no targeted killings in order to allow us to try to get to the next phase, so there’s a lot more challenges to go to get there.”

U.S. officials and Hamas negotiated the latest peace framework separately, with help from Middle East allies. The proposal, announced last month, called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish governance in Gaza and Israel to withdraw its military from the territory. The plan stalled when Hamas said it would not disarm until Israel withdrew, and Israel said it would not withdraw until Hamas disarmed.

Even as skeptics of the Trump plan criticized the president for overhyping its achievement, U.S. officials believed that they needed to go public once Hamas was on board to lock in its pledge to disarm. Despite the president’s public confidence, administration officials privately expected that the proposal would likely face pushback from Netanyahu but that talks could continue with Israel.

Still, they considered the roadmap a significant win.

“Nobody’s ever gotten to this point where they got Hamas to agree to this, so that’s a necessary step before actually disarming it,” the U.S. official said.

And there are signs that Israel is preparing for the possibility of withdrawal anyway, with Israeli media reporting Israel’s defense establishment began weighing contingencies to do so in the days after Netanyahu’s public rejection.

Another administration official said the Board of Peace, a 27-country initiative formed as part of Trump’s deal last year to end the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has been “getting good cooperation on the ground of late.”

“That’s what’s important,” the administration official said.

And it’s not just Trump administration officials hailing the framework as a step in the right direction. Former ambassadors and administration officials, including some who served in the Biden and Obama administrations, see the recent commitment the U.S. secured from Hamas to disarm — a monthslong sticking point in the peace process — as a small, but meaningful step, even as doubts remain whether Hamas will follow through. A member of the Hamas political bureau, according to the Associated Press, said this week that Hamas remains “committed to the roadmap.”

“For Netanyahu, his primary objective, of course, is getting through his election so he’s going to at least voice rejection even while he may allow some aspects of it to move forward,” said Dan Shapiro, a U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration. “It looks like Trump is tolerating the Netanyahu two-step. These two have done a dance like this before and as long as certain elements of it are moving forward … Trump seems to be willing to tolerate Netanyahu’s stated rejection.”

Even Trump appeared in little hurry Monday to escalate the dispute with Netanyahu, insisting to reporters in the Oval Office that he had a “good relationship” with the Israeli prime minister despite the very public rejection of his peace proposal.

The White House referred requests for comment to the Board of Peace.

A Board of Peace official added that “separate discussions with Israel are continuing.”

“The objective remains the full decommissioning of weapons and ensuring Gaza can never again pose the kind of threat Israel faced on October 7,” the official said. “Plans are moving forward in this regard. We have seen important elements of cooperation in recent days and we are intensifying our efforts to accelerate progress.”

The U.S. official added that Israel remains skeptical that Hamas will follow through on their commitments, while noting the country was similarly skeptical that Hamas would release the Israeli hostages.

“We basically have built a lot of credit with them. And I think that they’re willing to give us more of a shot to see if we can get to the next phase,” the official said. “We’re in an uncomfortable position for everyone, but I think that there’s a pathway to get through it.”

The idea that Israeli troops are at least planning to withdraw — especially if that withdrawal goes to the yellow line in Gaza, a key point of the plan the Board of Peace proposed — is giving Trump allies hope that Netanyahu’s words are meant for a domestic audience, while his actions are meant to demonstrate he might consider a deal in the future.

“Netanyahu’s playing a fairly tricky tightrope, where on the one hand he flexes his muscle for domestic audiences, given his situation at election eve, and on the other hand, he’s doing some baby steps in the direction of the 15-point plan — testing the tolerance of the American or Board of Peace team,” said Nimrod Novik, who served as senior diplomatic adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, said that “of course it’s a win” to get Hamas to agree to disarm. And, behind the scenes, he said there continues to be movement between the U.S and Israel.

“Slowly we and Israel are moving forward on both Lebanon and Gaza even in the face of Israeli elections,” Jeffrey said.

Still, the incremental movement leaves fundamental questions, which have repeatedly stymied efforts to create a lasting peace between Israel and Gaza. U.S. allies are also concerned that Netanyahu’s public rejection of the latest peace plan is undermining confidence in the Board of Peace and the broader Middle East peace efforts.

Hamas’ willingness to disarm is conditioned on Israel withdrawing from Gaza, leaving unresolved how — and in what order — either side would carry out its commitments.

Hamas is supposed to turn over its weapons to a United Nations-created body responsible for governing the day-to-day operation in Gaza, and that governing authority is supposed to eventually run the territory, supervised by the Board of Peace, though the timeline for leadership handover remains uncertain. And Israel, meanwhile, has not agreed to the withdrawal in the plan, even as its military is preparing for the possibility.

But administration allies don’t really expect some big peace ceremony at Camp David or in Geneva. They’ll settle for dialogue, however tenuous.

“You have to judge these things incrementally in the Middle East,” a person familiar with the White House’s discussions around the peace process said.

Jerry Wu and Daniella Cheslow contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump is stuck.

Iran has made clear that its price for ending hostilities is control over the Strait of Hormuz, a politically unpalatable prospect for the White House. But the ongoing tit-for-tat strikes, threatening to become a wider regional war, is equally untenable.

That’s left a frustrated White House with few good options, five former Trump administration officials told POLITICO.

“Iran wants the political concession of the principle that they get money for passage through the strait,” said a former administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “That will embed their control of the strait in diplomatic practice and customary law.”

Trump over the previous weeks has mixed threats of destruction with promises of resolution, a pattern that continued this weekend. On Saturday night, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had called off an attack on Iran, “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL” to open the strait.

“We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” he wrote. “This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”

The announcement followed media reports suggesting Trump was preparing new, intense strikes on Iran, possibly on the country’s energy infrastructure, which could certainly escalate the conflict. But Iran has not yet responded to Trump’s announcement and has not confirmed that a deal with Washington has been reached.

Nor is there any indication that Iran is willing to relinquish control of the strait.

Inside the White House, top administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have warned against any resolution that allows Iran to control the strait.

Doing so, they believe, would imperil the United States’ future ability to sanction Iran because multiple countries would need waivers to pay the fees. It would further reduce the international community’s ability to pressure Iran into giving up its nuclear ambitions. And Rubio last week warned it would create a dangerous precedent sure to be duplicated.

For the first time, both major parties’ presidential candidates have families that have been knit together by divorce. It's a sign that politics is finally catching up with America.

The historic nature of the two first families-in-waiting comes after a half-century of dramatic shifts in American family life. And though there has been a long running tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats over which party is the most “pro-family,” that political fight is more heated than ever.

Many conservatives have embraced former President Donald Trump despite his personal life and family structure, rather than because of it; important figures on the right, including Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, are pushing for a return to the traditional family structure as a salve for social ills, like declining birth rates, student achievement and crime. Democrats, meanwhile, are articulating a vision of families that includes same-sex couples, blended families, adoptive families and single parents or grandparents — one they argue is reflected in Vice President Kamala Harris’ family.

“It tells the honest story of America and that we’re doing the work of building a more just America where everyone can sit at this table, however you show up, in whatever kind of family model,” said Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who is among the two dozen members of Congress who are stepparents. “Whether you’re talking about two mommies, two daddies, bonus moms — this is reflective of today’s American modern family.”

Harris, herself a child of divorce, has a blended family that includes her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, and her stepchildren, Cole and Ella. Trump, who has been divorced twice, has five children, half-siblings with each other from three moms.

It’s a notable sea change since Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce and subsequent remarriage helped sink his 1964 presidential bid. More than a third of children don’t live with two married parents, and nearly one in six kids live in a blended family household with stepparents, stepsiblings or half siblings, according to the Pew Research Center. And 78 percent of people now think single-parent households are acceptable, while 58 percent support married gay or lesbian couples raising children together, according to Pew.

Until Trump, Ronald Reagan was the only president who had ever been divorced. And, as recently as 2008, John McCain’s first “broken marriage” to Carol McCain, his first wife, was the source of media speculation and titillation. President Joe Biden also has a blended family, though because of the death of his first wife Neilia, not from divorce. (First Lady Jill Biden is stepmom to the late Beau Biden and his brother Hunter, and Ashley Biden is their half-sister.)

“We’re a long way from the nuclear family,” said Rick Davis, McCain’s presidential campaign manager, calling Harris' family the “classic new nuclear family.”

“That looks more like America these days than a traditional nuclear family that’s been married for 25 years and has two kids,” he added. “I don’t think that’s the America we live in anymore.”

For many communities of color, blended and extended families have long been a part of family life, said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

“The whole ‘Leave It to Beaver’ family structure has never been the family structure for many communities,” Brown said. The blended family structure “has always been the backbone of so many communities, that their greatest economic security and infrastructure was the way that we actually saw family.”

Affairs, which were once kryptonite to a presidential bid, also don’t appear to have the same impact they used to. Kerstin Emhoff, Doug's ex-wife, quashed an early attack on an affair he had during their marriage, calling him “a great father” and “a great friend,” and is a vocal Harris booster. And Democrats have attacked Trump for his felony convictions related to hush money payments — rather than the alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. (Trump denies the affair took place.)

Strategists on both sides of the aisle attribute the lack of stickiness of attacks on candidates’ marriages to changing standards about what’s fair game in a presidential campaign as cultural attitudes shift.

“Donald Trump is on his third marriage. Certainly, on my side of the aisle, I don’t see anything wrong with that — because that’s life,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Still, as much as social norms have changed, Trump’s decision to pick Vance as his running mate has elevated the discussion about traditional families, which the New Right sees as the solution to many modern problems — with a populist twist. They argue that small-government programs have failed to beget traditional families and instead favor more government intervention, like the child tax credits and paid family leave Trump pushed as president.

“The marriage rate has come down to record lows, and fertility rates hit record lows last year," said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. "Whatever was the kind of standard Republican agenda — limited government, low taxes — that hasn’t really done much to revise the fortunes of the American family.”

Vance's proposal to raise the child tax credit to $5,000 per child is an example of the kinds of pro-government intervention policies once more traditionally aligned with Democrats now being advocated for as part of a new conservative pro-family agenda. But Vance, who was raised by his grandparents and has a collection of half and stepsiblings, has said this policy would apply to all families — whether kids are being raised by same-sex couples, grandparents or heterosexual couples — suggesting a desire to help more than just traditional families.

“Senator Vance supports policies that will make life better for all kinds of American families: lower prices, a stronger economy, safer streets, and a closed border to stop the deadly flow of fentanyl,” said Luke Schroeder, a Vance spokesperson. “All kids in America, whether they’re raised in a ‘traditional’ family or a ‘nontraditional’ family as JD was, deserve to achieve their American dream.”

Trump, meanwhile, has pledged free in vitro fertilization treatments to all Americans, paid for either by insurance companies or the federal government. His campaign has defended the proposal — which is angering social conservatives and deficit hawks alike — as a necessary long-term investment in light of the country’s record-low birth rate.

The former president also suggested last week that the federal costs of making child care more affordable in the U.S. would be “small” compared to the money that would be generated through his proposed tariffs on imported goods to the U.S.

At the same time, Democrats see their bevy of social safety net programs as a means of pushing a “pro-family” platform. Harris has pitched restoring the expanded child tax credit, as well as adding an additional $6,000 tax credit for children in their first year of life, a variation on the proposal Vance has put forward — all regardless of family structure. Democrats have also couched proposals to offer paid parental leave and expand health care access as similarly “pro-family.”

It’s part of their effort to counter that there is more than one way to build a happy family in the 21st century. That sentiment was underscored by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s comments last month at the Democratic National Convention, highlighting his relationship with his husband, Chasten, and their two kids.

"The makeup of our kitchen table, the existence of my family, is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago," he said. “This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime.”

Donald Trump pitched himself as a “leader” on in vitro fertilization during his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. His plans are angering swaths of the Republican Party.

The former president, eager to deflect attacks that his election would threaten fertility care, has gone so far as to pledge free IVF treatments to all Americans, paid for either by insurance companies or the federal government.

It’s a pitch designed to win back the moderate women who have moved away from Trump and neutralize Democratic attacks on his record on reproductive health that have dogged the GOP since the fall of Roe v. Wade more than two years ago. Harris, during Tuesday’s debate, said that “couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments” because of state restrictions that she frequently refers to as “Trump abortion bans.”

But heading into the final weeks of the election, the proposal is alienating two pillars of the Republican Party: small-government deficit hawks outraged by the idea of a sweeping new federal mandate and religious conservatives who oppose IVF as commonly practiced in the U.S.

“Though we share his desire for Americans to have more babies, Trump's plan to fund in vitro fertilization for all American women is in direct contradiction with that hope,” said Pro-Life Action League President Ann Scheidler. “Hundreds of thousands of embryos — each of them as fully human as you or me — are created and then destroyed or frozen in IVF procedures.”

Trump and the GOP have been on the defensive ever since the Alabama Supreme Court thrust IVF into the spotlight earlier this year with a ruling that frozen embryos should be considered people, citing the Dobbs decision — causing some fertility clinics in the state to suspend treatments until the legislature passed a bill restoring access nearly two weeks later. Trump immediately came out against the Alabama decision, to the dismay of many conservatives.

Trump’s campaign is defending the universal IVF policy as a necessary long-term investment given the country’s record-low birth rate. And aides credit the policy for an increase in support from independents in some battleground states while arguing it has not caused a decline in support from anti-abortion voters.

“We want more babies, to put it very nicely. And for the same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes,” Trump said in a statement.

The former president’s embrace of IVF comes as he and other Republicans grapple with an issue that has plagued them since the fall of Roe two years ago. He has tried to pitch himself as moderate by arguing that abortion should be decided by states — leaving the procedure accessible in some of the country, and banned in other parts — while stressing his support for rape and incest exceptions, IVF and, more broadly, “reproductive rights.”

“I've been a leader on it. They know that and everybody else knows it. I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF,” he said during the debate.

Many conservatives are outraged — or at least highly skeptical — of his free IVF plan because of its potential cost to taxpayers, what it would mean for the expansion of government involvement in health care, and what they see as an implicit endorsement of practices like the disposal of embryos that they see as morally abhorrent. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, wrote the forward to a 2017 collection of essays from the Heritage Foundation that, among other things, raised concerns about IVF. He also joined earlier this year with nearly all Senate Republicans in blocking consideration of a bill to federally protect access to IVF and other fertility treatments.

The Pro-Life Action League and other anti-abortion groups are calling on Trump “to walk back this IVF funding scheme,” while the editor of National Review Online is arguing that it’s hypocritical for the party that went after the Affordable Care Act to now support additional federal health care mandates. Some conservatives liken Trump’s IVF proposal to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 contraceptive mandate, which was broadly panned by the same conservatives and repeatedly challenged in court.

“There are still bona fide limited-government conservatives in the Republican Party who look at this and say: ‘Think about how expensive IVF is!’” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “This could be billions of dollars for something that we think has significant moral complications. What is conservative about that?”

The proposal, which would need congressional approval, has divided Republicans on Capitol Hill, nearly all of whom support Trump. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has said that he is open to the idea, while Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the House GOP conference chair, has said the former president’s IVF proposal should be “applauded by the pro-life community as it will further promote the culture of life.”

Other GOP lawmakers have met the idea with a mixture of uncertainty about what Trump is proposing and skepticism about whether he’s serious — and, if so, how much it will cost. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who is running to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell as leader of the Senate Republican caucus, told Axios he was unsure “whether or not that's something that you would want to mandate on insurance companies.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was blunter, telling ABC “there's no end” to the cost of the policy, and pitching a means-tested tax credit as an alternative.

According to a person familiar with the plans, Senate Democrats plan to highlight these divisions in the coming weeks by holding another vote on legislation from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who had two children through IVF, that would federally protect access to fertility treatments and guarantee public and private insurance coverage.

Nearly all Senate Republicans voted to block the bill when it first came to the floor in June, arguing that it was too sweeping in its scope. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) drafted an alternative bill that would strip federal Medicaid funding from states that ban IVF services but allow restrictions on how embryos are stored, implanted and disposed, but it has yet to move forward.

Despite the party's struggles to unify around a position on IVF, GOP pollsters and strategists believe that with the upcoming election likely to be decided by a relatively small group of people in a half-dozen battleground states, Trump's policy pitch could help him peel off enough votes to make a difference.

Trump’s former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway, who remains in close contact with the campaign, has also urged Republicans to support IVF, pointing to polling her firm conducted, which found broad support, including among GOP voters, for “candidates who prioritize increasing the availability of contraceptives and fertility-related treatments.” That survey found that IVF had 78 percent support among self-identified “pro-life advocates” and 83 percent among evangelical Christians.

“Look, he’s never going to win on this issue but if he can chip away at the margins, that’s a potential path for him,” said Stephen Lawson, a Republican strategist in Georgia, a key swing state President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020 where Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck. “For swing voters who are genuinely undecided or going back and forth, it’s another potential policy tool in the toolkit for them to get comfortable pulling the lever for him.”

Democrats, sensing an opportunity to paint the GOP as extreme, have honed in on the Alabama decision, arguing that IVF access everywhere could come under threat if Trump is elected. That’s prompted Republicans to try to shore up their pro-IVF bona fides — much to the chagrin of many anti-abortion advocates.

Duckworth, who was in the debate spin room Tuesday night in Philadelphia, argued Trump, by helping bring about the fall of Roe, is the only reason IVF access is in jeopardy. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has also made his own use of fertility treatments a regular part of his stump speech.

Trump’s attempt to neutralize the attacks from Harris, Walz, Duckworth and others with his own pro-IVF plan may, however, undercut his support with some white evangelicals who were already uneasy about voting for Trump this year. Though many of them see the former president as far better on abortion than Harris, some have expressed substantial frustration at Trump’s shifting rhetoricin recent weeks, including his criticism of Florida’s six-week ban on the procedure.

While evangelicals and self-identified “pro-life advocates” remain overwhelmingly supportive of IVF, the tide may be starting to turn, as many social conservatives see opposing the procedure as the next frontier of the “pro-life movement.” The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant denomination, voted at their convention in June to oppose IVF, a move that could open the door for other denominations to follow suit.

“Listen, I’m a realist here. I know my position is so unpopular. … But what I found myself just scratching my head at was this idea that there would now be an IVF mandate required by insurers,” said Andrew Walker, a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who opposes IVF and co-authored the resolution Southern Baptists voted on. “I mean, that’s basically somewhat of a facsimile from what Obama was doing with the HHS mandate. You’re going to require faith-based organizations to carry insurance that covers IVF against their conscience?”

“Even if you are for IVF, you ought to be able to say you shouldn’t force an organization to carry insurance coverage that they don’t want to carry,” he added.

Strategists from both parties estimate Trump can’t win without the support of 80 percent of white evangelicals nationally. In 2020, Biden won the second-highest percentage of white evangelicals of any Democrat of this century, behind only Obama in 2008, according to CNN exit polls — and in a close race, those votes could be the difference.

Prominent evangelical leaders have warned that despite Trump’s seeming course corrections after his recent abortion stumbles — particularly his declaration that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would expand access — he remains on thin ice with many rank-and-file voters as the Republican Party increasingly abandons socially conservative issues, like abortion and gay marriage. While white evangelicals have for decades been a core Republican constituency, those leaders argue there’s no guarantee that Christians will remain as engaged in politics as they have been in the past.

“Maybe he pays a political price for November,” Brown said. “It's going to be a tight election, and even a handful of demotivated pro-lifers in key swing states can make a difference.”

Liz Cheney is hitting the campaign trail with millions of dollars at her disposal to defeat Donald Trump and down-ballot Republicans, aggressively taking on the MAGA movement that dominates a party where she, and her father, are no longer welcome.

Cheney has pledged to do anything she can to help Kamala Harris, and has resources to back that up — including a PAC that raised more than $3 million in the first six months of the year, according to FEC records.

It’s part of an unprecedented effort by one of the party’s former highest-ranking leaders to not only take down Trump but purge any trace of him from the Republican Party. GOP strategists and elected officials who share her opposition to the former president say Cheney’s campaign — including her and her father’s endorsement of Harris — could pave the way for members of their party to join their cause. A critical mass could be enough to move the needle in a tight election.

“It’s a true reflection of how bad Donald Trump is — to think about a Dick Cheney, who is as time-tested of a conservative Republican as anybody in the roster, to come out and take a stance to support, like myself, Kamala Harris,” said former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican Harris supporter. “Look, the Republican Party loses no matter what. If Donald Trump gets beat by Kamala Harris — like I think is going to happen — the Republican Party loses. But if Donald Trump wins, the Republican Party loses even more: We’ll lose any and all credibility that we’ve got.”

Broadly, there doesn’t appear to be a deluge of Republicans flocking to Harris. An ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 93 percent of likely Republican voters still prefer Trump over Harris — similar margins to where Trump stood in 2020. Yet the campaigns are chasing any movement at the margins in what promises to be among the closest elections in modern political history.

“I think Dick Cheney’s voice is incredibly important, because I think it will draw some more traditional conservatives to pause for a second and kind of take that in,” said former Trump national security official Olivia Troye, a Republican surrogate for Harris who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She will also be near Mesa, Arizona, Thursday, leading a phone banking operation with Republican Mesa Mayor John Giles.

Cheney, who emerged as a prominent Trump critic in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and served as the vice chair of the House select committee that probed the riot, has in recent days renewed her war against Trump, saying that he “represents unrecoverable catastrophe” and promising in a series of high-profile interviews to do whatever it takes to defeat the former president in order to stamp out the fires of Trumpism. It’s also a bit of payback after Trump and his political operation helped orchestrate the primary that led to Cheney’s ouster from Congress.

In an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival last week, Cheney endorsed Democratic Texas Rep. Colin Allred, and said she would be “in many key battleground states very much focused on how important it is that we defeat him in this cycle,” though she said she wouldn’t be an official Harris campaign surrogate.

“I will continue to be doing everything I can over the course of the next two months here to make sure that people realize, understand, recognize who Donald Trump is and what he did and why he’s so dangerous,” Cheney said.

Her PAC in 2022 spent hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Republican secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem.

Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio talk show host in Wisconsin who is now anti-Trump, said the “one-two punch” of Cheney and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement gives conservatives wavering on Trump consent to back Harris. And while others in Trump’s administration who have broken with the former president have been reluctant to endorse a liberal Democrat, including former Vice President Mike Pence, the endorsement of someone like Dick Cheney carries significant weight.

“Both living Republican ex-vice presidents are now saying they’re not going to vote for Donald Trump. And one of them, a two-term Republican vice president, is saying he’s going to vote for Kamala Harris,” Sykes added. “That clearly creates this permission dynamic.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Other Republicans are more skeptical of the impact someone like Cheney could have on the election. The Cheneys’ support is, for instance, unlikely to move the needle with social conservatives for whom abortion remains one of the top issues — if not the top issue — in the election. While Trump has wavered on his views on abortion rights, anti-abortion advocates and their voters still see the former president as better on the issue than Harris, who they fear would uphold the status quo or possibly do more to expand abortion access in the U.S.

Pence, for instance, has said he won’t endorse Trump but hasn’t ruled out voting for him. But even if he does, Republicans who oppose Trump think it’s unlikely that he would make the leap to voting for Harris. (Pence previously said he would “never” vote for President Joe Biden.)

“She certainly appeals to the Never Trumpers,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. “But they are already in the column.”

The Cheneys’ support for Harris comes as Trump continues to rebuff the support of those who have previously rejected him. Earlier this year, Trump threatened to blacklist donors to Nikki Haley’s campaign, and he said he didn’t want the support of voters who “came back to” him during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity last week.

“They say you should take everybody, but that’s not the way I’m built,” he said during the town hall.

The Harris campaign isn’t claiming that the Cheneys’ endorsements — or the support of any one Republican — will make a significant difference in the election. But the campaign has been making a concerted appeal to Republicans.

The campaign in August launched a “Republicans for Harris” organizing program, hired a former GOP congressional staffer as its national Republican engagement director and has been targeting anti-Trump Republicans, as well as other conservatives and independents, through paid media and a grassroots digital campaign. The Democratic National Convention also prominently featured several GOP officials, including former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, former Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and Duncan.

And a group of 10 retired top military officials endorsed Harris on Monday, calling Trump a “danger to our national security and democracy,” criticizing his previous comments on the military and deriding his “chaotic approach” in Afghanistan before the U.S. withdrawal.

Her campaign has used that support — or at least, opposition to Trump — to get under the former president’s skin. A new ad released in the run-up to Tuesday’s debate features clips of former Trump administration officials — including Pence, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley — talking about their concerns about a second Trump term or their decisions not to endorse him. The ad specifically aired in Palm Beach, the home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

There have long been signs throughout the cycle that Trump’s GOP support could be softer than advertised. Nikki Haley consistently attracted upwards of a third of Republicans in various primaries weeks and months after she dropped out. In Maryland, Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan even ran an ad hitting Trump on his involvement in Jan. 6.

Cheney is giving these kinds of Republicans a permission structure to back Harris, said pollster Sarah Longwell, the publisher of the anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark and CEO of Longwell Partners.

“They are people who want to vote for a different Republican, and so they’re always frustrated they don’t have a different Republican to vote for. And so they know they don’t want to vote for Trump, but the question is, can they affirmatively get there on Kamala Harris?” Longwell said. “And that’s where Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney are helpful, because they set the stakes.”

Still, Republicans working to oppose Trump acknowledge that Harris — who tacked to the left on several issues during her 2020 presidential bid — is a harder sell for many Republicans than Joe Biden was. But they say the positions she is taking on a number of economic issues and her backtracking from progressive policies is giving many on the right the comfort they need to consider voting for her.

“Positive messaging on Kamala, not just negative messaging on Trump, showing people how neoconservative she sounded in her acceptance speech, sharing her talking points about small business tax breaks and getting rid of red tape — you can’t argue with that,” said Emily Matthews, co-chair of the Haley Voters Working Group, which has met multiple times with the Harris campaign to talk about how to get Republicans’ support. “It’s on paper.”

Former President Donald Trump would not commit to vetoing a national abortion ban. Vice President Kamala Harris would not say which restrictions she would support on the procedure.

Tuesday night’s debate offered a sharp contrast between the two candidates and their approaches on abortion. But what both had in common — a fear of alienating their bases.

The exchange highlighted the tightrope both candidates feel they must walk — appearing moderate so as not to alienate middle-of-the-road voters who support abortion access with some restrictions, without saying anything that could cause their most ardent supporters’ enthusiasm to wane. It’s been a particular problem for Trump, who has angered anti-abortion-rights advocates on several occasions by suggesting that the federal government has no more role to play in legislating abortion.

Harris used her time to excoriate Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices key to overturning Roe v. Wade. And she tried to undercut one of Trump’s most-used arguments — that ending Roe and returning it to the states is what most people wanted.

“You want to talk about, this is what people wanted?” Harris said. “A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. They don't want that.”

It was the starkest and clearest answer Harris has given on the implications of the fall of Roe and emblematic of the way her campaign has used the stories of women — including at the Democratic National Convention last month — to make that argument.

Trump, meanwhile, reiterated his support for his leave-abortion-to-the-states approach, which he said was only possible because of the “great courage” of the Supreme Court. But he wouldn’t weigh in on a veto of a national abortion ban — something Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has said that the former president would do — saying that he “didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness.”

“They can never get this approved so it doesn’t matter,” Trump said. “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”

The two also had a back and forth on abortions later in pregnancy, with Trump suggesting incorrectly that Harris favors allowing abortion in the “8th or 9th” month of pregnancy. The vice president, who declined to say what limits she would favor on abortion, supports restoring Roe, which would protect abortion access until fetal viability, which is around the 22nd week of pregnancy. States could still restrict abortion beyond that point, though not all do so.

“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris said. “That’s not happening, that’s insulting to the women of America.”

Harris also highlighted the ripple effects of the fall of Roe, nodding to an Alabama Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that said that frozen embryos are people, briefly halting some IVF services in the state. She said women were being denied such services because of “Donald Trump’s abortion bans.”

“Another lie, it’s another lie,” Trump said, calling himself “a leader on IVF.”

Trump has expressed support for IVF, and announced late last month that he would make IVF treatments free, paid for by the government or health insurance companies.

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said Wednesday that she will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris for president because of the “danger” she believes former President Donald Trump poses.

Her remarks, during an appearance at Duke University, came after the Wyoming Republican briefly flirted with her own third-party bid for president. Once the No. 3 leader of the House Republican Conference, Cheney has long warned of the threat she says the former president poses to American democracy.

“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said to applause and a standing ovation from the audience.

The former Wyoming representative, who had not previously said how she planned to vote in November, said that voters in swing states, like North Carolina, who dislike Trump need to do more than just not vote for him — but actively cast their ballots for Harris.

“Because we are here in North Carolina, I think it is crucially important for people to recognize not only is what I’ve said about the danger that Trump poses something that should prevent people from voting for him, but I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” she said.

Her announcement comes after more than 200 staffers for four Republican presidential nominees — former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush, former Arizona Sen. John McCain and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney — last week endorsed Harris for president.

Cheney, a fierce Trump critic, was ousted from her seat after she refused to temper her criticisms of Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. She served as the vice chair of the Jan. 6 select committee, which probed the attack.

The former president’s political operation was crucial to Cheney’s 2022 primary defeat. Her opponent ran with Trump’s support, was advised by those in his camp and was funded by his donors.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, criticized Cheney on Wednesday night during an event in Arizona, accusing her of “sending other people’s children off to fight and die for her military conflicts and her ridiculous ideas.”

“Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney make very, very interesting partners,” he said. “They get rich when America's sons and daughters go off to die.”

In a statement, Harris’ campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, praised Cheney as a patriot and said the vice president is proud to have her vote.

In December, Cheney published a book, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” which details how her former Republican colleagues, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, laid the groundwork for the events that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

INDIANAPOLIS — Eight years ago, needing a running mate to vouch for him among skittish evangelicals, Donald Trump turned to Mike Pence, tossing an olive branch to Republicans wary of the thrice-married real estate mogul who once said he was “very pro-choice.”

It’s a different story now: To those same voters this year, according to interviews with nearly two dozen religious leaders gathered here for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, Trump’s selection is bordering on a forgettable formality — less interesting to them because they’ve already made up their minds to back him, even if begrudgingly so.

“I think evangelicals will generally, by and large, vote for him regardless of who he picks,” said Kevin McClure, a member of a Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky, who spoke as he waited for Trump himself to beam into a meeting held on the sidelines of the convention. “Because the Republican platform currently, in the very least, has a place for pro-life priorities, even if they’re not as strong as many of us would want.”

Or as Mike Spradlin, a delegate to the convention from Memphis, Tennessee, put it: “I don't really know that it moves the needle one way or the other.”

It’s not that the vice presidential pick is irrelevant to the faithful. Many evangelicals here say they want Trump to pick someone who is sufficiently anti-abortion, or even to Trump’s right on the issue — both because that person could press their cause inside the West Wing and because he or she could be in line to inherit the MAGA movement.

Albert Mohler, a prominent evangelical theologian and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argued that Trump’s vice presidential pick could mean the difference between on-the-fence voters staying home or turning out to the polls come November. Mohler said Trump should pick someone who not only says the right things on abortion but “hopefully has a track record of defending them.”

But who, exactly, Trump picks from his shortlist is of far less concern. To most evangelicals here, the people Trump’s considering — at least the ones they know — seem to pass that litmus test.

“Who’s the Black guy?” asked Bonnie Fitch, of Carter Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Kentucky.

Asked whether she was referring to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the former presidential candidate who is known for his evangelical faith, she and her husband lit up. “I just like the way he’s been speaking,” said Bonnie’s husband, Sid.

Trump’s campaign is said to be vetting eight potential candidates: Scott, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. His pick will likely be announced close to the party’s convention in Milwaukee beginning on July 15.

Trump is entering a very different kind of veepstakes now than he was in 2016. His governing style is clearer now than it was then.

“We took a risk on what he said he would do, and he came through and he delivered in that case,” said Scott Colter, the CEO of the Danbury Institute, which wants to “eradicate” abortion, as he introduced Trump’s pre-recorded video message to a room full of Southern Baptists. “And so we can debate all day long the merits of who Donald Trump is and his personality and all of those different things. But he did what he said he would do. … And I’m tremendously grateful for that.”

But who he should pick to run with him resonated less here. Mohler declined to say who he would like to see the former president pick. And other evangelicals — while namechecking Rubio most, followed by Scott — didn’t have an overwhelming favorite. Many couldn’t name more than even a few.

Several of those interviewed specifically pointed to Rubio’s youth — in addition to his conservative bona fides — as one of his assets. At 53, he is not the youngest candidate under consideration — Vance is 39. But they expressed concerns about the ability of Trump, who is 77, to complete a second term.

“I really like Rubio because I think he has the fortitude to carry on as president after Trump,” said Daryl Poe, who attends Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. “The young man from Ohio, J.D. Vance, seems to be more politically aligned with Trump than anyone else, but I don’t think he has enough time nationally to be that well known.”

Evangelicals are also aware that Trump’s MAGA base is predominantly white, and some said he should pick a running mate like Scott or Rubio to appeal to voters of color.

“A diversity candidate would be great because Trump is for everybody. I feel like that’s a common misconception that he’s just for white people, but he’s for everybody,” said Bryan Gotcher, a pastor at Oakhill Baptist Church in Evansville, Indiana. “There’s a lot of ethnic people who are rallying to him, so that’s really encouraging.”

And then there’s the issue of abortion. On Tuesday, one attendee at the convention who is to Trump’s right on the issue spent 40 minutes over lunch sharing insights with pastors about how important it is to be a voice for evangelical causes in the public square. “I honestly think we haven’t come to the end of the debate over life: We’ve come to the end of the beginning,” the attendee said.

Heads nodded.

But asked by a reporter whether he had a favorite candidate or advice for whomever Trump would pick, the attendee, who drove here from his residence about 30 minutes away, didn’t have much to say.

The man, former Vice President Mike Pence, smiled at the question. And then he slipped out the exit.

INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump’s problem with abortion politics was never more apparent than it was here Monday, as he delivered brief virtual remarks to a Christian advocacy organization that wants to ban all abortions — and didn't mention the procedure once.

For all his efforts to avoid the issue and “make both sides happy,” as he has long promised, Trump still got hit by both sides — from Democrats for appearing at all, and from some of his own voters in the room for skirting a topic at the top of their agenda.

“He sounded more like a politician who wants to be elected,” said Rick Patrick, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Sylacauga, Alabama. “I voted for him and I plan to vote for him again, but he was not like the other speakers who were here talking about religious things.”

In a pre-taped video address just under two minutes long to the Danbury Institute, which calls abortion “child sacrifice,” Trump did not mention the word “abortion” at all, even though the group’s CEO praised Trump in an introduction for addressing, as president, what he called “the most important issue facing our country and the next generation of our children who are being slaughtered in the womb.”

Instead, Trump told the group, “You just can’t vote Democrat. They’re against religion. They’re against your religion in particular.”

The former president’s brief remarks to the Danbury Institute, on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, served as the latest example of the tightrope Trump is walking on an issue where polls show he remains vulnerable. Before the address, for which he was billed as a speaker, Trump’s campaign privately cautioned that he would only give a pre-recorded welcome message lasting less than two minutes. His address drew only polite applause and garnered some criticism among anti-abortion Southern Baptist leaders in attendance.

“It’s disappointing because you would hope to have a Republican presidential candidate who speaks strongly that life begins at conception,” said Kevin McClure, an attendee from a Baptist congregation in Louisville who said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he backed in the Republican presidential primary, was a better opponent of abortion rights.

Trump’s stated position on abortion — that the issue should be left to the states in the post-Roe era — is in conflict with the hardline position of the Danbury Institute. It is a major liability for him, even though he has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices necessary to overturn Roe.

“The president is not dumb, and he recognizes just how lethal Dobbs was in the midterm elections. From a purely political perspective, I think both the president and even the Republican Party in general realize that where they have been is maybe not where people are, or at least the majority of Americans are,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee.

But Trump also “cannot look like [he is] abandoning the religious right,” Bartlett said. And so he needs to “negotiate with the religious right, show that he understands them.”

Nearly two years out from Dobbs, roughly two-thirds of Americans continue to disapprove of the decision that felled federal abortion protections, according to a mid-April CNN/SSRS poll. And it remains a major issue for suburban women, a key voting bloc Trump has struggled with, according to a spring Wall Street Journal poll of seven swing states.

On the other hand, Trump may have found some middle ground with his stated position view that abortion rights should be left to states. Half of voters in a POLITICO-Morning Consult poll conducted after Trump cemented that stance in early April said they support states making their own laws about abortion access, compared to just 35 percent who do not.

On Monday, Trump’s video remarks came after nearly an hour of discussion earlier in the event about where the anti-abortion movement should be focusing in the post-Roe era — including restricting abortion pills and criminalizing women who receive abortions. Those policy measures would further curtail access to a procedure that is banned in almost all cases in more than a third of the U.S.

A Trump campaign spokesperson previously defended Trump’s appearance at the Danbury Institute, saying he “is committed to addressing groups with diverse opinions on all of the issues.”

But it came at a cost. President Joe Biden's campaign blasted Trump as a politician who “loves campaigning with abortion ban extremists.” And the Indiana Democratic Party joined in Monday morning, accusing Trump of “doing the bidding of the most extreme anti-choice groups in the country.”

Meanwhile, the former president disappointed many anti-abortion advocates still stung by his declining in April to endorse a national limit on abortion, saying that issue should be left up to state lawmakers and voters.

“We want to see abortion gone because it is a human rights issue,” said Tyler Murphy, an associate pastor at Southside Baptist Church in Fulton, Missouri, who supports a national abortion ban. “The federal government needs to protect its people.”

During an abortion-focused panel, Tom Ascol, senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, criticized anti-abortion groups for not taking bold enough positions on abortion since the fall of Roe. He and other speakers lamented the widespread accessibility of abortion pills, which have allowed people who live in states where the procedure is banned to terminate their pregnancies, and said that conservatives need to band together to work toward the complete elimination of abortion.

“Some of the pro-life organizations said, ‘Look, we've abolished abortion in America.’ No, we have not,” Ascol said.

And abortion was not the only issue on the religious leaders’ minds as was evident throughout the convention’s early proceedings. Prominent evangelical leader Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that Christians have before them a “bigger task than ever before” as he touted a resolution that is being put forward at the Southern Baptists’ annual meeting voicing opposition to in vitro fertilization as typically practiced in the U.S.

“We're about to find out how pro-life the pro-life movement is,” Mohler said.

Donald Trump, former Covid-19 vaccine booster, is now the nation’s most high-profile critic of immunization mandates.

The former president has on the campaign trail promised to strip funding from schools with vaccine requirements and lambasted independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “fake” anti-vaxxer, while obscuring his role in speeding the development of the Covid shot when he was president during the pandemic.

Trump's new anti-vaccine persona could have far-reaching consequences if he's elected to a second stint as president with far-reaching administrative powers. Public health experts say a White House opposed to immunization mandates could potentially cause upticks in cases of measles, polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases, or hamper efforts to fight a future pandemic.

The CDC could pare back the number of vaccines it recommends children receive or eliminate those recommendations entirely. The CDC could change the paperwork required to be shared with parents to make vaccines sound less safe than they are. Or the FDA could increase the number of years of safety testing required for new vaccines and impose other onerous requirements for vaccines to be approved in the U.S.

Trump also could, as a thank-you to vaccine skeptics for their support in November, appoint someone who opposes the government’s traditional role in promoting vaccines, such as Kennedy or Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who called for a pause in the use of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines and did not encourage parents to vaccinate their children during a recent measles outbreak.

“The short version is they can create — through their control over money, control over processes and infrastructure at the federal level — enormous havoc,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director at the American Public Health Association. “If you want to see an organization not function, put somebody that’s not qualified to be there, or who may have credentials on paper but is not motivated to really do the job in a way that enhances the public’s health.”

Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to a question about whether he would consider joining a future Trump administration; the Florida Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment from Ladapo.

The former president’s growing criticism of immunization mandates comes as Kennedy tries to woo Trump’s increasingly vaccine-skeptical MAGA base, and as suspicion about the Covid-19 shots spills into other routine childhood immunizations. A POLITICO | Morning Consult poll last fall showed that Republican voters are less likely than Democrats or independents to say vaccines are safe for children; Trump primary supporters were twice as likely as other Republicans to say such vaccines are unsafe, the poll found.

The Trump campaign has previously said that the former president is threatening to take away funding only from schools that mandate the Covid-19 vaccine, not other vaccines. Public health experts don’t think Trump is personally opposed to immunization, and Trump and his wife, Melania, received the Covid-19 shot and in 2021 encouraged “everyone” to “go get your shot.” And states are responsible for establishing most immunization policies.

But public health experts remain concerned about what Trump might do as president or whom he might appoint.

Trump’s campaign did not answer specific questions about what other vaccine policies the former president would or would not adopt, or whether he would consider appointing vaccine-skeptical individuals. The campaign pointed back to his promise to defund schools with vaccine mandates, which spokesperson Caroline Sunshine said in an email still stands.

Former Trump administration officials argue some policy changes are needed to address concerns about how the government communicated with the public during the pandemic and that those policies aren’t anti-vaccine. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint, for instance, recommends breaking up the CDC to separate its scientific and policymaking functions.

“Because CDC’s credibility has been so damaged because it bungled the Covid response, people rightfully have a lot more questions about recommendations for everything, vaccine-related and otherwise,” said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation and director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights under Trump. He added that he doesn’t question the safety and efficacy of any vaccine, but that “there is an additional burden on the CDC to explain with hard science the rationale for all the vaccines on the schedule being taken in combination."

The CDC declined to comment. Former CDC Director Robert Redfield, who served under Trump, did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul Mango, former deputy chief of staff for policy at HHS under Trump, said it’s unlikely the former president would prioritize anti-vaccine policies or appoint anti-vaccine officials in a second administration. Trump did, after all, champion Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership that helped develop the Covid-19 vaccine in record time.

“I guess it’s always a possibility, but I think it’s an extremely low probability,” Mango said. “I just don’t see that as a priority. If there's someone who’s great at all of that other stuff and they happen to be anti-vaccine, I don’t know, I don’t know who that individual is, but I don’t think that would be a selection criterion. I really can’t imagine that despite the political rhetoric and the campaign rhetoric.”

But Trump rewarded evangelicals for their support in 2016 with three conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and public health experts fear what a similar reward might look like for vaccine skeptics. They worry he might appoint someone like Kennedy, who Trump, after he was elected in 2016, asked to chair a “vaccine safety task force,” or Ladapo to a top health position.

Such appointments would represent a stark departure from the broadly respected personnel who served in the Trump administration, such as Alex Azar, a George W. Bush HHS appointee who was a top executive at the drugmaker Eli Lilly; Scott Gottlieb, who worked at the FDA under Bush; and Jerome Adams, who ran Indiana’s health department under then-Gov. Mike Pence. It would also deviate from the approach he took during the Covid-19 pandemic, putting scientists and doctors, such as Deborah Birx, at the forefront of the White House’s messaging.

“If he appoints any of those Fox News talking heads in a leadership position of the CDC or NIH or FDA, absolutely they could do a lot of damage,” said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

Kennedy’s campaign, in a statement, said that he “opposes all vaccine mandates” but has “no intention of amending the CDC childhood recommended vaccine schedule” and would “not use the federal government to force state governments or schools to change their policy on vaccines” if elected president.

A second Trump administration could effect significant change even just by making tweaks to two top vaccine advisory committees — the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. It could either appoint vaccine-skeptical individuals to the bodies or scrap them entirely.

Such a move would likely have immediate impacts on states, many of which point directly to CDC and ACIP recommendations in their immunization statutes. The CDC puts out yearly recommended immunization schedules for both children and adults.

“Imagine what happens if CDC guidance changes to, ‘Vaccination is a question for families. CDC recommends that families talk to their provider or minister about vaccines,’ and doesn't recommend anything,” said Wendy Parmet, who directs the Northeastern University Law School’s Center for Health Policy and Law. “Some state laws are going to change with a blink of an eye.”

The FDA, in a statement, said advisory committee members must be “technically qualified experts in their field” and be “able to analyze detailed scientific data and understand its public health significance.” It added that while committees provide recommendations, final decisions are made by the FDA.

A future administration could also use the power of the purse, like withholding funding for the federal Vaccines for Children Program, to persuade states to adopt or remove certain vaccine policies. It could defund or reduce funding for the CDC’s work on vaccine recommendations and promoting vaccination. CMS could remove vaccination as a quality measure. The NIH could decide not to fund certain kinds of vaccine research.

Public health experts additionally fear Trump could also end all federal vaccine mandates, including for members of the military, which they say could undermine the nation’s defenses. Military members are required to receive a suite of shots before basic training — against diseases like tetanus, measles and polio — while others have to get additional vaccines protecting them against anthrax or smallpox, though they can opt out on health, administrative or religious grounds.

Even if Trump takes none of those actions — or loses the 2024 election — public health experts warn that the former president’s campaign trail rhetoric is enough to give state and local officials the confidence they need to change their vaccine policies.

Some state and local jurisdictions have already been moving in that direction. In West Virginia, the GOP-controlled Legislature voted to remove vaccine requirements for students in private and parochial schools, though Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who is running for Senate, vetoed the bill. A Houston-area school board voted in May to remove sections from science textbooks that address vaccines.

“Even if it’s your state legislators who are making the decisions that count, if they see a president elected who holds strong anti-vaccine views, or who appoints anti-vaccine administrators, that tells elected officials at the state and local level, ‘Hey, this president was elected on this platform, this must be something that my constituents also care about,’” said Allison Winnike, director of the Western region for the Network for Public Health Law. “It could overnight cause really lasting harms that would take a long time to try to combat.”