Senator Kamala Harris, who was once seen as a top tier contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, dropped out of the race on Tuesday.
"I've taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life," the California senator wrote in a note to supporters. "My campaign for president simply doesn't have the financial resources we need to continue."
Harris spent the early days of her campaign as a promising candidate, rising as high as second place in the Real Clear Politics poll average in July, but has struggled with finances as well as reports of staff disorganization and infighting, according to the New York Times.
By November, she was polling in the low single digits and laid off her New Hampshire field team to increase her focus on Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses on February 3.
Though she had shifted focus to the Hawkeye State, she lacked the cash to run TV ads in Iowa, a state in which Harris had not run an ad in three months. Only recently, support for a super PAC made up of former aides to pay for advertising began to gain traction within the campaign.
Harris was one of seven candidates who had already qualified for the sixth debate, which will be held in her home state of California, before today's announcement.
The senator had started her campaign in front of a crowd of20,000 in Oakland, according to her campaign, and said she is withdrawing "with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude."
Republican Tom Emmer abruptly abandoned his bid to become House speaker, withdrawing hours after winning the internal party nomination once it became clear he would not have enough support from GOP colleagues for the gavel.
Eighty-five-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz spoke of a “hell that we never knew before and never thought we would experience” as she described the harrowing Oct. 7 assault on her kibbutz by Hamas militants and the terror of being taken hostage into the Gaza Strip.
Jenna Ellis, an attorney and prominent conservative media figure, reached a deal with prosecutors Tuesday and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez returns to court Monday to enter an expected not guilty plea to a conspiracy charge alleging he acted as an agent of the Egyptian government when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Hamas militants on Friday freed two Americans -- a mother and her teenage daughter who had been held hostage in Gaza since militants rampaged through Israel two weeks ago, the Israeli government said.
