SAN FRANCISCO — On President Donald Trump’s 101st day in office, his opponent for the White House returned to San Francisco to deliver a two-pronged message to America: I told you so — and keep fighting back.

Harris encouraged Democrats to set their goals higher than a successful midterm election, and build a wide-ranging coalition to counter the party of Trump, who she said has already steered the nation into crisis.

“What we are, in fact, witnessing is a high-velocity event,” Harris said. “Where a vessel is being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making.”

She described the agenda as “a narrow, self-serving vision of America where they: Punish truth-tellers, favor loyalists, cash in on their power and leave everyone else to fend for themselves. All while abandoning allies and retreating from the world,” she said. 

By the way, Harris said, that agenda “is not lowering costs, not making life more affordable and not what they promised.”

Harris’ 30-minute speech Tuesday at the Palace Hotel was equal parts encouragement for Americans to fight back against the excesses of Trump’s first three months in office and a  tsk-tsking that this was precisely what she warned voters about during her 107-day presidential campaign. She received 2.3 million fewer votes than Trump after raising more than $1 billion for her campaign.

Two things Harris, 60, didn’t mention during the speech: whether she plans to run for governor in 2026 (she has previously said that she would decide by the end of summer), or whether she has any regrets over how she conducted her campaign. 

Instead, she sought to rally Americans to fight back against Trump and praised those who are resisting his attacks on the federal and judicial systems. She said those attacks have taken us to the verge of a constitutional crisis “that will eventually impact everyone.”

“We all know, President Trump, his administration, and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. They are counting on the notion that, if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,” Harris said. “But what they’ve overlooked is that fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious: Courage is contagious.” 

Harris, who often tells audience how her parents, who met as graduate students at UC Berkeley, took her to anti-war demonstrations as a child, on Wednesday lauded the “courage of Americans who are rallying at Social Security offices to protect their hard-earned benefits … who are speaking out to say, it’s not OK to violate court orders, not OK to detain and disappear American citizens or anyone without due process.” She praised the courage of judges to uphold the rule of law in the face of those who would jail them and universities defying unconstitutional demands that threaten the pursuit of truth and academic independence.

“The courage of all these Americans inspires me,” she said. 

Much of the speech was celebratory before the most welcoming of audiences: the annual conference and 20th anniversary fundraiser for Emerge, which has trained 6,500 women to run for office. (The organization has 1,200 alums who have served.)  Harris is integral to the organization’s origin story. 

Twenty-five years ago, Harris was a young prosecutor who wanted to run for office. She asked Andrea Dew Steele, who was also a political adviser for top San Francisco Democratic donor Susie Tompkins Buell, for help. Steele showed Harris the basics, from creating a mini-biography to introduce herself to voters and donors to organizing her contacts. At the same time, Buell was creating Emerge. Harris would be its test case. 

Harris won her race for district attorney, was reelected, won two terms asCalifornia attorney general and then a U.S. Senate seat before running for president in 2020. She dropped out before the primaries started and returned to the Senate until Joe Biden asked her to be his running mate. 

Her opposition to Trump turned personal this week when the president fired her husband, Doug Emhoff, from the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, along with five other Biden appointees. Emhoff, who was in the first year of what typically are five-year terms, blasted Trump for politicizing the board.

“Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve,” Emhoff said.

Harris has kept a relatively low profile since losing to Trump last fall, with no major interviews or speeches. Nor has she offered her ideas on what Democrats should do to claw their way back into power — something every Democrat down to those serving on mosquito abatement districts has done since November.

She seems unlikely to run again for president in 2028, as Democrats will likely see her as a reminder of a moment they’d like to forget — and be inclined to gravitate toward a shiny new object. 

The California governor job, which will be open in 2026 with no heir apparent holding the inside track, seems a more likely path for Harris. With her name recognition, fundraising network and history of winning three statewide elections, she would be such an overwhelming favorite that some of the candidates currently in the field — Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and former Orange County Democratic Rep. Katie Porter — have said that Harris’ entry would move them to drop out or run for another office. For Harris, it would give her a powerful platform — leader of the world’s fourth-largest economy — to combat Trump. Both Porter and Kounalakis attended Wednesday’s gala. 

But Harris wasn’t focused on California politics Tuesday. She was focused on what she said was the- “greatest manmade economic crisis in modern presidential history.”

Harris pointed to how she and other Democrats warned that Project 2025, a policy document drafted by conservative think tanks, would be a blueprint for Trump’s second term. Trump disavowed Project 2025 during his campaign and promised to ban its from serving in his administration. But he appointed several Project 2025 leaders to key posts in his administration, including Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, his  border czar Tom Homan, trade adviser Peter Navarro and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. 

“What we are experiencing right now is exactly what they envision for America. We are living in their vision of America. And this is not a vision that Americans want,” Harris said. 

A plurality of respondents (45%) gave Trump a failing grade for his first 100 days in office, nearly twice as many as those who gave him an “A,” according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released Tuesday.