Harris calls on DNC to release its 2024 election autopsy report publicly

Democrats continue to win at the ballot box as the party tries to regain its congressional majority in this year’s midterm elections.

But despite a slew of election victories and outperformance in the more than 15 months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the party’s image remains poorly in opinion polls, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finds itself far behind the rival Republican National Committee in fundraising, a key indicator of a party’s strength.

Worse still, the DNC faces persistent calls to release its internal autopsy of the party’s major setbacks in the 2024 elections, when Democrats lost the presidency and the Senate majority and fell short of regaining control of the House of Representatives.

Among those calling on the DNC to publicly release its report on what went wrong for Democrats in 2024 is former Vice President Kamala Harris, who was the party’s presidential nominee two years ago.

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Harris, who is considering another White House bid in 2028, recently told donors that she believes the DNC should make the autopsy public. The news was first reported by NBC News and confirmed by Fox News Digital.

A knowledgeable source said Harris did not discuss the autopsy with DNC Chairman Ken Martin and that the former vice president had no prior knowledge of Martin’s decision in December to keep the autopsy of the 2024 election secret.

Martin ordered the report soon after he was elected DNC chairman early last year.

Democratic Party officials interviewed more than 300 Democrats from all 50 states for the report, in which Martin promised to examine the party’s mistakes in 2024 and offer a road map to victory moving forward.

There was controversy surrounding the report as it was being compiled last summer, after reports said the autopsy would skip analysis of whether then-President Joe Biden should run for re-election in 2024 and shift to evaluating key decisions made by Harris and her team after replacing Biden as the party’s nominee with just over three months before the 2024 election.

Throughout the process, Martin repeatedly pushed back on calling the report an “autopsy” because he stated that the Democratic Party was not dead. Instead, he labeled the report an “after-action review.”

But in December, weeks after Democrats won sweeping victories in the 2025 off-election, the party announced it would not release the report.

Martin said in a statement at the time that releasing the report would be a “distraction” from the party’s “core mission” of regaining its congressional majority in the midterm elections.

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Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin addresses party members at the DNC summer meeting in Minneapolis, Minn., on Aug. 25, 2025. (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News)

In announcing his decision, Martin wrote: “We’ve completed a comprehensive review of what’s happening in 2024, and we’re already putting what we’ve learned into action. And we’re winning again, even in places that haven’t turned blue in decades. In our conversations with stakeholders from across the democratic ecosystem, we agree on what’s important, and that’s learning from the past and winning for the future.”

“Here’s our North Star: does this help us win? If the answer is no, that’s a distraction from the core mission,” he emphasized.

But the DNC chair’s decision was criticized not only by Republicans but also by Democrats.

Former DNC Vice Chairman David Hogg warned in a speech: “They are accelerating the election autopsy that gave us Trump 2.0. If party leaders do not take the necessary steps to rebuild ourselves as a winning coalition, we will take it into our own hands.” social media post In that case.

Hogg, a gun control crusader who was elected DNC vice chairman when Martin won the election as chairman, resigned last summer after upsetting party leaders with his efforts to support primary challenges against older, longtime incumbents “asleep at the wheel” in safe, blue districts.

Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to then-President Barack Obama and co-host of the popular progressive podcast “Pod Save America,” also weighed in on the issue. social media I criticize the movement.

“This is a very bad decision that reeks of the caution and indifference that brought us to this moment,” Pfeiffer wrote.

Podcast co-host and fellow Obama alum Jon Favreau called the DNC flip-flop “unreal” and “surprising.”

“The DNC’s actual position is that if the public knew more about what Democrats did wrong in the last election, it would hurt the party’s chances in the next election,” Favreau wrote of “How might this rebuild trust between party insiders and grassroots activists and organizers?”

Last month, Martin appeared on “Pod Save America” ​​to counter the criticism.

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Asked if the DNC would release a summary of the report, Martin said, “We are releasing that.” “The truth is, we’re not hiding the ball on this. We’re sharing these things. There’s nothing certain here.”

Martin pointed to data in the report the DNC shared with Democratic stakeholders and stated that “we are giving briefings.”

Harris isn’t the only potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate to call on the DNC to make the full report public.

“Yes, release the autopsy,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in an interview last weekend on NBC’s Sunday show “Meet the Press.” “They should do this,” the senator added, pointing to the DNC.

However, Booker, who ran but failed for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination won by Biden and is considering running once again in 2028, said it was imperative that his party not remain stuck in the past.

Rotimi Adeoye, a former Democratic operative who served as an opinion writer for The New York Times, argued in a social media post: “The mistake the DNC made was that they could have released the report in the early spring, whatever is in it, you get two weeks of bad publicity, then Trump does something stupid and everyone forgets.”

“It feels like something is being hidden now, which makes it that much more salacious,” he claimed.

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A person familiar with the DNC’s strategy told Fox News Digital that “they’re going to have to release something” because of the interest in the autopsy.

The person, who requested anonymity to speak more freely, said the ongoing storyline was distracting for the DNC as the clock ticked toward the midterms, adding that “there’s no use talking about it.”

The DNC noted Martin’s previous comments when contacted by Fox News Digital.