When The Washington Post announced last week that its editorial board would not endorse Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump for president, the newspaper invited a flood of criticism and more than 250,000 cancellations from apparently irate subscribers.

It was perhaps the most controversial non-endorsement of the 2024 election cycle. But it was far from the first.

For months now, notable politicians, celebrities and institutions have been saying that they wont back anyone for president this year, at least not publicly. Since nobody seems to track non-endorsements, HuffPost has assembled this partial list of sideline sitters and their stated rationales. (For a list of actual endorsements, Wikipedia is a pretty good source .)

The Washington Post

Until this year, the Posts editorial board had made an endorsement in every presidential election for three decades. The papers editorial page editor approved an endorsement of Harris that was being drafted earlier this month and reviewed by Post owner Jeff Bezos, NPR reported .

But CEO William Lewis announced Friday that the paper would be returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates, citing a Post policy that was in place through the Richard Nixon era. He said the move was a statement in support of our readers ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions whom to vote for as the next president.

Bezos defended the move in a Monday op-ed, with the billionaire saying that endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election but create a perception of bias.

The reaction from high-profile journalists, including Post alums, has been brutal. Marty Baron, a former longtime executive editor, called the papers decision cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. He predicted that Trump would take the non-endorsement as an invitation to further intimidate Bezos, hinting that the billionaire may have feared retribution from a possible Trump administration if the Post endorsed Harris.