Sources: Top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills urging her not to run for president

The shift from coyness to a likely pursuit of long-held ambitions has played out in public. She’s been traveling constantly for speeches, both paid and free. She spoke out in support of a military strike in Syria. She’s reaching out to candidates in the New York City mayoral race and is hosting two fundraisers for friend Terry McAuliffe in his Virginia gubernatorial race. She has started granting media interviews.

In private, according to Clinton sources, the shift is even more pronounced. While Clinton has not made an emphatic final decision to run for president, some internal conversations within her orbit are now premised on the assumption that she is likely to run, several sources said, and that many important decisions about her schedule and her profile on prominent issues are being made with this goal in mind…

While her main professional affiliation is now to the Clinton Foundation — started by Bill Clinton and now named also after Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton — she has also opened a personal office that will serve as the main venue for political operations, in order to avoid enmeshing the foundation in potential political controversy.

While the debate over her 2016 plans has an increasingly steep tilt in one direction, it is not over. Cheryl Mills — a former top White House lawyer and chief of staff to Clinton at the State Department who is one of her closest confidants — has made heartfelt arguments that Clinton should forgo another presidential run to protect her own quality of life, according to Clinton sources.