This article was first published in the On the Trail 2024 newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings here. To submit a question to next week’s Friday Mailbag, email onthetrail@deseretnews.com.
Hello, friends. Wishing a belated happy Pioneer Day to all. Here is a short essay I wrote for The Dispatch about the holiday’s meaning to me.
An opening scooplet: Trump will visit Utah for a fundraiser on August 29. Headline guests include Papa John, Glenn Beck and Ken Paxton.
3 things to know
- President Biden addressed the country Wednesday night, his first public appearance since terminating his reelection bid Sunday. His decision to “pass the torch” was intended to “unite the country,” he said, and he reiterated his support for Vice President Kamala Harris, who he endorsed to be the party’s nominee. Biden intends to finish his term as president, which ends in January. Read more here.
- Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington Wednesday. Harris declined to attend Netanyahu’s address to Congress — a decision criticized by some Republicans — nor did Sen. JD Vance, the Republican nominee for Vice President. Harris and Biden met with Netanyahu privately, and Netanyahu will travel to Florida today to meet with Trump. Read more here.
- What is “brat theme,” you ask? I asked, too, and got a helpful answer from my colleague Gitanjali Poonia. Here’s a fascinating explainer on the internet memes and Gen Z slang driving Harris’ campaign. Re: brat — brat is, per Charli XCX, “like, it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.” Read (much) more here.
The Big Idea
Kamala Harris, ‘border czar’?
The White House and the media are currently locked in a battle over nit-picky semantics — one that could have significant implications for the presidential race.
In recent days, several national media outlets — including Axios and USA Today — have said that Harris should not be labeled the “border czar,” despite previously reporting that Biden tasked her to oversee the administration’s immigration response.
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared that Harris was “not a border czar,” calling the label a “false characterization.”
The concern over associating Harris with the Biden administration’s border response is likely a political one. Polls show that immigration is among the top issues in the election, and voters prefer Trump’s immigration policies more than Biden’s. Linking Harris to those policies could be a political vulnerability for Harris, the likely Democratic nominee.
But so could this latest effort to rid Harris of the “border czar” label: According to Google Trends, searches for “border czar” have spiked over the previous 24 hours.
The idea that Harris oversaw the Biden administration’s immigration response — thus the “border czar” title — likely stems from a March 2021 assignment given her by Biden to work with Central American countries to reduce immigration to the U.S.
As Biden described it, Harris’ task was “to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, and the countries that can help, need help, in stemming the movement of so many folks — stemming the migration to our southern border.”
As the Biden administration prepared to roll back many of the Trump- and COVID-era border restrictions, it announced that addressing “root causes” in Central American countries would be the center point of their holistic immigration approach. Harris was assigned to lead the effort.
As Harris put it, “Migration to our border is also a symptom of much larger issues in the region.”
“I think that it was pretty clear that at the beginning of the administration, when there was a crisis, the Biden administration appointed Kamala Harris with a task to help secure the border,” said Sam Peak, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
Instead of tasking Harris with overseeing border enforcement or migrant processing, which fall under the purview of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Harris’ assignment was centered on diplomacy with the Northern Triangle countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The strategy was that by decreasing violence and promoting economic growth in those countries, fewer migrants would be incentivized come to the U.S.
“If not ‘border czar,’ then maybe a more accurate term could be ‘Northern Triangle czar,’” Peak said. But he quickly noted that national media outlets — many of whom are now walking back their previous use of the label — used it generously in 2021. “If it’s incorrect to call Kamala Harris the ‘border czar’ now,” Peak noted, “then most of the press that is saying she wasn’t the border czar was incorrect before.”
A matter of semantics? Maybe. But the fight over terminology — and an attempt to shield Harris from potential political blowback over the administration’s record on immigration — may be aiming for the wrong target.
While Central American arrivals once made up a majority of illegal crossings at the U.S.’ southern border, those numbers have dropped precipitously. In April 2021, the month after Harris was tasked with overseeing the U.S.’ diplomatic relations with the Northern Triangle countries, Customs and Border Patrol encountered nearly 80,000 individuals from those countries at the southern border; in April 2024, less than 26,000 from those countries were encountered — even as overall migrant encounters stayed level. The effort to slow migration from Northern Triangle countries may have seen results, but it was replaced by increased migration from elsewhere.
Even so, the U.S. has seen a decrease in illegal crossings in the months following Biden’s executive order restricting asylum. Illegal crossings at the southern border are now at the lowest level since the fall of 2020. But American public opinion is now showing the sharpest uptick in anti-immigration sentiment since the post-9/11 years, according to Gallup data, and being associated with Biden’s unpopular border response could be enough to sink Harris politically.
The more the White House fights the “border czar” label, the more it may stick in voters’ minds. That is a reality the nascent Harris campaign must face: if she wishes to run on the Biden-Harris administration’s accomplishments, she will have to face voters’ discontent, too. A more profitable tactic than fighting labels might be arguing why she believes the current border strategy is the right one.
Weekend reads
Are Republicans pleased with VP Vance? Not as well as you might think. A poll of senior GOP congressional staffers and lobbyists found that over three-fourths (76%) don’t think Vance is the best pick to help Trump win in November. Alternative candidates that polled better than Vance? Glenn Youngkin, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Marco Rubio. See the full crosstabs here. The Canvass RNC recap: Most prefer Youngkin over Vance for VP (Elvina Nawaguna, Punchbowl News)
Jon Meacham, the historian and speechwriter, has as close a window into the Biden presidency as any. In this Q&A, he salutes Biden for walking away from power, something that goes against “human nature.” By his metrics, Biden is “a friend” and “a consequential President who has gotten a lot more right than he’s gotten wrong.” An interesting perspective: Was Biden’s decision to withdraw ‘heroic’? (Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker)
As a clean-shaven BYU grad, I’m fascinated by the norms surrounding facial hair and why they’re perpetuated. Here, a lighter look at the history of bearded White House occupants, and how Vance may disrupt a century of bald-faced history: Yes, JD Vance’s Beard Matters. Here’s Why. (Emily Schultheis, Politico)
See you on the trail.
Editor’s Note: The Deseret News is committed to covering issues of substance in the 2024 presidential race from its unique perspective and editorial values. Our team of political reporters will bring you in-depth coverage of the most relevant news and information to help you make an informed decision. Find our complete coverage of the election here.