Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris appears to have been listening to the critics complaining about her emphasis on “vibes” rather than painting a clear picture of her policy plans. During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday, Harris selectively detoured from a speech heavy on biography that was meant to reintroduce her to voters with sprinklings of administrative plans.
Conventions aren’t really the place for a candidate to roll out clear-eyed plans about how he or she plans to tackle the thorniest political issues confronting the country in the coming years. Democrats weren’t prepared to hold Harris’s feet to the fire so they could hear her five-point plan to address the economy, inflation, a housing crisis, and immigration. But she offered a taste for anyone tuning in who might be a persuadable voter worried about whether she was taking voters’ concerns seriously.
At the top of many voters’ lists of concerns is illegal immigration. President Joe Biden has been raked over the political coals throughout most of his tenure for a border crisis that has unleashed a flood of illegal immigrants into the country. Harris has suffered by association, having been deemed Biden’s “border czar” when she was tasked with working out diplomatic solutions with countries in Central America as a way to address the “root causes” of immigration into the United States.
Her handling was less than pristine, and her unofficial job title was the first attack Republicans used when it became clear she was stepping into the shoes left by Biden at the top of the ticket.
After weeks of building pressure to offer solutions instead of substitute talking points, Harris offered a sketch of a plan that offered little new content but did start her down the road into a broader conversation.
Immigration Reporter Anna Giaritelli broke down the outline and the criticism Harris ran into for us this morning.
“Harris reiterated this week that she would sign a bipartisan border bill the White House negotiated with the Senate earlier this year, suggesting she, like President Joe Biden, considers the millions in border crossings to be a liability in November,” Anna wrote.
“However, her pivot to the center on immigration, a departure from her 2020 views, has not quieted Republican criticism on what promises to be one of the most important topics of the 2024 race,” she wrote.
Immigration is one of several issues Harris has moderated herself on as she prepares for a general election fight with former President Donald Trump. Instead of running to get as far to the left as she could in a Democratic primary, Harris is working to position herself as a left-of-center figure rather than a leftist in the mold of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Harris’s campaign is also talking about working with Congress to institute a solution rather than promising a sweeping move that would come from the top down and risk not having the lasting qualities a piece of legislation would enjoy.
“We know at the end of the day the only way to really modernize our immigration system and secure our border is for Congress to pass commonsense immigration legislation,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Harris’s campaign chief, told CBS News last month.
Republicans are skeptical that Harris means business on the border.
“The one and only concrete policy Kamala Harris proposed tonight was to give amnesty and citizenship to every illegal alien in the country,” former Trump White House senior adviser Stephen Miller wrote in a post to X in response to Harris’s Thursday night speech referencing creating an “earned pathway” to citizenship.
There’s also some question about how much change Harris plans to implement beyond what is happening at the border now. The Biden administration recently cracked down on the number of asylum-seekers allowed at border checkpoints each day, which has reduced the number of reported daily crossings.
“I think, at this point, you know, the policies that are, you know, having a real impact on ensuring that we have security and order at our border are policies that will continue,” Chávez Rodríguez said.
Click here to read more about what Harris plans to do with the southern border.
Supremely busy summer
Supreme Court justices haven’t technically been on the clock for months, though salaried employees are rarely ever fully in vacation mode. The busiest time of year for the nine justices is during their term that runs from October through June, when they hear oral arguments on some of the most pressing legal matters of the day, have their own arguments with each other in the privacy of their chambers, and then shape news cycles with the release of opinions.
The offseason is generally made up of choosing which of the hundreds of cases that are appealed to them they want to hear further and the occasional spot decision to address an emergency development that can’t wait for the full treatment in the fall.
However, in recent years, those emergency decisions, sometimes referred to as the “shadow docket,” have been coming thick and fast, with dozens coming before the court in recent years, Supreme Court Reporter Kaelan Deese wrote for us this morning.
“On Thursday, the high court agreed to revive part of a Republican-backed Arizona law that aims to deter illegal voting in the state. They also decided last Friday to keep holds on new Title IX guidelines for schools in 26 states while lower court challenges proceed, a short-term win for conservative litigants who argued the updated sex and gender definitions would harm and discriminate against women’s privacy rights and fairness in sports,” Kaelan wrote.
“The last time the high court’s summer was this busy was during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when there were at least 21 applications rising up during the court’s seasonal break. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, the range was between six and 15 applications per summer,” he wrote.
Some legal experts are frustrated with the justices for making so many decisions without the benefit of having the full menu of arguments laid out before them. Others place the blame on the Biden administration for inviting the rulings by altering and adding a slew of rules this spring to get them on the books before the Congressional Review Act could be invoked under a Trump administration to challenge them.
Three major decisions the court is set to make before they return in full force during the second week of October will be related to the Biden administration’s sweeping student loan relief plan and its environmental air pollution policy, as well as “a challenge from Oklahoma over Biden’s requirement for family planning clinics that receive federal public health funding to provide referrals for abortions to patients who request it,” Kaelan wrote.
Click here to read more about the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” and how the justices feel about it.
Dogging it
It’s hard for Harris to say she is the underdog in a contest when she has raised more than $500 million in the span of a month. It’s harder when she has reversed polling that showed her predecessor losing and her coming out on top in key contests. It’s nearly impossible when criticism of her and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) appears to bounce off of them without tarnishing their images.
Democrats in Chicago told our crack team of reporters and editors last week that they are prepared to abandon the “underdog” viewpoint for 2024 and embrace the idea Harris will have to leg out the rest of the race in a defensive mode. That’s a change of perspective for the party that has spent most of the last month staring down a likely defeat.
It feels good to be in the lead, though changing the mindset from being the surging party scrapping for a win to fending off Trump could pose a new set of problems.
“The underdog story, everybody loves it, because the majority of us in America, we’re underdogs, so we believe in that story. That’s gonna be one of her stronger suits,” Michigan delegate Bobby Christian told the Washington Examiner last week. “Sometimes being too confident can come off real cocky and negative, so you always just want to, you want to be even-keeled, and you want to relate to everybody you can. But the underdog, everybody relates to.”
Click here to read more about how Democrats view the race and Harris’s place in it.
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For your radar
Biden has nothing on his public schedule and will remain in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, this week.
Harris has nothing on her public schedule.
Trump will speak at the National Guard Association of the United States General Conference & Exhibition in Detroit, Michigan, at 2 p.m.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) attends a campaign fundraising reception in Pikeville, Kentucky.
