If we're talking about Kamala Harris in this post's title, & we are, we know from her preferred gender pronouns that she would prefer czarina to czar.
Since the incessant overflow of migrants @ the southwest land border during the entire Biden/Harris term has finally moved border security near the top of concern for voters many Democrat pundits are saying that Biden never assigned Harris the role of Border Czar.
Checking the record we find that on March 24, 2021 Biden said "I've asked her, the VP, today - because she's the most qualified person to do it - to lead our efforts with Mexico & the Northern Triangle & the countries that help - are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border." Click here to hear it in Biden's own words.
The definition of the noun czar is "a person appointed by the government to advise on & coordinate policy in a particular field" - sounds pretty close to what Biden asked Harris to do.
NBC News reported that "the vice president is expected to focus on both curbing the current flow of migrants & coordinating with countries in the region to address the root causes (although Biden never used the words "root causes") of migration" - yet any activity by Harris over the last three & a half years regarding this assignment was confined to 1) a trip to Guatemala & Mexico on June 7, 2021: 2) a four hour trip to the El Paso Border Patrol station & the El Paso del Norte Port of Entry on June 25, 2021; 3) taking credit for a page & a half "Cover Message" to a National Security Council report entitled "U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America" in July 2021; & 4) issuing a Fact Sheet: Update on the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America on March 25, 2024 that says "the Administration is on track to meet its commitment in the 2021 Root Causes Strategy to provide $4 billion to the region over four years."
Notice that Harris has always ignored the part of her responsibility regarding "stemming the migration to our southern border" while morphing her assignment into identifying & spending money addressing the root causes of migration from Northern Triangle countries, which root causes we always knew were corruption, violence, trafficking, & poverty. This was all known before Harris even began her feeble pretense of doing anything constructively in this regard or even showing interest in any part of the assignment except for not being tarred politically with the border overflow problem plaguing the nation. Over eight million migrants illegally entered the country while Harris worked on root causes & Biden provided no supervision "because she's the most qualified person to do it."
Most importantly, if there was an effort by Harris to stem the migration it was a complete failure unless the goal was to bring in future Democrat party voters. Now that the damage is done & the election is getting closer the Harris effort has turned to one of professing border responsibility & she has statistics to prove it. For instance the July encounters (Border Patrol & Office Of Field Operations) totaled 104,118 down from 301,981 last December. The table below confirms that the trend of the number of encounters declined in 2024. Click on table to enlarge.
And of course this reduction was brought about for political reasons benefitting Biden/Harris & AMLO (Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) because 2024 is a presidential election year in both the U.S. & Mexico. In April AMLO asked Biden to hold off issuing his planned executive order that disqualifies migrants from winning asylum if they enter the U.S. illegally until after the June 2 Mexican presidential election that was won by AMLO's hand picked successor Claudia Sheinbaum. Two days after the AMLO protege's victory, Biden issued the EO that requires migrants to be deported quickly which, with AMLO's help, in turn has discouraged thousands of migrants from heading north in the first place - thus the lower number of border encounters as recorded in the above table.
A responsible U.S. citizenry should withhold their vote until Biden/Harris explains why this extraordinary cooperation with Mexico did not happen three & a half years ago & why the EO was not issued then also. Writing the EO in 2024 acknowledges that Biden had the authority to do so all along but in a dereliction of duty didn't.
Instead Harris is trying to turn the issue around saying she has been a responsible leader on border security all along & that the lower number of border encounters confirms that. Harris blames Congress & Trump for not giving Biden/Harris the laws needed to properly enforce border security earlier.
This complaint is a reference to the Border Act of 2024 - S.4361 - negotiated with much fanfare by senators Lankford (R-OK), Sinema (I-AZ), & Murphy (D-CT). This bill failed a floor cloture vote 43 to 50 (only Republican to support the bill was Murkowski - Alaska) on May 23. Harris claims Republican congressmen capitulated to Trump's demands to not pass the bill because it would give Democrats an advantage over Trump by taking away his perceived best issue - border security.
A better reason to vote against the bill is found in Section 3.01 of the bill entitled Border Emergency Authority, paragraph (3) entitled Activations of Authority that is divided into two sections - discretionary activation & mandatory activation. The new border emergency authority under the bill pertains to the Secretary of Homeland Security's authority & duty to summarily remove from & prohibit the entry into the U.S. of all aliens, except unaccompanied minors, between ports of entry in response to extraordinary migration circumstances (that we have had since Biden/Harris took office three & a half years ago).
The discretionary activation to prohibit further alien migration can occur if during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days there is an average of 4,000 to 5,000 aliens who are encountered each day. The mandatory activation to prohibit further alien migration shall occur if during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or on any one calendar day a combined total of 8,500 aliens are encountered.
The outrageous part of hiding behind this bill having not been passed as the reason the border is out of control is that one or more of the above activation levels were hit every month that Biden/Harris has been in office except for February 2021 (their first full month in office when the caravans we're just gearing up) & July 2024 (for reasons detailed above). See graphic below that shows the total number of encounters for each of the last twelve years & the average number of encounters per day for each of the years. Click on graphic to enlarge.
How could Biden issue his Executive Order prohibiting entry two days after the Mexican election that placed even stricter limits (2,500 border encounters per day) on unauthorized crossings than the failed border bill described above if he had no authority to do so all along? Answer - Biden always had the authority to control the border but chose not to. The migration has only slowed as a result of enforcement of the EO so that Harris can use the lower number of crossings & encounters as a talking point to disguise her did-nothing record.
If we are all on the same team & Biden/Harris thought they didn't have the legal authority from Congress to enforce border security why didn't they meet with congressional leaders to explain the problem so that Congress could write a law they could enforce?
Harris has become so aggressive on border security she has even shamelessly shown a TV ad as part of her campaign highlighting the border she never visited with the voice-over saying how tough she is & that she will hire thousands of border patrol agents.
Now a vice president is subservient to their president & in order to make an informed vote a voter has to find out how much of the president's policy the vice president (Harris in this case) truly believed in. For instance we know in 1996 that Jack Kemp temporarily put aside his supply side economic principles to support Bob Dole's economic plan for the country. It was something Kemp had to do to be on the Dole ticket & I for one never felt Kemp had abandoned supply side economics. After the campaign Kemp returned to champion supply side economics once again.
Based on Harris's improvement in the polls since becoming the presidential nominee it seems that voters are not holding her accountable for much of Biden's unpopular policies even though she made the tie breaking vote in the Senate on a record number 33 bills. Source - Ballotpedia.
But Harris's record is all over the progressive lot from her days as California AG & senator. Now she wants voters to believe she is for the strongest, most lethal military on earth, funding the police, respecting ICE, fracking, & supporting a bill that would resume building the wall that Trump never finished. This from a self-proclaimed moderate candidate who was against all of these things just two months ago when she was more progressive supporting single payer Medicare for All while abolishing private healthcare insurance, outlawing gas stoves & gasoline-powered cars, supporting the disastrous Afghan withdrawal (after all she was the last person in the room with Biden on that decision), & wanting people who were never slave holders to pay reparations to people who were never slaves. More recently Harris has been for national price controls @ least for groceries & the terrible ideas of no tax on tips, raising the top marginal tax rates on capital gains & wages, & taxing unrealized capital gains on the tippy top 0.01% of wealthiest households as if this would not trickle (flood) down to middle class households when she needed more revenue.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton says Harris must explain when & why she adopted her current policy views.
But Harris is quite content to keep a low profile & slide into the White House as a blank slate if she can get away with it. The hostile anti-American media will not help in any substantial way so that leaves Trump having to drag her contradictory record out to the public in a way that makes sense because she has no intention of explaining any more of her record than she has to.
I don't think Trump can do it.
All in all, Harris is no more deserving of the presidency than Trump or Biden.
