Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on reproductive freedom at Howard University on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
- High stakes and much confusion surround Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s response to the border crisis.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution today condemning Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for failures as the Biden administration’s ‘border czar.’ The 220-196 vote saw six Democrats break with their party and join Republicans in supporting the measure.
The floor vote came a day after Mississippi Congressman Michael Guest (R) presented the resolution in the House Rules Committee. In a tense exchange, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) challenged Guest on whether the Biden administration had ever named Harris ‘border czar.’
Guest noted that Harris had repeatedly been identified that way by the media, to which McGovern retorted “right wing media.”
The Political Dangers of Being Labeled ‘Border Czar’
The question of Harris’ role in managing the border crisis has featured prominently in the days following President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 election. For much of this year, immigration polled as the top issue facing the country.
Gallup reports that amid a record surge in illegal border crossings, 55 percent of Americans want to reduce immigration into the country — the first time since 2005 that a majority supports less immigration.
The stakes are high on the issue. A YouGov poll published this week showed Harris trailing former President Trump on the question of immigration by 12 points.
Harris’ track record on immigration could pose challenges in the current environment. When she ran for president in 2020, Harris indicated she did not think illegally crossing the border should be a crime and voiced support for providing taxpayer-funded government healthcare to migrants. In a 2018 Senate hearing, then-Senator Harris drew parallels between ICE agents and the Ku Klux Klan.
A ‘Right Wing’ Hit Job?
Axios’ Stef W. Kight wrote yesterday, “the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.”
Efforts to portray the use of the moniker as a Republican or ‘right wing’ falsehood also appeared in or on ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and TIME magazine.
In a joint press conference held on March 24, 2021, Biden assigned Harris to “lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle, and the countries that need help stemming the migration to our border.”
Kight, at the time of the press conference, wrote an article for Axios entitled “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.”
Similar headlines appeared three years ago in mainstream news outlets such as the Associated Press, NBC News, ABC News, Politico, The BBC, and The Los Angeles Times (Headlines pictured below).
Following a critical response on social media platforms, including a Community Note on X which highlighted the inconsistency in Kight’s 2021 story and her story from yesterday, Axios added a correction to the 2021 story, which read:
“Editor’s note: This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ back in 2021.“
The conservative Media Research Center put out a video compilation from ABC News, CBS News, CNN and MSNBC yesterday, which contrasted recent denials that Harris served the function of ‘border czar,’ with previous statements made by reporters and pundits on those same news outlets applying that label to her.
More than ‘Border Czar’ Revisions
News outlets are not the only ones revising stories in the wake of Harris’ ascent. In 2019-2020, the non-partisan organization GovTrack rated Harris as the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate. GovTrack deleted that story from its website this week and added this note:
On July 23, 2024, this article was updated. The text “, especially given our ranking her as the most left-leaning senator in 2019 based on cosponsorship. But looking at the legislation she’s introduced tells a different story — judge for yourself.” was removed. Once the 2019–2020 session of Congress was complete, the statistics for the entire session and for Harris’s entire tenure in the senate showed a different story.
The revised rankings for 2019-2020 put Harris as the second most left leaning Senator, behind only Senator Bernie Sanders.
Russ Latino
