The Dictatorship
Kamala Harris is done sacrificing herself for the sake of party unity
For years it was an open secret in Washington that former Vice President Kamala Harris had amassed powerful critics among the advisers closest to President Joe Biden. As a Democratic strategist and columnist during the Biden presidency, I received my fair share of insider pitches from Harris skeptics in the West Wing. This week’s much-hyped preview of Harris’ upcoming memoir, “107 Days,” reveals a politician finally ready to reclaim ownership of her own political and personal narrative.
“I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me,” Harris writes. “One narrative that took a stubborn hold was that I had a ‘chaotic’ office and unusually high staff turnover during my first year.”
Within months of Biden’s inauguration, Beltway gossip columns openly discussed the tension between Harris and first lady Jill Biden.
The gossip wasn’t subtle. Within months of Biden’s inauguration, Beltway gossip columns openly discussed the tension between Harris and first lady Jill Biden. White House staffers did little to rebut (and often quietly supported) stories of Harris’ staff dysfunction that later made their way into prominent political tell-all books. I even wrote about Biden’s bizarre decision to sideline Harris despite her significant achievements in a 2023 column for this website.
Harris, according to her book, took Team Biden’s barbs in stride because she understood how critical it was for Democrats to telegraph unity and shared purpose after four divisive years of Donald Trump. She might have hoped that her willingness to overlook all that political backbiting would be repaid with respect and support from Biden’s team after taking over Biden’s spot on the Democratic ticket in August 2024. That respect never came.
Instead, Biden loyalists piled blame onto Harris for the party’s 2024 losses just days after the election. They could have — would have — done it better, they recounted to journalist Franklin Foer. Whatever dignity Harris expected to earn from her grace, it’s clear she wildly misunderstood the intensity of political tribalism in Biden’s inner circle. Now, freed from her connection to her former colleague, Harris and her team are finally venting their frustrations.
Democrats should listen closely, because Harris is articulating a key problem that still plagues the party even after Biden’s departure.
Anyone who doubts Harris’ claims need only look at the bitter response from Biden world. On Thursday, anonymous former Biden advisers dismissed Harris as playing “zero substantive role” in the administration, and instead focusing on “stilted photo ops.” That those advisers refused to put their names behind such nasty accusations speaks volumes about the toxicity that still dominates Biden’s inner circle.
Rhonda Elaine Foxx, former Biden campaign director of women’s engagement, was among the first to validate Harris’ account of her treatment on the campaign trail. In a post on XFoxx recounted emailing Biden staffers about the dismissive way women of color were treated on the campaign, specifically around the uphill battle to give Harris any visible presence at major Black cultural events — the same Black voters who played a pivotal role in Biden’s 2020 victoryand who Biden personally pledged to represent in his inaugural remarks.
“The fight just to have a campaign presence at the Zeta convention referenced in her excerpt was insane,” Foxx wrote. “Black spaces that should’ve been obvious priorities for coalition-building were dismissed. The expertise of Black staffers was constantly dismissed. What the VP says in 107 Days is right: our biggest challenge isn’t just Trump, it’s us.”
Lest anyone think Foxx is just a disgruntled former staffer, her post received public support in a post from former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, one of Biden’s most visible backers during the campaign.
Harris’ book and the testimonials of former staffers paint a picture of a vice president willing to suffer petty humiliations in order to maximize Democrats’ chances of beating Trump in 2024. Instead of embracing Harris’ proposals to increase the campaign’s engagement with Black communities, the Biden team egotistically dismissed them as efforts to promote her own brand over and above the boss.
“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,” Harris wrote. “It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him. His team didn’t get it.”
The Biden team’s growing insecurity about Harris’ publicity would have disastrous consequences on Election Day, when Black voters bolted from a Democratic Party they felt took them for granted.
The Biden team’s growing insecurity about Harris’ publicity would have disastrous consequences on Election Day, when Black voters bolted from a Democratic Party they felt took them for granted. Democrats won 87% of Black men and 95% of Black women in 2020. Four years later, they won just three-quarters of Black men and 89% of Black women.
Harris’ memoir is a cautionary tale about what happens when a president allows his senior staff to amass too much decision-making power. Time and again, Harris describes her personal relationship with Biden in positive terms, yet key campaign decisions seemed to be made by staffers who rarely or never consulted Biden directly. Perhaps had the former president been informed, he would have made different decisions.
Unfortunately for the American people, the extreme control Biden’s team had over his day-to-day decisions means we will likely never know. What is clear is that Harris doesn’t deserve the venom heaped upon her in the wake of Democrats’ 2024 losses, and she’s no longer willing to take incoming fire for a White House team that apparently showed little loyalty or decency to her. As someone who has spent nearly two decades fighting to build a Democratic Party that lives up to its moral promise both internally and externally, I say it’s about time.
Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on X, @themaxburns.
The Dictatorship
Airport lines grow longer — and Congress can’t even agree if DHS shutdown talks exist
It’s been nearly a month since thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees were forced to begin working without pay, and the negotiations to overhaul and fund the department haven’t yielded any meaningful progress.
In fact, talks have moved so slowly that lawmakers are now publicly arguing over whether negotiations even exist.
Lengthening TSA lines, dwindling disaster aid funds and rejected proposals to fund portions of the department have forced lawmakers to acknowledge they’re nowhere close to a deal.
“If Democrats won’t sit down with us, it’s showing you who’s playing you right now,” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., told reporters Tuesday. “They’re playing you.”
Britt said she’s sought meetings with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and has been rebuffed.
Murray said she’s willing to negotiate, but President Donald Trump’s White House needs to acknowledge it has to change tactics at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as Democrats seek requirements for agents to wear body cameras, remove masks and cooperate with state and local investigations, among other things.
“I am willing to talk to people, but I’m not willing to sit in a room, have coffee, give away a few things and have Stephen Miller override whatever we all agreed to in a room,” Murray said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Murray sought agreement on the Senate floor to pass a bill to fund most of the department, excluding funds for ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the secretary’s office, which Britt objected to.
That leaves the TSA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard and other agencies running on fumes, as pressure builds on lawmakers.
FEMA was projected to have about $5.9 billion left in its Disaster Relief Fund at the end of February and $2.1 billion left at the end of this month, according to its latest report. Those funds were projected to run out before the end of April.
TSA wait times have varied widely as employees work without pay. On Wednesday afternoon, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport posted TSA wait times of 40 minutes at its main terminal. But Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, another major hub, posted wait times between 0 and 10 minutes at its terminals. Meanwhile, over the weekend, wait times in Houston and New Orleans were as long as three hours.
The ouster of Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary, and the selection of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., as the new nominee, hasn’t won over Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said ICE needs to be overhauled legislatively, and not just a change in personnel.
“The president has fired Kristi Noem. Good riddance,” Schumer said last week when Mullin was named as the new nominee. “But the problems at this agency, at ICE, transcend any one person. The rot is deep.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a Republican who helped push Noem out of her position — citing over-the-top mass deportations, mismanagement of disaster responses and her decision to kill her dog — said he’s not sure Mullin will change the negotiations over DHS funding.
He said he expects Mullin to “have a transformative impact on FEMA.” But Tillis said he still wants answers about ICE operations in North Carolina, which Noem didn’t answer.
“I just want to demonstrate that this mass deportation idea was a bad idea because it was quantity over quality — quality of really bad people that need to be incarcerated or deported, or hopefully deported and incarcerated in whatever country they came from,” Tillis told MS NOW Wednesday.
It’s been nearly two weeks since the White House last sent Democrats an offer in the ICE negotiations. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Wednesday that Democrats still hadn’t responded to the latest GOP offer.
Thune said Republicans aren’t going to agree to a funding bill that cuts out money for ICE and CBP.
“You take away border security — I can’t imagine wanting to do that,” he said. “This bill needs to move together.”
The spat over funding other agencies only highlighted the chasm between the two parties on policy changes at ICE and CBP.
“We are not going to defund the police,” Britt said of Murray’s proposal to fund other agencies. “We are not going back to Biden’s open borders.”
Murray pushed back, contending it’s “absurd” to say Democrats are defunding the police. She noted that ICE and CBP received billions of dollars in last year’s Republican reconciliation bill — money that’s still available during the shutdown.
After the tense exchange on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said it’s clear lawmakers have a long way to go.
“We are not that close,” Schatz said. “And so if everybody agrees on that, that we’re not that close, that it’s not like negotiations have shut down, but they’re a little stalled.”
Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University.
Three brothers were arrested Wednesday in a weekend bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Oslowhich Norwegian police are treating as a possible act of terrorism.
Authorities said the men, who have not been publicly identified, are Norwegian citizens “with a background from Iraq.” They are all in their 20s.
Officials earlier said Sunday’s explosion caused limited damage to the structure and no injuries. Prime Minister Jonas Store called the attack “very serious and completely unacceptable.”
Investigators said they have not determined a motive but had not ruled out terrorism.
“It’s natural to see this in the context of the current security situation and that this could be an attack deliberately targeting the U.S. Embassy,” Oslo police official Frode Larsen said shortly after the explosionreferring to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, particularly in Gulf countries caught in the crossfire, have been on high alert since the war with Iranbegan Feb. 28. The U.S. ordered the departure of nonemergency government personnel and families from missions in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq and Oman. Suspected Iranian drones struck the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabiaand the U.S. Consulate in Dubailast week. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was also targeted in a rocket attackSaturday.
Shortly after the bombing in Oslo, shots were fired at the exterior of the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, Canada, on Tuesday.
The State Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment on the Oslo arrests.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* All eyes on the Strait of Hormuz: “Leaders from the coalition of G7 countries — which is made up of the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom — met virtually today to discuss how to ease the economic strain caused by the Iran war, including the possibility of escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz with military assets.”
* In related news: “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it struck two ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, as the war disrupts one of the world’s most crucial economic passageways and threatens industries across the globe.”
* A case I’ve been following: “The U.S. must keep making payments on the $16 billion New York Hudson Tunnel, after an appeals court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to halt paying for the project.”
* All of the latest inflation data was collected before the war: “Prices consumers pay for a broad range of goods and services rose in line with expectations for February, offering a final look at inflation pressures before an oil shock tied to the Iran war rattled the outlook. The consumer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 0.3% for the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. Both numbers matched the Dow Jones consensus forecast.”
* The Epstein files: “On the heels of news reports that more than 40,000 files were either withheld or taken down from the Department of Justice’s site with documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, the DOJ late last week released documents including FBI memos related to accusations against President Donald Trump. But MS NOW has found that the released files still appear to be incomplete, missing FBI notes and memos reflecting interviews with women alleging abuse by other prominent men.”
* In related news: “The anonymous artists who have targeted President Donald Trump with satirical statues and installations in Washington struck again on the National Mall on Tuesday morning with an enormous statue of the president embracing the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a reenactment of a famous scene from the movie ‘Titanic.’”
* Bringing more guns to more convicted criminals: “The Trump administration quietly restored the gun rights to 22 people who had lost them because of felonies, indictments or other convictions this year as it prepares to revive a long-dormant program that’s expected to draw a tsunami of applications.”
* This proposal seems entirely worthwhile: “Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is introducing new legislation Wednesday to recover federal money that’s been paid out to U.S. presidents through settlements resulting from White House coercion. Here’s a copy of his billfirst obtained by HuffPost. In case it’s not obvious, the legislation is directly aimed at President Donald Trump.”
See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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- Wednesday’s Mini-Report, 3.11.26
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