*Vice President Kamala Harris is making her first foreign trip this week, and it couldn’t be more challenging: Guatamala and Mexico. Her goals: Secure commitments for better cooperation on border security and economic investment. In short, kick start an enlightened self interest, Central American version of the Marshall Plan. The elephant in the room: corruption. With it comes uncertainties on the rule of law. Without addressing endemic corruption, economic investment ultimately can’t succeed. Buena suerte, VP Harris.
* “Border czar”: How Republicans—who see the border dynamics as a Biden Administration vulnerability—have labeled Vice President Harris.
* The director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy is now officially a member of the Cabinet. Bottom line: Science officially—and literally—has a seat at the table.
* “I come here to help fill the silence, because in silence wounds deepen.”–President Joe Biden in Tulsa to honor the victims of the Tulsa race massacre.
* It’s relative. “The Congressional Progressive Caucus and the ‘squad’ have yet to behave like the liberal equivalent of the tea party representatives that made former House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan’s lives hell.”–Kara Voght, Mother Jones.
* Surprising no one, but infuriating Dems, Demapublican Sen. Joe Manchin says he will oppose voting reforms.
* “Does Barack Obama not hear how condescending he sounds when he goes on a media tour and portrays the Biden Administration, which is off to a bigger and leftier start, as ‘finishing the job’”?–Maureen Dowd, New York Times.