cover of episode The Border Is a Top Campaign Issue. It’s Also Their Home.

The Border Is a Top Campaign Issue. It’s Also Their Home.

2024/9/26
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The Run-Up

Chapters

El Paso residents, living on the border, offer diverse perspectives on immigration and the 2024 election. While some express frustration with both Democrats and Republicans, others prioritize economic opportunities. The militarization of the border and the 2019 Walmart shooting deeply impact the community.
  • El Paso residents have a fluid cross-border life, utilizing services and maintaining social connections in Ciudad Juarez.
  • The increase in migrant crossings has created real challenges for El Paso, straining resources and fueling national news coverage.
  • The shift in public sentiment on immigration is influenced by both practical challenges and political rhetoric.
  • Economic concerns play a significant role in voting decisions, even among those who disagree with Trump's immigration rhetoric.
  • The Santa Fe Bridge, a historical crossing point, has become a focal point of migrant protests and increased security measures.
  • The influx of migrants has shifted demographics and created tensions within the Latino community.
  • The militarization of the border has significantly altered the way of life for El Paso residents.
  • State and local communities grapple with the impact of increased migration amid political gridlock.
  • The 2019 Walmart shooting, a hate crime targeting Latinos, remains a significant trauma for the community.

Shownotes Transcript

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It's entirely online and super flexible. Fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a therapist and get started in minutes. Visit betterhelp.com slash runup today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash runup. Do we just go down? Yeah, just go. You can just go straight. Okay. You see like way, way over there? Yeah, the car's sneaking out. Over the weekend, I found myself on the side of a mountain.

with my colleagues A'Lisa, Anna, and Jasmine. We got really high up really quick. Yeah, no, no. More specifically, the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, Texas, climbing up a snaking road to a scenic overlook. So it's like a touristy area, but we would come out here and just hang out on weekdays. Jasmine Ulloa is a national politics reporter at The Times. She travels all over the country talking politics,

But she knows this little corner of Texas extremely well. Quinceañeras come here to take photos and just hang out. I came here with all my chambelanes and damas, and we took photos and just hung out, of course, dates, high school dates, you know, the whole nine. Jasmine grew up in El Paso, and she took us to this overlook because it's one of the best views in the city. Wow. Not only to see El Paso, but to see the U.S.-Mexico border itself.

And the city across the border, Ciudad Juarez. So there's Interstate 10 that leads all the way to Los Angeles. And then there's the border highway right behind it. And it follows the river all the way to the Franklin Mountains. And that would be the border. We're here because the southern border and immigration are a huge issue in the 2024 election.

And unlike the last two presidential elections, where that's basically meant Trump focused on immigration, while Democrats accused him of fear-mongering, this year, both Democrats and Republicans are fighting to convince voters that they are the party to fix what they both say is a big problem. Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit the border in Arizona this Friday.

And Trump has escalated his rhetoric even further, promising mass deportations if elected. This all comes alongside a big shift in public sentiment that's been showing up in polling and in our reporting. According to Gallup, 55% of Americans want to curb immigration.

The highest total recorded since 2001. And the sharp reversal from the time Trump was in office, when increasing immigration was more popular. So with all that in mind, I wanted to talk to some people who actually live near the border.

Today, a conversation with a group of Jasmine's family, friends, and neighbors about their own view of the border and what they make of the shifting politics and the battle over their backyard. From the New York Times, I'm Ested Herndon. This is The Runoff. Before we gathered for a carne asada with her family, I asked Jasmine to hop in the car to show us around El Paso.

and pick some places that she thinks say something about the state of the border right now. The first stop, where we started, the overlook. On the Mexican side of the border, this gigantic Mexican flag was waving in the wind. From here you can see how people cross every day for school, for work. We used to go to the dentist, our eye doctor. Our longtime eye doctor was on the other side. I had friends who crossed over every day to go to Catholic school.

And so we would go over to their homes, we would go over to quinceaneras, we would go over for, you know, birthday parties. So it's a really fluid life for many people. Of course, not all, right? Not everybody has documentation and can pass. Jasmine says that's a story about the border that's not often told in politics, but that the shift in voter sentiment isn't just about the narrative. But I also think that there are really real challenges that weren't

fully addressed during those years and El Paso was one of the cities that really felt them. You had groups of activists, lawyers, religious leaders getting together as record numbers of migrants were arriving at the border.

and trying to help people, trying to feed people, trying to provide clothing, trying to provide assistance to take them to other cities where they had relatives. But as the numbers just kept getting larger and larger, they were struggling to provide those services. And I think when you have these really real practical challenges that is overtaking the news, not just the local news, but the national news, and then on top of that you have

a really negative message about the border from one party exploiting those real challenges, it kind of fuels fear and concern among a greater swath of the population. I think also a lot of people trace their roots to Mexican migration and Mexican workers who put up with a lot of discrimination and were here to work. And I think there was

resentment in what they saw as people just being let in, right? And being handed things.

Last question I have and then we can go move is like, one of the big surprises of 2020's election was that a lot of these communities, particularly on the border in Texas and even some obviously in Florida, voted for Trump in way bigger numbers than people expected. It was one of the big shocks of the night in that election year. And I think a lot of that has lingered over to people saying like, what is it that would make a community that is experiencing this still back somebody who's saying that stuff? What is that answer?

There's a lot of reasons to that. I mean, there's a lot of reasons and it's being debated and I think it will be debated for years to come. But the main concern of many people who crossed this border to begin with were first and foremost interested in economic opportunity and upward mobility and that promise of the American dream that the United States offered. And so I think the economy...

comes first for a lot of people, even people who disagreed with Trump's rhetoric on immigration. You know, I've spoken to so many voters who have said, I've experienced racism. I don't like how he talks about immigrants. I don't like how he talks about Mexicans. But at the end of the day, what matters most is what's in my pocket. That's an important distinction, too, is I felt better under Trump. I felt the economy was better under Trump, even though economic indicators might show otherwise in some areas. Got it.

Driving to our next location. We're going to go to Mesa instead because it's going to be easier to get down there. Jasmine pointed out the historical reminders of the city's proximity to Mexico. In some of these hotels downtown, you could watch the Mexican Revolution play out in the 1910s. People would go up there to buy lemonade and popcorn and watch revolutionaries go at it across the border. Wow.

and talked about the role of politics in a place that is the subject of so much heated debate. Now, as you're someone who's reporting across the country about the impact of Latinos and the diversity among them, like, how do you see the experiences you had as similar or different than when you travel and talk to other groups? For me, like I said, the story of Latino voters has been one of neglect. We didn't really grow up talking about

U.S. politics, I actually knew more about Mexican politics growing up. And I think you'll find like the, like a lot of people don't,

participate a lot you see that story over and over again right among latino voters that they don't participate in the political system that campaigns don't reach out to them as much as black or white voters and i think that's very much the the reality for a lot of people here it's like you're here to care about your family to work hard to make money to move up you know you care about upward mobility but you you don't really care so much about politics at least in in my family

Next stop on the tour, the bridge. There are five bridges in the area that folks used to cross between the two countries. But Jasmine wanted to take us to the one known as the Santa Fe Bridge. Because this is a place where the influx of new migrants was really felt in recent years. When families from Central America came across the border in historic numbers. Like my grandmother and I used to...

It was like our little routine on the weekends to come here, buy a soda on the corner and just walk around. We walked down the street full of shops. Underwear, anybody? $1.50, good deal. And made our way to the border crossing. Go down that street so you can see the church where migrants were being received. Cool. Were? Well, the numbers have dropped.

The numbers hit record highs in December but have now sharply decreased. And then it always fluctuates right along the border. Sometimes people are crossing more through San Diego, other times it's the Yuma sector. Different parts of the border see the influxes at different times. All of this during Christmas was filled with people, migrants, who were sleeping on the streets, on

Pizza boxes, there were clothes hanging on all these metal fences. So it was filled with a lot of families, also a lot of young men and women who were looking for work. And so what I was hearing a lot from religious leaders and volunteers and people who were working with

helping shelter people and provide food for people was that the earlier migrants who were crossing often had family that they could connect them to in other parts of the country. But as more and more people were coming, hearing that people were getting across or that, you know, there's a lot of misinformation going on through WhatsApp,

and TikTok, and people were just coming here thinking that they could just get free shelter, and they didn't really know anybody else, so they couldn't connect them to other relatives that could help them find a more stable life here. That's where you really began to see the tensions rise, was as more people were left stranded here without a place to go.

You were beginning to see more people, not just in El Paso, but across the country, you know, seeing these images of just... Were these mainly Mexican migrants or was it Central American? No, it was people from Venezuela, it was people from Cuba. We talk a lot about all the anxieties and grievances and resentments that the nation's changing demographics are spurring among the American electorate.

But there's also demographic changes happening within the people who are migrating into the United States. And that's spurring its own divisions among Latinos in the United States. Can you describe what we're looking at right now? Yeah. Okay. So we've made it to the entrance of the Santa Fe Bridge. We are at the edge of El Paso Street. There's a welcome arch that says Bienvenidos with El Paso signs.

the sacred burning heart in the state of Texas. It's Sunday, so many people are going back home after staying in El Paso for the weekend. Some people are, maybe some are visiting.

How does this process take? Like if I was in Juarez and I want to come for like a day, how much of that day does the process of crossing the border take? So when I was young, it was really fast. You could just drive over there, buy some barbacoa for the afternoon and get back in time for dinner. In recent years, it's become much more unpredictable.

and longer on both sides as the U.S. has increased its security, especially in response to 9-11. And then now with the recent debate over migration. And it's really, really, I can't stress how much of a strain it is on people who live here. The distrust between both sides has just increased and the tension between both countries has increased. The way of life has been fundamentally shifted because of that.

the increased difficulty in moving back and forth. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, sometimes you'll have, if there's, you know, if migrants are protesting at the bridge, that can shut down the bridge for hours and leave people stranded on the other side. One time we were just coming back from having dinner and we were doing our usual process of, my aunt drops us off at the

pedestrian bridge and because she has a card that allows her to pass quickly through the car so she drops us off and we walk across and as we were walking up we saw many migrants protesting at the edge of the border and a couple of them trying to run up closer as close as they could get and that stirred a very hostile response from border officials and Mexican officials as well and we just saw soldiers coming up with guns and we saw the floodlights

flashing on people. And it was just a really stark reminder of how militarized the border has become. Going around with Jasmine was a reminder that while immigration enforcement and border security are big topics in election years, it's often less of a priority when it's time to govern. Like earlier this year, when Republicans in Congress backed out of a bipartisan border bill compromise,

at the behest of Donald Trump. This has left state and local communities to wrestle with the impact of increased migration themselves and fuel dissents among some voters here that they're being politically neglected by both parties. More after the break.

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After Jasmine showed us around El Paso... I'm guessing it's about 30 to 40 people. My mom's friends, my mom's childhood friends, and my childhood friends. We went to her aunt's house, where her family was hosting a big carne asada, a pretty regular Sunday event. Every Sunday. Every other Sunday. Yeah, yeah. It's always like this. Where family and friends come over and catch up over food. We have steak.

We have Mexican rice, beans, salsa for every taste. Of course, we have tequila. So we have plenty of food for everybody. A little bit for everybody. Yes, yes. Or a lot of it for everybody. Yes, yes. The gazebo in the backyard was decorated for Mexican Independence Day, which was just last week. Three tables were interconnected to make space for the 30 or so people there.

— As people mingled and got their food, Jasmine went around and introduced us to the guests. — Okay, so I'm going to introduce you all. Hello. So these are my friends. — Many of whom were born and raised there, alongside Jasmine.

friends of hers from high school. And some friends of her mother, who had moved to the United States as immigrants, but had now been in El Paso for decades. While we were introduced to the group, we asked each person to fill out a note card

and answer a couple of questions we were curious about. But just know, like, it's not a pop quiz. There's no right or wrong answers. And, you know, just be who you are, and it'll work out. Their party identity. Top voting issue. Which party they trusted more on immigration and who they planned on voting for in the November election. A top issue for most people, roughly half of the group, was abortion and reproductive rights, with the economy a close second. After people ate,

Jasmine's uncle got everyone's attention. Now, have your attention, please. Quiet, girls. Thank you all so much for coming. I know I met some of you all individually, but I'm going to give a little overview about what we're going to do here, about who we are, about what we do. And because this was a bilingual group, Jasmine helped serve as our translator. It's basically a program. Well, you should slow down, man.

We started by asking people how they identify politically.

With Democrats, I like the freedom that we have to choose. You don't like abortions? Don't have an abortion. You don't like gay people? Don't be gay. You know, it's just those things that you have, you have that freedom, that right. But I have the ability to say, yes, I want to do this or I don't want to do that. El Paso is a Democratic-leaning city. 67% of El Paso County went for Joe Biden in 2020.

And most of the group said they were aligned with Democrats. They talked about their history with the party. I was a big Obama admirer. Actually, when I was very young, I saw him as a senator speak, and he gave me goosebumps because his words were that powerful. And I knew he was going to be somebody. I didn't know that he was going to disappoint me so much.

They're growing frustrations with the party's changing rhetoric.

This is the first time that it's been like the hardest to identify as Democrat, but because I think that now I often struggle with a little bit more conservative values that Dems have, specifically around immigration. Honestly, in this past legislation, when Kamala spoke about Guatemalan immigrants and said, like, do not come, I think that was a really difficult thing to let go of and see it continue to transpire in like their lives.

around immigration. I would say it happened before then, but that's one of the instances that just kept pushing it away to find some distance.

frustrations with being treated like a monolith. There are some things that you can point to about Latinos that have a very similar experience, for sure. Like when we talk about racial profiling and policing and discrimination. But I think at the same time, when we talk about a Latino issue, it's like a living wage is an important issue to all working people, and that definitely impacts a ton of Latinos. But

At the same time, there's a lot of Latinos that vote for Republicans who don't believe in raising them, like don't believe workers should have a living wage off a 40-hour job. So I think it is hard to just characterize certain issues as Latino issues.

and with the lack of investment to build political power in places like El Paso. We need some organizing force specifically in Texas, right? When we're thinking about the electoral college, Texas has just been red. And we see the last elections, it's gotten smaller and smaller each margin with Trump-Hillary, Trump-Biden, and then we'll see what happens with Trump-Harris. I sit on city council. We're in my district right now. And I think the big deal that I'm seeing is that we're not

electing people that look like us to many positions of power at the local level here in El Paso.

One woman said she has to admit she's leaning Trump. I might touch a little bit of a nerve here, especially in this presence. I'm a little biased because I come from a business background. I'm currently an educator. But even though I identify as a Democrat, I am really looking at the Trump campaign, the Republican campaign,

Because the approach that Trump takes is very businesslike. Obviously, he's a business person. And so in regard to the economy, there's just a very black and white approach. He's obviously been very successful. And so when you approach tough issues, it has to be, it's almost very blunt and abrasive. And what I see with Democrats is,

It's very emotional. There's always a lot of emotions involved in what's right and what's wrong instead of a straightforward approach. And many talked about neighbors and relatives who supported Trump.

I had a neighbor that has a Trump, like all the other neighbors are looking at him like, what is wrong with you? But it has to do with that. The conversation I had with him, he basically said no, because I can't support, I'm pro-life. And that's the position they hold.

So my grandpa, he's from Mexico. He only speaks Spanish. He understands English, but he's from Mexico. And he's very Republican. And so, you know, similar things like we need to stop people from coming over here. Everything that he agrees with is like full-on Republican. Like he doesn't have...

I don't know if the word is sympathy, but he doesn't have an understanding of why people want to come over here even though he did the same thing. I don't remember him ever voting before Trump ran for office. He was very adamant that he was going to go vote for Trump. His argument, I think, is mostly like, well, I did things the right way. Like, I moved over here. I applied for citizenship. And if people are going to do this, this is how they should do it too.

Toward the end of the afternoon, we gather Jasmine's mom and a group of her longtime friends. This is the cool kids. I feel it. I feel it. For a conversation about life around the border, in both Spanish and English, with Jasmine and Elisa translating. Everybody in this table was actually born in Juarez and raised in Juarez. But eventually we all came here. My parents were American and they lived in Juarez, and I was born there. But all of us came back here

like anybody else, for a better life. I've been here over 50 years. And I've done everything from a chef to a special agent with immigration. I've done a little bit of everything. I've been in the army. But all of them have done something. Their teachers, their secretaries, everybody's done a little bit of everything. And to us, Juarez and El Paso is just another city.

It's nothing out of this world to us.

Yeah, so like the border crossed them, not the other way around. Like between Mexico and Texas, it's more like the U.S. came to them, not the other way around. And here it's Spanish and English are very intertwined. It's the everything. Life is very intertwined here. Have you seen any of that change from...

Years ago until now, how would you say that the interconnectedness between Juárez and El Paso has shifted, or has it not? One woman said that while she is sympathetic to the struggle of new migrants, the increase is draining on the system, and that Mexicans are being forgotten as a result. Another woman said...

Me in particular, I don't think it's affecting, it has affected us. Okay, at least not for us. I don't see any changes in my job or anybody coming over to take over my job or anything like that. Okay. People that come across, they don't stay.

They move because they have somebody else that is going to be their mentor or the sponsor, and they move. So basically, I haven't seen an influx of students or people that come into my school or anywhere that I go to the store that I see, okay, it's a Venezuelan, it's a...

somebody else from a different place. I know a lot of us come over here to the United States for a better life, okay? And we have worked really hard for that, okay? We have gone to school. We have worked our way up, okay? So we go through the legal ways, okay? And what I don't like about the immigrants is that they come in

going not through the legal channels. They just burst into El Paso. Granted, they leave, okay? But it's just, I think there should be a legal way because that's what we did. That's what we all did. Okay, we took our turn.

We waited. Granted, it was probably easier back then than nowadays, but all these people that want the right, oh, no, I'm going to go to the United States because they give me food stamps and this and that. I don't agree with that. That's the Democrat part that I don't like, that, yes, we're going to support all of you guys here, but you know what? I work for it. I work hard for it. I waited my turn, so I think everybody should wait their turn.

The political world puts Latino voters as a big group, right? But I know that the countries of origin and the histories between people are so diverse. Do you see yourself as part of a larger Latino collective? Or do you see yourself as individually Mexican-American or individually Texan or the like? Do you see yourself as a collective voting group? No, I feel myself, I'm an American.

We have different cultures and we have had different experiences. Okay, Mexico is one of the best countries, okay? If you're in Latin America, it's one of the best countries to go and to live in because we have a lot of freedoms, okay? We have a lot of rights and we have a lot of freedoms. But if you go to Venezuela, okay, it's very different. You have doctors not being able to pay for toothpaste. But it's not like you see...

Hispanics as a community. No. No. No. A lot of people in Miami go for Trump. We spoke about the waves of more recent arrivals to the country. Some people mentioned things they'd seen on social media. Or another person that I heard, you know, TikTok, you hear her say, OK, I don't want to work. I just want my food stamps.

I asked one man, a former ICE agent, what he thought about this. You'd be amazed how many people think that our sidewalks are made out of gold. That's the way they think. I've been through Russia, Africa, South America, and a lot of those people think that we as Americans, I'm not saying Latino, I'm saying as Americans, we owe them. I don't owe them anything, man. I worked my butt off to get what I got.

One woman argued that more border agents are not the answer, but that people need more information before they think about trying to come. — Well, my last question will just be a general one. Like, you expressed kind of nervousness about the result. Who do you think is going to win? — No queremos volver a los cuatro años de Trump. No. No queremos más. No, no, no. — I'm afraid. I'm afraid. So that's why I'm going to go vote.

Okay, I don't want him. The answers that he gives is just, they're scary. Okay, he promotes violence. And right now with Kamala, I feel like she's promoting unity and cohesiveness and, you know, whatever is in the past, it's in the past. Now let's move forward. I hope Kamala wins. And only because she's doing, she's easing the people down instead of making something big out of it.

And that's what people are looking for. We want somebody to bring it down and show that she can do the job. She's not going to go play golf. That's the bottom line. Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. All afternoon, one of Jasmine's uncles was passing around tequila shots.

just to keep the conversation flowing. So, to wrap up the afternoon, in true El Paso fashion, we all agreed to take one together as folks headed out. Even in this group, a collection of Democrats, there's a range of opinions when it comes to immigration. Some felt Democrats had turned their back on migrants.

Continuing a long-standing pattern of neglect, others sounded a little bit like Kamala Harris and the new party line for Democrats on immigration, which concedes there's a problem at the border, but argues Trump's hardline policies aren't necessarily the solution. Still, even that concession feels notable, considering that four years ago, Democrats felt Trump's rhetoric and policies on immigration would lead to a surge of support in border towns and among Latino voters.

Now, they seem to be getting the point. On this issue, at least, not being Donald Trump is not enough. After we left, I was thinking about the last thing we heard in that conversation with Jasmine's mom and her friends. They were all nodding their heads, agreeing that they feel real danger with the prospect of Trump returning to office. And here, in El Paso, that isn't some hypothetical sense of danger or violence.

Because just a few miles from Jasmine's aunt's house stands a Walmart super center that was the site of the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history. That hatred really came home during August 2019 during the Walmart shooting here. The shooting came up repeatedly at the Carne Asada.

My dad was there, so it was something that lingered in my life for a really long time. Some folks said they had family members who were in the store that day. He barely escaped, and we're very lucky that he's still here, but it had a really long-term effect on him mentally, emotionally. You know, I don't think he's still the same person.

And so it always felt personal, right? It always felt like, well, of course, you know, we're in a border town, so there's going to be things that they discuss and there's going to be pictures that they're painting of what this border city looks like that are completely inaccurate. And what happened still looms large in a lot of people's minds. While she was showing us around El Paso, Jasmine actually took us to the Walmart parking lot.

where the shooting began. Dedicated to the people of El Paso, may this memorial stand as a solemn tribute to those who lost their lives on August 3rd, 2019, be a beacon of hope for the survivors and the lasting memories of the endearing strength, resiliency, and love that unites El Paso. Twenty-three people were killed by a white supremacist who drove 10 hours from outside Dallas and wrote a manifesto that mimicked Trump's language of a migrant invasion.

I can't say there was shock, though, just because the rhetoric against migrants and immigration had been getting steadily violent. And we had already seen some really stark images being beamed across the country from the border. You know, we had had the child separations happen. We had seen people not too far from here, you know, young kids, you know,

walking out of tent camps. We had seen migrants getting penned underneath the Santa Fe Bridge. So already the dystopian picture that we've been talking about was playing out nationally. You know, it's interesting because I think particularly if we look at the

example of blackness or black Americans, the discussion of discrimination and American discrimination is so like core to like how a lot of black communities talk about the country.

How frontally do people talk about migrant discrimination or nativism or anti-Mexican bias in the communities you're from? Well, and that was part of the discussion we were having is that a lot of our parents don't talk about it, don't want to talk about it. A lot of our parents and grandparents haven't historically wanted to talk about it. I mean, even if you hear...

when they implemented some of the first hardline measures at the border, which was all Mexican laborers were first to go through medical inspections and their clothes were washed in these big laundry machines and they were sometimes hosed down with chemicals because they were seen as dirty or inferior. I mean, a lot of that history, many El Pasoans don't know it.

But the shooting definitely opened up a lot of conversations that weren't being had before among El Pasoans, among fronterizos, among Mexican-Americans, Latinos. Do people blame Trump? Depends on party. Yeah, it depends on who you talk to.

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And now, the rundown. Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen says there will be no special session to consider making Nebraska a winner-take-all state ahead of the upcoming 2024 election. Nebraska will not be changing its electoral vote system before November. This after state Senator Mike McDonald announced that he would not vote for the measure before the election either, leaving winner-take-all just short of the votes it needed.

It's one of two states that awards electoral votes proportionally, rather than winner-take-all. That means that, even though Nebraska is a red state, it sometimes gives one electoral vote to a Democrat. Months ago, Republicans started pressuring state legislators to change the system. The state's governor, Jim Pillen, considered holding a special legislative session to change the rules, but decided not to when it became clear this week that he did not have the votes he needed.

State Senator Mike McDonald, a swing vote on the issue, explained his decision. If we are going to change to winner-take-all, then do it in two years and let the people vote, you know, two years before the next presidential election. I'm opposed to winner-take-all. I've been consistent. I'm always willing to listen to people, but I'm no. We covered this story back in April. And in that episode, we spoke to Diana Shemek.

who sponsored the legislation to make Nebraska a split-vote state back in 1991. Well, it seemed to me to be a fair system, and it seemed to me that people ought to be able to vote for the one they thought represented their area the best. Also, I thought it would get voters excited

Also this week, President Joe Biden appeared on The View in a rare live interview. Post asked him about his decision to drop out of the race after facing pressure from lawmakers like Nancy Pelosi. Did you feel that your hand was forced? And what is your relationship with Speaker Pelosi now? Our relationship is fine. Look,

I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance of my running again. I didn't sense that.

They also asked what advice he'd given to Kamala Harris about beating Donald Trump. Be herself. He went on. She has the energy, she has the intelligence, she has the grit, she has the stamina, and she has the guts to do the right thing. Yes. There are five days until the vice presidential debate and 40 days until the general election. We'll see you next week. The Run-Up is reported by me, Ested Herndon.

and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin, with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Alisha Ba'i-Tub. It was mixed by Sophia Landman and fact-checked by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnick, Larissa Anderson, David Halfinger, Maddie Macielo, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, and Elizabeth Bristow. Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunupatnytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the voice memo app in your phone. That email again is therunupatnytimes.com. Thanks for listening, y'all.