In Trump’s crowded White House, JD Vance finds a role behind the scenes

 

EAGLE PASS, Tex. — Vice President JD Vance traveled 1,500 miles last week to the U.S.-Mexico border, where he declared into a bay of dust-caked news cameras that President Donald Trump’s aggressive executive actions on immigration were all that was needed to fix what had, weeks before, been a “national crisis” under Joe Biden.

Joining Vance on the trip were two of Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, confirmations the vice president had been personally tasked with pushing across the finish line in a reluctant Senate. It was an early test that Vance, working largely in private, had passed. Their joint trip to the border was not just a celebration of Trump’s unyielding approach to immigration control, but a display of Vance’s role securing Trump’s norm-shattering Cabinet.