With ongoing speculation about whether President Biden will remain the Democratic 2024 presidential nominee after a disastrous debate performance last week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is one of the names being raised as a replacement.

But the ongoing crisis at the southern border remains a top issue for voters across the country, and there are signs of the extent to which Pritzker might take a different approach to the crisis than the current administration.

Illinois has been one of the states hit by the knock-on effects of the immigration crisis, where migrants have moved through the southern border into cities like Chicago by the tens of thousands. 

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While Pritzker has been broadly supportive of most of President Biden’s efforts at the southern border, he has also been one of a number of Democrats who have been critical of the federal government’s handling of the crisis.

In October, Pritzker sent a letter to Biden stressing that he believes in the right “of every human, especially those facing persecution, to find refuge and live with dignity in this great country of ours.” However, he warned that the crisis is “overwhelming” the states and criticized the federal government.

“Unfortunately, the welcome and aid Illinois has been providing to these asylum seekers has not been matched with support by the federal government. Most critically, the federal government’s lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation for Illinois,” he said.

“There is much more that can and must be done on a federal level to address a national humanitarian crisis that is currently being shouldered by state and local governments without support,” he said.

Specifically, he requested a number of actions, such as the waiving of fees for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and “significant” increases in logistical coordination, including the federal government taking over coordination of routing buses of migrants across the country.

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Migrants are processed by the U.S. Border Patrol near the Jacumba Hot Springs after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on June 13, 2024, near San Diego, California.  (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)

Pritzker also called for a “federal coordinator and task force” to be based at the border and solely to be dedicated to migrant resettlement. In addition, he called (as Biden’s administration has done) for more funding to states, local governments and non-governmental organizations and the expediting of work permits.

He also called on Biden to approve requests from Illinois to allow waivers for Medicaid and housing vouchers for migrants.

In January, he, along with a number of other governors, wrote to Biden calling again for more federal action while backing the administration’s supplemental funding request to Congress. It also backed claims by the administration that the immigration system is broken and in need of reform.

“Without serious reform informed by evidence-based solutions, the challenges facing states and localities will only grow,” the letter said.

Pritzker was also supportive of the Biden administration’s move last year to redesignate Venezuela for TPS, meaning that hundreds of thousands more were protected from deportation and given work permits.

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“Reducing wait times for employment approvals and expanding protection status for those coming from Venezuela will get people working and on a path to building a better future for themselves and their families,” he said.

Meanwhile, at home, Pritzker has kept that focus on funding by approving significant amounts of funding to help the state deal with the number of migrants it is seeing.

As he was pushing Biden for more funding last year, he also announced that the state was investing $160 million to address the crisis, including money for shelter and wraparound services.

This year, Pritzker announced another $160 million for assistance, while taking another shot at inaction from Congress.

“With thousands of asylum seekers continuing to come to Chicago in desperate need of support and with Congress continuing to refuse to act—it is clear the state, county and city will have to do more to keep people safe,” he said.

Get the latest updates on the ongoing border crisis from the Fox News Digital immigration hub.

Vice President Kamala Harris is suddenly at the center of a maelstrom in the 2024 presidential election.

After President Biden’s poor debate performance in late June, a growing number of Democrats are calling on him to drop out of the race for the good of their party and the nation.

Our Revolution, a liberal political action committee, fundraised Wednesday off a post-debate poll of more than 17,000 of its members that said roughly two-thirds wanted Biden replaced at the top of the Democratic ticket.

And prominent donors, including in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, have begun publicly expressing their concern about Biden as the nominee. His interview Friday night with ABC — an attempt to right his campaign — drew tepid reviews, and the number of Congress members calling for Biden to bow out grew to five Saturday.

Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. This week we bring you the final installment of the L.A. Influential series: The Establishment. They are the bosses, elected officials and A-list names calling the shots from the seats of power.

Biden, 81, has pledged to remain in the race, but if he were to step aside, Harris — the nation’s first female, South Asian and Black vice president — would almost certainly be elevated to lead the campaign against former President Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

As San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator, Harris, 59, had never lost a race when she announced her 2020 presidential bid. She was long viewed as a rising star in the Democratic Party. Beyond representing generational and racial change, her prosecutorial skills shone during incisive, surgical questioning during Senate hearings.

However, after announcing her White House campaign in 2019, Harris was inconsistent and struggled to articulate what set her apart in a crowded Democratic field — and to motivate donors and early-state voters. Campaign infighting did not help. She suspended her bid before the Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest in the nation.

Biden resurrected Harris’ political prospects by selecting her to be his running mate, adding a youthful, diverse perspective to the presidential campaign of a white, then-septuagenarian at a time the nation’s demographics were shifting and racial turmoil was at the fore.

Democrats recognize that passing over Harris if Biden were to step back would alienate some Black voters, a decision that would be potentially disastrous in battleground states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. If he were to throw his support behind Harris, a Los Angeles resident for the last decade, it would represent a new wave of national political power for Southern California, a burst that the region has not seen since the days of the late Presidents Reagan and Nixon.

“Just like Biden has a finite amount of time to prove he can stay on the ticket, she has exactly that same amount of time to prove that she should be the nominee if he steps aside,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University. “The good news for her is that the way she would prove that she is ready to take the top spot is by saying and doing all the things she would be doing as a running mate anyway.”

For decades, San Francisco dominated Golden State politics, its status cemented by the Bay Area addresses of statewide elected officials and a political machine that produced some of the most prominent national Democrats: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and California Govs. Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown.

But Harris — the product of Bay Area politics, which she has described as a “bare-knuckled sport” — acknowledged that the state’s power center has shifted.

“Elected leaders in L.A. are rising to prominence in terms of beyond L.A. itself and beyond statewide, and taking on national roles,” she told The Times in an interview in L.A. last fall. “And doing an extraordinary job, by the way.”

Harris began her migration south while she was dating entertainment attorney Doug Emhoff — she recalls moving in “a couple of sweaters at a time” — and she had permanently relocated to Brentwood by the time they married in 2014.

The couple moved into Emhoff’s multimillion-dollar four-bedroom house (later transferred to a trust using the couple’s initials) on a quiet street of pool-flecked mansions in Kenter Canyon — a neighborhood whose residents have reportedly included model Gisele Bündchen, rap mogul Dr. Dre, Lakers star LeBron James and actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

Once settled, Harris took classes at Brentwood’s SoulCycle and found spots to buy fresh ingredients for her cherished Sunday dinners, such as Huntington Meats near the Grove and the neighborhood farmers market.

The year after Harris moved to L.A., Boxer announced she would retire after her term ended in 2017, creating a chance to launch one of the state’s many rising Democratic figures onto the national stage. Harris seized the opportunity, becoming the second Black woman elected to the upper chamber.

Her ambitions for higher office were clear as she stumped across the country for Democrats during the 2018 midterm elections, shortly before she launched her bid for the White House.

“There was a lot being asked of her as she was entering Los Angeles,” said U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler, a longtime Harris friend who served as an advisor on her 2020 presidential campaign.

Even before Biden’s stumbles, Harris, like other vice presidents, was viewed as a potential heir apparent, given her visibility on the national stage and her party’s support. One of the most prominent and challenging tasks in her portfolio was trying to improve the economic, security and political conditions in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to stem the number of migrants making a perilous journey to the United States.

Harris’ approval ratings have long been not much better than Biden’s, though her chances against Trump have improved since last month’s debate.

She has already assembled a network of state officials, local party leaders and donors who could coalesce behind a run for the Oval Office. And some polls indicate that she has advantages among younger Americans and voters of color, key Democratic constituencies.

Heading into the election year, Biden’s team tasked her with trying to motivate those voters to support their reelection. She has spent the better part of a year building her profile around issues that disproportionately affect those groups, becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion protections, gun safety and climate action.

Last fall, she toured college campuses to rally students around the administration’s efforts on abortion access, climate change, voting rights and LGBTQ+ equality. She launched another tour in January to push back on state restrictions of abortion rights and has held a string of recent events on how the administration is tackling gun violence.

Harris has hit the road more as the campaign heats up, playing an important role in shaping the Biden administration’s message to voters the president needs to win back in November. But she’s also positioned to serve as an advocate for California at a time when the state’s political clout in Washington is waning.

“The shift in power, quite frankly, is away from California” because of Pelosi’s retirement and the loss of seniority in the Senate, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, political analyst and co-host of the podcast “Inside Golden State Politics.” “We are lucky to have a Californian in the White House as vice president simply because we don’t have much else left in Washington at this point.”

Harris has allies, and fellow Angelenos, in the Senate. Alex Padilla was appointed to her seat after she was elected vice president, becoming the first Latino to represent California in the upper chamber. Newsom’s subsequent pick of Butler, who has made L.A. her home base, to replace Feinstein has further tipped the scales toward Southern California.

“In the future, when people think of California politics, they’ll increasingly think of Southern California rather than the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, who pointed out how “San Francisco Democrat” is no longer Republican shorthand to dismiss more progressive figures.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, plans to bring up options under the 25th Amendment in terms of President Biden’s fitness during a meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday.

Roy told Fox News he believes Republicans need to have a position on where they stand regarding Biden’s competence.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides a series of steps for removing a president from office if he or she becomes incapacitated.

But a resolution on the 25th Amendment cannot just be presented to the House floor immediately.

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The bill would not be “privileged” and go straight to the front of the legislative line because it deals with the executive branch and not Congress.

Impeachment, on the other hand, could be considered “privileged” because those powers are enumerated in the Constitution as being under the purview of Congress.

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Democratic Party donors in Hollywood are reportedly saying that they will stop donating to the party if Biden isn’t replaced as a presidential candidate. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Any resolution on the 25th Amendment would need to go through committee first, a senior House Republican leadership source told Fox.

Roy’s plan comes a week-and-a-half after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., spoke about the cabinet weighing in on the 25th Amendment regarding Biden.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., was asked by “Fox News Sunday” if Biden was well enough to continue to serve as president and if he would support a move on the 25th Amendment.

Daniels said he did not believe Biden has the capability to serve out the rest of his term, or even run for president.

He also told the host he would support a move on the 25th Amendment.

“I do agree we do have a responsibility to make sure that the occupants of the Oval Office has the mental capabilities to do that job, but that responsibility relies with the Vice President Kamala Harris and with the cabinet,” Daniels said. “What we are seeing is that they have decided to cover up for Joe Biden to protect their radical agenda as opposed to doing what is in the best interest of the American people. If that resolution hits the floor, I would vote for it 100 percent. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris and the cabinet, they have a responsibility to the American people. They have a constitutional duty to the American people.”