Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, we dive into the type of commander in chief Vice President Kamala Harris would be. Plus, senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur looks at how Sen. Mark Kelly’s stance on border issues could benefit Harris if she chose him as her running mate.

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Harris’ foreign policy is a work in progress

By Courtney Kube, Dan De Luce, Andrea Mitchell, Abigail Williams and Carol E. Lee

How Vice President Kamala Harris, now the de facto Democratic nominee, would lead the country as commander in chief remains an open question. 

Interviews with nearly three dozen current and former U.S. officials who have worked with Harris and her team on foreign policy issues, as well as a review of her voting record in the Senate and her public comments, offer limited clues to how she would respond to some high-stakes national security challenges facing the U.S.

President Joe Biden has an extensive foreign policy record from his decades in political office, and former President Donald Trump has his own record from serving four years as commander in chief.

Harris’ lack of a clear record on foreign policy issues — and no definitive doctrine — is a marked difference and potentially opens a front in the battle over voters’ national security concerns in the 2024 campaign.

Critics say Harris’ reticence is a sign that she lacks both a foreign policy vision and deep expertise. Supporters say that she treaded carefully because she did not want to disagree openly with Biden and his aides, and that she gained a great deal of foreign policy experience as vice president.  

Harris has kept her views closely held during Situation Room meetings and policy debates, according to more than a dozen current and former administration officials.

Her approach was shaped early in her tenure as vice president by what these officials saw as a lack of confidence in her foreign policy chops, particularly when stacked against Biden’s résumé and hardened positions on key issues. Administration officials — from the Pentagon to the State Department and the White House — have at times tried to decipher Harris’ positions based on questions she asks on specific topics.

Five current and former officials said they believed that distrust of Biden’s inner national security circle left Harris concerned that the president’s aides would leak details of her comments if she expressed any dissent.

Officials close to Harris also acknowledge that she was not confident in her knowledge of foreign policy at the beginning of the Biden administration. 

Read more on Harris’ foreign policy views →

Veepstakes: Kelly could help shore up the Democratic ticket on border politics

By Sahil Kapur

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s stature as a border-state senator who has held hawkish positions before it was popular in the Democratic Party has led some Harris allies to see him as an ideal running mate who could help neutralize what may be her biggest political vulnerability.  

Trump has put immigration at the center of his case against Harris. And unlike other VP contenders, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kelly is the only one getting a serious look who lives in a state along the southern border and has been out front on the issue.

While he has been a Biden ally on most issues, Kelly has also been a vocal critic on border security. He went after the White House for inadequately funding Arizona’s migrant programs and urged the administration not to reverse a Trump-era policy known as Title 42, which made it easier to turn away migrants at the U.S. border. When the White House revoked the policy anyway in 2022, Kelly called the decision “wrong” and “unacceptable” in a statement.

“We’ve worked together on it in a very positive way. At times, there were disagreements,” Kelly told NBC News while praising “the steps that the administration has recently taken and the results that we have seen from it” in bringing down border crossings, including an executive action restricting who can claim asylum. 

Kelly tried to blunt Trump’s immigration-related attacks during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, criticizing the former president for his role in sinking a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year.

 “On their side of the field, we realized, we’ve got to get operational control over the border. I realized this, Kamala Harris realizes this, and this legislation was going to do that,” Kelly said. “And our goal here was to get this legislation passed and then start working on comprehensive immigration reform. But this was stopped dead in its tracks by Donald Trump because he wanted to have this as an election issue. Like a lot of other Republicans, they don’t actually want to solve this problem.”

Read more on Kelly’s border stance →

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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