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Voters in new poll divided on Biden student debt cancellation plan

Americans are divided on how they view the Biden administration’s new student debt cancellation initiative, according to a new MorningConsult/Politico poll.

The new poll, published Wednesday, found that 48 percent of respondents agree with Biden’s move to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 annually and households who earn less than $250,000 annually.

Forty-three percent of those surveyed said they oppose the plan of canceling student loan debt for those individuals, and 9 percent of respondents said they have no opinion on the matter. 

Along party lines, 72 percent of Democrat respondents said they agreed with the proposed initiative, while just 19 percent said they oppose the move. 

Sixty-seven percent of Republicans said that they oppose canceling the debt, while 26 percent of Republican respondents showed support for the proposal. 

Seventy-three percent of respondents who currently owe student loan debt said they agree with the administration’s initiative, while 22 percent said they were opposed. 

The poll comes after President Biden announced last week he would forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers who make less than $125,000 annually and $20,000 for borrowers who are Pell Grants recipients. He also announced an extension of the debt payment pause for at least four months. The payments have been on hold since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initiative, which is the largest forgiveness of student loans to date, has sparked a number of criticisms as Republicans argue that the new initiative is an unfair move for borrowers who already paid off their loans and Democrats argue that the initiative doesn’t do enough that it’s intended to do.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they support developing a plan to lower the costs of higher education in the U.S., compared to 14 percent who disagreed. 

The new MorningConsult/Politico poll was conducted from August 26-28 with a total of 2,007 respondents participating in the survey. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden declares emergency over water crisis in Mississippi capital

President Biden declared an emergency in Mississippi on Tuesday, freeing up federal resources to assist local and state officials in responding to a water crisis in the state’s capital.

The water system in Jackson, Miss. has failed in recent days, leaving residents with little to no drinking water. Officials have blamed flooding on the Pearl River and previous issues that have plagued a local water treatment plant’s operations.

Biden’s emergency declaration authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide assistance and coordinate disaster relief efforts funded 75 percent by the federal government for 90 days.

“FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency,” the White House said in a statement.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier in the day said the White House had been in regular contact with state and local officials, including Jackson’s mayor.

“Our federal disaster declaration for Jackson water has been approved,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) tweeted. “Grateful to @FEMA_Deanne for our long conversation about the crisis this evening, for she and Gracia and @femaregion4 team for their swift work and the White House for ultimately granting the request.

State and local officials have resorted to handing out drinking water for tens of thousands of residents as officials advise them not to drink the tap water or use it to even brush their teeth. Reeves activated the National Guard to assist.

The crisis has also exposed a rift between the state and city officials, including Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba (D), who have reportedly offered differing accounts of the crisis’s cause. Residents had been under a boil water advisory for roughly a month.

The city has blamed flooding on the Pearl River as causing the latest issues, but the local O.B. Curtis Water Plant has faced issues for years.

The Environmental Protection Agency identified concerns with the system, including compliance deficiencies and maintenance issues, and in March 2020 issued a Safe Drinking Water Act Emergency Administrative Order to address some of the concerns.

In February 2021, the city experienced a system-wide failure, including frozen pipes and low water pressure, that led to some residents going without water for several weeks. 

Lumumba has previously acknowledged the system’s issues but stresses Jackson was unable to receive sufficient outside resources to solve the problems.

“We’ve been going it alone for the better part of two years when it comes to the Jackson water crisis,” Lumumba said at a press conference on Tuesday. 

Lumumba also said he welcomed the state’s emergency declaration and support but clarified what he described as “inaccuracies” from Reeves, saying the city has not distributed any untreated, raw water.

“In too many cases, it is raw water from the reservoir being pushed through the pipes,” Reeves said earlier.

Lumumba met with state officials on Monday to discuss the crisis, a meeting the mayor described as “very productive.”

Source: TEST FEED1

US life expectancy drops significantly, fueled by COVID-19

Life expectancy in the United States fell for the second straight year, fueled by COVID-19, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published Wednesday. 

The two-year decline was steep, down 2.7 years between 2019 and 2021. Life expectancy was 76.1 years in 2021, down from 77 years in 2020 and 78.8 years in 2019.  

That is the largest drop in decades: It is the first two-year decline in life expectancy since 1961-1963, the CDC said.  

Life expectancy in the U.S. is now back to the level it was in 1996.  

By far the largest factor driving the decline, making up about half of the change, was COVID-19. Other factors included overdose deaths and heart disease.    

“Overall, we have reversed 26 years of health progress in US, with average life expectancy now falling to levels not seen since 1996,” tweeted Tom Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations.  

There were also sharp racial disparities in the declines.  

“During the 2-year period, large disparities were seen in loss of life expectancy by Hispanic origin and race,” the report states.  

For American Indian and Alaska Native people, in particular, the decline over two years was a massive 6.6 years. The decline was about four years for Hispanic people and Black people, compared to 2.4 years for white people.  

COVID-19 has killed over 1 million people in the U.S. since the pandemic began in early 2020. While the situation has greatly improved since then, with vaccines offering important protection against severe disease and death, about 475 people are still dying from the virus every day, according to a New York Times tracker.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Despite leaving government, Anthony Fauci ain't going anywhere

Old habits die hard, especially for the outgoing head of President Biden’s COVID-19 task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

As you may have heard, the 81-year-old announced last week that he will be stepping down from his role in the administration and as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Next stop: Tony Fauci, private citizen. But save this column for early 2023: Because it is virtually guaranteed that Fauci will not forfeit his greatest love and habit: Appearing on camera.

Since the coronavirus hit the United States in early 2020, Fauci has conducted hundreds upon hundreds of interviews. He originally was seen as a necessary voice to educate the public about what COVID-19 is and how to best protect ourselves from it, and rightly so given his resume on infectious diseases. But Fauci quickly became overexposed in ways that had little to do with the virus, but about the man himself.

InStyle magazine, for example, featured Fauci on its cover, not in a lab coat, but lounging by his pool. Headline: “Dr. Fauci says, ‘With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective.’”

Fauci also posed for magazine covers for People, Time and The Washingtonian, among others. The Guardian dubbed him “The Sexiest Man Alive.” And Brad Pitt scored an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of a sexy Fauci on Saturday Night Live.

NBC National Affairs analyst John Heilemann even went so far as to argue that Republicans intentionally wanted COVID to stay around, which is why many are critical of Fauci.

“If people follow Fauci, there’s a likelier chance that COVID will go away. And if COVID goes away it’s bad right now for Republicans,” Heilemann once said, “It’s just the math on this — the political math is not hard to figure out.”

In retrospect, a turning point for some in their perception of Fauci came in July 2020. The Major League Baseball season was finally underway in Washington after being delayed for almost four months when the Nationals hosted the New York Yankees. Fauci was chosen to throw out the first pitch and stayed to watch the game in a near-empty stadium.

Then a photo emerged that quickly went viral: Fauci, smiling and chatting with two other people without wearing a mask over his nose and mouth, a precaution he insisted was needed in public settings, especially for older Americans, who may be more susceptible to the virus, and especially at a time when no vaccine was available.

Fauci was confronted about this apparent hypocrisy but claimed he was drinking water at the time and lowered his mask for just a moment. He called the criticism “mischievous.”

But the photo showed him with two hands on his phone and not on a bottle of water. The right thing for Fauci to say at the time was that he should have been more careful and should follow his own rules. That never happened. 

But as we would learn, Fauci is much like Donald Trump: He almost never admits a mistake.

From there, the distrust continued to grow as the pandemic wore on during an election year. In April 2020, Fauci had publicly bucked President Trump’s claim that a vaccine could be available before the end of 2020, instead predicting its availability more likely in the later stages of 2021. (The first jabs of the vaccine were administered in December 2020.)

Fauci also flip-flopped on mask wearing itself by first recommending that they weren’t needed as the pandemic came, before recommending them and even going so far as to advise double-masking as the best way to go late in 2020. He also once wrote that the kind of masks that the average citizen would buy in a store was not “really effective” in preventing infection.

“The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material,” Fauci said in a February 2020 email.

And then there were the confrontations on Capitol Hill with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) over the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) funding for gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Technology, which is located in the same city where the novel coronavirus originated. Fauci, to this day, says it’s almost impossible for COVID-19 to have originated in a lab despite growing evidence to the contrary.

“Anyone that knows even a little bit about virology will tell you that it would be molecularly impossible for those viruses to have turned into, either accidentally or deliberately, SARS-COVID-2,” Fauci told Fox News Channel anchor Neil Cavuto recently. “People seem to disregard that and go on with a wide variety of conspiracy theories.”

Republicans promise hearings starring Fauci on Capitol Hill if they take back the House of Representatives. Fauci says his retirement isn’t timed to avoid them and plans to willingly appear.

So in addition to what promises to be highly watched hearings if the GOP takes back the House, there is also Fauci’s tendency to almost never say “no” to an interview request. And as a contributor on cable or broadcast news, Fauci would undoubtedly be featured more than most.

As to where he ends up, the best bet is MSNBC. As Freud said, there is no such thing as an accident, and it’s certainly no accident that Fauci ran to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for an exclusive and fawning interview on the same day the retirement was announced earlier this month.

“Thank you for a lifetime, so far, of service,” Maddow told Fauci last week. “I can’t wait to see what you do next.”

Oh, it’s fairly certain what Fauci will do next: Appear on the air — often. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.

Source: TEST FEED1

Mikhail Gorbachev’s was a truly great revolution

By the nature of the regime he dismantled and the sheer number of people and peoples whom he freed, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev — the reformist Soviet leader who died Tuesday at 91 — may have been the greatest liberator of all time.

A longstanding “theory” spread by his enemies and adopted by many in the West postulated that Gorbachev was a bumbler who did not know what he was doing, stumbled onto his reforms, sleepwalking, and woke up when the crisis was too far gone to redress.

Nonsense. His contemporaries — Cuba’s Fidel Castro, North Korea’s Kim family, and the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev or Leonid Brezhnev, hardly Mensa material they — knew exactly what to do when their power was threatened: show trials, executions, life sentences, starvations and tanks in Budapest and Prague, or the Quisling regime in Poland.

No, Gorbachev did not resort to repression, because he thought it was wrong to rule through terror and lies. Wrong — for the first time in 70 years, morality and moral accountability were brought to bear on Soviet politics and became operational terms.

This is how we know that Gorbachev’s was a truly great revolution: coup d’état and other intra-elite squabbles are about power; all great revolutions always start with human dignity and morality. “A new moral atmosphere is taking shape in the country,” Gorbachev told the Central Committee Plenum in January 1987 as he announced the turn of “glasnost” and “democratization.” “A reappraisal of values,” he called it. Later, recalling his feeling that “we couldn’t go on like that any longer, and we had to change life radically,” he called it his “moral position.”

Another “theory” holds that, mired as it was in economic problems, the Soviet Union was going to collapse anyway. That, too, is balderdash. Cuba lasts, North Korea lasts, Zimbabwe lasts, and of course the Soviet Union lasted from 1930 to the 1950s with horrific shortages and starvation of millions — and would have lasted, along with Soviet enslavement of east-central Europe, had it not been for Yuri Andropov’s kidney failure and Konstantin Chernenko’s dying senility.  

When Gorbachev took over, the Soviet empire was frozen in terror and bleakness. All the prominent dissidents were either dead, silenced or in jail. The dominant prediction among Western experts was an indefinite, grim, open-ended slog. The Polish Solidarity had been crushed. West Germans were readying to “march through the institutions” for decades: bribing the German Democratic Republic’s Soviet handlers in the hope of inducing better relations and liberalization in the East, one tiny step at a time.

Yes, there was Ronald Reagan and the stark but still unrealized prospect of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Yet nothing threatened the Soviet domestic regime and its dominance of the empire in the short- or even mid-term. And which authoritarian thinks beyond that? Like his predecessor, Gorbachev, who came to power at 54, easily could have stayed in the Kremlin for at least 20 years.

It is true, of course, that Gorbachev started as an “authoritarian modernizer” — as did most tsars and general secretaries (and the Russian Federation’s current president, Vladimir Putin). But when the continuation of Andropov’s police renaissance — “Work honestly for the motherland!” “Stop drinking!” “Don’t steal, or else!” — with its executions of especially egregious bribe-takers, bans on vodka sales, and daytime raids of the bathhouses and beer hall in search of “shirkers,” produced only meager increases in the GDP, Gorbachev faced another familiar Russian dilemma: introduce institutional reforms or face stagnation.

Liberalizations bring uncertainty, likely turmoil and, most of all, a very real threat to personal power. The greatest Russian liberalizer, Alexander II, was assassinated. The de-Stalinizing Nikita Khrushchev was deposed in a coup. As for stagnation, there are always foreign and domestic enemies to blame for the belt-tightening and propaganda myths to distract and inspire. Breaking with the national tradition, Gorbachev chose liberalization.

As we later learned from his “Memoirs” and those of his top aide, the “godfather of glasnost” Alexander Yakovlev, economic considerations were secondary to Gorbachev’s decision. He had come to realize that the Soviet regime was incompatible with human dignity. And so, perestroika was launched: moral cleansing of a scale and intensity that had few, if any, precedents in the histories of major European states.

Very soon, Gorbachev faced another traditional Russian dilemma: empire vs. liberty at home. Unlike British or French colonial empires, Russia’s dominance of East-Central Europe was not compatible with democracy. In the end, every Russian ruler chose the empire over freedom. Alexander II’s liberalization was set back by the suppression of the Polish rebellion. Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization was interrupted by the Hungarian revolution. And the crushing of the Prague Spring stopped the Alexei Kosygin economic reform. The first Russian ruler ever, Gorbachev broke with this national political tradition. The Berlin Wall fell.  

Predictably, the liberalization-from-above could not be contained and became a revolution from below, led — as were all revolutions in modern history — by the urban middle class. Yet, to the end of his life, Gorbachev believed that what he had done was right. He remained an ardent proponent of what, following the short-lived Prague Spring, became known as “socialism with a human face.” In the 20th century political taxonomy, he aligned with George Orwell’s anti-Stalinist left: those often-heroic men and women who opposed the communists in the Spanish civil war and, after World War II, in the unions of Great Britain and in parliaments and street battles in France and Italy. They were the first to go to the wall in the communist takeovers in Eastern Europe, Cuba or Ethiopia, just like the anarchists and socialists hunted down by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in Spain, or the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) after the Bolshevik takeover in Russia.

Gorbachev’s legacy is said to be “controversial,” to use another cliché that the impatient Western societies slap on any policy that does not produce unambiguously positive results within the first five minutes. Well, which great liberator’s heritage hasn’t been? Liberty takes away the narcotizing blind worship of the hero or the state, which will in the end sort everything out and take care of everything. It gives back only risks, terrifying choices, and insecurity of the grinding daily responsibility for one’s life. 

As the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” tells Christ: You liberated them, but they don’t want to be liberated! “Nothing has ever been more unbearable for a man and a human society than freedom.” What people want, instead, is “mystery, miracle and authority” (chudo, tayna, avtoritet). Add a dollop of superpower nostalgia, militarized patriotism and now war — and you get the Putin restoration.   

Yet, revolutions that are unfinished, that are interrupted, are still revolutions. And to the end of his days, Gorbachev was proud of his. “The Soviet model was defeated not only on the economic and social levels; it was defeated on a cultural level,” he said. “Our society, our people … rejected that model because it does not respect the man, oppresses him spiritually and politically. … That is why what was most important for us was always connected to freedom.”

Leon Aron is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and the author of “Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991” and other books. Follow him on Twitter @AronRTTT.

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The Hill's Morning Report — Biden, nasty Senate race put Pennsylvania in spotlight

President Biden took his 2022 midterm roadshow on Tuesday to Pennsylvania, a key battleground, where he laid out his latest argument for Democrats to retain hold of Congress in moving ahead — combating crime and gun control — as the party’s chances have increased in recent weeks. 

Biden, who has seen his approval ratings increase slightly in recent weeks, lauded his administration’s work aimed at preventing crime, specifically citing the bipartisan gun prevention and mental health law passed in late June. He also used the opportunity to pan some Republicans over their calls to “defund” the FBI, contrasting it with his push to beef up police departments across the country. 

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI,” Biden said, pointing to some congressional Republicans who have called for the destruction of the agency following the search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month (The Hill).

“When it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police,” Biden added (The Washington Post). 

The appearance marks Biden’s first of three in the Keystone State in a week’s time. He is set to deliver a prime-time speech in Philadelphia on Thursday centered on protecting democracy and to appear in Pittsburgh for the city’s annual Labor Day parade on Monday. 

Politico, The Washington Post and other outlets late Tuesday reported in detail (including one photo) the Justice Department’s first forceful rebuttal to Trump’s request to inject an independent special master into a dispute about documents, including highly classified materials, removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8. The government’s assertion: Trump’s team may have knowingly hidden and moved materials. 

The former president is due to respond to those DOJ objections by Wednesday evening. A Thursday hearing in West Palm Beach, Fla., is set to weigh both sides of what is becoming a prolonged and unusually public legal battle about Trump’s possession of cartons of materials sought by the National Archives for more than a year.

• NBC News: Trump hired former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise to help represent him in his clash with the Justice Department.
• READ: The Justice Department’s filing.

While the drama over documents continues in the Sunshine State, Pennsylvania remains a lively political test of both parties’ efforts to control the Senate after Election Day. Biden’s Tuesday visit to Wilkes Barre, Pa., on Tuesday will be shadowed by Trump, who plans his own rally there on Saturday (ABC News).

Biden wants to help Keystone State candidates for Senate and governor — Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro — by putting a national frame around this fall’s contests. With 68 days to go until Election Day, both Democrats are considered slight favorites. Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz is struggling in polls and state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), the GOP’s nominee for governor, is testing the laws of political gravity by declining advice to appeal to moderate Republicans who could swing the election one way or another.

“The conventional wisdom is they both have shots in a year when a lot of folks thought we’d get clobbered,” T.J. Rooney, a former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, told the Morning Report. “Everyone prays Trump will continue to make headlines, which turns it from a referendum into a choice.”

The nasty battle between Fetterman and Oz took yet another turn on Tuesday as the progressive Democrat said that he will not debate the former daytime talk show host next week, accusing the Oz campaign of continuing to mock the stroke he suffered days before the May primary (The Hill).

“As I recover from this stroke and improve my auditory processing and speech, I look forward to continuing to meet with the people of Pennsylvania. They’ll always know where I stand,” Fetterman said in a statement. “Today’s statement from Dr. Oz’s team made it abundantly clear that they think it is funny to mock a stroke survivor. I chose not to participate in this farce.”

The debate was set to be hosted by Pittsburgh-based KDKA-TV. Fetterman did not rule out taking part in future debates. 

▪ David Catanese, McClatchy D.C.: Is Oz done? Republicans still see a path to a comeback against Fetterman.

▪ NBC News: Crime emerges as a focal point in Pennsylvania Senate race.

▪ Niall Stanage: Five reasons Democrats’ midterm chances are rising.

Elsewhere on the 2022 scene, a pair of polls released on Tuesday showed a dead heat shaping up in Georgia between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker. A survey released by Emerson University showed Walker leading by 2 percentage points (46 to 44 percent), while a Trafalger Group poll has the former University of Georgia star leading the incumbent Democrat by a single point. 

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) holds solid leads over Democrat Stacey Abrams in both surveys (The Hill). 

▪ The Hill: Democrats see opening to take down Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

▪ Dave Wasserman, The Cook Political Report: House overview: GOP control no longer a foregone conclusion.

▪ CNN: Alaska to tabulate ranked-choice ballots today as Sarah Palin attempts political comeback.  

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Trump’s Truth Social barred from Google Play over content moderation. 

▪ The Associated Press: Indiana abortion clinics sue to block state’s near-total ban. 

▪ The State: South Carolina House advances near-total abortion ban with rape, incest exceptions up to 12 weeks.

▪ The Hill: Appeals court rules two Trump administration Gulf lease sales unlawful.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ ADMINISTRATION

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday changed longstanding Justice Department policy to try to avert appearances and public accusations of political bias and activism by employees under his jurisdiction. He banned all department political appointees from participating in campaign events in any form. “We must do all we can to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work,” Garland said in a memo (The Hill).

The Hill’s third installment of a special report on Afghanistan includes reporting by Rebecca Beitsch that explains how thousands of Afghans remain stuck in third-party countries a year after the United States left Afghanistan to the ruling Taliban.  

The New Yorker: The evacuation of Afghanistan never ended. At the end of 2021, according to the United Nations, there were more than 2.7 million Afghan refugees registered worldwide. Since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, there have been no such reliable figures.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday said U.S. counterterrorism work “is not done” a year after U.S. troops and intelligence assets departed Afghanistan (The Hill).

NASA plans a second try on Saturday afternoon to send the Artemis I rocket and the Orion unmanned capsule to the moon from Kennedy Space Center. A planned launch Monday was postponed because of several systems problems during countdown (The Hill).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL 

Mikhail Gorbachev — the last president of the Soviet Union and the leader who set in motion the reformist principles of glasnost and perestroika that ended seven decades of Communist rule and the Cold War — died at age 91, Russian state media reported on Tuesday, citing the Central Clinical Hospital, which announced that he died after a long illness. Gorbachev’s office said earlier that he was undergoing treatment at the Moscow hospital. No other details were given (The Associated Press and The New York Times). 

Gorbachev in the span of about six years lifted the Iron Curtain, decisively altering the political climate of the world. The 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner ultimately was chased from office at home but hailed as a visionary abroad. Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not share perspectives about Russia’s future. Putin saw himself “second only to God,” Gorbachev once commented.

Biden, in a written statement, praised Gorbachev, with whom he met at the White House in 2009, as “a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.”

Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency today are headed from Kyiv in Ukraine to try to inspect Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which is operated by Ukrainians while being controlled by Russian forces and used as a dangerous base for war. As Reuters aptly reports this morning, questions and tensions abound for the future of the Zaporizhzhia plant — and risks of catastrophe.

Gazprom, Russia’s government-owned energy giant, is expected today to temporarily stop natural gas flows through Nord Stream 1, the critical pipeline that connects Russia to Germany, aggravating worries about European energy supplies. Germany is rushing to fill natural gas storage facilities before winter as backup against cutoffs by Russia. The Russian government appears to be trying to obstruct that effort as well as create uncertainty over future gas deliveries (The New York Times). 

On Tuesday, Pope Francis, through the Vatican, unequivocally condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine as “senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious.” Tuesday’s damage control was a response to public criticism that the pope has been too tolerant in recent remarks about Russia’s aggression and too vague about Ukraine’s suffering (The Associated Press). 

🌏 Today and Thursday in Hawaii, representatives from the U.S., Japan and South Korea will meet amid heightened tensions with China over Taiwan (Reuters). … The Biden administration plans to ask Congress to approve an estimated $1.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan that includes 60 anti-ship missiles and 100 air-to-air missiles, Politico reported on Monday. … Amid China’s tensions with Taiwan, Taiwanese soldiers on Tuesday fired flares and then warning shots at three unidentified drones that flew near an offshore grouping of islands under their protection. The drones later flew back toward the Chinese mainland, according to the Defense Command (CNN). … Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday became the latest U.S. elected official to visit Taiwan (Reuters).

OPINION

■ Gorbachev played a complicated but unique role in world history, by Natan Sharansky, opinion contributor, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3czXHmK

■ Gorbachev almost made Russia democratic, by William Taubman, opinion contributor, The Wall Street Journal. https://on.wsj.com/3wHKbnW

■ The enemy gets a vote: The forever war and future war after Afghanistan, by Joseph Felter, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3Rm167f

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at noon for a pro forma session and return to work in the Capitol on Sept. 13.

The Senate convenes on Friday at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m.

Vice President Harris has no public events.

First lady Jill Biden will speak during a White House meeting at 12:30 p.m. focused on helping K-12 school districts fill teacher vacancies. Joining her: Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, National Education Association President Becky Pringle, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education President Lynn Gangone and others.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2:45 p.m.

🖥  Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features news and interviews at http://thehill.com/hilltv, on YouTube and on Facebook at 10:30 a.m. ET. Also, check out the “Rising” podcast here.

ELSEWHERE

➤ STATE WATCH

This week, Mississippi has serious water problems, including Pearl River flooding, contamination and malfunctioning water treatment for drinking water. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R), elected in 2020, formally proclaimed a state of emergency on Tuesday for the water system in Jackson, where at least 150,000 residents are without clean water and are being told not to drink what comes through the faucets. 

Heavy rainfall and flooding this week exacerbated well known problems in one of two water treatment plants in Jackson. The city had already been under a boil-water notice for a month because the Health Department discovered cloudy water and said digestive problems could result from ingesting it. The governor said his state will try to help resolve indefinite contamination problems by hiring contractors to work at the treatment plant, which was operating at diminished capacity with backup pumps after the main pumps failed “some time ago,” he said (The Associated Press and CBS News). The National Guard has been distributing bottled water to long lines of takers (CNN).

In New York City’s Times Square on Thursday, a state law goes into effect making the Manhattan tourist attraction one of scores of “sensitive” places (others are parks, churches and theaters) in which guns are banned. New signs have appeared in Times Square identifying it as a “Gun Free Zone.” The state measure, passed following the Supreme Court’s June decision expanding gun rights, also sets stringent standards for issuing concealed carry permits (The Associated Press).

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH

The administration plans to shift its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment coverage and federal underwriting to the private sector as soon as January, in large part because pandemic appropriations approved by Congress are depleted (The Hill).

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday allowed New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, in effect since December for municipal workers, to be enforced (The Hill). The emergency application to the high court came from New York police detective Anthony Marciano, who listed New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) as one respondent. The case is currently being considered by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The White House on Tuesday announced plans to expand its monkeypox response by providing vaccinations and education at large LGBTQ-centered events around the country. The move follows a recent pilot program carried out in Charlotte, N.C. “Given the progress we’ve made toward making the tools available to end this outbreak, our vaccine strategy is to meet people where they seek services, care or community — especially in communities of color. We know that Prides and other large LGBTQI+ focused events can do just that,” said Demetre Daskalakis, deputy director for the White House’s national monkeypox response. Daskalakis added that the goal is to make the response more “intentional and targeted” (The Hill).

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,044,763. Current average U.S. COVID-19 daily deaths are 387, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

➤ TECH

Elon Musk, in regulatory filings revealed on Tuesday, cited a Twitter whistleblower’s report as a reason to scrap his bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion. While the whistleblower claims are being investigated, Musk wants to postpone his legal battle with Twitter over his push to exit the deal (The New York Times).

THE CLOSER

And finally … The last member of an Indigenous tribe, who lived a solitary, largely hidden life for decades deep in a Brazilian forest, was found dead on Aug. 23, reportedly of natural causes (CNN). His death marks the end of his tribe, according to authorities in Brazil tasked by the government to protect them (The New York Times).

Nicknamed the “Man of the Hole,” he had lived in complete isolation for the past 26 years on the Tanaru Indigenous land in the Brazilian Amazon in Rondonia state, according to nonprofit organization Survival International. The man’s body was found lying in a hammock in a hut. There were no signs of struggle, violence or the presence of other people in the area. His body was to undergo a forensic examination.

The last known image of the forest dweller was released in 2018 by Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency, known as Funai. The organization said the man’s abandoned campsites and shelters of straw and thatch left clues about his lifestyle, including that he grew corn and papaya.

He appears in a clandestinely made and shaky video clip taken years ago (YouTube) and, in another snippet, hidden inside a thatched shelter and apparently wary of an intruder.

Live Science (2018): Last survivor of uncontacted tribe, “Man of the Hole,” is spotted in the Amazon. 

New York Post (2016): “Man of the Hole’s” lonely life.

Brazil is home to about 240 Indigenous tribes, many of which are under threat from farmers, ranchers, illegal miners and loggers who want to drive them off the land.

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Democratic hopefuls steer clear of Biden student loan plan

Several Democratic candidates in tough Senate races are treading carefully when it comes to President Biden’s decision to cancel student loans for millions of borrowers, with some distancing themselves from the new White House plan that has quickly became a major campaign issue. 

The long-awaited move to forgive $10,000 in federal student debt was geared toward gaining support from young people and working Americans just three months out from the midterms. But some Democrats in closely watched Senate races that will help determine control of the chamber have criticized Biden’s policy for not being targeted enough and not addressing underlying issues.

“Student loan forgiveness is seen by some as a cultural war — the elites with degrees who are on their path to economic security versus those who did not attend college and are working their butts off every day to make ends meet,” said Debra Dixon, former chief of staff at the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development at the Department of Education under President Obama.

“By supporting the idea generally, but not wholeheartedly, the senators can try not to alienate the beneficiaries of the student loan forgiveness or those who do not have student loans to forgive,” she said.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who is joining Biden at an event next month in the Buckeye State, said on Sunday he supports a broader package of debt relief and a tax cut “for all working people” over the student loan forgiveness plan.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who is facing a tougher-than-expected reelection bid, criticized the student loan forgiveness plan for not being targeted enough and giving one-time cancellation as opposed to solving broader issues.

Meanwhile, other candidates, including incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and North Carolina Democrat Cheri Beasley, supported the plan. Kelly has a 3-point lead in his race against GOP challenger Blake Masters, according to a poll released on Tuesday, and Beasley has been tied with Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) in the race for North Carolina’s open Senate seat.

“In this case, in particular, I think Democrats are yelling about the places we do agree and we find ourselves politically whispering about the places that we disagree,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. “I think that’s safe. I think it’s healthy.”

Ivan Zapien, a lobbyist and former Democratic National Committee official, said that an election where the president is not on the ballot allows space for candidates to have their own policies that may be different from what is coming out of the White House.

“That’s the theory of the case for Democrats. We’re gonna find out whether it works out or not. But, in theory, that’s what Democrats are going for,” Zapien said. “Every district and every state is going to take a different approach, and that’s OK.”

Biden fulfilled his 2020 presidential campaign promise by forgiving $10,000 in federal student loans for all borrowers. In what is seen largely as a nod to progressives, he also forgave $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

Some progressive candidates want more.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is slightly trailing behind his GOP challenger Herschel Walker in a recent poll, has been pressing Biden for months for forgiveness of $50,000 per borrower. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, who is joining Biden at an event on Monday, called the relief only a first step and argued that people who did not go to college need to be supported too.

Seawright argued, though, that Democrats who do not align with Biden’s exact forgiveness plan do not necessarily disagree about the broader issue it works to solve.

“I don’t buy into this and that there’s some controversy because they don’t agree 100 percent with everything the president may have done by way of his executive orders,” he said. “The truth of the matter is they’re in lockstep agreement that something needs to be done and the way we do that is by the elected legislative branch and the executive branch working together.”

Republicans have aggressively leaned into appealing to working Americans who did not go to college when bashing Biden’s policy. They have called the plan unfair and pushed that it is being paid for by taxpayers.

The plan also comes as the U.S. is facing 40-year high inflation, which was already set to be a top issue for Americans in the midterms, with the cost of gas and groceries still high. 

Blue-collar workers overall are a demographic Democrats worry they could lose to the GOP in the midterms, and Biden is betting the enough people will support the forgiveness plan, particularly in minority communities, to ward off these hits from Republicans.

“This is going to have continued vibration throughout the political ecosystem, both downstream and upstream. I think it’s a real opportunity for Democrats to make the contrast between what we have done and what we’ve offered and what [Republicans] have not done and what they have not offered,” Seawright said.

The president mulled his decision on student loans for more than a year, with advocates and Democrats pushing for broad-based forgiveness and the president saying consistently he would make a decision soon. 

The historical decision to implement the most far-reaching student loan forgiveness program ever was eventually made just three months out from November, in the heat of a midterm election that is crucial for Democrats looking to hold on to control of the Senate.

“The timing probably was influenced by politics, but, in something like this, I don’t think there’s ever a good time to do it,” Zapien said. “Obviously, people that weighed the consequences and walk through the politics of this, I don’t think anyone’s shocked with the mixed reactions. People knew what they were getting into.”

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Pandemic burnout helped cause ‘quiet quitting’ trend, experts say

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Democrats see opening to take down Rubio

Democrats are seeing new glimmers of hope for their chances of ousting Sen. Marco Rubio (R) in Florida after months of hand-wringing over just how aggressively they should pursue his seat.

Until recently, the Senate race drew little attention from national Democrats who have grown increasingly skeptical that their candidates can remain competitive in the Sunshine State after a spate of narrow, though still painful, losses. Top party officials instead looked to Senate contests in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — two states that President Biden carried in 2020 — as safer bets.

But Rep. Val Demings (Fla.), a rising Democratic star who clinched the party’s Senate nomination in Florida last week, has so far shown herself to be a formidable challenger to Rubio. 

She’s raised about $48 million to his $36 million and has already spent months blanketing airwaves with ads talking about her law enforcement credentials and hitting Rubio over everything from his attendance record in the Senate to his stance on abortion rights.

“The fundraising situation for Republicans seems pretty dire, and meanwhile Demings is continuing to raise millions of dollars and outraise Rubio. So I think the fundamentals are really encouraging,” said Joshua Karp, a top adviser to Demings’s campaign.

Demings’s allies also argue that many of the GOP’s standard attacks — most notably their claim that the Florida congresswoman favors defunding the police — have fallen flat, given her career in law enforcement and the years she spent as Orlando’s police chief.

“Republicans haven’t really been able to lay a glove on Demings,” Karp added. “She’s pretty Teflon when it comes to their usual basket of attacks. And this is not a candidate that they know how to define and target.”

But that’s not to say winning will be easy for Demings. Unlike Republican Senate nominees in several other battleground states — like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia — Rubio is a seasoned politician with a track record of winning statewide by wide margins, and the vast majority of public polling in the race between him and Demings shows Rubio in the lead.

Rubio’s message, meanwhile, has focused on casting Demings as a “rubber stamp” for Democrats’ agenda in Washington, linking the three-term congresswoman to President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), while also homing in on inflation and crime, two issues that have repeatedly dogged Democrats this year.

“When Floridians go to the ballot box in November, they’re going to hold Demings and Democrat-controlled Washington accountable for driving skyrocketing inflation, out of control crime, and a crisis at the border letting drugs flow into our communities,” said Elizabeth Gregory, a spokesperson for Rubio’s campaign.

There’s also a long list of structural challenges for Florida Democrats. For one, there are now more registered Republican voters in the state than Democrats, and the GOP’s advantage in the state has only continued to grow. And while Florida has a penchant for hosting ultra-close statewide races, Republicans have a tendency to come out on top more often than not.

Rubio himself also has a proven ability to outperform other statewide Republican candidates in Miami-Dade County, a Democratic stronghold, albeit one where the GOP has made gains in recent years. Rubio lost Miami-Dade by only about 11 percentage points the last time he was on the ballot in 2016. That same year, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, won it by nearly 30 points.

“I think that Rubio’s strength in Miami-Dade is not to be underestimated. But it’s also never been stress-tested,” said one Democratic strategist who works in Florida politics.

In 2010, when Rubio first won his seat, his opposition was largely split in the general election between supporting Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor who challenged Rubio as an independent, and former Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), giving Rubio an opening to win Miami-Dade County, the strategist argued.

Democrats also blame former Rep. Patrick Murphy, the party’s 2016 Senate nominee, for a lackluster effort to reach Florida’s vast and diverse Hispanic communities. Murphy’s campaign released its first Spanish-language ad little more than a month before Election Day.

But Democrats say there’s reason to believe that things will be different this year. 

Demings’s campaign announced earlier this year that it would spend $3 million on a coordinated bilingual effort to boost Democrats up and down the ballot, while the Democratic National Committee moved to install a Spanish-language voter outreach program and a new organizing staff in Miami-Dade County.

Demings also began running Spanish-language digital ads in June, two months after launching “Todos Con Demings,” her Hispanic outreach campaign.

Demings has also buoyed her position in the race by seizing on the same issues lifting Democrats across the country. 

The party’s candidates have seen a burst of momentum following the signing of a massive tax and climate law, arguing that it’s evidence that they can pass meaningful legislation. And then there’s the conservative-majority Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights case — a ruling that has put reproductive rights back in the country’s political spotlight.

Meanwhile, inflation has shown signs of easing and gas prices have begun to tick downward, bolstering Democratic hopes of avoiding an electoral thrashing in November.

But Republicans argue that the problems for Democrats in Florida are apparent. While the national political environment has shifted, at least somewhat, in Democrats’ favor in recent weeks, there’s no guarantee that trend will hold over the next two months. Republicans also argue that the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Palm Beach club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, could energize their voters at a time when GOP enthusiasm is already running high.

At the same time, many of the major donors and outside groups that have invested heavily in Florida in the past have stayed on the sidelines so far, fearing a repeat of recent election cycles that saw huge spending by Democrats followed by disappointing losses.

Priorities USA, the main Democratic super PAC, has yet to announce any spending plans in Florida this year. Neither has Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Democratic Senate leadership. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, recently donated $1 million to the state Democratic Party, but has held off from making the kind of massive investments he made in the state in 2020.

“I think there’s a lot of skepticism about whether Florida is winnable. And I think that’s partially because Republicans have spent the last four years screaming at the top of their lungs that Florida is a red state,” one national Democratic consultant familiar with fundraising said. “There’s a lot of ‘don’t throw good money after bad results.’”

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Can’t go home, can’t enter the US: Thousands of Afghans remain stuck in between

Editor’s note: This is the third installment in a three-part series on Afghan refugees marking one year since the U.S. withdrew its military from Afghanistan, ending its longest war. The series — Here, There, Everywhere — tells the story of life after the evacuation through the eyes of Afghan refugees in the U.S., vulnerable Afghans who have been unable to escape the country, and those refugees scattered across the globe. To protect refugees and their families, The Hill used pseudonyms in this story.

Yusuf and his brother Ibrahim were the lucky ones.

After the U.S.-led evacuation of Afghanistan ended, just a handful of privately-organized charter flights made it out. 

They got the last two seats on the flight, one for Ibrahim, who was placed on the flight because of a medical condition, and one for Yusuf, to help care for him.

What they didn’t know is they would spend the next year of their lives trapped in the United Arab Emirates’s Humanitarian City.

Yusuf, 28, hesitated to go. He didn’t want to leave his wife and two daughters behind in Mazar-e-Sharif, but he was told they could come along shortly. And his family was pushing him to take the leap. 

It would be just the first in a series of difficult decisions for Yusuf. 

“It was very, very hard for me. The most hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. And I really regret making that decision actually,” he said.

“I got out, me and my brother, and I was waiting for my family to get out too, but they never did, and it’s been one year now.”

The fallout of the Taliban takeover has created a massive Afghan diaspora. Those who didn’t get out on U.S.-sponsored flights left in charters that took them wherever they could get landing rights, leaving them scattershot across the globe, from next-door Pakistan to countries in Africa and South America. 

Others have trickled through Afghanistan’s borders to neighboring countries, in some cases hopeful they will eventually make it to the U.S., a dream that clashes with a backlogged American bureaucracy. 

Yusuf and Ibrahim landed in Abu Dhabi in September and, even amid the chaos, things were relatively good. It was a crowded camp with roughly 10,000 people, but the accommodations were comfortable. 

And there was one key element keeping spirits high: flights were taking off, carrying refugees to a new life in the U.S.

But they halted in November, following a similar decision in September to halt flights from U.S. bases in Qatar and Germany after a limited outbreak of measles.  

They did not resume for six months. 

For a group of people who had already been through some of the most trying months of their lives — still grieving their exit, still worried about family members left behind in Afghanistan — the suspension of flights left many sinking into a deep depression.

“People were not mentally stable; people got sick; people ran out of money,” Yusuf said.

In June, one woman tried to commit suicide, jumping off the third floor of the apartment buildings housing refugees there.

For Ibrahim, 26, his medical problems have only worsened. He has ulcerative colitis, a disease that leaves his intestines lined with ulcers. It’s a difficult disease to contend with on its own, but it’s only exacerbated by stress.

And Yusuf, who spent the last three years in the high-octane environment of a military interpreter, is struggling with an idle life.

“Refugee camps are different than military camps,” Yusuf said.

“I was living in military camps for years. But refugee camp is different because you don’t have any hope for the future. There is no clear program for you, no mechanism of how your day will go. But for me, it was very frustrating,” he added. 

“I see one year of my time, of my life, wasted.”

Residents of the camp aren’t allowed to leave, only transported outside for medical issues that can’t be treated on site. Many are exhausting whatever funds they came with, frustrated to be stranded with no ability to work.

Impatient camp residents launched protests in February, pressing the U.S. government to resume flights. 

At one point, some refugees at Emirates Humanitarian City opted to return to Afghanistan, a decision some Yusuf has kept in touch with told him they now regret.

The two brothers stuck it out, only later to be informed they’d have to make another tough choice: Yusuf was offered a seat on a flight out to the U.S., but Ibraham was not.

It was a difficult decision compounded by Ibrahim’s medical condition. They have made friends at the refugee camp, but Yusuf is always at his brother’s side when he’s not feeling well. 

“There are certain things you can’t ask a friend to do,” Yusuf said. 

Yusuf worked for the military for three years, allowing him to qualify for a Special Immigration Visa (SIV), a program for those that aided the military that allows them to come to the U.S. But Ibrahim’s work with the military lasted only about six months, short of the yearlong requirement.

Accepting the offer to fly out would make Yusuf one of the few evacuated Afghans with a clear pathway to get to the U.S. Reports indicate there may still be as many as 6,500 residents at the camp in UAE – data the State Department will not confirm.

Elsewhere across the globe are others who got out, often with financial assistance from veterans or others based in the U.S., but who now have no idea if or when they’ll make it to the states.

Aryan, a doctor with a side business that contracted with the U.S. military, knew as soon as the evacuation ended that he would have to find another way out of Afghanistan.

“I saw that there was no other chance for me. The first week I made the decision, and I came to Pakistan,” he said.

He paid a travel broker $300 a person, a large expense for the 11-person family, to speed up processing of visas that otherwise would have taken about three months.

Life has been an adjustment for the well-heeled family. Despite a previously comfortable lifestyle, Aryan crossed the border with just $10,000 in cash.

“I​n Afghanistan, I have my own apartment, my house, my guest house, my car, my job,” he said.

“And suddenly it all collapsed. No job, no money, no house, no car. We lost everything.”

They’ve been slowly rebuilding a life in one of Pakistan’s largest cities. He sold his home in Kabul for extra cash. His children are in school but are blocked from getting access to the full suite of services since they are not Pakistani. 

But primarily, his children are unsettled because they’re fearful for his safety.

The Taliban killed 17 of Aryan’s employees during the war, and they twice tried to kill him, once shooting at his car and killing two passengers and injuring two more, another time placing a bomb near his house that went off when he wasnt there, mangling a different car.

He too is concerned that the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border could enable the Taliban to track him to his new location. 

“My family has not adjusted yet, but we are between fear and hope,” Aryan said.

Now it’s a waiting game. Their visas expire in August. He’s paid $7,000 to extend them. 

Aryan has applied for a SIV, but even though he’s far along in the process, he’s yet to hear when he may get the final word of approval.

Others from less affluent backgrounds who made it to Pakistan are struggling even more. 

Mohammad, who had a contract to run a radio station housed on a U.S. military base, had a picture of him conducting an interview flanked by the Afghan military that was published on a U.S. military website in 2009, creating headaches for him ever since.

Like Aryan, he’s already had multiple run-ins with the Taliban, in one case escaping when they came by his house by donning a burka and blending in with his female relatives as they told his would-be assailants he had just slipped out the back door.

He ended up criss-crossing the country for six months after the fall of Kabul until the Taliban came to his parents’ house and gave them a letter to pass along to Mohammad. It said they would “do things to you you will never have heard being done to another person.”

He got a visa to enter Pakistan, but now he barely leaves the studio apartment he shares with his wife and six children. His visa has expired and he’s scared to get caught without proper documentation. He tries to disguise his accent when he talks to people so they don’t realize he’s Afghan. He can’t work and has been surviving through charity from American contacts.

“Most days I eat one time. I eat breakfast and a little for lunch, and at night I sleep early because there is no dinner,” he said.

Pakistan is just one of many countries to receive a wave of Afghans over the past year. Many are well beyond the Middle East, reaching Kosovo, Albania, Brazil, Poland, Uganda and Australia.

Not all realized that after leaving they wouldn’t be able to easily immigrate to the U.S.

Purdy said while DHS has been working to come up with a plan to deal with those in third countries, it became clear that it would be key for charter flight destinations to be chosen selectively. 

Some, like the group that aided Yusuf and Ibrahim, got Afghans to destinations like UAE where there are processing centers, but others landed in counties with no asylum system or that are not signed into the refugee convention. 

“Is it better for them to be hunted and starving in Afghanistan or being in Uganda without potentially a future pathway? I don’t know, people need to make that call for themselves. My thought is anywhere is better than Afghanistan. That being said though, people were not thoughtful in how they dropped people off in places around the world. That still caused damage,” he said.

Yusuf ultimately decided to take the flight to the U.S. – Ibrahim encouraged him to do so. 

Yusuf joined about 5,000 Afghans who have made it to the U.S. in what the government has deemed the second phase of the evacuation.

But it’s yet another decision he regrets.

“I’ve made a very bad decision. I shouldn’t have come here, I shouldn’t have left him behind. I always keep complaining about myself and keep blaming myself, ‘Why did I leave him behind?’” he said.

He’s been in the U.S. for roughly two months now, with plans to start a new job and move into a new apartment in September.

Every morning he wakes up early and calls his brother, then checks in on his children, and then his parents.

“For me life is so tough that sometimes I sit down, and when I get alone, I talk to God like, ‘Why have you put me in that kind of situation?’ Because sometimes I get tired too. Have you been in a situation where you don’t have the chance to get tired? You can’t get tired too. Like, if I get tired, three other families will collapse,” he said.

Ibrahim remains trapped in the UAE for the foreseeable future – unable to go home, unable to move on. 

And life in the camp has gotten lonelier. He says he’s an introvert and acknowledges Yusuf is the more outgoing one – an excellent companion – while several of their other friends have left too.

But there’s little hope for getting out of the camp any time soon. The U.S. has stopped chartered flights from the camp, meaning anyone that leaves will likely have to be processed as refugees instead, something that takes years.

“Eventually he will be moved to somewhere, I believe that. But that takes time, and he doesn’t have much time,” Yusuf said.

“He’s sick. He needs care. He needs support.”

Ibraham said the uncertainty is the hardest thing to tolerate. The anniversary has him reflecting – he thought by this time he’d be in the U.S., working and sending money back to his family in Afghanistan.

“It is hard when a year passes and you look at the end of the year and it’s a blank sheet,” he said.

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