If you have kids, you are much more likely to make school policy a top voting priority than if you don’t have any children.
That was hammered home to me during the pandemic. Most old people cared more about their own well-being than they cared about the mental and physical health of the country’s school children.
This is not a new dynamic. We spend far more money on Social Security and Medicare than we do on education in this country. Let’s face it — old people vote for their self-interests and most young people don’t vote at all.
For as long as I have been involved in politics, Democrats have dominated on education policy, because they have been much more willing to spend public money on education and because their closest allies are the teachers unions, an extremely effective special interest group.
Not that long ago, being closely identified with the teachers unions was a net positive. That all ended during the pandemic.
Off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia showed a backlash against both the Democrats and the teachers unions. Former Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe unwisely campaigned with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and lost an election that centered on how the Democrats mishandled school closures. In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was so freaked out about his narrow victory that he immediately lifted all restrictions on his schools.
Most, but not all, Democrats have learned the lesson of the 2021 elections. Many are trying to memory-hole what they and their colleagues did to the children during the pandemic. But reminders persist. For example, in Washington, D.C., and in New Orleans, schools are still threatening that kids won’t be able to go back to school unless they are fully vaccinated. In both school districts, the vast majority of the unvaccinated are African-American. This policy should be seen as cruelly racist — but because the Democrats are the ones implementing the policy, they get a pass in the media.
Republicans will continue to win on the education issue because the Democrats are hopelessly devoted to the unions and to a model of education that doesn’t work for most kids. They should continue to press their advantage by pushing for policies that give more power to parents to decide what is best for their kids and their education.
This includes supporting policies that allow education spending to follow the children and not go directly into the hands of the public-school bureaucracy.
America’s public schools weren’t doing that well before the pandemic hit. Now, they have become a disaster, a cesspool of woke indoctrination and substandard teaching that has left a generation of school children far behind their private-school peers.
Kids around the country are going back to school. This is a good time to remind their parents that Republicans have a real plan to improve education in this country, and it is not in any way endorsed by the unions that kept your kids at home and in masks last year.
Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).
The Latino Victory Fund and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) on Tuesday endorsed Michelle Vallejo, a progressive Democrat running for the most competitive House seat in Texas.
“It’s an honor to have earned the support of LCV Action Fund and Latino Victory Fund,” said Vallejo.
“As South Texas faces more severe weather every year and is on the verge of the worst water crisis in our history, our health and our economy are taking the hit.”
Vallejo, 31, is running in a district that was redrawn after the 2020 Census, shifting from a slight Democratic lean to a true purple district.
It is currently represented by Rep. Vicente González (D-Texas), who after redistricting and the retirement of former Rep. Filemón Vela (D-Texas), decided to run in the neighboring, more Democratic seat.
In May, Vallejo won her primary by 30 votes and in July she received the endorsement of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus campaign arm, an indication that Hispanic Democrats are betting she can win the increasingly competitive district.
Vallejo, a local small business owner, is running as an unabashed progressive while her opponent, Republican Mónica de la Cruz, is running as a Trump-backed conservative.
Vallejo is also the only Democratic Latina running in one of the three South Texas Hispanic-majority districts, and the only Democrat who’s not already in Congress.
González and longtime Rep. Henry Cuéllar (D-Texas) are running in the two neighboring districts against Republican Latinas – because González switched districts, he is also running against a House incumbent, Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas).
“Michelle Vallejo is the only Latina candidate running in the 15th District who supports issues and policies that will help South Texas families and Latinos across the country,” said Nathalie Rayes, Latino Victory Fund president and CEO.
“She is a small business owner who will fight for jobs and higher wages and the daughter of immigrants who will advocate for a fair and humane immigration system,” added Rayes.
Although Vallejo is openly progressive, many of her positions are filtered through the lens of the staunchly moderate-to-conservative Rio Grande Valley communities in the south of the district.
For instance, Vallejo won the dual endorsement in part based on her environmental proposals, which focus on job creation through clean energy, rather than combative rhetoric on climate change.
“Michelle Vallejo will fight for every community in South Texas to have clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment, especially people in frontline communities facing the brunt of corporate polluters,” said LCV Action Fund Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld.
“As a small business owner and family of farm workers, immigrants, and entrepreneurs in the Rio Grande Valley, she understands what is at stake. She is committed to protecting our environment, strengthening our democracy, and building a just and equitable clean energy future for all,” Sittenfeld added.
Progressive Democrats, including President Biden, constantly complain about threats to democracy. And yet, they are more than willing to disregard the democratic process if that’s what it takes to get their way. Biden’s half-trillion-dollar student loan “forgiveness” overreach is the latest and most egregious example.
Progressives have increasingly embraced the “one person, one vote, once” view of democracy. Once their candidate is elected president, it is his (or eventually her) job to implement the progressive agenda.
If the president has the votes in Congress to pass that agenda through the normal, constitutionally mandated process, fine. Go with that.
But if he doesn’t have the votes, progressive Democrats will demand that he do whatever it takes to implement the agenda anyway. Because the ends – that is, the progressive vision – is more important than the constitutionally-prescribed process.
You can hear progressives’ justifications for taking such anti-democratic steps in their stringent pleas for the president to act. Warnings like: “Climate change is too important to wait for Congress to act” and “The poor need help now.”
It didn’t start with Biden. There was President Obama’s “I have a pen and a phone” proclamation. If he could get Congress to pass his agenda, great. If not, he would act on his own. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was his biggest unilateral step.
But there were other overreaches: entering into what were essentially treaties with foreign nations such as the Paris Climate Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and other nations to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities and even Obama’s U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change. Obama declined to put those agreements to the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote of the Senate because he knew he would lose. To Obama and the left, trying to address climate change and imposing limits on Iran were more important than the Constitution.
Following the Obama executive-action model, Biden is taking even bigger and bolder steps.
Of course, that’s a process we criticize when other countries engage in it. Once voted into power (think, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and, of course, Vladimir Putin in Russia), these strongmen begin to consolidate that power so they can impose their agenda. If they can get their legislators to go along, so much the better. But in their (and the progressive) vision, the job of the elected representatives of the people is to validate the executive’s agenda.
The framers of the Constitution took steps to stop such efforts. While there are three equal branches of the government (the legislative, executive and judicial), the Constitution makes the legislative branch, Congress, the first among equals.
Tax and spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, or at least they’re supposed to. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan would cost the federal government (i.e., taxpayers) about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. And that’s only if Biden stops there. Progressives will push him to do more, and there are always more votes to buy.
As for the Senate, it provides its advice and consent on treaties. But Obama decided to call some treaties by a different name and never submitted them to the Senate.
Fortunately, there is still one roadblock on this executive overreach: the judicial branch.
Unlike the banana republics, the United States still has an independent judiciary. And even though many judges have strong political leanings, no one knows, or controls, in advance how the courts, and especially the Supreme Court, will decide.
That judicial independence is precisely why progressive Democrats called on Biden to pack the court with at least four additional justices. And why they suggested imposing age and term limits on the Supreme Court.
None of them cared about age or term limits if that would have cut short the career of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The Supreme Court isn’t broken, as they claimed. It just stood in the way of the all-powerful president model.
The real problem created by the progressives’ demand for executive overreach is it vastly increases the importance of the presidential election. If an all-powerful president can singlehandedly implement a party’s agenda, that added importance increases the incentive to engage in election fraud or to challenge elections. Just as President Trump challenged, and still rejects, the 2020 election.
Encouraging a sitting president to bypass the democratic process that requires passing bills and treaties through Congress sets a terrible precedent. It will only make the fight for the White House more important and costly, and will likely result in even more claims of a stolen election.
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.
Can Americans sleep soundly at night, confident that our national secrets are safe from falling into the wrong hands? The same for our allies?
With all due respect to former President Trump and his aides, along with the leaders of America’s intelligence community in Congress, the CIA, the FBI and other high federal officials, both sides in the battle over the classified documents in Mar-a-Lago have been insulting our intelligence.
We reach this conclusion most regrettably. But unlike Col. Nathan R. Jessup (a.k.a Jack Nicholson) in “A Few Good Men,” we think Americans can handle the truth.
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, he and his aides knew that he no longer had the right to possess certain sensitive intelligence information. The now former president says that prior to leaving the presidency, he issued an oral order declassifying any previously classified documents later sent to his residence, or already kept there. But this explanation is not consistent with other statements by the former president, including his claim that documents may have been planted to frame him.
The White House has procedures to ensure that sensitive classified information is secured. That system apparently collapsed in the Trump White House. The staff secretary and the National Security Council executive secretary offices should have had records of what documents went where during the four years and then worked to retrieve them well ahead of time. The presidential daily briefer (PDB) and staff are supposed to keep tabs on anything not returned with the briefing book.
Thus, Trump had no legal right to hold in his personal possession, into his post-presidency besides, classified, and much of it extremely sensitive, information posing a potentially serious, if not grave, danger to our national security. He lacked the required security clearance. This information was furthermore not kept in the secured, restrictive access environment required by law.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Trump only wanted the information to help write his memoirs. Unfortunately, motivation is irrelevant to the intelligence matter at issue: To wit, he had no legal right to possess such sensitive information in written form.
The former president needs to own up to his mistake.
But our intelligence community, starting with the Senate Intelligence Committee, needs to do the same. One member of the committee claimed he had no idea that Trump had this information until recently. This defies a reasonable interpretation of the known facts. Committee members, at least some, knew well before.
It’s too easy to put all the blame on the former president and the failures of his administration to follow established protocols for securing classified materials.
The intelligence community had long complained about President Trump’s cavalier handling of classified information. Just about everyone in the Washington, D.C., political community knew he had taken boxes of documents to Florida. The intelligence community’s criticism of Trump convinced President Biden to deny his predecessor the regular intelligence briefing given all other former presidents.
By the middle of last year, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had alerted the White House and others about the probability that Trump possessed documents he longer had the right to keep, much less allow others without proper clearance to see. NARA earlier this year made this point again in a letter to key government officials. Were congressional intelligence committees, among others, kept totally in the dark?
Federal law limits access to the previous Oval Office occupant’s presidential documents for several years. But facts already known make this clear: the intelligence community might not have seen the actual documents, but it has been long aware of the classified nature of the information therein.
Bottom line: For over a year, NARA had a reasonable suspicion of the nature of the documents that Trump continued to refuse to give back. For the past six months, NARA and the intelligence community had sufficient evidence to believe those documents contained information of potential grave harm to the nation.
Perhaps government officials are restrained from telling us all they did to ensure Trump’s documents were secure from prying eyes. Perhaps the FBI got a secret FISA warrant. Perhaps the government planted assets inside Mar-a-Largo. There can be endless speculation.
But this we know for sure: Instead of seizing the documents and ending the potential threat, our intelligence community, acting through the FBI, let an unauthorized person keep the documents in an unauthorized location in violation of mandatory protocols.
Americans deserve better. Certainly from a former president.
But the same is true for the actions of our intelligence community. They decided to give former President Trump unprecedented deference. Their defenders will say political reality left them little choice these past 18 months.
We disagree. Consider that the intelligence committees of Congress are now demanding a damage assessment. If they had acted appropriately, there would be no need for one at this point.
There must be zero tolerance for actions capable of putting our national security at such risk. We need better protocols for ensuring certain documents can’t leave secure rooms. As soon as there is reason to believe someone has unauthorized access to classified information, the law must provide an immediate path to get it back. Our Constitution permits this.
The Trump document fiasco points to one of the greatest intelligence failures since the Cold War. We need a presidential commission to review the circumstances and propose laws to prevent a recurrence. This ensures future good will come from this debacle.
Trump would be well advised to admit his mistake. The intelligence community also needs to own up to its failures. One of America’s greatest strengths is our willingness to give people who have accepted their punishment and atoned for their misdeeds a second chance. America is more important than any one person or any one group of people.
Mark J. Rozell is dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Paul Goldman is a Richmond, Va., based attorney.
Seventy-one percent of Americans indicated support for labor unions in a Gallup poll released on Tuesday, the highest percentage since 1965.
The latest measure is a slight uptick from the 68 percent who supported labor unions when the survey giant polled the question last year.
Gallup has tracked union approval for decades, and support has gradually increased since 2009.
Support fell below 50 percent for the only time in 2009, but ever since has been improving to levels now not seen in more than a half century.
The increased support comes as workers at many major companies have pursued union campaigns.
A Starbucks store in Buffalo, N.Y., became the company’s first U.S. location to unionize in December, and more than 200 stores have since successfully held votes to join the union. Starbucks has battled many of those unionization efforts in court.
In April, workers at one of Amazon’s New York City facilities voted to become the first of the e-commerce giant’s U.S. locations to unionize.
Additionally, the first U.S. Chipotle store voted to unionize last Thursday in Lansing, Mich.
The new poll found that 6 percent of U.S. adults report that they are a union member, and 16 percent live in a household in which at least one resident is part of a union.
The results remain in line with Gallup’s range of between 14 percent and 21 percent of adults since 2001 who have said they live in a household with at least one union member.
“We’re seeing a resurgence of worker organizations and unionization,” Biden said earlier this month. “Where I come from, that’s a good thing, and it’s long overdue.”
The Gallup poll was conducted between Aug. 1 and 23 through a random phone sample of 1,006 U.S. adults. The sample is weighted to match national demographics, and the margin of error is 4 percentage points.
Has the immediate danger of a catastrophic explosion at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant concentrated our minds sufficiently to avert a disaster, and can we turn it into an opportunity to learn and reduce such risks everywhere?
A United Nations team will visit the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, which in recent weeks has come under shelling that endangers the safety of its core nuclear functions. Ukraine and Russia blame each other for military action that threatens potentially disastrous consequences for Ukraine, Russia, the region, and the world. Urgent international action is needed to stave off a catastrophe.
Serious damage to the supply of electricity to the plant could cause a nuclear meltdown, even if modern nuclear plants like those at Zaporizhzhia are considered better able to withstand equipment malfunction than was the Chernobyl reactor. Radioactive fallout would spread over a vast region — the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 impacted Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Sweden, among other areas. This time, the actual countries affected would be determined by upper atmospheric wind currents, but undoubtedly would include Ukraine and likely western Russia.
No nuclear plant should be hostage in a conflict and then be turned into a fortress and staging ground for military action to gain strategic advantage. In Ukraine alone, there are nine other operating nuclear power reactors, three of which are near the frontline of Russia’s war. There are dozens more located in regions globally that are in potential conflict zones, including India and Pakistan.
International action is needed now to deal with the immediate challenge in Zaporizhzhia, as well as to set norms for the treatment of nuclear power plants in potential conflict zones. Ukraine, Russia and the international community all have an interest in replicating the India-Pakistan 1988 agreement banning attacks on each other’s nuclear installations and facilities.
For Zaporizhzhia, the central purpose must be to end all activities that threaten the integrity and stability of the nuclear plant and to permit its continued safe operation within the Ukrainian electricity grid. The necessary steps would include:
Creating around the plant a 15-kilometer radius zone where neither side will take military activity of any kind — on land, in the air or from the sea.
Monitoring and patrolling the secure plant zone by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force (PKO) of neutral states broadly acceptable to Ukraine and Russia. The IAEA would assure nuclear safety and integrity. The PKO would separate forces, monitor their presence, and verify reductions and locations of forces permitted.
Managing the zone to assure the continued unhindered and safe operation of the facility by its Ukrainian employees. That must include the evacuation of all heavy weapons from the zone (artillery, anti-aircraft systems, missiles and tanks), a no-fly zone, and an open land connection to Ukrainian-held territory to facilitate the monitored passage by the UN of plant staff and equipment and experts to assure the continued safe operation of the facility. Any residual military forces should be withdrawn, two kilometers at least, from the periphery of the plant.
The recent agreement on grain shipments provides a model for negotiating such a deal. The negotiations should be conducted on a quiet basis between Russia and Ukraine, under the aegis of the UN and the IAEA, with the assistance of a potential neutral facilitator and the full support of the United States, the other P-5 members, and the European Union.
The agreement should be registered with the United Nations, and a mandatory Security Council resolution, ideally adopted unanimously, would authorize the peacekeeping force and establish the IAEA monitoring activities.
Similar arrangements should be put in place for Ukraine’s other nuclear power plants. IAEA and UN observers, with the cooperation of the Ukrainian government, should be stationed at all the plants to assure that any attacks against them are terminated and prohibited.
The UN Secretary General, with the full support of the UN Security Council, should sponsor a follow-on conference to be attended by all states where the more than 400 existing nuclear power plants are located. The purpose would be to adopt a strict code dealing with such plants in actual or potential conflicts.
Achieving these goals will not be easy. Russia has said it rejects a demilitarized zone around Zaporizhzhia. But on this they are losing the international information battle; they were hardly enthusiastic at first about the grain deal. As was true there, it will take insistent public pressure and the active engagement of the UN Secretary General to start serious negotiations.
The international community has a genuine opportunity — not only to avert an immediate catastrophe, but also to further mitigate this dangerous conflict and, in the process, make the whole world safer.
Thomas R. Pickering is a former Under Secretary of State and ambassador to Russia, India, the United Nations and Israel and Assistant Secretary for Oceans, Environment and Science.
William Ury is a Distinguished Fellow with the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation and co-author of “Getting to Yes.”
President Biden plans this week to hit the road with hopes he can boost the political fortunes of key Democratic candidates while persuading voters in swing states that they shouldn’t back Republicans just 70 days from now.
Pennsylvania is on his mind, and not just because he hails from Scranton. The president plans events in Wilkes Barre, Pa., today, Philadelphia on Thursday for a prime-time address about defending democracy and Pittsburgh on Labor Day with a nod to unions.
Biden would like to make the midterms a referendum on what he describes as the hazards for democratic governance because of the Republican Party’s dominant personality, former President Trump, and the “ultra-MAGA” hold Trump wields over elected officials and his base of supporters.
His remarks in Philadelphia are likely to reprise themes woven into his 2020 campaign and repeated at the White House.
“It’s up to all of us to protect the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the right to equal justice under the law; the right to vote and have that vote counted; the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and know that our children and grandchildren will be safe on this planet for generations to come; the right to rise in the world as far as your God-given talent can take you, unlimited by barriers of privilege or power,”he said a year ago from the South Lawn on Independence Day.
Since this summer’s Supreme Court decision sending abortion rights to the 50 states, the president also warns Americans that conservatives want to erase constitutional protections beyond abortion to perhaps include contraception, LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage.
The president began the political season last week in Democrat-friendly Maryland. Biden also plans a Labor Day stop in Wisconsin, followed by Ohio on Sept. 9 to tout jobs and semiconductor manufacturing at a new Intel Corp. plant. He’ll headline at least one political fundraising event a week later in New York City during his official stayover to speak to the United Nations General Assembly.
On Biden’s autumn agenda: raise money, pitch Democratic policies and new laws, contrast his party with the GOP, and lend a hand to specific candidates who want to share his stage.
The president, whose job approval numbers have inched up to the mid-40s, today will be in Wilkes Barre to promote crime prevention ideas that have largely been blocked in a divided Congress. He’ll tout his ideas for community policing, curbing violent crime and getting guns off the streets. Biden, who narrowly beat Trump in the Keystone State in 2020, will say Congress should approve $37 billion for his policing and gun safety ideas, proposed for the fiscal year that begins in October.
In Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Senate race, Democratic nominee John Fetterman, still recovering from a life-threatening stroke and surgery, is outpacing Republican Senate nominee Mehmet Oz, who is struggling to overcome negative headlines about his multiple domiciles and a much-mocked “crudité” video aimed at Biden and inflation, which his campaign posted months ago to his social media account. Oz, who has disappointed GOP leaders with lagging poll numbers in an open seat held by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), wants to get on offense, The Hill’s Julia Manchester reports.
Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), whose 8th Congressional District race is rated a toss-up by Inside Elections, is expected to appear with Biden. Cartwright is facing a rematch against Republican Jim Bognet, a former Trump administration appointee who lost to Cartwright by 4 points in 2020 even as Trump carried the district by 4 points, Roll Call reports.
Fetterman will not be with Biden today but plans to meet with the president on Labor Day, according to his campaign (The Hill).
Some Democratic candidates in competitive races are tiptoeing around Biden’s official visits, making case-by-case decisions about whether to appear with him (NBC News).
Biden on Sept. 5 will also appear in Milwaukee (future swing-state site of the GOP presidential nominating convention) to salute working Americans and organized labor (The Washington Times).
Related Articles
▪ The Philadelphia Inquirer: Biden to give a prime-time speech about democracy from outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Thursday.
▪ The Hill: Democratic Senate candidate Fetterman, ahead of Biden’s visit to the state today, called on the president to move toward decriminalizing marijuana.
▪ Bloomberg News and The New York Times: In a letter Monday, 18 House lawmakers told Credova Financial, a small Montana financial firm that has emerged as a major player providing no-interest financing to online gun buyers for weapons and ammunition, that Congress wants answers about its business practices.
▪ The Associated Press: A bipartisan gun law enacted in June includes a quiet breakthrough for victims of domestic aggression and abuse.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ MORE POLITICS & COURTS
The Department of Justice finalized its initial review of potentially privileged materials seized at Trump’sMar-a-Lago estate, the agency informed the court Monday.
The news comes amid an effort by the former president to prevent the department from examining evidence collected during the Aug. 8 search at his West Palm Beach, Fla., residence. As The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch points out, the government’s acknowledgment of the review and that it has already set aside items that could be covered by attorney-client privilege could undermine Trump’s push to stall the probe.
Trump’s latest push has involved attempting to bring a “special master” into the mix. The third party would review the materials collected by investigators to screen for privileged material or personal property that may have been taken during the search. The former president complained days after the search that his passports were among the items collected.
The department’s examination started two weeks before Trump and his legal team filed a lawsuit seeking an independent special master.
Politico: Justice Department indicates Trump’s demand for special master may be too late.
In Georgia, a superior court judge on Monday rejected a request from Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to quash a subpoena for his testimony from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) in the investigation into possible 2020 election interference by Trump and his allies.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, however, said the incumbent governor’s testimony can wait until after the Nov. 8 election. Kemp requested the delay, having argued that the probe is politically motivated and could unfairly influence the election. Kemp is considered a witness, according to prosecutors, not a target of the investigation.
▪ Bloomberg News: Trump “entanglement” weakens Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) push against testifying in a Georgia criminal probe into the 2020 presidential election, Atlanta’s district attorney says.
▪ The Hill: California seeks to build on federal climate advances.
On the 2022 scene, fresh off a week featuring red flags galore, Republican candidates are tempering their messaging on abortion rights as their chances to create a “red wave” in November have fallen.
Following key losses in Kansas and a New York swing district, Republican candidates are scrambling to tweak abortion messaging ahead of Election Day, reports The Hill’s Caroline Vakil.
▪ The Washington Post: Pennsylvania governor hopeful Doug Mastriano (R) bets he can win by not moderating Trumpian stances.
▪ The Associated Press: Supreme Court security fencing removed, but building remains closed.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ADMINISTRATION
NASA’s planned lunar launch of its unmanned Orion capsule atop the Artemis I rocket will be delayed until Friday at the earliest because of problems Monday with several systems. It could be September before the test flight happens, all part of the U.S.’s goals to return astronauts to the moon by 2025 and perhaps one day send a manned mission to Mars.
One of the rocket’s engines failed Monday to settle on the correct temperature, and in the predawn darkness at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA repeatedly stopped and started the fueling of the Space Launch System rocket because of a leak of highly explosive hydrogen, eventually succeeding in reducing the seepage. The leak happened in the same place that saw seepage during a dress rehearsal in the spring (The Hill and The Associated Press).
The Hill’s special Afghanistan report one year after the departure of U.S. forces: Veterans battle a “moral injury,” Jordan Williams reports. … America’s Afghan allies hiding from the Taliban in Afghanistan have hit dead ends in their quests to reach the United States, Rebecca Beitsch reports.
OPINION
■ I’m a Ukrainian soldier and I’ve accepted my death, guest essay by Artem Chekh, an author and volunteer patrolling the Chernobyl exclusion zone, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3TConUC
■ Latest COVID-19 conundrum is when to get yet another shot, by Faye Flam, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3CJBHQT
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 at 10 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.
The president and Vice President Harris will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10:15 a.m. Biden will travel to Wilkes Barre to speak at 3:15 p.m. about gun safety, crime, law enforcement and his proposed Safer America Plan. He will return to the White House by 5:40 p.m.
First lady Jill Biden, who has been in Delaware, will return to the Washington, D.C., “area” today after testing negative for COVID-19 after a rebound infection, according to her office.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky will speak from 4 to 5 p.m. ET about preparing for the next pandemic during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Livestream HERE.
An inspection team from the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog is heading to the Zaporizhzhia power plant in southern Ukraine in an attempt to ward off any possibility of a nuclear disaster. The plant is under Russian control, having been overtaken shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the team is expected to arrive at the plant later this week. They reportedly arrived in Ukraine on Tuesday. “We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,” Grossi tweeted. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba added that the team’s mission “will be the hardest in the history of IAEA” (The Associated Press). IAEA inspectors arrived in Ukraine.
The New York Times: The first shipment of Iranian military drones arrives in Russia.
Great Britain’s defense office suggested in updates published on Twitter on Monday that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu may have been “side-lined within the Russian leadership” more than six months into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. According to British officials, the move is likely “due to the problems Russia is facing” in the ongoing war with Kyiv (The Hill). … British intelligence information on Tuesday focused on evidence of possible “significant” reorganization of Russian forces in Ukraine.
➤ POX, PANDEMIC & BACK TO SCHOOL
The Health and Human Services Department on Monday said the government will spend $11 million on domestic production in Michigan of Jynneos monkeypox vaccine doses during a period of U.S. vaccine shortage to get ahead of outbreaks of the virus, first detected in May (The Hill).
The Washington Post: Student vaccinations slowed during COVID-19. Can schools catch them up?
The academic year kicked off in parts of the country this week as many school districts have moved on from COVID-19 restrictions. In Portland, Ore.-area school districts, masking is now optional, infection quarantines are shorter and more students have received COVID-19 jabs than at the start of last school year (Oregon Live).
In Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, schools have ended almost all restrictions and have even ended some COVID-19-era practices. Allentown School District discontinued the operation of a dashboard showing how many COVID-19 cases are in the district (The Morning Call).
ABC-6 (Philadelphia): School District of Philadelphia students will need to bring masks as they head back to school.
Lawyers for Elon Musk issued a subpoena to Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s former security chief, who came forward as a whistleblower over his claims that the social media giant deceived regulators, according to a Monday court filing. Zatko said in his whistleblower complaint to the Justice Department and regulatory agencies that Twitter misled the public and the Tesla CEO about its security practices. Musk’s move comes as he tries to break off his agreement to buy the company for $44 billion after Twitter allegedly “misled” him about bot and spam accounts on the platform. Twitter has rejected Zatko’s claims (The New York Times).
➤ SPORTS
The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) announced on Monday that it is launching a campaign to unionize Minor League Baseball players. The MLBPA sent out authorization cards allowing minor league players to vote for an election that could make them members of the union. “Minor Leaguers represent our game’s future and deserve wages and working conditions that befit elite athletes who entertain millions of baseball fans nationwide,” MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark said in a statement (ESPN).
And finally … Serena Williams is back in the tennis spotlight, for a few more days at least.
The tennis legend handily won her first round matchup at the U.S. Open on Monday night, defeating unranked Danka Kovinic in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3, to open the Grand Slam event that is widely expected to be the swan song of her career.
The celebrities were out in force at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadow, N.Y., to catch her in action, including former President Clinton, Spike Lee, Lindsey Vonn, Mike Tyson, Gladys Knight and Martina Navratilova.
However, the 23-time Grand Slam champion’s tournament might not last too much longer as she is set to face No. 2-ranked Anett Kontaveit in the second round. The match is slated for Wednesday night.
Republicans hoping to seize control of the House in November are already setting their sights on what is, for many of them, a top priority next year: impeaching President Biden.
A number of rank-and-file conservatives have already introduced impeachment articles in the current Congress against the president. They accuse Biden of committing “high crimes” in his approach to a range of issues touching on border enforcement, the coronavirus pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Those resolutions never had a chance of seeing the light of day, with Democrats holding a narrow control of the lower chamber. But with Republicans widely expected to win the House majority in the midterms, many of those same conservatives want to tap their new potential powers to oust a president they deem unfit. Some would like to make it a first order of business.
“I have consistently said President Biden should be impeached for intentionally opening our border and making Americans less safe,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “Congress has a duty to hold the President accountable for this and any other failures of his Constitutional responsibilities, so a new Republican majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.”
The conservative impeachment drive is reminiscent of that orchestrated by liberals four years ago, as Democrats took control of the House in 2019 under then-President Trump. At the time, a small handful of vocal progressives wanted to impeach Trump, largely over accusations that he’d obstructed a Justice Department probe into Russian ties to his 2016 campaign. The idea was repeatedly rejected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), not least out of fear that it would alienate voters in tough battleground districts.
The tide turned when a whistleblower accused Trump of pressuring a foreign power to find dirt on his political opponent — a charge that brought centrist Democrats onto the impeachment train. With moderates on board, Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry in September of 2019, eight months after taking the Speaker’s gavel. Three months later, the House impeached Trump on two counts related to abusing power.
The difference between then and now is that liberals, in early 2019, were fighting a lonely battle with scant support. This year, heading into the midterms, dozens of conservatives have either endorsed Biden’s impeachment formally, or have suggested they’re ready to support it.
At least eight resolutions to impeach Biden have been offered since he took office: Three related to his handling of the migrant surge at the southern border; three targeting his management of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year; one denouncing the eviction moratorium designed to help renters during the pandemic; and still another connected to the overseas business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.
Those proposals will expire with the end of this Congress. But some of the sponsors are already vowing to revisit them quickly next year. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the lead sponsor of four of the impeachment resolutions, is among them.
“She believes Joe Biden should have been impeached as soon as he was sworn in, so of course she wants it to happen as soon as possible,” Nick Dyer, a Greene spokesman, said Monday in an email.
A noisy impeachment push from the GOP’s right flank could create headaches for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), the Republican leader in line to be Speaker, and other party brass just as the 2024 presidential cycle heats up.
On the one hand, impeaching Biden could alienate moderate voters and hurt the GOP at the polls, as was the case in 1998 following the impeachment of President Clinton. Already, GOP leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) are throwing cold water on the impeachment talk, suggesting it could damage Republicans politically in the midterms.
On the other hand, ignoring the conservatives’ impeachment entreaties might spark a revolt from a Republican base keen to avenge the Democrats’ two impeachments of Trump, who remains the most popular national figure in the GOP. McCarthy knows well the perils of angering the far right: The Freedom Caucus had nudged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) into an early retirement in 2015, deeming him insufficiently conservative, then prevented McCarthy from replacing him.
McCarthy’s office did not respond Monday to a request for comment.
The challenge facing Republican leaders in a GOP-controlled House will be to demonstrate an aggressive posture toward the administration, to appease conservatives, without alienating moderate voters in the process.
Stefanik’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Another strategy GOP leaders may adopt is to impeach a high-ranking member of the administration, but not the president himself. Several resolutions have been introduced to do just that, separately targeting Vice President Harris, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
McCarthy, during a visit to the southern border earlier in the year, had floated the idea of impeaching Mayorkas if he is found to be “derelict” in his job of securing the border. And the concept has plenty of support among conservatives.
“Mayorkas and Garland have purposefully made our country less safe, politicized their departments, and violated the rule of law. In some instances, they have instructed their subordinates to disobey our laws. That is unacceptable,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who has endorsed a number of impeachment resolutions this year, said in an email.
“Next January I expect the House to pursue my impeachment articles against Mayorkas as well as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impeachment articles that I co-sponsored against Attorney General Merrick Garland,” Biggs added.
Still, conservatives like Biggs, the former head of the Freedom Caucus, also want to go straight to the top by impeaching Biden. And it remains unclear if anything less than that will appease the GOP’s restive right flank — one that’s expected to grow next year with the arrival of a number of pro-Trump conservatives vowing to take on anyone they consider to be part of Washington’s political establishment.
Some Republicans said the decision whether to endorse impeachment next year will simply hinge on events. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), for instance, has endorsed two impeachment resolutions this cycle related to the Afghanistan withdrawal, but “has made no decisions yet on supporting impeachment articles next year with Republicans in the majority,” according to spokesman Austin Livingston.
“He will wait to see what those efforts look like, specifically how they align with Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution,” Livingston said, referring to the section outlining Congress’s impeachment powers.
But others are eager to use a GOP majority to hold Biden’s feet to the fire. And that energy doesn’t appear to be fleeting, particularly when it comes to the border crisis, which could very well remain a hot topic six months from now.
Rep. Mary Miller (R), a strong Trump supporter who recently won an Illinois primary over the more moderate Rep. Rodney Davis (R), said Biden should be removed “for purposely ignoring our immigration laws.”
“Biden and Harris have failed their most basic duty,” Miller said, “which is ensuring the safety of the American people through the security of our borders.”
Republican candidates are shifting their message on abortion after several recent elections have shown the issue energizing Democrats.
Some candidates for House, Senate and governor have either reworked sections on their websites or released ads that have sought to downplay, reverse or clarify some of their anti-abortion stances.
The shift started over the summer following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but the change has become increasingly noticeable as more and more signs have emerged showing abortion can be a galvanizing issue for Democratic voters in key states.
“I think the concept that for decades, you know, a Supreme Court fight energized the conservative base because they wanted to overturn Roe, right?” Republican strategist Barrett Marson, who previously worked on Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters’s campaign, said.
“I think you’re gonna see a flip on that, that the liberal base will get more energized about this issue because they got it taken away from them,” he added.
Voters in the red state of Kansas earlier this month resoundingly rejected a ballot measure that would have given the legislature more authority to restrict the procedure. And last week, Democrat Pat Ryan won a New York special election seen as a bellwether after focusing his campaign on abortion rights.
In three other special elections since the Supreme Court struck down federal abortion protections, Democrats outpaced expectations even though they ultimately lost. And states such as Pennsylvania, Idaho and Wisconsin are seeing larger gaps open up between new female and male voter registrations since the Supreme Court decision, according to TargetSmart, the Democratic data services firm.
Taken together, the developments have seemingly pushed Republicans to reassess how they approach an issue that has already shown it can help swing elections and for some to step back from support for outright abortion bans.
NBC News reported last week that Masters had changed some language on his website regarding his stance on the issue, including getting rid of the line “I am 100% pro-life” and support for “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”
The network, which took images of the website before and after it was updated, also reported the previous version said he supported legislation that would criminalize abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, while an updated version showed him supporting restrictions after the third trimester.
“He has moderated slightly on this issue, and I would still say he is pretty unabashedly pro-life,” Marson said of Masters. “I mean, I don’t think there’s a question that he is very pro-life. And so, has he, you know, backed away from maybe some of the harsher stances? Sure. But [I] don’t think that he’s, you know, all of a sudden, a moderate on the issue. He’s not.”
Masters’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but the campaign did direct NBC toward an interview he did earlier this month with The Arizona Republic after his primary in which he expressed his support for restrictions in the third trimester. He also supported the state’s 15-week ban on abortion that outlines exceptions for saving the patient’s life as “a reasonable solution.”
Other GOP candidates are finding themselves pushing back against Democratic attacks on their abortion stances.
In Washington state, Republican Senate nominee Tiffany Smiley, who is taking on Sen. Patty Murray (D) released a commercial last week that included the line “Patty Murray has spent millions to paint me as an extremist. I’m pro-life, but I oppose a federal abortion ban.”
The ad came after Murray’s campaign released an ad that hit Smiley over her previous support of Texas’s abortion law and accused her of supporting a nationwide ban. Smiley has previously said she did not support a federal ban and took a critical stance earlier this year on Texas’s law.
Smiley spokeswoman Elisa Carlson contended Smiley hasn’t changed her messaging, saying she issued the ad to reiterate her position on abortion and that she’s willing to work with both parties. While she acknowledged that Smiley did previously support Texas’s abortion ban, she said Smiley changed her opinion “when it became clear how far that law went.”
The latest moves are a continuation of a trend that started this summer.
Scott Jensen, the GOP gubernatorial pick in Minnesota, told Minnesota Public Radio in an interview in March, before the Supreme Court decision, that he would try to ban abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned.
“We have tremendous opportunities and availability of birth control. We don’t need to be snuffing out lives that if left alone will produce a viable newborn, that may go on to be the next Albert Einstein,” he said at the time.
Jensen in July released a video with his running mate, Matt Birk, following the Supreme Court decision, saying he supported some exceptions.
“I’m just gonna say it real clearly. Without question, rape and incest are exceptions that, with no hesitation on my part, I would want a pregnant woman to feel that they absolutely have the choice. You cannot bring a tubal pregnancy to fruition. What you would do is you would sacrifice the pregnant woman’s life, and as a physician, I would never go along with that,” Jensen said in the video.
The Hill reached out to the Jensen campaign for comment.
If there was any question that the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would galvanize Democrats and abortion rights advocates, it was the developments that came after the ruling that showed the issue of abortion could play a critical role in the midterms.
Only one week after the high court issued its ruling, ActBlue, the digital fundraising platform for Democrats, had hauled in more than $80 million.
The Kansas referendum became a warning sign for Republicans — even in red states.
And even in several special elections that Democrats lost, such as in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District and Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, Democrats lost by single digits races that were supposed to significantly favor Republicans, a sign that the issue could be encouraging more voter turnout.
“I think they underestimated the power and the historical voice women have always carried in this 200-year-old-plus republic. And I think they also underestimate how they have been out of touch and out of step with how, not just women, but how the American people feel about a woman having the ability to make her own health care decisions and those decisions remaining between her and her doctor,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, who believed Republicans were trying to reverse course.
Mallory Carroll, a spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, argued that Republicans weren’t shifting their views on abortion, noting their messaging was simply “a reflection of the dynamics of the office that these people are running for.”
“While we would love to see every single human life protected from the moment of conception, you know, starting today, you know, from this moment moving forward, the reality is that the consensus is going to not necessarily look like what I, you know, what my dream policy would be like,” she said, adding that there’s a difference between what’s achievable at the state and federal levels.
Republican strategist Doug Heye said he didn’t think the Republican candidates’ reevaluation of their abortion message would hurt them with voters, but the issue is distracting from what Republicans wanted to make the midterms about: the economy, crime and a referendum on President Biden.
“In politics, you want to be talking about what you want to be talking about and you want your opponent to be talking about what you want to talk about, right? What they don’t want to talk about,” Heye said. “And so, if you look at Democratic messaging right now, they’re spending a lot more time on abortion than they are on inflation. And that should tell Republicans exactly what they need to know in a ‘don’t go there’ sort of way.”
Afghan refugees arrive at Skopje International Airport in Skopje, North Macedonia, on August 30, 2021, after being evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Getty Images
Editor’s note: This is the second 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 those in hiding and their families, The Hill used pseudonyms in this story.
Gul Mohammad managed to hide for a few months before he was kidnapped by the Taliban.
They kept the former senior special forces commander tied up in a house for two days, demanding cars and cash.
He kept lying about his rank.
“If they understand who I was before, that I was special forces, they would kill me,” he said.
“They always loaded the rifle very close to me, sometimes they would shoot close to my head, and they told me they would kill me at any moment, at any time,” Gul Mohammad recounted to The Hill.
He thought he was going to die.
“The Taliban doesn’t have rules. They don’t care about killing one person, they’re just thinking about one round. They’re just thinking of the price of one round, one bullet,” he said.
They ordered him to come up with $300,000 Afghanis, or about $3,500. He pleaded with his wife to sell their house as quickly as possible, enabling her to secure the ransom money before they figured out who he was.
They let him go, leaving him on the side of the road, something he suspects was due to his kidnappers’ desire to hold on to the cash themselves rather than turn him over to Taliban superiors.
The ordeal wiped out his savings, and he got home to realize he had lost 10 pounds in the two days.
For every story of Afghans who navigated a hectic Kabul full of Taliban checkpoints, contended with crowds and chaos at the airport gates, and found their way onto a flight ultimately bound for the U.S., there are just as many stories of people who didn’t.
Advocates estimate there are more than 100,000 they deem to be vulnerable Afghans due to their ties to the U.S or its democracy efforts and goals, a figure that jumps significantly when adding former Afghan military members.
Many have gone into hiding — and they’re disappointed the U.S. has no clear plan to get them out.
Imran, a former special forces commander who led thousands of troops before the government’s collapse, spent days waiting outside the airport gates in Kabul.
Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 16, 2021. Associated Press-Shekib Rahmani, File
“You fight against insurgents and fight against these people for all your life, the most beautiful years of your life you fight against them, and then all at once you’re just sitting there in front of them with no arms, with no weapons, in just local civilian clothing and looking at them,” he said through a translator.
“This is the most annoying feeling any human being could have. And the four days at the airport were the hardest days of my life, under the sun with my children, my wife, some friends, just sitting there with no resources, waiting to get out,” he added.
When he found out he wasn’t going to get in, “it was like all my hopes shattered into pieces.”
“I was thinking ‘OK, so I’m going to go home now, and I’m all on my own with all these groups I’ve fought against for all these years,’” he said.
The end of the evacuation was the start of months of traversing the country for those left behind, moving from place to place, in hopes of getting out on another flight or simply to evade detection by the Taliban.
Gul Mohammad and Imran were among those who spent months in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, hundreds of miles from Kabul, hoping to get out on another evacuation flight, both cramming their large families into one-bedroom apartments while awaiting any word.
But the flights never materialized, and for their own safety, they had to move on.
Both are now in hiding in a large city where they won’t be as conspicuous.
In the early days of the evacuation, a number of outside groups were stood up to aid in the evacuation, both with charter flights and with helping pay for visas for those trying to leave the country. But as the American attention span has shifted elsewhere, initial funding for such efforts has largely dried up.
Now many vulnerable Afghans are relying on charity from U.S. veterans they served with.
One former U.S. special forces officer said he spends between $1,000 and $1,500 a month helping various families, something he is able to do largely because he and his wife still work full time after retiring with a military pension.
“When we say shoulder to shoulder and honor the promise and finish the mission — these are all things that are a commitment and we also realize it’s a multiyear commitment,” he said. The Hill is not identifying him in order to protect those he served alongside.
That he expects to do so for years is a reflection of how little hope many Afghans have for reaching the U.S. any time soon.
There are no U.S. consular services in Afghanistan, but even if families took the risk of making it to another country that does have an American diplomatic presence, the options there aren’t promising either.
Soldiers in Afghanistan’s military aren’t eligible for the special immigrant visa (SIV) program that allows those who contracted with the U.S. government to immigrate to the United States. That leaves them applying for the new refugee program categories open to Afghans, which require referrals and often take years to process.
“They have no clear, unobstructed pathway forward,” the officer said. “Maybe three years from now that pathway will be open to them but it hasn’t happened up until this point.”
Being in hiding is both boring and terrifying.
Ahmad worked on a security team contracted by the U.S. Embassy that coordinated with those screening for bombs. Now, even though he barely leaves the house, he has little sense of safety, he said.
“Life here under the Taliban, it’s like living in a jungle where you can be attacked by the lions, by any kind of wild animal, any single minute,” he said.
Gul Mohammad said he’s alert to any noise near his apartment.
He also made the difficult decision to separate his family, staying with his wife and daughter while his sons stay with friends in another part of the country. His sons also served in the military, and he figures it will be tougher for the Taliban to figure out who they are if they aren’t all together.
“The disruption that has — it destroys families. Because you can’t have half your family in hiding and half not hiding, and still be a whole family,” said Joseph Azam, board chairman of the Afghan-American Foundation, which advocates for the Afghan diaspora.
“So it destroys families; it separates parents from their children; it separates siblings; it separates families that usually live together multigenerationally,” he said.
Both Gul Mohammad’s and Imran’s families are still crammed into small apartments — in the latter case squeezing nearly 10 family members between two bedrooms. Schools are now closed to girls, but they don’t send their sons either, because if they are identified, the whole family will be at risk.
Ahmad has been passing the time tutoring his sisters.
“Our home is like kind of a jail for me now. I am barely just going downstairs,” he said. “I’m just living the life of a prisoner here.”
Imran is struggling with feelings of isolation. Many of his former soldiers have his number, but he doesn’t want to talk.
“Now when my soldiers call, I don’t pick up. I feel ashamed because I don’t have anything to do; I don’t have anything to tell them,” he said.
The situation also leaves women in their family in an unfortunate Catch-22 – they’re the best option for running errands but uniquely vulnerable when they leave the house.
Imran’s daughter, Freshta, has been doing the bulk of the family’s food runs, able to conceal her identity with a now-required burqa.
But women can go only about 45 miles without being escorted by their father or brother. And anytime she leaves, she risks getting stopped by the Taliban and getting asked a series of questions about where she lives and where she is going.
When she leaves the house, she doesn’t bring her phone because those at Taliban checkpoints will go through it. If they stop her, she has to lie, saying she had an emergency while none of the men in her family were home.
The 25-year-old gets choked up talking about her new life. She was dismissed from her job as an IT specialist as the Taliban directed the vast majority of women in the workforce to return home.
“Now I don’t have anything — my job, my salary, my degree, my freedom, my decisions — I can’t make a decision for myself.”
– Freshta, Imran’s daughter
Gul Mohammad is terrified for his 14-year-old daughter. To him, she’s still a baby, but he knows to the Talbian, she’s of marrying age.
Freshta has had several friends who have been married off to Taliban fighters after they threatened to kill the girls’ families. She hasn’t heard from them since.
She’s been in a few stores, but the shelves are mostly empty, with owners complaining that even if they were able to import goods, no one would be able to buy them.
Conditions in the country have rapidly deteriorated since the Taliban takeover.
Frozen central bank funds have caused cash flow issues around the country, and more than 90 percent of Afghanistan is now considered food insecure — a figure that follows a United Nations effort over the winter that stopped many from starving.
“We expected things to get bad. I think no one knew how bad they could get,” Azam said. “The economy is in ruins. There’s a liquidity crisis. You hear that there’s food on the shelves, and people don’t have money, the actual cash, to buy it.”
“Women are being driven out of the workforce, out of public life,” he added. “That’s half the population that’s being erased from the economy, in terms of contributing, rebuilding. And, generally speaking, Afghanistan is on life support.”
But pathways out of the country feel like a series of dead ends.
Ahmad wanted to apply for the SIV program, but he doesn’t qualify. He worked for a U.S. contractor for eight months, falling short of the minimum yearlong requirement.
The different categories don’t recognize the totality of his situation. Two of his brothers studied in the U.S. before he started his own work with the embassy, and those affiliations are all the Taliban see, he said.
“We were a recognized family here in Afghanistan, and everyone knew we studied in the USA and then came back and started working for the benefits of the USA,” Ahmad said.
“People like me should be the priority because we worked entirely with the USA and so we should not be stranded here and left to the Taliban,” he said.
Roughly 5,000 Afghans have made it to the U.S. since March — just a trickle compared to the 76,000 who left over a roughly two-week span in August.
Many former military members and others who worked on various democracy efforts are now applying for the Priority 1 and Priority 2 programs designed to help those who don’t qualify for an SIV. Unlike the broader refugee program, it does not require first leaving the country, but similar to its umbrella program, it’s a process that is likely to take years.
The State Department has said it is committed to bringing more Afghan allies to the U.S., but it’s not clear how they plan to do so. In response to a query from The Hill, the department largely stressed pathways for those who have already left Afghanistan.
“We will continue to welcome additional qualifying Afghans over the coming weeks and months through Operation Allies Welcome, including thousands of Afghans who are at overseas transit locations for processing to come to the United States,” a State Department spokesperson said by email.
The State Department has received some 44,000 applications between both priority programs. Getty Images
“We continue to receive and process submissions for Afghans who may be eligible for referral to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Once an individual with a complete referral arrives in a third country, they are eligible to begin processing their refugee case,” the spokesperson added.
State has received some 44,000 referrals between the priority programs, a figure that does not include the main applicants’ family members. But of those, only 23,000 have been accepted for review after being “determined to be complete.”
Recent legislation introduced in Congress would expand the SIV program to include Afghan special forces members such as Gul Mohammad and Imran. It’s part of the broader Afghan Adjustment Act that would provide a pathway to citizenship for evacuees that did make it to the U.S., but it’s not clear when it may come up for a vote.
In desperation to leave the country, many Afghans have applied for humanitarian parole, one of the few options that provides a pathway to enter the U.S. without having to first escape the country.
Afghan refugees said it was incredibly difficult to find housing. Associated Press-Damian Dovarganes
But the 49,000 applications have overwhelmed the Department of Homeland Security, which has ramped up processing but typically gets only 2,000 such applications per year. It’s not designed to replace the refugee program, the agency has stressed.
Of the applications that have been reviewed,9,000 have been denied parole, while just 380 have been granted conditional approval, a roughly 4 percent approval rate.
For Gul Mohammad, the evacuation was confusing, as the U.S. left behind “important military people.”
“With American special forces we were very close. We fight shoulder by shoulder against terrorism. Sometimes we cried together. Sometimes we sleep under one blanket if it was very cold in the mountains. But we feel like two brothers. It doesn’t matter that we belong to different countries or otherwise belong to different religions. Always we had one important point — that’s to fight against terrorism,” he said.
“The only thing I think about the American government is help us because we were very close friends with Americans; we fight together,” he added.
“My only wish is to go out with my family,” he said.
