President Biden acknowledged criticism of the harried airlift of Americans and Afghan allies in the final weeks of the country’s longest war but touted the ‘extraordinary success of this mission.’ Although about 200 Americans remain stranded, over 122,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
“President Biden declared Tuesday that ‘the war in Afghanistan is now over’ in an address that was less a celebration of a mission accomplished than a somber eulogy for a 20-year endeavor that cost the country much but whose burden was borne by few.
From the White House, Biden gave a grim speech to mark the conclusion of a grim conflict, alternately offering explanation, defiance and justification as he reiterated that ‘it was time to end this war’ and promising anyone who attacks Americans that ‘we will hunt you down.’
But Biden also recognized the criticism that accompanied the war’s chaotic ending, taking pains to reject the contention that in orchestrating a frenzied exit, he had abandoned Americans and vulnerable Afghans to the mercies of the Taliban.
Speaking in the midafternoon, rather than a prime-time slot that might have been expected to mark the end of a two-decade war, Biden argued that President Donald Trump, in signing the initial withdrawal deal with the Taliban, had left him only two options: honoring that deal or reneging and sending in thousands more troops.
‘That was the choice, the real choice — between leaving and escalating,’ Biden said. ‘I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.’
Americans debate what’s right in Afghanistan
Biden’s speech followed nearly a month of chaotic images from inside Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control far more swiftly than the president and his advisers anticipated. It also came less than a week after a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport left 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans dead.
He lauded ‘the extraordinary success of this mission,’ framing the evacuation effort as a historic accomplishment, but there was little in his address that was ebullient or exultant, either in substance or delivery.
Biden has faced rebukes, even from allies, over the as many as 200 Americans still stranded in Afghanistan, as well as the turbulent execution of his exit strategy, and he devoted a good part of his remarks to pushing back on the narrative that he was leaving Americans behind in a treacherous battlefield.
‘For those remaining Americans, there is no deadline,’ Biden said. ‘We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.’
He spoke of the thousands of people his administration helped to evacuate in the final days: the more than 5,500 Americans, the roughly 2,500 locally employed U.S. Embassy staffers and their families, the thousands of Afghan translators and interpreters who worked alongside Americans during the war.
‘Most of those who remain are dual citizens, longtime residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan,’ Biden said. The White House said 98 percent of Americans wishing to leave had been evacuated.
Republicans are divided over the wisdom of leaving Afghanistan, with some arguing for a long-term commitment and others saying the time has come to cut America’s losses. But they have coalesced around a message that Biden is shamefully abandoning Americans, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) demanded before the address, ‘What is the plan to get Americans out?’” Read more at Washington Post
“The Washington Post: Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) unsuccessfully tried twice in the course of a week to carry out unauthorized schemes to enter Afghanistan to rescue Americans, seeking assistance from the U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan and the Defense Department in Greece. His requests were rejected as dangerous and potential violations of law. Mullin’s behavior has alarmed top U.S. officials who say he has gone to extraordinary lengths to defy U.S. warnings. Mullin’s current location is a question mark. He has never served in the armed forces.” [The Hill]
“Europe pressures Afghanistan’s neighbors. The EU is drafting a $700 million aid package to incentivize Afghanistan’s neighbors to temporarily absorb transit refugees fleeing the Taliban takeover. The decision comes after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned that up to half a million Afghans could flee by the end of the year. Pakistan said it has absorbed enough refugees, warning it will not take more refugees permanently, while Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan have closed their borders.
EU ministers pledged to ‘prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled large-scale illegal migration movements faced in the past’ during the closing statement of a Tuesday meeting in Brussels.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“After the country’s U.S.-backed government collapsed, Beijing couldn’t contain its glee at what it described as the humiliation of its main global rival—even though one reason for the meltdown was Washington’s decision to focus resources on China. In Russia, too, state media flowed with schadenfreude. But now that America’s 20-year war has come to an end, the gloating has begun to wane. The failure of the U.S.’s Afghan client state marked the limits of American hard power, while scenes of despair in Kabul have frustrated many American allies and inflicted reputational damage. But Beijing and Moscow know the U.S. isn’t the only one losing out. For one thing, managing Afghanistan from now on is increasingly a problem for Moscow and Beijing as well as their regional allies.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A Texas law barring abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy took effect at least temporarily today as the U.S. Supreme Court deliberated over a bid by clinics and doctors to block the measure while a legal challenge goes forward.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Texas Republicans passed a bill to restrict mail voting and empower partisan poll watchers. Gov. Greg Abbott said he would sign it.” Read more at New York Times
“NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana residents still reeling from flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Ida scrambled for food, gas, water and relief from the sweltering heat as thousands of line workers toiled to restore electricity and officials vowed to set up more sites where people could get free meals and cool off.
Power and water outages affected hundreds of thousands of people, many of them with no way to get immediate relief.” Read more at AP News
“Emergency response | After Hurricane Ida wrecked transmission lines and left New Orleans in darkness, infrastructure advocates see an opportunity to rebuild an electricity grid that’s more resilient to increasingly violent storms from the Gulf of Mexico. A $550 billion infrastructure bill in Congress that’s a key piece of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda and could help pay for improvements may gain more Republican support as a result, one GOP senator said.” Read more at Bloomberg
A billboard damaged by Hurricane Ida in Luling, Louisiana. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
“Two senior leaders in the FDA's vaccine review office are stepping down. It's unclear why they are leaving, but their departures spark questions about whether it would affect the agency's ongoing decisions around Covid-19 vaccine approvals, authorizations for children and booster shots. An FDA spokesperson said the agency is confident in the expertise and ability of its staff ‘to continue our critical public health work, including evaluating COVID-19 vaccines.’ The US is now surpassing an average of 160,000 new daily cases of Covid-19, with unvaccinated people making up a bulk of hospitalizations. That surge is prompting the CDC to ask unvaccinated Americans not to travel during the Labor Day weekend. On the other side of the world, the Australian state of Victoria is extending lockdown restrictions for three more weeks as Covid-19 cases continue to rise.” Read more at CNN
“A New Jersey woman who used the Instagram handle @AntiVaxMomma was charged with selling fake vaccine cards.” Read more at New York Times
“Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, will require mask-wearing in schools.” Read more at New York Times
The Caldor fire is threatening tens of thousands of homes and hotels that ring Lake Tahoe.Max Whittaker for The New York Times
“Tens of thousands of people in California and Nevada have either evacuated or been ordered to do so as the Caldor Fire rages closer to the Lake Tahoe Basin. The fire, which has burned nearly 200,000 acres so far, has destroyed hundreds of homes and now threatens more than 34,000 structures. It's being fueled by dangerously dry conditions as California undergoes an extreme drought -- another disaster brought on by climate change. The Caldor Fire is now California's 17th largest wildfire on record.” Read more at CNN
“China’s videogame limits signal a push to shape the next generation.
Under Xi Jinping, China’s ruling Communist Party has moved to reassert control over the country’s economy, going after some of its largest private enterprises in a drive to dial back what it sees as capitalist excesses. Now, the party is making it clear that it intends to insert itself into the private lives of Chinese citizens to an extent not seen in decades. This week, officials unveiled new limits on the amount of time young people can spend playing online games.
The government said all online videogames will be required to connect to an ‘anti-addiction’ system operated by regulators. In response to Beijing’s previous moves to limit young people’s gaming, Tencent Holdings has used a combination of technologies that, for example, automatically boot off players after a certain period and use facial-recognition technology. The restrictions are part of a crackdown that represents a break with the approach of Mr. Xi’s two immediate predecessors, in which China expanded personal freedoms in exchange for acquiescence to the party’s monopoly on politics.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“China tightens its grip on LGBTQ groups. Beijing is increasingly clamping down on the LGBTQ space, echoing moves it made earlier this summer, when WeChat removed LGBTQ accounts from its platform. Now QQ, a popular Chinese messaging platform, is blocking search terms such as ‘gay,’ ‘lesbian,’ and ‘LGBTQ.’ And it’s not just messaging apps: Shanghai University has reportedly asked for lists of LGBTQ+ students and reports on their “state of mind,” a move that has alarmed activists.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The mysterious disappearance of John Pierce began Aug. 24, prosecutors say, when the lawyer missed a hearing for one of the many cases where he is representing a defendant in the Capitol riot investigation. The young associate who took his place said that Pierce had a ‘conflict.’ At the time, no one seemed to give it much mind.
But in the days that followed, Pierce — who is defending more cases connected to the riot than any other lawyer — missed additional hearings and the reasons for his absence started changing.
On Wednesday, his associate told a judge in one case that Pierce had gotten COVID-19 and was in the hospital on a ventilator — but only after telling a prosecutor in another case that Pierce had been in a car accident. That same evening, a different associate told a reporter that Pierce had in fact been hospitalized but was getting care for ‘dehydration and exhaustion.’
Finally, on Monday — after Pierce had still failed to emerge — the government got involved. Federal prosecutors issued letters to several judges in 17 Capitol riot cases, informing them that no one in the Justice Department had heard from Pierce in a week and that ‘multiple’ phone numbers for his law firm appeared to have been disconnected.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Social Security costs will exceed total income in 2021. The severe economic downturn caused by the pandemic and related lockdown measures weighed on Social Security’s financial health, though not as much as forecasters originally feared. Trustees said they expect the program’s reserves to be depleted by 2034.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Jury selection began in the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. The biotech entrepreneur arrived at court flanked by news cameras for her criminal fraud trial. Her legal team and prosecutors have been scrutinizing a pool of nearly 200 potential jurors to find the 17 needed to serve on the four-month-long trial.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Gloucester County High School senior Gavin Grimm, a transgender student, spoke during a news conference in Richmond, Va. The Gloucester County School Board has agreed to pay $1.3 million in legal costs to the American Civil Liberties Union after the nonprofit spent six years representing a student who sued over the board's transgender bathroom ban.STEVE HELBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“A school board in Virginia has agreed to pay $1.3 million in legal fees to resolve a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former student whose efforts to use the boys’ bathroom put him at the center of a national debate over rights for transgender people.
Gavin Grimm’s battle with the Gloucester County school board began in 2014, when he was a sophomore and his family informed his school that he was transgender. Administrators were supportive at first. But after an uproar from some parents and students, the school board adopted a policy requiring students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for their ‘corresponding biological genders.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“Lives Lived: Lee (Scratch) Perry was an influential reggae artist and a mentor to Bob Marley. With a four-track tape recorder in his Jamaican home studio, Perry opened sonic vistas and cultivated the image of a mad genius. He died at 85.” Read more at New York Times
“An oil spill the size of New York City is growing and spreading across the Mediterranean Sea, and could potentially reach the island of Cyprus today. The spill originated from Syria's largest oil refinery, and officials said last week that a tank with 15,000 tons of fuel had been leaking since August 23. Locals say much of Syria's coastal areas have been polluted, threatening the marine ecosystem and making life harder for those who live there. This is the second major oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean this year.” Read more at CNN
“WARSAW — Poland’s government asked the president Tuesday to declare a state of emergency along the border with Belarus as it tries to stop migrants from entering from the neighboring country. The government cited the potential risk from foreign actors and the actions of protesters in Poland as rationales for the declaration.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Geronimo, the eight-year-old alpaca that galvanized the British public after being sentenced to death four years ago for testing positive twice for bovine tuberculosis, was executed on Tuesday after a long legal battle. Although Geronimo was granted a stay of execution in mid-August, he was ultimately removed from his Gloucestershire farm and euthanized. ‘I am absolutely disgusted by this government. These are barbaric actions,’ said Helen Macdonald, Geronimo’s owner.
The four-year legal battle to save Geronimo resonated with the public, who notably formed a human shield to protect the alpaca. Geronimo’s dedicated supporters—or ‘alpaca angels’—also camped out on his farm to guard him, and almost 100,000 people signed a petition urging the British government to reverse the decision.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Sony said on Tuesday that Mike Richards would immediately exit his job as the executive producer of ‘Jeopardy!,’ completing a stunning downfall for a game-show impresario who just three weeks ago had secured one of the most coveted jobs in television as the replacement for the longtime host Alex Trebek.
‘We had hoped that when Mike stepped down from the host position at ‘Jeopardy!’ it would have minimized the disruption and internal difficulties we have all experienced these last few weeks,’ a Sony executive, Suzanne Prete, wrote in a memo to staff on Tuesday. ‘That clearly has not happened.’
Mr. Richards is also set to leave his role as executive producer of ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ He will be temporarily replaced at both programs by Michael Davies, a veteran game-show producer who developed the original American version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’
Sony had named Mr. Richards as the permanent host of ‘Jeopardy!’ on Aug. 11, calling him a ‘unique talent.’ But Mr. Richards quit the hosting job on Aug. 20, days after a report by The Ringer revealed offensive and sexist comments he had made on a podcast several years ago, the latest in a series of scandals that tarred his brief tenure.” Read more at New York Times
“After entering training camp as New England’s starting quarterback, Cam Newton didn’t just lose that job on Tuesday — he lost his roster spot, too.
The Patriots cut Newton, the N.F.L.’s most valuable player in 2015, as they began paring their roster to the league-mandated 53 players before Tuesday’s 4 p.m. deadline. The move allows the rookie Mac Jones, who excelled in camp and the preseason, to start in Week 1 against the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 12. Newton’s release was first reported by The Boston Globe.
Newton, 32, started all three of New England’s preseason games, including Sunday’s preseason finale at the Giants, in which he played two series. But he missed three days of practice last week because of what the team said was a ‘misunderstanding’ related to Covid-19 protocols after a team-approved medical appointment out of the area. His absence enabled Jones to take more first-team snaps.” Read more at New York Times