The Morning Dispatch: Hope for Our Allies in Afghanistan

Happy Friday! Today’s TMD got put to bed a little later than usual because the Cubs were on the West Coast throwing a combined no-hitter and somebody didn’t want to multitask. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• After weeks of deliberations, President Joe Biden announced that he and a bipartisan group of senators came to terms on an infrastructure package that includes approximately $600 billion in new spending on roads, bridges, airports, railways, and broadband, among other provisions. Hours later, however, Biden said he wouldn’t sign the bill unless Congress also sends him a much bigger “human infrastructure” package, which would likely go through the reconciliation process and receive only Democratic support.

• Nearly a month after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to study the events surrounding the attacks of January 6, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she was creating a select committee under which ongoing congressional investigations into that day will be consolidated. It’s unclear whom Pelosi will appoint to head the committee, and whether Republicans will choose to participate in it.

• Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Thursday signed another extension of the nationwide eviction moratorium, pushing its expiration date back one “final” time from June 30 to July 31. The agency first implemented a freeze on evictions last September to “prevent the further spread of COVID-19.”

• A large condo building outside Miami partially collapsed early Thursday morning, likely killing dozens of residents. Rescuers have thus far pulled about 40 people from the wreckage, but at least 99 remain unaccounted for. President Biden approved Florida’s emergency declaration last night, authorizing FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to assist with the situation. Local authorities say it is too early to know the cause of the collapse.

• The United States confirmed 12,944 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday per the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, with 2.5 percent of the 510,639 tests reported coming back positive. An additional 345 deaths were attributed to the virus on Thursday, bringing the pandemic’s American death toll to 603,178. According to the CDC, 12,329 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. Meanwhile, 815,152 COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered yesterday, with 178,331,677 Americans having now received at least one dose.

Afghanistan Allies See Hope

When President Biden announced his plan a few months ago to withdraw the remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11 this year, many predicted it wouldn’t be long before the Taliban went on the offensive and toppled the Afghan government. As we wrote earlier this month, it’s already begun. 

People of good faith can come to different conclusions as to whether it was time for the United States to leave the region. It’s been 20 years, and the mission had certainly shifted from the time American troops first deployed. The Trump administration struck a “peace deal” with the Taliban in early 2020 that—had the former president won reelection—would have removed U.S. troops from the region even sooner. 

What a growing group of bipartisan lawmakers finds unacceptable, however, is abandoning the thousands of Afghani interpreters, drivers, and engineers who aided the U.S. military over the years and whose safety will be in jeopardy once American forces are gone. “The threat here is death, quite frankly,” Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, told The Dispatch.

Yesterday, the Biden administration indicated it is working to relocate those Afghan allies and their families to an unspecified destination—possibly Guam—while their visas allowing them entry into the United States are processed. “We’ve already begun the process,” Biden told reporters yesterday. “Those who helped us are not going to be left behind.”

In the last year, 18,000 Afghani citizens have applied to the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program through their connection to the United States military, but the average wait time for admittance into the U.S. through the SIV program is 790 days—at least 10 times longer than American troops will remain in Afghanistan.

A State Department spokesperson declined to tell reporters Thursday which countries are currently under consideration as an intermediary, but said the administration is “identifying SIV applicants who have served as interpreters as well as translators to be relocated outside of Afghanistan before we complete our military drawdown by September, in order to safely complete the remainder of the Special Immigrant Visa application process.”

Biden plans to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the White House later this afternoon on the heels of reports that the U.S. intelligence community believes Ghani’s government may be toppled by the Taliban within six months of American soldiers’ departure. Lawmakers and military officials have long been pressing the White House to assist American allies in Afghanistan, and Thursday’s news was met with tentative optimism. 

“I hope it’s good news,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup told The Dispatch. The Ohio Republican—who has served in the U.S. Army Reserves since 1998—is a co-sponsor of the Honoring Our Promise through Expedition (HOPE) for Afghan SIVs Act alongside Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat. 

“We’ve put as much pressure on [the Biden administration] as we possibly can,” he said.“What we don’t want to see is a scene like Vietnam, people trying to hang on to the helicopters [as American troops fly away]. … I don’t know of anyone against it.”

Rep. Michael Waltz—a Florida Republican who himself deployed to Afghanistan as a Green Beret—expressed aggravation with what he saw as a lack of urgency in the White House. “My frustration has been, the [Department of Defense] said they’re ready, the Congress is demanding action—bipartisan, bicameral—and the host nation has said they’re happy to do it and the Afghanis are begging,” he told The Dispatch. “It was literally all sitting in the White House. What the hesitation is, I don’t know, but these people are literally being hunted as we speak.”

The White House has yet to release an official plan, and “there are a lot of details to fill in,” Noorani told The Dispatch. Evacuations of this scale—let alone the vetting required as part of the eventual visa process—will be a bureaucratic lift of mammoth proportions. But Noorani believes it to be well worth the effort.

“I don’t think there is a broad-brush security risk to the United States to help those who’ve helped us,” he explained. On the contrary: “If the U.S. fails to help those who’ve helped us, it is going to be that much harder to identify allies and partners on the ground in the next theater of war that we get dragged into.”  

Waltz concurred. “Our allies around the world are critical, they’re all watching,” he said. “America has a terrible reputation for keeping its promises in these situations.” 

If the government of Afghanistan falls in six months, Waltz added, “Who are our soldiers going to work with if we do have to go back?” 

Republican Sen. John Kennedy brought his Save Our Afghan Allies Act to the Senate floor Thursday; supporters sought unanimous consent to expedite the vote. The bill compels the Departments of Defense and State to present a plan in the next 30 days to evacuate Afghans who aided the United States.

Sen. Rand Paul objected. “The quest for liberty requires fighting by the people who have been given their liberty,” he said. “It seems like it might precipitate the overcoming of the Taliban if you take 18,000 of the most Westernized … and you say ‘Flee, flee, flee! The end is coming!’ Well guess what, the end comes quicker if they all leave.”

“I respect my colleague, and I certainly respect his right to object. I disagree,” Kennedy responded. “The Afghan government is in a bitter fight to the end with the Taliban. And the Taliban is winning. And the Taliban is ruthless. And they’re going to murder these people. They’re going to murder them. And the blood’s going to be on American hands if we don’t do something to help them.”

“There’s right and wrong in this world. There’s politics, and there’s a time for it,” he continued. “But there’s a time to do the right thing. And the right thing is to help save these human lives who fought for America.”

Wenstrup said he expects his HOPE Act to be voted on next week in the House, and a more robust plan from the White House is expected in the coming days.

Infrastructure Negotiations: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?

After weeks of back and forth, President Biden announced Thursday that he and a bipartisan group of senators had finally reached a deal on an infrastructure package. The agreement—which would allocate approximately $579 billion in new money toward the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, and other physical infrastructure—was hammered out by five Democratic and five Republican senators, and for many represents a welcome respite from the bitter partisanship that has come to define American politics. But the framework is far from the finish line and may be scuttled before it gets there: Biden later told reporters he will not sign the legislation into law unless Congress (read: Democrats) also sends him a hefty “human infrastructure” package, likely through the reconciliation process.

Standing in front of the White House in a rare impromptu news conference, Biden triumphantly told reporters that “we have a deal.”

“None of us got … all that we wanted. I clearly didn’t get all I wanted. [Republicans] gave more than, I think, maybe they were inclined to give in the first place,” Biden said. “This reminds me of the days we used to get an awful lot done up at the United States Congress.”

The framework released yesterday is high-level—the legislation itself has yet to be drafted—but it is also far narrower in scope than the $2.3 trillion proposal the White House initially put forth. 

“I’m pleased to see today we were able to come together on a core infrastructure package—this is not non-infrastructure items—without new taxes,” Republican Sen. Rob Portman said of the proposal. “This is roads and bridges, but also lots of other kinds of infrastructure, including broadband, our water system, and our rail system, all of which is good for the economy. This will lead to more efficiency and higher productivity, more economic growth. This is about the long term.”

In recent weeks, the biggest barrier to reaching a deal has been coming up with how to pay for new spending. Republicans opposed reversing the corporate tax cuts enacted as part of 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, while Biden refused to budge on his pledge not to raise taxes directly on the middle class. Democratic senators balked at the possibility of indexing the gas tax to inflation or implementing fees on electric vehicles.

Negotiators seem confident their deal will not violate either side’s red line. So where is the money coming from? The framework includes 13 bullet points as potential sources, ranging from “5G spectrum auction proceeds,” to “reducing the IRS tax gap,” to redirecting unused funds from the past year’s COVID-19 relief packages and unemployment insurance boosts.

Earning the president’s endorsement was a crucial step for negotiators—who have been in talks for weeks—but it’s far from the last one. In crafting a package that the most moderate members of the Senate can agree on, negotiators may have alienated their more progressive (and conservative) peers.

“My sense is there’s much closer to 20 votes for that than 60 votes,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told Politico, adding that there “aren’t the votes” for a bipartisan package unless progressives receive assurances that a big reconciliation bill is also on the way.

Democratic leadership appeared to be on the same page. “All parties understand, we won’t get enough votes to pass either [package] unless we have enough votes to pass both,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, said she “will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill.” 

In a press conference at the White House just hours after touting the deal, Biden echoed these sentiments. “I’m getting to work with Congress right away on the other half of my economic agenda as well—the American Family Plan—to finish the job on childcare, education, the caring economy, clean energy, and tax cuts for American families,” he said. “We need physical infrastructure, but we also need the human infrastructure as well. … What we agreed on today is what we could agree on: the physical infrastructure. There was no agreement on the rest. We’re going to have to do that through the budget process.”

“If this [bipartisan agreement] is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” he added. “It’s in tandem.”

It’s not entirely clear, however, what Republicans would get out of signing onto a smaller infrastructure package—bolstering Biden’s “dealmaker” persona in the process—only for Democrats to add everything they’d cut back into a multitrillion dollar reconciliation package. 

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the Democrats’ two-step in remarks on the Senate floor. “Less than two hours after publicly commending our colleagues and endorsing the bipartisan agreement, the president took the extraordinary step of threatening to veto it,” he said. “That’s not the way to show you’re serious about getting a bipartisan outcome. So I hope our colleagues can recover and get their good-faith efforts back on track.”

Worth Your Time

• In yesterday’s TMD, we included a “Presented Without Comment” about a law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that “requires Florida colleges and universities to survey students about their viewpoints and beliefs.” But the tweet we included didn’t capture the full context of the legislation. We encourage you to read Jonathan Adler’s take on the bill in Reason, and Joe Cohn’s for FIRE. “The required survey is not a survey of the political beliefs of students and faculty. Rather, the survey is to measure ‘the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented,’ and the extent to which ‘members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,’” Adler writes. “Might a survey include questions about respondents’ backgrounds or perspectives for cross-tab purposes? Perhaps. Such information may be useful, insofar as it could identify whether members of minority racial, ethnic, or religious groups experience the educational environment differently, but that is not the focus or requirement of the law.”

• New York Times election analyst Nate Cohn has a great piece detailing the many ways in which Democrats’ For the People Act was a “flawed bill,” and what comes next in the party’s quest for federal election reform. “The law, known as H.R. 1 or S. 1, was full of hot-button measures—from public financing of elections to national mail voting—that were only tangentially related to safeguarding democracy, and all but ensured its failure in the Senate,” Cohn writes. “At the same time, reformers did not add provisions to tackle the most insidious and serious threat to democracy: election subversion, where partisan election officials might use their powers to overturn electoral outcomes.”

Presented Without Comment

Also Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• Yesterday’s episode of The Hangover might have been the best yet—and that’s really saying something. In it, Commentary editor John Podhoretz joins Chris Stirewalt for a discussion of conservative media, and how it’s evolved over the years. 

• Live from Oklahoma (okay, maybe not “live”), Jonah has a new solo episode of TheRemnant. On it, he discusses how he would shape abortion law if he were made czar for a day, and what the separation of church and state really means in American life.

• Sarah and David have been champing at the bit for the opportunity to break down the “Angry Cheerleader” case at the Supreme Court, and yesterday was the day. Tune in to Thursday’s Advisory Opinions for a look at not only Mahanoy Area School District v. BL, but Lange v. California as well.

• The closure of the pro-democracy paper Apple Daily was a blow to freedom of press in Hong Kong. As Ellen Bork reports, it’s also a warning shot to global businesses.

• One downside of the Biden-Putin summit? It’s opened the door to other Western governments to do the same. Eric Edelman and David J. Kramer critique a proposal from Germany and France to have an EU summit with the Russian leader.

Let Us Know

As it happens, almost half of the Morning Dispatch crew is moving apartments in the next couple of weeks. Any tips for us on how to make this process less stressful? It’s terrible!

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Haley Byrd Wilt (@byrdinator), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), Harvest Prude (@HarvestPrude), Tripp Grebe (@tripper_grebe), Emma Rogers (@emw_96), Price St. Clair (@PriceStClair1), Jonathan Chew (@JonathanChew19), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).