The House votes to increase the number of visas for Afghans who have helped U.S. troops. – The New York Times

Daily Political BriefingJuly 22, 2021Updated

July 22, 2021, 10:57 p.m. ET

The House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to expand a visa program for Afghans who are facing retribution for helping American troops and diplomats during the 20-year war in Afghanistan, moving to allow more of them to immigrate to the United States quickly as the Biden administration races to evacuate them.

With Afghans who helped the U.S. personnel now facing threats from the Taliban as American troops withdraw, a broad bipartisan coalition in Congress led by military veterans who have worked alongside interpreters or fixers in combat zones themselves has raced to give the administration wider latitude to airlift them to safety.

By a vote of 407-16, the House moved on Thursday to expand the number of available special immigrant visas for Afghans to 19,000 from 11,000 and broaden the universe of people eligible for them by removing some application requirements.

Many of us have expressed grave concerns about the challenges our allies face in navigating the application process, said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Administration Committee. Afghans stepped forward to serve aside our brave military.

Under the legislation, applicants would no longer have to provide a sworn statement that they faced a specific threat or proof that they held a sensitive and trusted job. Instead, the measure would in effect stipulate that any Afghan who helped the U.S. government by definition faces retribution, and should be able to apply for a visa.

The legislation also strengthens protections for surviving spouses and children, allowing them to retain eligibility if an applicant dies or is killed before his or her visa is approved. Each visa applicant is allowed to include up to four family members, limited to their spouse and unmarried children under the age 21.

The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where there is bipartisan support for the Afghan visa program, but funding for its expansion has been embroiled in a broader fight over spending on Capitol security. The same is true for another measure the House passed recently that would waive a requirement for applicants to undergo medical examinations in Afghanistan before qualifying for visas.

Both pieces of legislation aim to shorten the long wait for permission to enter the United States, which can last as long as seven years for some applicants.

Even with the bill passed on Thursday, the application process is still expected to take more than a year long after the American withdrawal.

Sixteen Republicans opposed the measure, which some of them argued did not contain strong enough vetting for the Afghans who helped American troops. Others argued that the bill was simply misguided at a time when Congress should be more strictly limiting immigration, not making it easier.

But those arguments were rejected by Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida and a former Green Beret who still serves as a colonel in the national guard. He referenced an interpreter he served with in Afghanistan, nicknamed Spartacus, who he said had been beheaded along with members of his family for helping Americans.

The legislation does not diminish or circumvent the screening process, Mr. Waltz said. Trust me, before these men and women were allowed to work with our units, they were heavily vetted.

The legislation, spearheaded by Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a former Army Ranger, has widespread support in both parties.

Some members of this body, including me, may not be here without the service and sacrifice of Afghans who answered the call to serve shoulder-to-shoulder with us, Mr. Crow said.

Its consideration comes as the Biden administration has announced plans to evacuate an initial tranche of Afghans to an Army base in Virginia in the coming days. About 2,500 Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces, as well as their family members, will be sent in stages to Fort Lee, Va., south of Richmond, to await final processing for formal entry into the United States, officials said.

With the American military in the final phases of withdrawing from Afghanistan, the White House has come under heavy pressure to protect the Afghan allies.

Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said the Afghans have a bull's-eye on their back.

They will be killed if we dont get them out of there, Mr. McCaul said. Please, Mr. President, get them out before they are killed.

Some of the Afghans awaiting visas have spoken out about the threats they face from the Taliban.

Since 2014, the nonprofit organization No One Left Behind has tracked the killings of more than 300 translators or their family members, many of whom died while waiting for their visas to be processed, according to James Miervaldis, the groups chairman and an Army Reserve noncommissioned officer.

More than 18,000 Afghans who have worked as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards, fixers and embassy clerks for the United States during the war have been caught in bureaucratic limbo after applying for special immigrant visas, which are available to people who face threats because of work for the U.S. government. The applicants have 53,000 family members, U.S. officials have said.

J. Thomas Manger, a veteran police chief of departments in the Washington, D.C., region, has been hired to lead the United States Capitol Police, the board that oversees the agency announced on Thursday.

After conducting a national search in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the board members said in a statement that they were confident in Chief Mangers experience and approach in protecting the Congress its members, employees, visitors and facilities.

He will begin work on Friday. Chief Manger takes over a police force that is still reeling half a year after the riot. The 2,000-member police force that protects Congress finds itself at perhaps its biggest crossroads in its nearly two-century existence. Its work force is traumatized and overworked as its ranks have been hollowed out by a flood of departures. The agency is facing possible furloughs, teetering on the brink of running out of funding as overtime costs outpace its budget for salaries. It has been besieged by criticism from members of both parties for the stunning security failures that allowed the assault to occur.

After the attack, Steven A. Sund resigned from his post as the Capitol Police chief, along with the top House and Senate security officials, a move that left raw feelings on the force among those who remained deeply loyal to Mr. Sund.

The union representing officers voted that it had no confidence in the acting Capitol Police chief, Yogananda D. Pittman, and six other senior officials in the department.

The challenges in protecting the Capitol campus, and everyone who works or visits there, have never been more complex, Chief Manger said in a statement.

The courage and dedication of the men and women of this agency were on great display on Jan. 6th. It is now my job to ensure that they have the resources and support to continue to fulfill their mission in an ever increasingly difficult job.

Chief Manger has spent more than four decades in policing, including serving as chief of police in Montgomery County, Md., from 2004 to 2019. He also served as police chief in Fairfax County, Va., from 1998 to 2004.

From 2014 to 2018, Chief Manger was president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, and from 2013 to 2017, he was vice president of the Police Executive Research Forum.

transcript

transcript

If were ever going to be able to get through this, and especially to prevent something like this from happening again, we need to at least find out how it really did happen. And while Speaker Pelosi refuses to investigate this, many of us have taken action on our own to start digging in to the facts, to try to get the facts as best we can. We know that the Chinese Communist Party wont release the background, the data, the facts. Wont let us talk to those people that worked in that Wuhan lab was there American tax dollars that went directly or indirectly to the Wuhan lab to perform gain-of-function research. A lot of evidence indicates there was all of these questions deserve answers. The question is: Why are Democrats stonewalling our efforts to uncover the origin of the Covid virus? Why are Democrats not investigating the growing list of evidence that leads us directly to the Chinese Communist Party and their cover-up? And why is this administration refusing to hold China accountable? Our Republican members will continue to work to demand answers and accountability and transparency for the American people.

House Republican leaders and doctors gathered Thursday morning for a news conference ostensibly to urge Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus amid rising infections across the United States, but they used the event to attack Democrats who they said, without proof, had dissembled about the origins of the virus.

The appearance by the second and third-ranking House Republicans, Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and Elise Stefanik of New York, alongside a dozen doctors suggested that a resurgence in the spread of the virus, driven by the more contagious Delta variant, had not prompted the party to change its tone. Mr. Scalise and Ms. Stefanik instead blasted Democrats for what they called a cover-up on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

Only when pressed by reporters did the leaders address vaccination.

I would encourage people to get the vaccine, Mr. Scalise said near the end of the event, when pressed about his position on it. I have high confidence in it. I got it myself.

He and other Republicans spent most of their time on Thursday discussing unproven claims that the Chinese had released a virulent, human-made virus on the world and charging that Democrats had ignored it.

The event in front of the Capitol had been billed as a press conference to discuss the need for individuals to get vaccinated, uncover the origins of the pandemic, and keep schools and businesses open. Yet Republicans who attended, many of whom represent constituencies that have refused to get the vaccine, could not seem to bring themselves to hammer home the importance of doing so.

Even the doctors who emphasized vaccinations, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, soft-pedaled and qualified their statements.

If you are at risk, you should be getting this vaccine, Dr. Harris said, adding, We urge all Americans to talk to their doctors about the risks of Covid, talk to their doctors about the benefits of getting vaccinated, and then come to a decision thats right for them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone age 12 or over not only those at higher risk get vaccinated against the coronavirus as soon as possible.

When pressed, Representative Greg Murphy, Republican of North Carolina, demurred: This vaccine is a medicine, and just like with any other medicines, there are side effects and this is a personal decision.

The emphasis on the so-called lab leak theory was something of a surprise given the surge of infections concentrated in rural, strongly Republican regions of the country.

Nationally, the average of new coronavirus infections has surged 171 percent in 14 days, to more than 41,300 a day on Wednesday, and deaths a lagging number are up 42 percent from two weeks ago, to nearly 250, according to a New York Times database. Still, new cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain at a fraction from their previous devastating peaks.

Vaccines remain effective against the worst outcomes of Covid-19, including from the Delta variant. Experts say breakthrough infections in vaccinated people are so far still relatively uncommon. The Delta variant is estimated to account for 83 percent of new cases in the United States, the C.D.C. said earlier this week.

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported at the end of June that 86 percent of Democrats had at least one shot, compared with 52 percent of Republicans. An analysis by The Times in April found that the least vaccinated counties in the country had one thing in common: They voted for Mr. Trump.

But Dr. Murphy said the notion that conservatives are hesitant to receive the vaccine is not only disingenuous; its a lie.

As for the lab leak theory, one after another, Republicans framed the issue as virtually settled: Research at a virus laboratory in Wuhan, China, created the novel coronavirus through risky gain of function experiments, then leaked it into the world.

Criminals have been convicted on less circumstantial evidence than currently exists, and every day more evidence has revealed, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa said.

Recently, some scientists have urged that the possibility of a lab leak be taken seriously, alongside the possibility that the coronavirus emerged naturally, most likely from an animal. But they are mostly looking at the possibility that a naturally evolved virus was present in the lab and escaped, not that the virus was created deliberately. Even some of the most vocal scientific supporters of a lab leak possibility do not claim that there is definitive evidence of the origin of the virus.

Rather than cover up the matter, President Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies in late May to investigate the origins of the coronavirus and to report back in 90 days.

The Justice Department on Thursday began putting in place a plan to reduce violent crime in the nations largest cities, detailing the work of five federal strike forces aimed at disrupting illegal gun traffickers who flood urban streets with illicit firearms.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland traveled to Chicago, where one of the strike forces will be located, to highlight the plan and underscore the Biden administrations efforts to curb the spread of illegal firearms. A Chicago police officer and two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were shot while working undercover in the city this month.

The gun violence tragedy now facing the country, needless to say, affects our communities and our security and safety, but it also affects our law enforcement officers, Mr. Garland said in remarks at A.T.F. headquarters in Washington before leaving for Chicago.

He also appealed to lawmakers, who have not yet confirmed President Bidens nominee to lead the bureau, David Chipman. A.T.F. is on the front lines of our efforts to battle gun violence, Mr. Garland said. We are very hopeful that the Senate will soon act.

The bureau will serve as a key coordinating partner in the strike forces, which will be overseen by U.S. attorneys in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Northern California and Washington, D.C. The Justice Department has identified those places as end points for significant gun trafficking corridors.

WASHINGTON Calling Roe v. Wade egregiously wrong, Mississippis attorney general urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to do away with the constitutional right to abortion and to sustain a state law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The court will hear arguments in the case in the fall, giving its newly expanded conservative majority a chance to confront what may be the most divisive issue in American law: whether the Constitution protects the right to end pregnancies.

Lower courts blocked the Mississippi statute, calling it a cynical and calculated assault on abortion rights squarely at odds with Supreme Court precedents. The justices agreed to hear the case in May, just months after Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has said she personally opposes abortion, joined the court. She replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a proponent of abortion rights, who died in September.

The new filing, from Attorney General Lynn Fitch, was a sustained and detailed attack on Roe and the rulings that followed it, notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that said states may not impose an undue burden on the right to abortion before fetal viability the point at which fetuses can sustain life outside the womb, or about 23 or 24 weeks.

The Constitution does not protect a right to abortion, Ms. Fitch wrote. The Constitutions text says nothing about abortion. Nothing in the Constitutions structure implies a right to abortion or prohibits states from restricting it.

She told the justices that the scope of abortion rights should be determined through the political process. The national fever on abortion can break only when this court returns abortion policy to the states where agreement is more common, compromise is often possible and disagreement can be resolved at the ballot box.

The law at issue in the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, No. 19-1392, was enacted in 2018 by the Republican-dominated Mississippi Legislature. It banned abortions if the probable gestational age of the unborn human was determined to be more than 15 weeks. The statute included narrow exceptions for medical emergencies or a severe fetal abnormality.

The law was challenged by Mississippis sole abortion clinic, which is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group. The centers president, Nancy Northup, said she was dismayed by the states new filing.

Mississippi has stunningly asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe and every other abortion rights decision in the last five decades, Ms. Northup said in a statement. Todays brief reveals the extreme and regressive strategy, not just of this law, but of the avalanche of abortion bans and restrictions that are being passed across the country.

The precise question the justices agreed to decide was whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. Depending on how the court answers that question, it could reaffirm, revise or do away with the longstanding constitutional framework for abortion rights.

Ms. Fitch urged the justices to take the third approach, saying it would bolster the legitimacy of the court.

Roe and Casey are unprincipled decisions that have damaged the democratic process, poisoned our national discourse, plagued the law and, in doing so, harmed this court, she wrote.

Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, was among a group of protesters arrested on the Capitol complex on Thursday while demonstrating for voting rights and against the filibuster in the Senate. The arrest came one week after the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus was arrested by U.S. Capitol Police, also while demonstrating for voting rights.

I was arrested today protesting against Senate inaction on voting rights legislation & filibuster reform, Mr. Johnson wrote on Twitter. In the spirit of my dear friend and mentor the late Congressman John Lewis I was getting in #goodtrouble.

In a video posted to his Twitter account, Mr. Johnson could be seen continuing to chant with protesters even after he was taken into custody with his hands bound in zip ties.

Tia Mitchell, a reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution who was on the scene, posted a video on Twitter showing Mr. Johnson and other protesters with their arms linked, blocking a doorway. They were warned by U.S. Capitol Police that they could be arrested for demonstrating without a permit, according to Ms. Mitchell.

Last Thursday, Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, was among nine people arrested in the atrium of a Senate office building while demonstrating in favor of two voting rights bills in Congress, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act.

Both measures aim to protect and expand access to voting but face long odds of becoming law because Democrats, who have a narrow majority in the Senate, need Republican votes to overcome a filibuster. For months, Democrats have expressed frustration over their inability to advance their expansive voting overhauls as Republican state legislatures rush to pass laws that restrict voting rights across the country.

President Biden last week called the fight against restrictive voting laws the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War, even as he seemed to acknowledge that the legislation had little hope of passing. At a televised town hall on Wednesday in Cincinnati, the president defended keeping the filibuster, saying that getting rid of it would throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.

As news and images of the arrests spread across social media, some noted the contrast between the treatment of the members of Congress, who are both Black, and the hundreds of rioters who trespassed at the Capitol on Jan. 6 who were not detained, although police made efforts to impede them.

In an interview with Elle about her arrest, Ms. Beatty pointed out the same discrepancy.

At the Jan. 6 insurrection, you had thousands of people damaging federal property, rushing and breaking down doors, Ms. Beatty said. People were dying. There was nothing peaceful about it. And look what happened. That day there were no arrests, no handcuffs, no paddy wagons.

WASHINGTON The Biden administration issued new sanctions on Thursday against Cubas defense minister and an elite brigade of government security forces over human rights violations during a crackdown on protesters this month.

In the days since demonstrations erupted across Cuba on July 11, the Biden administration has been consulting with officials in Washington and experts on how broadly it should impose economic penalties against authorities accused of ordering or carrying out a heavy-handed response.

The Biden administration concluded that lvaro Lpez Miera, the head of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, has played an integral role in the repression of ongoing protests in Cuba, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

Members of the special forces unit Boinas Negras, or Black Berets, which was previously placed under sanctions during the final days of the Trump administration, will also be penalized for a wave of arrests larger than any other crackdown in years, if not decades.

Activists said at least 150 protesters were arrested or disappeared during the July 11 demonstrations, and internet service was cut for much of the island to stifle anti-government sentiment. Additionally, Human Rights Watch officials said on Thursday that protesters in Cuba were being subjected to closed-door summary trials without a defense lawyer.

The sanctions, issued as part of the Global Magnitsky Act, allow the American government to freeze the property or other assets in the United States that belong to the people targeted by the economic penalties.

The Cuban people have the same right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly as all people, President Biden said in a statement.

He added, This is just the beginning the United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people.

Cubas foreign minister, Bruno Rodrguez, said the new sanctions were unfounded & slanderous in a message on Twitter.

Calling attention to police violence in the United States, the foreign minister added: It should rather apply unto itself the Magnitsky Global Act for systematic repression & police brutality that took the lives of 1021 persons in 2020.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, described the sanctions as among a range of responses Mr. Biden would deploy to help Cubans grappling with government oppression and a growing humanitarian crisis. She said that addressing this moment was a priority for the administration.

As vice president during the Obama administration, Mr. Biden oversaw a policy that restored full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in more than a half-century. But he has taken a tougher stance as president, a position that generally has been greeted warmly by members of Congress including some Democrats who had been in the awkward position of siding with President Donald J. Trumps policy of containing Cubas communist government.

Cubans have grown increasingly frustrated with their government amid an economic crisis that has included food scarcity, power cuts, skyrocketing inflation and a growing number of Covid-19 deaths. The Cuban government, for its part, has blamed the United States for a trade embargo and, last week, accused American officials of stirring the unrest.

Our message could not be clearer: The U.S. stands with the people of Cuba and there will be consequences for those with blood on their hands, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on Twitter. Mr. Biden is absolutely right in holding the Cuban regime accountable as it violently tries to squash Cubans hopes & dreams.

The State Department also is considering whether to allow people in the United States to send money to relatives and friends in Cuba though a remittance process that, in past cases, has been exploited by government officials who have seized a cut of the funds. The departments spokesman, Ned Price, said this week that the Biden administration was examining how to get the money directly in the hands of the Cuban people.

Additionally, Mr. Price said, the department may increase the number of American diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, where the Trump administration set the number of staff at the bare minimum. It is not clear when, or if, the Biden administration will move forward on either front.

Ernesto Londoo and Frances Robles contributed reporting.

The C.I.A. is stepping up efforts to confront the cause and effects of mysterious sonic incidents, believed to be attacks, that have injured U.S. officials, by increasing medical staff and assigning an agency veteran who hunted Osama bin Laden, the agencys director, William J. Burns, said in an interview on Thursday.

Im certainly persuaded that what our officers and some family members, as well as other U.S. government employees, have experienced is real and its serious, Mr. Burns told NPR in his first interview since taking over the C.I.A. three months ago.

Read this article:

The House votes to increase the number of visas for Afghans who have helped U.S. troops. - The New York Times