Month: September 2021

 TRANSCRIPT

The Inside Story: Biden and the Borders (Episode 07, September 30, 2021)

Show Open:

Voice of PATSY WIDAKUSWARA, VOA White House Bureau Chief:

Another immigration confrontation at the U.S. southern border.   

Thousands of Haitian migrants amass concern for the Biden Administration.   

U.S. President Joe Biden:

Of course, I take responsibility.  I’m President.  But it was horrible what — to see, as you saw — to see people treated like they did.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

While challenges remain at the southern border, thousands of Afghan refugees are entering the United States.   

The President campaigned on changing immigration policies.   

Who gets in?   

Who is not getting in?  

And why …  

On “The Inside Story: Biden and the Borders.”     

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

I’m Patsy Widakuswara at the White House.  President Joe Biden is facing rising criticism over his handling of Haitian migrants at the U.S. southern border.   

More than 14,000 migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexican border in recent weeks, setting up camps underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas.  

Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing Haitian migrants has sparked outrage and questions about the Biden administration’s immigration policies.  We begin our coverage in Del Rio, Texas.  

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Thousands of migrants, many of them Haitians living in South America, have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas, seeking asylum.

Hundreds have been expelled by the administration back to Haiti, a country mired in poverty and violence. It’s an “inhumane, counterproductive” response, said U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote, who quit his job in protest Wednesday.

Voice of PATSY WIDAKUSWARA quoting former U.S. Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote:

“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed,” Foote said in his resignation letter.

Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State:

The fact is, there have been multiple senior level conversations on Haiti, where all proposals, including those put forward by Special Envoy Foote, were fully considered in a rigorous and transparent process.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected Foote’s accusation, as did White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary:

Special Envoy Foote had ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure. He never once did so.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Still, the Biden administration continues to be haunted by images from the border, including of agents on horseback chasing migrants.

U.S. President Joe Biden:

Of course, I take responsibility. I’m President. But it was horrible what – to see, as you saw – to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you those people will pay. They will be, there’s an investigation underway now, there will be consequences.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Immigration analysts say this change in policy does not address the bigger question of what to do with the influx of people at the border — a real challenge for the administration.

Julia Gelatt, Migration Policy Institute:

The Biden administration really wanted to send the message that it was breaking completely with the immigration policies of the Trump administration that were seen as cruel and inhumane. But at the same time, the Biden administration, I think, fears that if they treat the Haitian migrants all as asylum-seekers and allow them in, that will send a message to people around the world that the U.S. border is open.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Daniel Foote declined VOA’s request for an interview. In his resignation letter, he pointed out Haiti cannot possibly absorb the deported migrants.

The country is facing numerous crises, including last month’s earthquake, the assassination of its president in July and rampant gang violence, causing many to flee.

Cristobal Ramon, Immigration Analyst:

COVID has made it difficult for them to be able to work to sustain themselves. These are individuals who came from Haiti in the wake of a lot of earthquakes and went to South America.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Democrats in Congress have urged the administration to stop expulsions. The United Nations, which rarely criticizes U.S. policy, has also denounced the expulsions of Haitians as “inconsistent with international norms.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

President Biden sets U.S. immigration policies and priorities. His Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, is responsible for seeing they are carried out.  

Secretary Mayorkas recently took questions from the White House Press Corps, explaining how the administration can expel people because of COVID-19, under Title 42 — a law code used in the same way by the Trump administration. 

Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary Department of Homeland Security

Migrants continue to be expelled and under the CDC is title 42 authority title 42 is a public health authority and not an immigration policy, and it is important to note that title 42 is applicable and has been applicable to all irregular migration. During this pandemic, it is not specific to Haitian nationals, or the current situation.

To date, DHS has conducted 17 expulsion flights to Haiti with approximately 2000 individuals, those who are not expelled under Title 42 are placed in immigration removal proceedings.

Individuals, as I mentioned, with acute vulnerability, can be accepted from the title 42 application. Approximately 12,400 individuals will have their cases heard by an immigration judge to make a determination on whether they will be removed or permitted to remain in the United States.  

The title 42 authority has been applied to irregular migration since the very beginning of this administration and before. And it has applied to individuals from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and other countries. It has been applied equally, and the exceptions that I cited have been the exceptions that have applied to all.

There are three exceptions. The Convention Against Torture, acute vulnerabilities such as extreme medical needs, and operational capacity. Those are the three exceptions. Title 42 authority has been applied, irrespective of the country of origin, irrespective of the race of the individual, irrespective of other criteria that don’t belong in our adjudicative process, And we do not permit in our adjudicative process.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Migrants from Haiti trying to get into the United States is not a new phenomenon.  U.S. policy regarding Haitians is complex and goes back decades shaped against a backdrop of natural disasters, political instability and violence.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi explains.    

ARASH ARABASADI, VOA Correspondent:

It recently began in July, with the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and an investigation that seems stuck in park.  A little more than a month later in August, a magnitude seven-point-two earthquake shook much of the southern part of Haiti to the ground. The ongoing crises persuaded thousands of Haitians to seek asylum somewhere else. 

Robert Fatton, University of Virginia Professor:

It’s not that Haitians necessarily want to exit.  It’s simply that the situation is so bad and so desperate that they do not have another choice.

ARASH ARABASADI:

Haitians fleeing the country is a phenomenon that began in the 1960s but gained momentum because of an uprising against the country’s first democratically elected president.

Robert Fatton, University of Virginia Professor:

It started again… major wave after the coup that overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and because of political problems, the waves continued.  And then the earthquake of 2010 was one of the major, if you wish, triggers that led the Haitians to the United States and elsewhere.

ARASH ARABASADI:

Fatton says a weak global economy in the 1970s triggered, in part, the mass migration of Haitians to the US. 

In the 1980s, the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent back Haitian migrants who were intercepted at sea trying to come to the U.S. Those who made it to the U.S. faced prison.

More than 25-thousand Haitian migrants were sent back.

In 1991, a coup ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power, creating years of instability, only for the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton to bring him back to power to oversee what Fatton calls a neo-liberal economy that collapsed and never recovered. 

In their search for a better life, some Haitians spend their life savings just to leapfrog from countries like Brazil and Chile to get to the United States.

Robert Fatton, University of Virginia Professor:

It was a very long trek, and they’d assumed that they could in fact get into the United States.  Most of them found that that was simply wrong.

ARASH ARABASADI:

More than 12 thousand of the 30 thousand Haitian migrants who amassed at the border in September were eligible to seek asylum in the U.S. Another eight thousand went back to Mexico voluntarily. About two thousand were flown back to Haiti.

Robert Fatton, University of Virginia Professor:

The situation in Haiti is getting really desperate, especially for very poor people.  The economic situation has deteriorated significantly.  Poverty has increased.  The rural areas have suffered significantly because of bad agricultural policies and also because life in rural areas is a life of deprivation.  So people move to the urban areas. They create those huge slums, and there are no jobs to satisfy their economic needs.  In addition to that, they’re confronted with gangs, and you have a government that’s completely dysfunctional.

ARASH ARABASADI:

Fatton says Haiti’s problems are problems Haitians should solve on their own.  He says he’s hopeful for the future as the country has hit rock bottom but adds he has been saying the same thing for the past 20 years. Arash Arabasadi, VOA News.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Protecting the border and managing immigration are challenges faced by every American president.  As the Biden administration manages criticism over its handling of the Haitian migrant surge, concerns remain over the future of U.S. immigration policies.   

VOA reporter Aline Barros has covered immigration policy under both Democratic and Republican administrations.  

She explained the evolution of America’s immigration policy in a conversation with ‘The Inside Story’ producer Elizabeth Cherneff.

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF, VOA Producer:

Aline, what US immigration policies were executed in order to deal with this most recent influx of Haitian migrants?

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

So there are a few things happening right now, we have title 42 in place, which is basically a federal health code that was put in place under the Trump administration that the Biden administration decided to keep it, and the title 42 basically allows immigration officials at the border to expel migrants. What does that mean? It means that they do not go in front of an immigration judge, it means that they are immediately sent back to the home country and it’s it’s the same guideline is the same policy that it’s happening to all migrants,

It’s not just Haitian migrants so migrants from Central American and other nationalities, they are met with the same policy. But the Biden administration, they made a few exemptions right, so when a company minors and family units with tender age children might be paroled and they are usually paroled.

Immigration officers at the border, they have the discretion to parole them in to allow them to be paroled under humanitarian conditions, and they might be one fighting a removal proceeding, a potential order of deportation, while asking for asylum, while asking for the possibility of staying, you know, permanently in the US.

A number of Haitian migrants, they were paroled in. But, however, they are, they will be able to, to ask for asylum, they will be able to go in front of an immigration judge, or an asylum, officer. But at the same time, they’re fighting already the possibility of being sent back. So, while some people were sent back, the folks who were allowed in, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to stay here.

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF:

Right. You touched on a really interesting point that I think is confusing to a lot of our audience. Why are we seeing some people sent back to the country of Haiti on planes, and yet others are allowed to stay in the USA?

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

That’s exactly because of title 42. Because we have exemptions, right? Because CBP officer a custom border protection officer might they have the discretion, they have the authority according to immigration wall. To look at you and say, you are a woman with a tender a child, you are very in a very vulnerable situation, I’m going to parole you in, you know, but here’s the thing, and this is based on the interviews that I’ve done with people at the border in the past with now immigration lawyers, a lot of these people, they understand that they need help.

When you are asking for help at the border, you don’t have access to lawyers easily as someone who is already inside of the United States, right, their advocate groups, their immigrant advocate groups at the border. But the amount of people that need help is much higher than the amount of lawyers available so you’re going to be fighting your removal proceedings, you’re going to be fighting a potential deportation order, while trying to get your asylum at the same time.

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF:

How is this latest wave being handled in comparison to prior waves of migrants arriving at the border?

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

So Haitians have come to the US to seek asylum at borders for decades but in every presidential administration since 1970s has treated migrants differently so some rejected asylum seekers, while others held them longer in detention. Some administration’s they had the US Coast Guard basically intercepting boats and sending them back right away. We also had an administration sending Haitian migrants to Guantanamo. So, it depends on the administration they are dealing with the migrant Haitian migrants in waves, um differently, right now. The position of the US government is, don’t come, you’re going to be sent back.

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF:

Those terms, I think there’s a lot of confusion about what those terms mean. The terms, seeking asylum, refugee expulsion, deportation.

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

If you are an asylum seeker, if you are a migrant, and you need help, the key is for you to be an asylum seeker for you to go through asylum. You have to be in an us territory to do that as a refugee, you go through a process, outside the country you go through the UN. You apply, you actually receive refugee status so when you come to the United States, you already have the path for permanent residency, which in five years will allow you to file for your citizenship if you wish

If you were expelled. It doesn’t carry legal consequences to you as an a potential asylum seeker again. But if you went through an immigration proceeding, if you went through removal proceedings and you lost your case and you actually received an order of deportation from an immigration judge according to US law. If you come back, you might be barred from entering the U.S. So, so that’s basically the difference. 

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF

Are we seeing consistency and how the Biden administration is implementing immigration policies?

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

So that the immigration, while at the Biden administration is, is, abiding is, is using it is the what is the same one that the Trump administration had and the difference is that Trump wanted to, you know, continue construction of the border wall he wanted to work on policies to restrict not only unauthorized immigration, illegal immigration as well, you know, cutting visa caps and things like that.

Biden administration he’s in a way, pushing for a more positive tone on immigration, however, he has been heavily, heavily criticized but immigrant advocates for keeping title 42 in place, and for the continuation of expelling migrants at the border.

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF

It seems like the images and the videos this past week of border patrol agents on horseback, those images have just resounded with viewers and audiences really around the world. What can you tell us about the administration’s reaction to this how they’re handling it the fallout?

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

There will be investigation there is an ongoing investigation according to immigration officials, Biden said that he took full responsibility, and the horseback unit has been suspended for now. So that was, that was something that Mayorkas came out and said he has been suspended. We’re using horses. As of now, because we’re having an investigation.

The administration has been saying don’t come to the US don’t come to the US illegally, but when you have border patrol officers, you know, at ports of entry, and some advocates are saying that migrants are not allowed in. So migrants will in turn to try to get into the country in between ports of entry because again, in order for them to ask for help, they need to be in the US. So that’s a point that immigrant advocates have been pushing a lot saying, this idea of not allowing immigrants, through ports of entry to ask for asylum the right way pushes them to come in between ports of entry and pushes them to cross illegally.

ELIZABETH CHERNEFF:

Okay. Aline Barros, VOA immigration reporter Thank you very much for speaking with us.

ALINE BARROS, VOA immigration reporter:

Thank you for having me.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

As the U.S. completed its military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, thousands of evacuated refugees are waiting to be resettled.  

Here, in the city of Washington, DC, local business owners, some refugees themselves, are stepping up to collect donations and supplies for their new neighbors.  VOA’s Karina Bafradzhian tells us more.   

 KARINA BAFRADZHIAN, VOA Reporter:                   

The owners of this Washington, D.C., restaurant, called Lapis, have spent the last few weeks collecting donations for Afghan refugees that were evacuated to the United States. Wine shelves hold hundreds of boxes full of everything from clothing and personal hygiene items to dinnerware and cleaning supplies. 

The person behind this makeshift donation center is Fatima Popal, the owner of a number of D.C. restaurants. She says her desire to help the refugees stems – among other reasons – from personal history. 

Fatima Popal, Popal Group:

We are also refugees, from a different time period of war in Afghanistan. So, we do understand how most of these refugees feel. Of course, our time period was a little bit different – it wasn’t the Taliban regime. 

KARINA BAFRADZHIAN:

Popal’s family left Afghanistan in the 1980s when Fatima was just six months old. They have been living in the U.S. since 1987 – and today own three restaurants in the U.S. capital. She decided to spread the word about the donation center on social networks – and was flooded with gratitude and responses. 

Fatima Popal, Popal Group:

And both my brother and I woke up with just a social media blast of people wanting to help, not only to donate but also to help and volunteer their time for us. And it was just beautiful to see how the community has come together, how everyone wants to help and donate.

KARINA BAFRADZHIAN:

Receiving the donations, sorting through them, filling up trucks with the necessary items – and then doing it all over again – this is what Popal and dozens of volunteers have been doing since.   

A lot of business owners in the Washington, D.C., area are collecting donations for the Afghan refugees, both small local businesses and giants like Airbnb that promised to provide 20,000 Afghan refugees with free accommodations around the world.  

A myriad of charity organizations in the U.S. have also volunteered to do what they can to help. Catholic Charities located in Virginia is one of them.  

Emily Wood, Catholic Charities of Arlington:

What we have here is just one day’s worth of donations. Amazon drivers have been dropping them off a truckload after truckload all donated. 

KARINA BAFRADZHIAN:

Stephen Carattini, CEO of Catholic Charities in Arlington, Virginia, says the numbers of Afghan refugees are quickly rising.

Stephen Carattini, Arlington Catholic Charities:

I think it’ll continue to be an increasing number over the next few months and even years. When they come to this country, we’re usually the first faces that they see – we meet them at the airport. Then things happen very quickly after that. The priority is to help these people into housing, find permanent housing as quickly as possible and then also begin the search for employment.

KARINA BAFRADZHIAN:

Volunteers – on top of physical help – don’t forget about psychological help as well. They keep in touch with the refugees, help with advice, help them calm down. No one wants to leave their home country like that, says Fatima Popal. But if they must, she adds, the least others can do is to help the refugees find a second home in the U.S. 

Karina Bafradzhian for VOA News, Washington.

PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:

Stay tuned at VOANews.com and our social media for the latest on U.S. immigration policy. Stay connected with me on twitter @pwidakuswara. From the White House, I’m Patsy Widakuswara.  See you next week for The Inside Story.    

    ###

 
…

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Sam remains an intense Category 4 storm heading northward as it churns in the Atlantic.

In its latest report, the Miami-based center said Thursday Sam was 575 kilometers northeast of the northern Leeward Islands in the Caribbean and about 1,175 kilometers southeast of Bermuda. Its maximum sustained winds are about 230 kilometers per hour.

Forecasters expect the storm to turn to the north by late Friday, and on that forecast track, Sam will continue to pass well east of Bermuda early Saturday. The storm – which, at its peak, last Sunday – was the strongest recorded so far this season, is forecast to remain a major hurricane through Saturday.

Meanwhile, the hurricane center says Tropical Storm Victor has formed in the eastern Atlantic, with maximum sustained winds of 75 kilometers per hour and higher gusts. Officials say additional strengthening is forecast, and Victor could be near hurricane strength by Friday. It is already the 19th named storm of the season.

Meteorologists with The Washington Post Capital Weather Gang say the naming of Victor leaves just one name – Wanda – left on the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) storm naming list for this season. 

After 2020’s record-breaking 30 named storms exhausted the regular list and forced meteorologists to dip into the Greek alphabet for names for only the second time in history, the WMO this year developed a supplemental list of names.

According to the new list, should a “Wanda” form, the next named storm after that would be Aidan. 
…

U.S. lawmakers have less than three weeks to avert a default on the country’s sovereign debt by raising the limit on the amount of money the Treasury Department can borrow. Failure to do so would result in the United States purposely defaulting on its debts for the first time in history. 

By now, the extent of the damage that economists predict the U.S. economy would suffer in the event of default triggered by bitter conflict between Congressional Democrats and Republicans has been widely reported.

An estimate from Moody’s Analytics earlier this month predicted that in a prolonged default scenario, the U.S. would slide into recession, with the Gross Domestic Product falling by almost 4%. Some six million jobs would be lost, driving the unemployment rate up to 9%. The resulting stock market sell-off would erase $15 trillion in household wealth. In the short term, interest rates would spike, and in the long term, they would never fall back to pre-default lows. 

But the damage from a U.S. default would not be contained to the United States itself. Securities issued by the U.S. have been so trustworthy for so long that they are treated as essentially risk-free in financial markets, and are used to underpin a vast number of financial contracts worldwide. 

“The U.S. Treasury market is the world’s anchor asset,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “If it turns out that that asset is not actually risk free, but that it can actually default, that would basically detonate a bomb in the middle of the global financial system. And that will be extremely messy.” 

Immediate fallout 

In the event of a default, it is generally assumed that there would be a broad sell-off of Treasury securities, known as Treasuries. This would happen for multiple reasons — from individual investors being spooked by the default, to companies that had collateralized loans with Treasuries being forced to replace them with something the lender sees as more secure. 

The sell-off would make it more expensive for the U.S. to borrow in the future, driving up interest rates in the United States and driving down the value of the dollar against other world currencies. 

Here are five ways those effects would echo through the global economy. 

Reduced global trade 

If a default drove the U.S. into recession, U.S. consumers and businesses would reduce the amount of goods and services they purchase from outside the country. 

While this would impact virtually all countries to some extent, emerging market countries that rely on exports to the United States for much of their income would be particularly hard-hit. 

The expected devaluation of the dollar would have a similar impact — making it more expensive for U.S firms to purchase supplies overseas, resulting in trade being reduced even further. 

Dollarized economies would suffer 

The U.S. dollar is a common currency in much of the world. Some countries have adopted it as the official currency, while in others it exists side-by-side with a local currency that is often “pegged” to the dollar to keep its value stable. 

In the event that a default drove down the value of the dollar, countries with highly dollarized economies would see the buying power of existing currency stock diminished.

“Emerging markets would suffer greatly from this, because they wouldn’t have a domestic currency that’s very credible,” said Kirkegaard. 

Business contracts affected 

Around the world, many cross-border transactions carry requirements that they be settled in U.S. dollars. In ordinary times, this is seen as a practical way to be sure that sudden swings in the value of a local currency don’t dramatically disadvantage one party in a transaction that is to be settled in the future. 

A sudden and sharp decline in the value of the dollar would mean that individuals and companies anticipating payment on existing contracts in dollars would effectively be receiving less than they had expected for their goods and services. 

More sophisticated trade contracts may contain anti-default clauses that require agreements to be renegotiated in the event of a default that drives down the value of a reserve currency. While this would keep both parties to a contract whole, it would also complicate and likely slow down many transactions. 

Capital flows away from the U.S. 

One of the economic advantages the United States has long enjoyed is that it is a magnet for global capital. When the global economy is strong, investors seeking growth funnel money to U.S. firms. When times are bad, investors seek shelter in U.S. Treasuries. Either way, global markets are directing capital into the U.S. 

But when interest rates go up for the wrong reason — because investors don’t trust the U.S. government to pay its debts — that system is broken. 

The result is that to some degree, investors seeking shelter would be more cautious about assuming that Treasury securities are the go-to investment to protect the value of their assets. The logical move would be for them to begin directing at least some of their investments to securities issued by other governments and denominated in different currencies. 

New reserve currency 

A side effect of those new capital flows could be a challenge to the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency.” 

A reserve currency is money held by a country’s central bank and large financial institutions in order to facilitate global trade for domestic companies, to meet international debt obligations, and to influence domestic currency exchange rates, among other reasons. 

The stability of the dollar has made it the dominant global reserve currency since the end of World War II. This has generated constant global demand for dollars, making it possible for the U.S. government to borrow at lower interest rates than other large nations.

The United States’ global competitors, including China and Russia — but even allies, like the European Union — have for years suggested that it would be better if the dollar’s dominance were not as complete as it is. 

There has been little movement to unseat the dollar in recent decades, but a shock like a default on U.S. debts could persuade some countries to hedge their bets by taking on other currencies, like the euro or renminbi, as additions to their reserve holdings. 

“If you are China or, for that matter, the euro area, you have been wanting to replace or supplant the dollar’s dominant role in the global economy with either the renminbi or the euro,” said Kirkegaard. “You couldn’t ask for a better thing.” 

 
…

In the shadows of Washington’s government office buildings, Gary Hayes searches for another dose of heroin, chasing a high that will last only a few hours before he wants more.

“It’s hard to stop using when you are living on the streets and there’s no treatment help,” Hayes told VOA. The 28-year-old Black man, who lives in a homeless tent encampment in the nation’s capital, has struggled with substance abuse disorder for a decade.

“I overdosed twice in the last year, but I know several people who died,” Hayes said, reflecting on the deadly opioid epidemic playing out during another health tragedy, the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 93,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2020, the highest number on record, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics released in July. U.S. health officials attribute the rise in deaths to powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine.

Overdose deaths: Black vs. white

In the District of Columbia, more than 400 people died from opioid overdoses last year, and most were African American. The medical examiner’s office reported that fentanyl or fentanyl analogs were present in many cases.

“In some communities, we’ve seen deaths among African Americans eclipse the death rates among whites over the past several years,” said Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “Many people who have died from the opioid epidemic or otherwise developed addiction are African American or other people of color living in urban areas.”

Opioid overdose deaths among African Americans have been on the rise since 2013, according to a study published in the journal Addiction. Simultaneously, opioid use among white Americans leveled off for the first time since the 1990s, when doctors began overprescribing the opioid painkiller that sparked the health crisis.

“Historically, the opioid epidemic has at times been painted as an epidemic of rural white working-class families, but opioids don’t discriminate,” Alexander told VOA. “The addiction that one develops looks just the same, regardless of the color of your skin.”

Pandemic’s impact

According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2019, nearly 500,000 lives in the U.S. were lost to overdoses involving opioids, both prescription and illicit types. The epidemic has impacted many communities, and U.S. health officials believe the crisis has worsened since the pandemic started.

While overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest data show a sharp rise in overdoses during the pandemic.

“It’s gone from being called the opioid crisis to the overdose crisis,” said harm reduction activist Britt Carpenter, director of the Philly Unknown Project, a group that advocates for the homeless. He says the pandemic has reversed progress made in reducing opioid addiction in recent years.

Carpenter walks the streets of the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, trying to help the homeless people he sees using opioids. “It’s been a younger demographic of users from the suburbs in their 20s, coming into the city to live on the streets and use drugs,” Carpenter told VOA. “In the last 18 months, some of the neighborhood streets have become overwhelmingly filled again with people.”

In August, Philadelphia city workers and police cleared out two large homeless encampments in Kensington, where, according to officials, hundreds of people had been living and several drug overdoses had been reported. “The outreach and recovery world have their hands full now,” Carpenter said.

In Philadelphia County, illicit fentanyl was present in more than 80% of drug overdose deaths in 2020, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In September, the DEA issued a public safety alert warning Americans of an alarming increase in the lethality and availability of fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine.

“Drug traffickers, both here and abroad, are increasingly using counterfeit pills to package and distribute the poison that illicit fentanyl is,” said Thomas Hodnett, acting special agent in charge of the DEA’s Philadelphia Division. Law enforcement officials say most of the counterfeit pills coming into the United States are produced in Mexico and China.

Opioid vaccine?

U.S. health officials believe the pandemic lockdowns and the availability of potent drugs last year dramatically increased overdoses and addiction rates.

“I know a lot of people who had made progress in their recovery, then relapsed,” Arman Maddela, a recovering addict, told Reuters. Maddala, who lives in San Diego, California, lost his sobriety and began using heroin and fentanyl last year. “Being alone and isolated in your living space without any reason to leave the house is enough for someone struggling with addiction to relapse and dig themselves into a hole,” he said.

Harm reduction advocate Carpenter agrees. “One trait of addiction is isolation. The pandemic lockdowns made it hard for people to attend support group meetings in person or visit their therapists.”

With the easing of many pandemic restrictions this year, more drug counseling programs reopened in-person services. At the same time, U.S. medical researchers are working to develop new treatments for opioid addiction with further hopes of reducing fatal drug overdoses.

Clinical trials are under way for the first vaccine to be tested in the U.S. for opioid abuse disorder. The vaccine would create antibodies that prevent opioids such as oxycodone from reaching the brain and later impairing a person’s breathing. The serum could be given in combination with other opioid-based medications used to treat addiction.

“A vaccine that lasts for several months could help many more people beat their addiction and potentially protect them from an overdose death if a patient relapses,” said Sandra Comer, a professor of neurobiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where the research is being conducted.

With billions of dollars being spent on the coronavirus pandemic, some health care specialists are calling on the government to allocate more money for comprehensive addiction prevention and treatment programs.

“We need to be sure these treatments are available and that individuals with addiction have unfettered access because it can reduce the risk of dying by as much as 50%,” said Alexander. “We know this can be done because there are millions of Americans living healthy successful lives in recovery today.” 

 
…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has dismissed the United States’ offer to resume a dialogue but says he is open to improving ties with South Korea.

In a speech published Thursday in North Korean state media, Kim said the willingness of the U.S. to hold talks was only a “show” to cover up what he called Washington’s “hostile policy.”

“There is no change in the U.S. military threat to and hostile policy toward us at all, and instead, their expressions and methods get more cunning,” Kim said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly called for North Korea to resume negotiations, stalled since 2019, on the country’s nuclear program.

Responding to Kim’s speech, the State Department stressed in an email to the VOA Korean Service that the U.S. “harbors no hostile intent” toward North Korea, whose official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“Our policy calls for a calibrated, practical approach that is open to and will explore diplomacy with the DPRK to make tangible progress that increases the security of the United States, our allies, and our deployed forces. We are prepared to meet with the DPRK without preconditions. We hope the DPRK will respond positively to our outreach,” the U.S. statement read.

Kim delivered his speech Wednesday, the same day North Korea announced the details of its latest weapons test, which involved a new hypersonic missile apparently designed to evade U.S. missile defenses.

North Korea has conducted three missile tests this month, even as it signals it is open to dialogue with its neighbor South Korea.

In his speech, Kim said he would consider reestablishing communications hotlines with South Korea starting in early October.

Pyongyang opened the hotlines in late July for the first time in about a year, but it severed them two weeks later, after the U.S. and South Korea decided to move ahead with annual joint military drills that North Korea sees as a provocation.

Earlier this week, Kim Yo Jong, a senior North Korean official and sister of Kim Jong Un, said Pyongyang would also consider an inter-Korean summit as well as a formal declaration ending the Korean War of 1950-53.

The moves create a tricky situation for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a left-leaning politician who wants to resume talks with North Korea before his single presidential term expires in May.

The North’s strategy is unsurprising to many analysts, who say Pyongyang wants to both build up its nuclear deterrent and put pressure on the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

“There’s nothing new here,” said Jenny Town, a North Korea specialist with the Washington-based Stimson Center.

Though it’s not clear if the coming months will see the reestablishment of inter-Korean talks, Pyongyang has hinted it will not stop its weapons tests anytime soon.

In a speech Monday at the United Nations General Assembly, North Korean diplomat Kim Song defended his country’s nuclear missile advancement, calling it a response to the “hostile policy” of the United States and South Korea.

“Nobody can deny the righteous right to self-defense for (North Korea) to develop, test, manufacture and possess the weapons systems equivalent to the ones which are possessed or being developed by” the United States and South Korea, Kim said.

The North Korean ambassador also condemned the presence of U.S. troops in South Korea, recent U.S.-South Korea military exercises and South Korea’s military buildup. 
…

A dozen Democratic senators are pushing President Joe Biden to create two high-level posts to assist in evacuating eligible Afghans and others who remained in the country after the U.S. withdrew troops Aug. 31.

Senator Maria Cantwell, leader of the initiative, said her office had been contacted by at least 1,800 people. She said they included U.S. citizens, Special Immigrant Visa holders, journalists and contractors who worked at the now-shuttered U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

“We know that we still have many people in Afghanistan that are stuck there, and they need the U.S. continuing to help them and support them,” she said Wednesday, after introducing a letter signed by 11 colleagues, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, both of whom sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

The senators have asked Biden to establish those positions in the president’s office and in the State Department.

The United States evacuated 124,000 people from Afghanistan over two weeks in August in what administration officials described as the largest airlift in history.

This week, the State Department said that about 100 U.S. citizens were still waiting to leave Afghanistan but that their evacuation was challenged by the “unpredictability” of the hard-line Taliban government, which took over after the American withdrawal.

“Rescuing Americans is a floor, not a ceiling,” the senators wrote. “A focus on evacuating Americans to the exclusion of others we have promised to get out is unacceptable. Civilian lives are in danger, and the United States’ international reputation is at risk.”

Rabbi Will Berkovitz, who heads the Jewish Family Service of Seattle, joined Cantwell in making the plea.

“I think what we need is … a point person at the White House who sits on the National Security Council. That person needs to oversee this entire effort, because it just needs to be a high-level person of authority who can get things done,” he said via a Zoom call Wednesday afternoon.

VOA asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki about the criticism and requests presented in the letter.

“We agree that there’s more work to be done in Afghanistan, that it’s important and imperative that humanitarian assistance is able to reach the people of Afghanistan,” she said, adding that Biden raised this with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week, and that the U.S. government is working with the government of Qatar on humanitarian assistance flights.

“We do have a range of officials who are working on exactly this, from the State Department and from the White House,” she said. Psaki said that she didn’t know the specifics of the request but that the administration agrees “there’s more work to be done.”

“We have staff. We’re committed to doing exactly that,” she said.

Republican effort

Senate Republicans are pursuing the matter through legislation. On Monday, 22 Republican senators introduced the Afghanistan Counterterrorism, Oversight, and Accountability Act, which seeks, among other things, to set up a State Department task force to focus on the evacuation of U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders still in Afghanistan.

“We continue to see the grave implications of the Biden Administration’s haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Senator Jim Risch said in a statement. “An unknown number of American citizens and Afghan partners remain abandoned in Afghanistan under threat from the Taliban, we face a renewed terror threat against the United States, and the Taliban wrongly seek recognition at the U.N., even as they suppress the rights of Afghan women and girls.”

Jacob Kurtzer, director and senior fellow with the Humanitarian Agenda initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the criticism and calls for a plan are valid.

“I think the need for a plan, a specific plan, reflects that this is not something that we can expect to resolve quickly,” he said. “For me, the necessity of a plan is that it’s an indication of the administration’s commitment into the future.”

The Democratic senators also urged the Biden administration to appoint officials who would hold the Taliban accountable on its previous commitments to protect human rights and allow freedom of movement, while also assisting the new Taliban government with humanitarian work and operating an international airport.
…

Many Vietnamese Americans in southern California are stepping up to help Afghan refugees. Titi Tran spoke with residents of Orange County’s Little Saigon and Afghan refugees now living in a nearby Afghan American neighborhood and filed this report.

Camera and produced by: Titi Mary Tran
…

The U.S. and Qatar together sanctioned seven individuals for supporting a financial network of the Islamist political party and militant group Hezbollah in the Arabian Peninsula.

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement Wednesday that Qatari nationals Ali Reda Hassan al-Banai, Ali Reda al-Qassabi Lari and Abd al-Muayyid al-Banaiare were among the seven it identified as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for supporting Hezbollah financially or materially.

Treasury Department official Andrea Gacki accused Hezbollah of trying to “abuse the international financial system by developing global networks of financiers to fill its coffers and support its terrorist activity.”

“The cross-border nature of this Hezbollah financial network underscores the importance of our continued cooperation with international partners, such as the Government of Qatar, to protect the U.S. and international financial systems from terrorist abuse,” Gacki added in the statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Treasury Department’s action was “one of the most significant joint actions” the U.S. has taken with a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and he called on other countries to also target Hezbollah.

The Treasury Department statement said the sanctions froze any U.S. assets the targets hold and generally prohibits Americans from conducting business with them.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah, which the U.S. and several other Western countries consider a terrorist group.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters provided some information for this report.
…

…

The U.S National Fish and Wildlife Service Wednesday is expected to announce the extinction of 23 species, including the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, an elusive bird long-sought after by bird watchers throughout the southeast United States.  

The New York Times reports the list of extinctions includes 11 birds, eight freshwater mussels, two fish, a bat and a plant. Many of them were likely extinct, or almost so, by the time the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973.

The measure is intended to provide special protection for rare species on the brink of extinction.

U.S. officials have determined no amount of conservation would have been able to save these particular species.

Fish and Wildlife Species Classification Specialist Bridget Fahey told the Times, “Each of these 23 species represents a permanent loss to our nation’s natural heritage and to global biodiversity. And it’s a sobering reminder that extinction is a consequence of human-caused environmental change.”

Wildlife experts cite loss of habitat, usually due to human activities, as the top driver of extinction of species. Farming, logging, mining and damming take habitat from animals, while pollution and poaching drive down numbers as well.  

U.S. government scientists do not declare extinctions casually. It often takes decades of fruitless searching. About half of the species in this group were already considered extinct by the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature, the global authority on the status of animals and plants.  

Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tend to move more slowly, in part because it is working through a backlog, but also to exhaust all efforts to follow up reports of sightings.

In the case of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports of both sightings of the large, colorful red, white and black bird with a large beak and head feathers, and of hearing its distinctive call in the woods.  

The U.S. broadcaster National Public Radio reports the IUCN is not putting the bird on its extinction list because they believe it may still exist in parts of Cuba.

Some information in this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters news organizations.
…

A day after giving their assessments of the end of the war in Afghanistan and future terror threats that may emanate from the country, the top U.S. military officials return Wednesday to Capitol Hill to testify before another congressional panel about the conclusion of the two-decade mission. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, and General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, are all due to appear before the House Armed Services Committee. 

At a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, lawmakers both praised the decision to end the country’s longest war and condemned its final days as a debacle.

Austin defended the evacuation, saying that while not perfect it went as smoothly as possible and that no other military could have done better. 

“It was the largest airlift conducted in U.S. history, and it was executed in just 17 days,” he told committee members. ”We planned to evacuate between 70,000 and 80,000 people. They evacuated more than 124,000.” 

“It was a logistical success but a strategic failure,” Milley, the nation’s top-ranking military officer, told lawmakers of America’s final days in Kabul, which saw the evacuation of 124,000 people, including about 6,000 Americans. 

Milley said the final outcome, with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, “is a cumulative effect of 20 years, not 20 days.” 

He also warned of the potential threat from terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS Khorasan or ISIS-K. IS Khorasan is an Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic State extremist group. 

McKenzie cited the 2020 Doha agreement, which set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying it “had a profound psychological effect” on Afghan forces and may have hastened their collapse. 

“The Taliban were heartened by what they saw happen at Doha and what followed and our eventual decision to get out by a certain date,” McKenzie said. “I think the Afghans were very weakened by that morally and spiritually.” 
…

America’s top military officer has described the Afghanistan evacuation as “a logistical success but a strategic failure.” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at a contentious Senate hearing on the U.S. military’s withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has the details.

Produced by: Mary Cieslak
…

If Congress fails to act, the U.S. government’s authority to continue spending money will expire at midnight on Thursday, forcing more than 1 million federal workers and an untold number of contractors to stop working. Thousands more will be expected to continue working without clarity about precisely when they will be paid. 

“The stakes are whether the United States government is able to answer the many challenges that we face as a country,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, an advocacy group for improved federal government.

And once the government shuts down, Stier said, restarting it isn’t like flipping a switch. 

“This is a multitrillion-dollar, very complex entity,” he told VOA. “And so, turning it off and turning it back on actually takes a ton of energy and a bunch of time. So, it is highly costly — billions of dollars costly — when you have a shutdown, even if it’s not for a very long period of time.” 

History of shutdowns 

Since 1980, the federal government has shut down because of a lack of funding 21 different times. 

This would be the first government shutdown of President Joe Biden’s term in office. Going back to Jimmy Carter’s term in office from 1977 to 1981, every U.S. president except for George W. Bush has experienced at least one such funding crisis, though the majority have lasted only a few days and several have been for a few hours. 

The last time the government shut down was in 2018, when a dispute between then-President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over his proposal to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico resulted in a record-setting 35-day partial closure that stretched into January 2019. 

Not a full shutdown 

The term “government shutdown” is something of a misnomer. Under existing rules, when the government runs out of funding, federal agencies are required to furlough all “nonessential” employees. Doctors and nurses at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs will still be allowed to go to work. So will Transportation Security Agency officers, active duty members of the military and most federal law enforcement officers. 

But employees deemed essential will still not be paid until the shutdown is resolved. 

In a sign of the degree to which government shutdowns have been normalized as just part of how Washington does business, Trump in 2019 signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, which guarantees that federal workers, essential and nonessential, receive the back pay they missed during the duration of any future government shutdowns. 

However, Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that a promise of getting paid eventually is cold comfort to a federal worker unable to pay their rent. 

“So many of our members live paycheck to paycheck,” Kelley told VOA. “Unless a creditor or landlord agrees to work with them, they’re going to be in a terrible situation.” 

If financial distress winds up affecting a furloughed employee’s credit rating, Kelley said, the damage can extend to their careers. “A lot of security clearances depend on your credit rating,” Kelley said, meaning that workers whose credit suffers could lose their jobs. 

What to expect 

In past shutdowns, the most publicly visible effects were the closure of national parks and the museums near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Those would also likely happen this time around. But it’s beneath the surface where shutdowns cause real turmoil. 

About 60% of government employees would be barred from working during a shutdown, which means that any number of seemingly mundane procedures would stop happening. New passport applications wouldn’t be processed; small business loans wouldn’t be approved; requests for federal retirement benefits would stop moving through the system. 

Most Americans would not be immediately affected by stalled government activity. But those who are — a person waiting for a passport, a small-business owner waiting for funding, a retiree needing income — could face anything from inconvenience to significant economic injury. 

Employees of government contractors are particularly vulnerable. For example, Congress has contracts with private firms to supply the workers who provide food service on Capitol Hill and clean congressional offices. During a shutdown, those workers cannot work, and because they are paid an hourly wage rather than a salary, they rarely recover those lost wages. 

Economic damage is limited and localized 

The 35-day shutdown during the Trump administration was only partial, because before it began, Congress had passed funding measures for some agencies, most notably the Department of Defense.

Nevertheless, the Congressional Budget Office later estimated that the shutdown had “delayed approximately $18 billion in federal discretionary spending for compensation and purchases of goods and services, and suspended some federal services.”

The overall impact on GDP was minor, the CBO found. During the shutdown and immediately following it, economic activity slumped noticeably, but much of that “lost” productivity was recouped later in the year. On balance, the CBO said that the 35-day shutdown cut 2019 GDP in the U.S. by just 0.02% 

However, the CBO noted, the damage from the shutdown was not equally distributed.

“Underlying those effects on the overall economy are much more significant effects on individual businesses and workers,” the agency found. “Among those who experienced the largest and most direct negative effects are federal workers who faced delayed compensation and private-sector entities that lost business. Some of those private-sector entities will never recoup that lost income.” 

‘Completely irresponsible’ 

Kelley, of the American Federation of Government Employees, pointed out that it is unprecedented for the government to be shut down in the midst of a pandemic, calling it “completely irresponsible” to hobble agencies battling COVID-19 with staff shortages. 

“Shutting down the government at this critical juncture, in this fight against the dangerous delta variant (of the COVID-19 virus) is simply unthinkable,” he said. 

Stier, whose organization prepared detailed guidance for government agencies navigating shutdowns, said all that guidance had to be rewritten to reflect employees working remotely, and that new measures remain untested. 

 
…

Twenty years of American blood and treasure spent in Afghanistan was reduced Tuesday to about six hours of testimony in the United States Senate, with the nation’s top military officer admitting that the war amounted to a “strategic failure” that in the end, perhaps, could never have been won.

The hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee with U.S. President Joe Biden’s top military officials saw a staunch defense of the efforts and sacrifices of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with lawmakers both praising the decision to end the country’s longest war and condemning its final days as a debacle. 

In between, it featured sobering assessments of what, if anything, could have been done differently. 

“It was a logistical success but a strategic failure,” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s top-ranking military officer, told lawmakers of America’s final days in Kabul, which saw the evacuation of 124,000 people, including about 6,000 Americans. 

“Outcomes in a war like this, an outcome that is a strategic failure — the enemy is in charge in Kabul; there’s no way else to describe that — that outcome is a cumulative effect of 20 years, not 20 days,” Milley added. 

Pressed on whether Washington could have done anything differently to prevent the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan from crumbling and stop the Taliban takeover, Milley was blunt. 

“If you kept advisers there, kept money following, etc., then we could probably have sustained them for a lengthy or indefinite period of time,” he said of the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces. 

“If you would have had a different result at the end of the day, that’s a different question,” Milley added. “I think the end state probably would have been the same no matter when you did it.” 

Testifying alongside Milley, General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said that in hindsight, the 2020 Doha agreement, which paved the way for the U.S. exit, “had a profound psychological effect” on the Afghan forces and may have hastened their collapse.

“The Taliban were heartened by what they saw happen at Doha and what followed and our eventual decision to get out by a certain date,” McKenzie said. “I think the Afghans were very weakened by that morally and spiritually.” 

Republican anger 

Such somber assessments did little to mollify some lawmakers, with at least two demanding the resignations of Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the way the U.S. ultimately left. 

“Our exit from Afghanistan was a disaster,” said Nebraska Republican Senator Deb Fischer. 

Another Republican, Senator Joni Ernst, called the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan “haphazard.” She pointed to the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and close to 170 Afghans from a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport days before the last military plane took off. 

“The loss of our service members and abandonment of Americans and Afghan allies last month was an unforced, disgraceful humiliation that didn’t have to happen,” Ernst said. 

Some Democrats, however, praised Biden and his administration for finally ending the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. 

“It took guts, and it was the right thing to do, and it should have been done earlier,” Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said. 

Others scolded their Republican colleagues. 

“Anyone who says the last few months were a failure but everything before that was great clearly hasn’t been paying attention,” said Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren. 

But most of the outrage was saved for the White House, with Republican lawmakers questioning the president’s decision-making, and some accusing him of misleading the American public when he told ABC news last month that his top advisers did not recommend keeping about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. 

“No, they didn’t,” Biden said at the time. “It was split.” 

On Tuesday, both Milley and CENTCOM’s McKenzie told lawmakers that in the early days of Biden’s presidency, they advised keeping 2,500 to 3,500 troops in Afghanistan because the Taliban had not met their commitments under the 2020 Doha agreement. 

“My view is that 2,500 was an appropriate number to remain and that if we went below that number, in fact, we would probably witness a collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan military,” McKenzie said. 

Cost of staying 

At the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki defended Biden and the decision to end the war in Afghanistan. 

“There was a range of viewpoints, as evidenced by their testimony today, that were presented to the president, that were presented to his national security team, as would be expected, as he asked for,” she said.

“It was also clear to him that that would not be a long-standing recommendation, that there would need to be an escalation, an increase in troop numbers,” she said. “It would also mean war with the Taliban, and it would also mean the potential loss of casualties. The president was just not willing to make that decision.” 

Milley also cautioned that staying in Afghanistan once the U.S.-backed government had collapsed could have been done, but at a cost. 

“On the first of September, we were going to go to war again with the Taliban. Of that there was no doubt,” he told lawmakers, saying it would have required the U.S. to send in as many as another 25,000 troops. 

“We would have had to reseize Bagram (Airfield). We would have had to clear Kabul of 6,000 Taliban,” Milley said. “That would have resulted in significant casualties on the U.S. side, and it would have placed American citizens that are still there at greater risk.” 

Additionally, Milley and the other U.S. defense officials told lawmakers that even with troops and all but about 100 U.S. citizens out of Afghanistan and out of harm’s way, dangers would remain from terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS Khorasan or ISIS-K. 

“A reconstituted al-Qaida or ISIS with aspirations to attack the United States is a very real possibility,” Milley warned lawmakers, adding that the exact nature of the threat might not be evident for months or years. 

“They’re gathering their strength,” CENTCOM’s General McKenzie said of the threat from IS Khorasan, thought to have about 2,000 fighters now roaming Afghanistan.

“We have yet to see how it’s going to manifest itself,” McKenzie said. “We know with certainty that they do aspire to attack us in our homeland.” 

The U.S. first sent troops into Afghanistan to pursue al-Qaida, after the militant group used the country to plan the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. 

Milley and McKenzie said that despite the Taliban’s commitments under the terms of the Doha agreement, the group had yet to sever its long-standing ties with al-Qaida. 

“I think al-Qaida is at war with the United States, still,” Milley said. 

No going back 

For his part, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that the Pentagon remains focused on the threat but will use its over-the-horizon strike capabilities to target al-Qaida and IS Khorasan as needed. 

“We’ve not been tasked to construct any plans to go back,” Austin said. 

Austin also defended the evacuation, telling lawmakers that it went as smoothly as possible, and that no other military in the world could have done any better.  

“It was the largest airlift conducted in U.S. history, and it was executed in just 17 days,” he told committee members. ”We planned to evacuate between 70,000 and 80,000 people. They evacuated more than 124,000.”  

“Was it perfect? Of course not,” Austin added, describing as “difficult” the first two days of the airlift, when huge crowds had rushed to the airport following the Taliban’s unexpectedly swift takeover.  

“We moved so many people so quickly out of Kabul that we ran into capacity and screening problems at intermediate staging bases outside of Afghanistan,” he said.  

But some lawmakers, such as the committee’s top Republican, Senator Jim Inhofe, were unconvinced. 

“We all witnessed a horror of the president’s own making,” Inhofe said, accusing the Biden administration of failing to create a plan to counter the terror threats likely to emerge in Afghanistan with the Taliban in control.  

“The terrorist threat to American families is rising significantly,” the senator said. “While our ability to deal with these threats has declined decidedly.” 

Austin, Milley and McKenzie are all due to appear again Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee.  

 
…

The top U.S. military officer told Congress on Tuesday that two calls to his Chinese counterpart in the last months of the Trump administration were made openly and in response to legitimate concerns. 

He said key officials in the administration of former President Donald Trump knew about the calls, in which he assured China that Trump had no intention of launching an attack against it in the waning weeks of his White House tenure. 

Some Republican lawmakers have called on President Joe Biden to fire Army General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for what they characterized as a violation of the long-standing U.S. tradition of civilian control of the military. 

But Milley defended the calls, one on October 30 and one on January 8, saying he was responding to “concerning intelligence” that China was worried about a U.S. attack. 

“I know, I am certain, that President Trump did not intend to attack the Chinese and it was my directed responsibility to convey presidential orders and intent,” Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee, referring to his calls to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army. 

“My task at that time was to de-escalate,” he said. “My message again was consistent: Stay calm, steady, and de-escalate. We are not going to attack you.” 

The calls were first disclosed in the recently released book “Peril” by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, an account of the final weeks of Trump’s presidency.

After the disclosure, Trump called the Joint Chiefs chairman “a complete nutjob” and said Milley “never told me about calls being made to China.” 

But Milley said the first call was directed by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, while 11 people were present for the second call and that he later informed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows of it. 

Milley said the second call, which occurred two days after hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent lawmakers from certifying that Biden had defeated Trump in last November’s election, came at the request of the Chinese and was coordinated with the office of then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller. 

Milley said he was committed to civilian control of the U.S. military. 

“Civilian control of the military is a bedrock principle essential to the health of this republic,” Milley testified, adding, “And I’m committed to ensuring that the military stays clear of domestic politics.”

 
…

The U.S. government is likely to run out of money to pay its bills on October 18 if the country’s debt ceiling is not raised, Treasury chief Janet Yellen warned congressional leaders on Tuesday.

She said that absent a congressional vote to lift the country’s debt ceiling, either to a specific amount or to some extended date to allow continued borrowing, Treasury officials expect the country “would be left with very limited resources that would be quickly depleted” after the next three weeks.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer later tried but failed to win unanimous support to hold a simple majority vote in the 100-member chamber to raise the debt ceiling rather than the 60-vote threshold needed for most major legislation.

But Republicans blocked the new effort to raise the borrowing limit, just as on Monday they defeated legislation that also would have averted a partial government shutdown starting on Friday.

The national government’s debt now stands at $28.4 trillion, but the U.S., virtually alone among governments throughout the world, has for decades imposed limits on its borrowing or occasionally lifted the debt ceiling until a certain date.

Congress has always raised the debt ceiling or lifted it entirely for a period of time to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its debts, averting a worldwide financial crisis spawned by the biggest global economy.

But now the country is facing a new cash crunch without congressional approval for more borrowing.

Long-term government borrowing is designed to pay for measures already approved over the years by Congress, including aid supported by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the last year to help the U.S. economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

But Senate Republicans on Monday blocked the Democratic-supported measure to raise the debt ceiling, contending that a new debt limit would allow for passage of spending Republicans oppose, as much as $3.5 trillion that President Joe Biden and many congressional Democrats support to provide the biggest expansion of U.S. social safety net programs since the 1960s.

In her letter to congressional leaders, Yellen said the government’s daily cash flow varies widely, from nearly $50 billion a day over the last year to as much as $300 billion.

“As a result, it is important to remember that estimates regarding how long our remaining extraordinary measures and cash may last can unpredictably shift forward or backward,” she said. “This uncertainty underscores the critical importance of not waiting to raise or suspend the debt limit.”

“The full faith and credit of the United States should not be put at risk,” she said.

Yellen said that past debt limit impasses have shown “that waiting until the last minute can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States for years to come. Failure to act promptly could also result in substantial disruptions to financial markets, as heightened uncertainty can exacerbate volatility and erode investor confidence.”

The legislation rejected by Senate Republicans on Monday would also have averted a partial government shutdown on Friday, October 1, the start of a new fiscal year for the national government.

Republicans say they will support stand-alone legislation to keep the government operating into December while budget negotiations continue, but not a measure combining it with an increase in the debt ceiling. That could force the narrow Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress to approve the debt ceiling increase on their own without Republican support.

“We are not willing to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling while they write a reckless taxing and spending spree of historic proportions behind closed doors,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the Senate.

Democrats say some of the nation’s debt was incurred during the administration of President Donald Trump because of large tax cuts he supported. Historically, both parties have voted to raise the limit to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debts.  

Schumer said that the Republican action is “one of the most reckless and irresponsible votes I have seen take place in the Senate” and that “the Republican Party has solidified itself as the party of default.”

In addition to debate on the debt ceiling, Congress is in the midst of contentious discussions on the Democrats’ plan for the social safety net spending, with no Republicans supporting it.

There is more bipartisan support for a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to fix the country’s deteriorating roads and bridges and expand broadband internet service throughout the country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a Thursday vote on the legislation, which the Senate has already approved.
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