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      Almost 50,000 Wisconsin voters just told Biden to stop the Gaza war. Will he listen? | Malaika Jabali

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      This Tuesday, more than 48,000 people defied cold, rainy weather to register protest votes in the Wisconsin Democratic primary against the Biden administration’s unrelenting support for Israel’s war on Gaza.In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by an excruciatingly narrow margin of victory of about 21,000 votes. As of Wednesday afternoon, Wisconsin’s “uninstructed” vote tally – the equivalent of the “uncommitted” campaign that Arab Americans launched in Michigan – was 48,093 votes, more than twice Biden’s 2020 win margin.The protest vote in Wisconsin has made clear that this campaign is bigger than Biden. The many people calling for a ceasefire aren’t merely swing voters or bitter castoffs who have long left the party. Many involved in the uncommitted campaigns have, until now, been committed Democrats. But they fear a critical mass of voters may permanently leave the Democratic party if Biden and other leaders don’t implement a ceasefire in Gaza, and quickly. For some voters, even that may be too little, too late.Francesca Hong worked in hospitality before she became a Wisconsin state representative in 2020. “I’ve always voted for Democrats, since I was eligible to vote when I was 18,” she told me a day after the Wisconsin primary.Hong was one of the first elected officials to endorse the “uninstructed” campaign and has been critical of Biden financing the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. Although the president has promised humanitarian aid to Gaza – including in a statement on Tuesday in the wake of an Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers – he continues to fund Israel’s weapons. At least twice, Biden has bypassed Congress to do so, while nearly 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in just six months in Israel’s relentless attacks.Hong, a woman of color from a working-class, immigrant family with no political background, rose through the ranks in the restaurant industry to become an executive chef. A materialized version of the American dream, she is precisely the sort of person that the Democratic party purports to represent. Yet she said she sometimes feels betrayed and “dismissed” by the party: “This administration is prioritizing some lives over others, and leaders of color are having to go back to their communities with the ‘lesser of two evils’, again.”People “seeing a genocide unfold on social media on their phones has made them even more disillusioned about the political process”, Hong said. “I think that in turn makes them less likely to vote for Democrats.” They feel “betrayed by a party and an administration that they thought was supposed to stand for something different, was supposed to stand for democracy and justice,” she added.Hong, the only Asian American in the Wisconsin state legislature, hopes that Tuesday’s results will get state Democratic leaders to listen to their party’s progressive faction, as party leaders throughout the country continue to appeal to conservatives.Wisconsin state representatives like Ryan Clancy expressed frustration that the party continues to “court imaginary voters”, referencing the conservative voters Democratic leaders believe they can win over.The party’s strategy seems to be that if it is “just moderate enough or timid enough, that somehow, magically, these largely nonexistent Republican [swing] voters will cross over the aisle and vote with them”, Clancy told me a day before the primary.While insurgent campaigns against the Democratic “establishment” are getting less attention this election season, a tectonic shift appears to be happening whether the party wants to acknowledge it or not. The anti-war vote, and an inadequate response to that movement at multiple levels of government beyond the White House, could permanently drive away some of the party’s base: progressive and younger voters. Many progressive voters have no interest in showing up purely to vote against Trump; unless they have a Democrat they really believe in, they’ll simply stay home.Clancy has been loyal to the Democratic party since 2011 when he got involved in politics as a Democratic delegate. He has noticed a shift in voters from younger generations, who largely voted for Biden in 2020 before becoming more repelled by the Democratic party’s politics. “I’m hearing [from] a ton of people, especially younger folks – I’m a father of five, three of my kids are now at voting age – [who] cannot imagine bringing themselves to vote for somebody who is complicit in genocide,” he said.Clancy thinks that Biden is “way out of step with both his own party and Americans generally”. Sixty-eight percent of likely voters under 45, regardless of party, said they support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, while 77% of Democrats support it, according to a February survey by Data for Progress. Even a majority of Republicans favor a ceasefire, according to an Institute for Social Policy and Understanding poll of religious groups in February.Democrats, according to Gallup, are “in a weaker position than they have been in any recent election year”, as independents continue to outnumber those who consider themselves either Democrats or Republicans. While the party may scoff at progressives, they can’t afford to lose any more of those votes, especially in critical swing states where victories can be decided by a fraction of a percent.“Nobody wants fascism in November,” Hong shared. And that’s precisely why Democrats in swing states urge Biden to shift course in Gaza if they want any chance to win the White House, this election season and beyond.
      Malaika Jabali is a 2024 New America fellow, journalist and author of It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On More

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      AOC and Sanders aim to place public housing at center of Green New Deal

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      With a sweeping legislative proposal, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders are attempting to place public housing at the center of the green energy transition, tackling the twin crises of global warming and soaring housing costs.“Public housing should be the gold standard for affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an email. “This bill is how we ensure that.”The Green New Deal for Public Housing aims to decarbonize all of the nation’s public housing units – and build more of them – with an investment of between $162bn and $234bn over the next decade. In doing so, it would avert 5.7m tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing 1.26m cars from US roads each year, while creating jobs and public health benefits.The proposal is co-sponsored by a slew of other progressive lawmakers and supported by dozens of environmental groups, housing justice organizations and labor unions.“We are going to provide decent-quality, affordable housing for millions of Americans, and at the same time, we’re going to create good-paying union jobs,” said Sanders at a Thursday press conference. “That is a win, win, win situation.”It is not likely to pass, but supporters say it can help build support for the vision.The bill’s reintroduction comes as the nation faces an unprecedented shortage of affordable housing. In 2022, a record half of US renters spent more than 30% of their incomes on rent, a January report from Harvard University found – and more than half of these “rent-burdened” Americans gave more than 50% of their earnings to the landlord.Public housing remains an affordable option that 1.7 million Americans rely on. But amid a chronic lack of investment, it is often allowed to fall into disrepair, creating a maintenance backlog of $70bn.In the absence of funds to mend these units, they are often demolished or privatized instead. As a result, the US public housing stock shrunk from 1.2m units to just over 900,000 between 2009 and 2022 – a 25% decline – according to an analysis from the progressive thinktank Climate and Community Project, which informed the policy proposal.Instead of allowing the nation’s public housing stock to wither away, the bill seeks to transform it. Units would not only be repaired and freed of contaminants like lead and mold, but also made efficient and green.Each would be insulated and weatherized to conserve energy, as well as outfitted with fossil fuel-free electric appliances. Renewable energy would be installed on-site. And developments would be made climate-resilient with increased green space and decreased paved areas, which can help absorb heat and soak up water during heavy rains.In addition to slashing greenhouse gas pollution, the bill would come with “major health and comfort benefits”, said Kira McDonald, a researcher at Climate and Community Project who co-authored the report.Removing fossil fuel-powered appliances would lower air pollution and therefore improve residents’ respiratory health. And insulation and heat pumps could cut energy bills, while making homes easier to keep at a comfortable temperature amid extreme weather.The Green New Deal for Public Housing would not only improve the nation’s existing public units, but also “finally help build more”, said Ocasio-Cortez. Currently, the 1998 Faircloth Amendment in effect prevents the federal government from funding new public housing, but the proposal would immediately repeal that policy in order to erect more state-of-the-art, green units.The policy would benefit the US’s most vulnerable residents. Public housing residents are disproportionately likely to be people of color, and 24% of public housing residents are living with a disability.“The Green New Deal for Public Housing is going to change the game for those of us and our neighbors who are being hit hardest by the climate crisis,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.The policy also would have knock-on effects for the entire nation, including by spurring the creation of about 280,000 jobs over a decade. The bill includes language to ensure those jobs are all unionized.It could also help create a supply of efficient technologies for all residents. Last year, New York City’s public housing authority invited manufacturers to compete for a contract to create and install at least 10,000 induction stoves in New York City Housing Authority (Nycha) buildings, specifically calling for apartment-sized models that do not require electrical upgrades. The winning model will become available on the market for all US residents.“Those models are available elsewhere, but not in the US because producers basically don’t see that there is a strong enough market,” said McDonald. “This can change that.”Nycha has launched a similar program to bring small heat pumps on to the US market, and back in the 1990s put out a call for small, energy-efficient refrigerators that helped shape the green fridge market.“There are gaps in green building technology and green appliance markets in the US,” said McDonald. “Public housing can help fill them … so this policy is also a form of green industrial policy.”Public housing is the only form of US housing whose affordability does not rely “solely on the market and solely on billionaires”, Ocasio-Cortez said at Thursday’s press conference.Jasmine Sanchez, a housing advocate who lives in a Nycha development, said many public housing residents face the “constant threat of privatization” and often feel left behind by the US government.“Everyone deserves to be invested in and everyone deserves to live threat free,” she said.Though the bill is not expected to pass, Climate and Community Project says support to expand and improve public housing is growing. In 2021, the report notes, the House voted to repeal the Faircloth Amendment and most Democratic lawmakers supported including $60bn for public housing in the spending package that later became the Inflation Reduction Act, though both measures ultimately failed to pass.“While just a couple of senators ultimately blocked these reforms, it was clear that there is already strong support for saving public housing that advocates can build on,” the report says.The policy represents a “visionary future that will uplift everyone”, said Levin of Green New Deal Network.“By lifting up the world we need,” he said, “we are building toward that vision”. More

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      US repeatedly warned Russia ahead of Moscow attack, White House says

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      The US repeatedly alerted Russia that extremists were planning to attack large gatherings in Moscow ahead of last week’s concert hall attack that claimed more than 140 lives, the White House has said.The national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said on Thursday that US officials passed on warnings – including one in writing – and dismissed Russian allegations that Ukraine was involved as “nonsense”.“It is abundantly clear that Isis [Islamic State] was solely responsible for the horrific attack in Moscow last week,” he said. “In fact, the United States tried to help prevent this terrorist attack and the Kremlin knows this.”Kirby spoke shortly after Russia’s investigative committee said it had uncovered evidence that the four gunmen who carried out last Friday’s attack were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists” and had received cash and cryptocurrency from Ukraine.“As a result of work with the detained terrorists, examination of the technical devices seized from them and analysis of information on financial transactions, evidence of their links with Ukrainian nationalists has been obtained,” Russia’s investigative committee said on Thursday.It alleged the suspects had received “significant amounts of money and cryptocurrency from Ukraine” and said another man “involved in financing the terrorists” had been identified and detained.“Investigators will ask the court to remand him in custody,” it said.Kirby described the Russian allegations of Ukrainian involvement as “nonsense and propaganda”.Kirby said that the US provided several advance warnings to Russian authorities of extremist attacks on concerts and large gatherings in Moscow, including in writing on 7 March at 11.15am.The United States passed “following normal procedures and through established channels that have been employed many times previously … a warning in writing to Russian security services”, Kirby said.The four suspected assailants appeared in a Moscow courtroom on Sunday with bruises and cuts on their swollen faces. All four are from Tajikistan.Russia’s FSB security service said it arrested the gunmen while they were trying to flee to Ukraine, a claim seemingly disputed by the Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who said they were headed for his country first.Islamic State jihadists have said several times since Friday that they were responsible, and IS-affiliated media channels have published graphic videos of the gunmen inside the venue.Vladimir Putin has not visited the scene of the massacre or publicly met any victims.“If any contacts are necessary, we will inform you accordingly,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday, when asked if Putin planned to meet family members of the dead.He also said Putin did not plan to visit Crocus City Hall, where rescuers had for the past week been searching the rubble for bodies.“In these days it would be completely inappropriate to carry out any fact-finding trips, because this would simply interfere with the work,” he said. More

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      State department official’s resignation highlights rifts over US Gaza policy

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      A human rights official has resigned from the US state department over Gaza saying the Biden administration is flouting US law by continuing to arm Israel, and is hushing up evidence that the US had seen on Israeli human rights abuses.Annelle Sheline, said she had hoped to have an influence on policy by staying at her post in the Near Eastern section of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, taking part in discussions, signing dissent cables and raising her concerns with her supervisor. But she had lost confidence she could do anything that would affect the flow of US arms to Israel.“The fundamental reason was – I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,” Sheline told the Guardian. “I have a young daughter. She’s not yet two, but if some day in the future, she is learning about this and knows that I was at the state department and she asked me [about it] – I want to be able to tell her that I did what I could.”Sheline is only the second state department official to resign over US policy on the Gaza war (another official left the education department over the issue), but she said that many of her colleagues had told her they would resign if they could afford to lose their job, and had urged her to speak out about her reasons for quitting, rather than to leave quietly.View image in fullscreenThe 38-year-old, who studied the foreign policy of Arab governments for her doctorate, said the state department was aware of plenty of evidence that Israel was violating international law in its conduct of the Gaza war, and that the Biden administration was violating US law by continuing to supply weapons.She pointed in particular to the Leahy laws, which forbid assistance to foreign military units implicated in atrocities, and section 620 (I) of the Foreign Assistance Act, which states that no assistance should be given to any government which “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.On Monday, the state department said it had received assurances from Israel officials and “not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law”. But Sheline said: “The law is clear here and we do have evidence. But the specifics are just not being followed.”The state department has said it is reviewing evidence of civilian harm under a mechanism established by the Biden administration last year, weeks before the Gaza war broke out, but Sheline said the results of those investigations would only be made public when the White House wanted them to be.“There are a lot of people working on this at State but at the end of the day, the public policy does have to be something that the White House signs off on,” Sheline said. “Until the White House is ready to take a different line, some of the other things happening in State are just not going to come out.”She said she believed administration policy was being driven by domestic political considerations, but argued that domestic politics were shifting on the issue, pointing to the significant “uncommitted” protest vote in the Democratic presidential primary election, and suggested that the Biden administration had misjudged the mood.“I do think the president’s view of Israel is deeply influenced by a generational divide,” she said. “I think it’s taken this administration a long time to realise that the previous political calculus on this, in terms of big donors, in terms of the Israel lobby, … is seeing a shift.”On Wednesday, Gallup published a new poll showing a significant drop in American public support for Israel’s conduct of the war, from 50% in November to 36% now, with 55% disapproving of Israel’s actions.Sheline credited this shift for helping lead to the US abstention on a UN security council resolution on Monday, allowing it to pass after the US vetoed three earlier draft texts over the nearly six months since the war started.“I am glad to see that slight shift, but it hasn’t really made any difference to the people in Gaza yet,” Sheline said. “So it’s really too little, too late.“Not only are these policies devastating the people of Gaza, but I think they’re also devastating the US image in the world,” she argued. “This administration came in promising to rebuild American diplomacy and America’s moral leadership after the Trump administration, but so many of these issues that the administration said were so important – including human rights – seem to be less important to this administration than the US-Israel relationship.” More

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      Netanyahu has been spoiling for a fight with the US. He may not survive this one | Alon Pinkas

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      How do you gaslight an entire nation about a war and then try to do the same to a superpower that is your ally? And how do you turn a just war into global isolation and widespread condemnation? Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. He has the patent.Netanyahu has been deliberately and intently seeking a confrontation with the US ever since late October. The UN security council resolution 2728, demanding an “immediate ceasefire”, is just the latest pretext for this premeditated showdown. This may sound counterintuitive and imprudent to you, given that the two countries are close allies, given Israel’s heavy reliance on US military aid and its diplomatic umbrella, and particularly given President Biden’s sweeping and unwavering support for Israel since the 7 October catastrophe.But Netanyahu has two reasons to instigate such a confrontation. The first is pure gaslighting on a grand scale. He concocted a narrative that supposedly explains the war’s context and consequently absolves him from the responsibility and accountability he persistently refuses to assume. It also distracts from his stated policy of imploring Qatar to funnel more funds to Gaza to strengthen Hamas, all in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and render any political negotiations impossible.According to this narrative, 7 October was simply a debacle that could have been averted had the Israel Defense Forces and Shabak intelligence not failed. The bigger problem now, according to Netanyahu, is the possibility of a Palestinian state that the world, especially the US, has been trying to impose on Israel since the attack. According to this narrative, only a heroic Netanyahu can stand up to the US, defy an American president and prevent this travesty.Now of course it is impossible that a new Palestinian state could be “imposed” from outside. But this framing allows Netanyahu to placate his rightwing extremist coalition and partners, who have long opposed any form of Palestinian statehood. And it lets him make conflict with the US a focal point, rather than his own failures. It’s not about the Louis XIV wannabe prime minister. It never is.The second reason is more current and practical: the confrontation is about setting up Biden as the scapegoat for Netanyahu’s failure to achieve “total victory” or “the eradication of Hamas”, two fortune cookie-type slogans that he spews regularly.The security council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, adopted by 14 members with the US abstaining, puts Israel on a double collision course: with the UN security council but more critically, with the US. Netanyahu’s sanctimonious tantrums about how “surprised” he was and how the US abstention is a departure from policy that would prevent victory is mendacious. He was warned repeatedly by the Biden administration that this would be an inevitable outcome if he persisted with his endless recalcitrance, defiance and effective refusal to engage with the US, ostensibly Israel’s staunch ally and protector.When you ignore US requests, dismiss the president’s well-intentioned advice, inundate the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, with duplicitous spin, casually deride US plans and ideas for a reconfigured region, show crude intransigence by refusing to present a credible and coherent vision for postwar Gaza, hold a video call with Republican senators (a group that Netanyahu feels he is a life member of) and actively pursue an open confrontation with the administration, there’s a price to pay. Most recently, Blinken’s state department has warned Israel that it is increasingly isolated and is in danger of inflicting “generational damage” to its reputation and image.Had Israel seriously engaged with the US on any of the above issues, without necessarily agreeing to everything, it would have prevented this rift. The US has one long-running fundamental contention with Israel: the lack of a coherent political objective for the war, with which military means must be aligned. The US inquired time after time about Israel’s goals and got nothing but “topple Hamas”, which is a worthy goal, but does not address the “day after”.In respect of the security council, Israel will conveniently explain to itself that the resolution is not a big deal, that there is no imminent threat of sanctions and anyway, the UN was always and remains anti-Israeli. Perhaps. But that’s not the point. The resolution puts Israel in a very unpleasant and precarious place to be for a country, let alone a democracy and a US ally. The more critical and consequential arena is US-Israel relations. Their deterioration under Netanyahu has been well documented over the past year, but the security council resolution represents a new low.Since around January time, the US has negatively revised its assessment of Israel under Netanyahu. He does not behave as an ally, he has accrued a debilitating credibility deficit over the years on a multitude of issues, and he has intentionally failed to come up with a plan for postwar Gaza – to the point where he is now seriously suspected in Washington of prolonging the war for his own political survival antics. The current showdown over the security council resolution widens the rift to the point that it is impossible to see how the trajectory will change as long as Netanyahu is in power.At the moment, the US has three points of disagreement with Israel regarding the details of the prosecution of the war: the notion that Israel is impeding humanitarian aid; the number of civilian non-combatant deaths; and a possible military invasion of Rafah, on the southern tip of Gaza. These differences could have been resolved had Netanyahu and Biden had a working, honest and good-faith relationship. They do not. In fact, Netanyahu has a track record of confrontations and frequent spats with US administrations, from George HW Bush through to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and now Biden. His – unsuccessful, it must be added – meddling in US politics is also a familiar trait of his since the 1990s.The current state of relations is close to an inflection point, and could go in one of two directions: either Netanyahu is ousted or leaves or loses an election, or the US will be convinced that the bilateral ecosystem has faltered and warrants a major reassessment of relations. Under Netanyahu, Israel has reached the point at which its very value as an ally is being questioned. It took the US some time, but it finally seems to realise a simple fact: Israel may be an ally, but Netanyahu most certainly is not.
      Alon Pinkas served as Israel’s consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004. He is now a columnist for Haaretz
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Kamala Harris says Israel assault on Rafah ‘would be a huge mistake’

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      Senior US Democrats on Sunday increased pressure on Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon a planned offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering.Two days after a similar call by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was rejected by the Israeli leader, vice-president Kamala Harris said that the Joe Biden White House was “ruling out nothing” in terms of consequences if Netanyahu moves ahead with the assault.Harris said that Washington had been “very clear in terms of our perspective on whether or not that should happen”.“Any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said on ABC’s This Week. “I have studied the maps – there’s nowhere for those folks to go. And we’re looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there.”Harris declined to say if she, like Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, the most senior politician of the Jewish faith in the US, believed that Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace. But she said: “We’ve been very clear that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.“We have been very clear that Israel and the Israeli people and Palestinians are entitled to an equal amount of security and dignity.”Her remarks came as political figure from progressive elements of the Democratic political established added their voices to the growing opposition to the humanitarian costs of Israel’s five-month military campaign on the Palestinian territory.That air and ground campaign began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing more than 1,100 and taking hostage. The offensive has killed more than 30,000 people and pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.On Friday, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians and called on the US to suspend military aid to Israel.She went further Sunday, saying that Israel had “crossed the threshold of intent” in blocking humanitarian aid from reaching starving Gazans.“Multiple governments [and other entities] have stated themselves plainly that the Israeli government and leaders in the Israeli government are intentionally denying, blocking and slow-walking this aid and are precipitating a mass famine,” she told ABC News.“It is horrific. What we are seeing here, I think, with a forced famine, is beyond our ability to deny or explain away. There is no targeting of Hamas in precipitating a mass famine of a million people, half of whom are children.”Netanyahu responded to US pressure on Friday by issuing a statement saying that he told Blinken there was no way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah.“And I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the US, but if we have to – we will do it alone,” Netanyahu said.Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday dismissed Netanyahu’s position, saying: “The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves.“We are talking about collective punishment, which is unjustifiable.”Separately on Sunday, senator Ralph Warnock of Georgia – a key Black Democrat in Biden’s political coalition for re-election – was asked by CBS’s Face the Nation why the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had become a key issue for African American voters amid a broader discussion around US values.“We in the African American community understand human struggle. We know it when we see it,” Warnock said. While the US cannot forget or turn away from the 7 October attack by Hamas, he said, “we cannot turn away from the scenes of awful suffering and human catastrophe in Gaza”.“For Mr Netanyahu to go into Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians are now sheltering, would be morally unjustifiable,” Warnock added. “It would be unconscionable. And I hope that at the end of the day, cooler heads will prevail.”Asked if continuing to transfer military supplies to Israel was a sacrifice of US moral authority, Warnock instead acknowledged that “Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood, and its enemies are more than just Hamas”.“But look, we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Warnock said. “We can be consistent in our support of Israel’s right to defend itself – and at the same time, be true to American values, and engage this catastrophic humanitarian situation that’s on the ground.” More

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      Biden administration failures drove the fall of Kabul, say top former US generals

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      The top two US generals who oversaw the evacuation of Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 blamed the Biden administration for the chaotic departure, telling lawmakers on Tuesday that it inadequately planned for the evacuation and did not order it in time.The rare testimony by the two retired generals publicly exposed for the first time the strain and differences the military leaders had with the Biden administration in the final days of the war. Two of those key differences included that the military had advised that the US keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to maintain stability and a concern that the state department was not moving fast enough to get an evacuation started.The remarks contrasted with an internal White House review of the administration’s decisions which found that Joe Biden’s decisions had been “severely constrained” by previous withdrawal agreements negotiated by former president Donald Trump and blamed the military, saying top commanders said they had enough resources to handle the evacuation.Thirteen US service members were killed by a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in the final days of the war, as the Taliban took over Afghanistan.Thousands of panicked Afghans and US citizens desperately tried to get on US military flights that were airlifting people out. In the end, the military was able to rescue more than 130,000 civilians before the final US military aircraft departed.That chaos was the end result of the state department failing to call for an evacuation of US personnel until it was too late, both former joint chiefs chairman Gen Mark Milley and US central command retired Gen Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie told the House foreign affairs committee.“On 14 August the non-combatant evacuation operation decision was made by the Department of State and the US military alerted, marshalled, mobilized and rapidly deployed faster than any military in the world could ever do,” Milley said.But the state department’s decision came too late, Milley said.“The fundamental mistake, the fundamental flaw was the timing of the state department,” Milley said. “That was too slow and too late.”Evacuation orders must come from the state department, but in the weeks and months before Kabul fell to the Taliban, the Pentagon was pressing the state department for evacuation plans, and was concerned that the state department was not ready, McKenzie said.“We had forces in the region as early as 9 July, but we could do nothing,” McKenzie said, calling the state department’s timing “the fatal flaw that created what happened in August”.“I believe the events of mid and late August 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the [evacuation] for several months, in fact until we were in extremis and the Taliban had overrun the country,” McKenzie said.Milley was the nation’s top-ranking military officer at the time, and had urged the US president to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces there to give Afghanistan’s special forces enough back-up to keep the Taliban at bay and allow the US military to hold on to Bagram Air Base, which could have provided the military additional options to respond to Taliban attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden did not approve the larger residual force, opting to keep a smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the US embassy. That smaller force was not adequate to keeping Bagram, which was quickly taken over by the Taliban.The Taliban have controlled Afghanistan since the US departure, resulting in many dramatic changes for the population, including the near-total loss of rights for women and girls.The White House’s 2023 internal review further appeared to shift any blame in the 26 August 2021 suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai international airport, saying it was the US military that made one possibly key decision.“To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the president repeatedly asked whether the military required additional support to carry out their mission at HKIA,” the 2023 report said, adding: “Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate threats.”A message left with the state department was not immediately returned on Tuesday. More

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      Arizona county fears ‘homelessness on steroids’ as migrant shelter funds end

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      An Arizona migrant shelter that has housed thousands of asylum seekers plans to halt most operations in two weeks when funding from Washington runs out, a problem for towns along the border where officials fear a surge in homelessness and extra costs.Arizona’s Pima county, which borders Mexico, has said that at the end of the month its contracts must stop with Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter and services that transport migrants north from the border cities of Nogales, Douglas and Lukeville.The Pima county administrator, Jan Lesher, said the county could not afford the roughly $1m a week that previously would have been covered by federal funds.The amount “is not something that can be easily absorbed into a Pima county budget”, she said.Funding predicaments similar to Pima county’s are playing out in other border regions and faraway cities like New York City, Chicago and Denver that have received migrants.As in Tucson, other local governments anticipate that without federal dollars, communities will face many more migrants living on their streets, greater demands on police, hospitals and sanitation services.Pima county, which since 2019 has received over 400,000 migrants who have been processed by USborder authorities, estimated 400 to 1,000 migrants with nowhere to stay could start arriving daily in Tucson beginning in April.Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund the US Department of Homeland Security, which pays for migrant services, along with other federal agencies. Current money could be temporarily extended as a stopgap measure to keep DHS and other federal agencies running.View image in fullscreenBut additional funding for the shelter and transportation services has been caught in broader political battles about illegal migration and government spending, and Congress is at an impasse, largely due to election-year politics.Immigration is among the top three concerns for voting-age Americans, and Arizona is an election battleground state that could help decide control of the White House and US Senate.President Joe Biden, a Democrat running against the Republican former president Donald Trump for re-election on 5 November, has tried to appeal simultaneously to the Democratic base in favor of protecting asylum seekers while also courting other voters who want to reduce the number of illegal crossings from Mexico.Biden has grappled with record numbers of such migrants since he took office in 2021.In recent months, Biden has toughened his stance, blaming Republicans for opposing additional border security funding and legislation that would grant him new enforcement authority.Republicans counter that Biden should reinstate restrictive Trump policies and end new legal entry programs before Congress devotes more money to border security.‘Homelessness on steroids’Casa Alitas started in 2014 as a church effort to help Central American migrants whom authorities dropped at Tucson’s bus station. By 2023 it had served over 180,000 asylum seekers, mostly families, who are legally entitled to stay in the US as they pursue their immigration cases.While some migrants come from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries, Casa Alitas has recently housed people from west Africa, India and elsewhere.At one of five Casa Alitas shelter sites last week, migrants rested on cots and received meals, clean clothes, toiletries and assistance planning onward travel.Sara Vásquez González, 45, came with her husband and three of her six children from Chiapas, Mexico, where cartel violence has driven Mexican families to flee to the US.As they ate breakfast sandwiches, Vasquez said criminals had shot at their house, forcing them to seek refuge in the US.View image in fullscreen“We lost our house, our corn, our harvest,” she said.Casa Alitas has already told two-thirds of its 60-person workforce that they will be dismissed due to lack of funding, according to Diego Lopez, the executive director.The shelter plans to reduce its capacity from 1,400 people a day to 140, a level that may not even be enough to house all incoming families with infants and toddlers, he said.In December, Pima county received 46,000 migrants – more than ever before, according to county figures. Numbers have been just below 30,000 a month in January and February.In a February memo to Pima officials, Lesher said migrants being released by border patrol without shelter services could result in “homelessness on steroids”.Tucson officials are considering setting up a migrant site with bathrooms but no sleeping accommodations. By giving migrants “some place where they can go”, the city hopes to avoid people living on the streets and resulting calls on police and emergency services, said a county spokesperson, Mark Evans.The Democratic Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, last week sent a letter to top US lawmakers on funding committees saying her state needed at least $752m in shelter funds. In the meantime, Hobbs said in a press conference that her office was working to find ways to deal with the situation.‘Stopping the flow’In Congress, lawmakers representing the area are divided on the issue of shelter funding.Representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents part of Pima county and more than 350 miles (563km) of the Mexico border, called for more federal funds and said Republicans were “continuing to exploit the humanitarian crisis for their political gain.”Representative Juan Ciscomani, a Republican whose district includes another part of Pima county, said in an interview that Biden should reinstate more restrictive Trump-era policies and increase deportations before Congress provides more money for migrant shelter and transportation.“We need to focus on what would actually solve the problem, which is stopping the flow at the border,” Ciscomani said. More