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SCOTUS Declines to Block Restrictive Texas Abortion Law – The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take action Tuesday night on Texas Senate Bill 8, a nearly complete ban on abortions, The New York Times reports. The bill allows health care providers in the state to be sued for providing abortion services and makes no exceptions for incest or rape. The law restricts abortions for mothers who are at least six weeks pregnant.
An emergency application by abortion providers who are trying to block SB 8 is pending, and SCOTUS is expected to rule on it presently.
Note: Loading of the federal courts with conservative judges, as well as Senate Republicans’ successful replacement of SCOTUS Justices Antony Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg over the last four years is about to lead to a (likely successful) challenge to 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision.
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Biden Refuses to Back Down on Need to End 20-Year War – President Biden’s address to the nation Tuesday afternoon following the United States’ one-day early withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan drove home many of the points he has made since evacuations began last month as the Taliban swiftly took over Afghanistan. His administration refused to count on an Afghan government crippled by corruption and unwilling to rely on a security force with 20 years of training and support by U.S. troops to fight back.
“After 20 years I refuse to send another soldier to fight a war that should have ended long ago,” Biden told the nation.
Note: The Taliban were quickly pushed out during the Bush administration, and now they are back in. Excepting suppression of terrorist attacks this qualifies as an unmitigated U.S. defeat, a result that must annoy neocons as much now as hawks were miffed at the Vietnam result 46 years ago.
After serious criticism of a poorly planned withdrawal and Saigon-like images of helicopters removing people from the roof of the U.S. embassy in the last couple of weeks, Biden is getting a bit of relief from the right and left this week as he attempts to shift much of the blame to previous administrations, especially Donald Trump’s. The president reported that 5,500 Americans have been evacuated from Afghanistan, with 100 to 200 remaining who he says will get out if they want. The fate of allies, including Afghan interpreters for American soldiers is, and always has been, the main point of attacks on the Biden administration. Several American veterans’ groups are working to keep “promises” to such allies, including those who are the subject of anecdotes of how they saved many of our troops’ lives.
Biden says 120,000 people have been airlifted from Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. There have been no reliable estimates of the number of allies and their families, but reports say the Taliban is “hunting” down anyone who has helped the U.S. effort since late 2001. Some of the blame for lack of such evacuations is directed to the State Department’s exceptionally bureaucratic Special Immigrant Visa program.
The other red meat for hard-liner Republicans, some of whom continue to call for Biden’s impeachment, is the issue of billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment, including airplanes and helicopters and ground vehicles falling into the hands of Taliban fighters, but Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, chief of U.S. Central Command confirmed Tuesday they were permanently disabled before the last soldier jumped on a C-130 military transport just before midnight local time Monday.
Ex-President Donald J. Trump told Fox Business’ Varney & Co. Tuesday that the Biden administration cannot execute “a simple withdrawal from a country that we should have ever gotten into in the first place.”
But hard-right pundit-provocateur Ann Coulter tweeted this: “Thank you, President Biden, for keeping a promise Trump made, but then abandoned when he got to office.” Then, hitting Trump where he especially feels it, she later tweeted this: “Trump REPEATEDLY demanded that we bring our soldiers home, but only President Biden had the balls to do it.”
The Poll: According to a poll released by the Pew Research Center Tuesday:
•54% said the U.S. decision to withdraw was the right one; 42% said it was wrong.
•69% said the U.S. failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan; 27% said the U.S. succeeded.
•42% said the Biden administration did a “poor” job of executing the Afghanistan withdrawal; 29% said his actions were “only fair”: 21% “good”; 6% said Biden did an “excellent” job.
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New Afghani Leader – The Taliban is set to name Hibatullah Akhundzada as Afghanistan’s new leader, The New York Times reports.
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Ending Enhanced Unemployment Insurance Early Didn’t Help – Job growth was not enhanced in the half of U.S. states that cut off early an extra $300 per week in federal unemployment insurance funds that were part of President Biden’s COVID-19 relief package, according to The Wall Street Journal. Citing economists and its own analysis of the numbers, states that shut off the additional $300 per week in unemployment insurance from the federal program, meant to enhance states’ standard unemployment insurance, had “about the same job growth” as states that continued to offer the pandemic-related extra aid. The extra unemployment insurance ends next week.
Note: Many businesses that re-opened as COVID-19 vaccinations began last spring and early summer had complained of worker shortages, particularly restaurants, hotels and other service-related industries. While some Republican lawmakers blamed the extra $300 per week for keeping unemployed out of the job market, the Journal posits that family care responsibilities, school closures, imbalance of available jobs, fear of COVID-19 and employee retirements had much to do with the worker shortages.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods