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Afghans ask U.S. soldiers to be let into the East Gate of the airport in Kabul on Aug. 25, 2021. | Photo by Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images | POLITICO Illustrations; Photos courtesy of Elliot Ackerman | In the U.S. military, there's a code, writes Marine veteran Elliot Ackerman: Leave no one behind. A year ago, as Kabul fell to the Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ackerman worked with an improvised network of veterans, journalists and activists who rallied together to honor that code by evacuating as many of their Afghan allies as possible. Together, they coordinated over WhatsApp and Signal to lead groups through the chaos of Kabul airport — even negotiating with the Taliban. Whether he'd be able to successfully evacuate an interpreter named Shah and his pregnant wife, Forozan, Ackerman did not know. "Like so many involved in this effort, this dredged up conflicted memories from my past, sucking me back into a war I thought I'd left long ago," Ackerman writes in this excerpt from his new book, The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan. "Did we fulfill our obligations to the Afghans?" he asks. "Perhaps the answer to the question lies in the specifics of what happened a year ago." Read Ackerman's harrowing story.
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| "[He has] no more backbone than a chocolate eclair." Can you guess who said this about President William McKinley? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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Women and children picnic in the historic Babur Garden in Kabul, August 5. The park has been divided by gender since the Taliban demanded that men and women not mix in public spaces. | 'Their Whole Identity Has Been Taken From Them' … After Kabul fell to the Taliban one year ago, the Islamic fundamentalist group promised that they had changed, that women were "going to be very active in the society." But, shocker, that's not how things turned out. In this intimate photo essay, photographer Nanna Muus Steffensen explores the lives of women in Kabul after one year of repressive Taliban rule.
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| 51 percent … of registered voters strongly or somewhat support President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw the U.S. military presence from Afghanistan; 35 percent strongly or somewhat oppose it; 14 percent don't know or have no opinion.
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Then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks during a primary debate on Jan. 14, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo | 'I Would Vote for You, If You Had a Penis' … During the 2020 campaign, Elizabeth Warren's response to the tedious question of women's electability was simple: "I'm glad to talk about it right up front, 'cause you know what? Women win." She may have been glad to talk about it. But Bernie Sanders — and the News Gods — didn't give her any other choice. In this excerpt from her new book, Electable: Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House … Yet, NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali gives us a front-row seat to the Warren-Sanders row over their notorious 2018 dinner and the fraught dynamics women candidates faced on the presidential campaign trail.
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| The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago has sharply divided the country, with liberals saying it's a step toward justice and conservatives calling it an overreach. Not sure what to think? Let's get caught up on some facts. (From POLITICO's Kyle Cheney.) - If your friends ask if Trump is really in trouble this time, the answer is … probably. The search of Mar-a-Lago is clearly the most aggressive step the Justice Department has taken against any former president, let alone Donald Trump. - But don't forget, Trump was already facing extreme legal threats in multiple investigations. If you want to sound smart, remind your friends about Fulton County and the escalating grand jury investigation there. - Trump is in a pickle thanks to Merrick Garland. This week, the DOJ abruptly agreed to release the search warrant for Trump's home and invited him to bless or oppose that decision. Now Trump has to decide whether to quickly release the materials or keep the public in the dark. - What might be in the search warrant? These documents often list potential crimes that are being investigated, and in this case, there's a receipt for all the property the FBI seized.
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Republican Blake Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona, represents the aspirations of a new generation of young, very online conservatives. | POLITICO illustration / Getty Images, iStock | Blake Masters Is 'Based' … The endlessly memeable Donald Trump may have animated the young, way-too-online part of the conservative movement, but Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters could lead it. With his awkward personal affect and incongruous macho posturing, the Peter Thiel protege is an avatar for the denizens of message-boards — and their own-the-libs ideology could become a permanent feature of American political life, writes Derek Robertson .
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Photo courtesy Seattle Estates Vintage | Historian Ted Widmer is back with another piece of history up for sale: a group of buttons from the very first Earth Day, available for a whopping $10 . The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and its massive investment in climate measures and clean energy, feels like the beginning of a new era. Or perhaps it's the end of a chapter, dating back to April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day. That hopeful day was spearheaded by a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson. But it came at a moment when many Republicans (for example, Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island) were also devoted to the cause of conservation. The major environmental initiatives of the Nixon administration were passed with strong bipartisan support (unlike the climate bill being approved in the House today). Perhaps the most compelling button of all is the one that simply shows the American flag, and says, "Keep America Beautiful." It is a reminder that the flag belongs to all of us, on all sides of an issue that does not need to be polarizing.
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Five years after the attack that killed Heather Heyer, Charlottesville protestors are telling their story. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo | 'Was She Afraid?' … It's been five years since the attack on protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia left dozens injured and 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead. For her upcoming book, an exhaustive oral history of the Charlottesville protests, CNN's Nora Neus compiled over 150 hours of original interviews , including with many Antifa-aligned activists who have not previously shared their stories. Excerpted here, it is the most comprehensive account of the attack yet to be published.
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Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library | These photos of President Ronald Reagan were taken on August 23, 1986, during a weekend trip to the Reagans' vacation home, Rancho Del Cielo, Santa Barbara, to celebrate First Lady Nancy Reagan's birthday. The Reagans purchased the 668-acre ranch in 1974. It was basic, with no central heating, but boasted a lake and freely roaming animals. "We relax at the Ranch," Ronald once said, "which if not Heaven itself, probably has the same ZIP code." Ironically, he believed that the more he visited the secluded location, the longer he would live. The president ultimately spent roughly a year there over the course of his two terms — a push-button telephone was installed to connect him to the outside world.
| | | **Who Dissed? answer: The quote is often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but in their book, Kings of the Hill, Dick Cheney and Lynne V. Cheney say it was Speaker Thomas B. Reed, who lost the Republican nomination to McKinley in 1896. Either way, Roosevelt would serve as vice president under McKinley until his assassination lifted him to the presidency.
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