So much has happened since our last newsletter. To start, we pray for the recovery of National Guard Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and mourn the loss of Spec. Sarah Beckstrom. Our hearts go out to their families and friends. 

Mariana Alfaro, Brianna Sacks and Karin Brulliard of The Washington Post lay out what has happened since the shooting on Wednesday. That night, authorities announced that the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who "had worked for a CIA-organized counterterrorism outfit in Afghanistan" and was granted asylum in April. 

The tragedy has resulted in several major immigration policy actions by the Trump administration, including a pause on all asylum decisions, as Cedar Attanasio and Collin Binkley of the Associated Press report. 

The State Department ordered embassies to stop issuing visas for Afghan allies, reports Humeyra Pamuk of Reuters. And U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow said that his agency was ordered to implement a "rigorous reexamination" of all green cards granted to immigrants from a list of 19 countries "of concern," report Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Kerry Breen and Caroline Linton of CBS News. 

In a briefing with reporters yesterday, President Trump said the pause on processing of all asylum applications could last "a long time," reports Thao Nguyen of USA Today. 

But as Lucy Gilder of BBC Verify explains, the vetting process for Afghans has included many layers of security. And in the words of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, "Collective punishment of all Afghans in the U.S. won’t make America safer and it might embitter more against the United States." 

See Jennie’s response along these lines Thursday. In an interview yesterday with CNN, she said, "[T]he asylum system is a legal system that’s protected by the Immigration and Nationality Act. And these folks are already waiting between four to five years for their cases to be adjudicated. ... So this [existing] process is an extreme vetting process and one that protects Americans, as well as newcomers." 

All of this happened after the administration announced earlier last week that it would reopen the cases of all refugees admitted during the Biden administration, which our policy team parses in a new explainer.