The last one out

That's Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division—the last U.S. service member to exit Afghanistan. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, announced the end of the U.S. mission, saying, "Tonight's withdrawal signifies both the end of the military component of the evacuation, but also the end of the nearly 20-year mission that began in Afghanistan shortly after September 11, 2001. It's a mission that brought Osama bin Laden to a just end, along with many of his al-Qaeda co-conspirators. And it was not a cheap mission. The cost was 2,461 U.S. service members and civilians killed and more than 20,000 who were injured." —Defense One

• — A secret arrangement. The U.S. military secretly negotiated with the Taliban to escort groups of Americans to Kabul airport as they sought to evacuate, according to two defense officials. U.S. special operations forces set up a "secret gate" at the airport and established "call centers" to guide Americans through the evacuation process. They were notified to gather at pre-set "muster points" near the airport, where the Taliban would gather the Americans, check their credentials, and take them a short distance to a gate manned by American forces, who were standing by to let them inside amid huge crowds of Afghans seeking to flee. —CNN
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• — Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Of course Donald Trump just had to weigh in on the final withdrawal. Aside from copiously criticizing Biden for carrying out his own plan, Trump wrote, "ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost." Naturally, that's not accurate. The U.S. spent $83 billion to train, equip, and house the Afghan military and police—so weapons and equipment are just a part of that figure. At this point, no one really knows the value of the assets seized by the Taliban. —The Washington Post
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• — Moving forward. So what's next? The U.S. and the Taliban could cooperate on priorities that are in America's "vital national interest," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday. That could include such areas of mutual interest as securing the release of American hostages, making the region more stable, and conducting counterterrorism operations against ISIS-K. But Blinken said that for any partnership to work, the Taliban will need to stand by promises it has made to govern the country differently than during its brutal reign in the 1990s, when women and girls especially suffered. —Defense One

Rama: NATO has a responsibility to the Afghans

"Until a few days ago, NATO members were the main source of support for the people of Afghanistan. We cannot recede like shadows, alongside the ideals, principles, and promise of freedom and democracy that we made over two decades. The world's most powerful military alliance, built to uphold those ideals with the threat of force and the force of example, cannot become a spineless entity in the eyes of the Afghan people and the millions of people elsewhere who crave to live in a free, just, and democratic society. All of us, our community of countries, must give hope, shelter, and a new life to all of those who trusted us, worked for us, and fought for the promise of the future we represented." —Edi Rama on Project Syndicate

Edi Rama is the prime minister of Albania.

MORE: Afghan folk singer taken from his house and killed by the Taliban —CNN

'When are you going to call us to Washington again?'

If you believe Rep. Madison Cawthorn, he's working on it now. At an event hosted by the Macon County Republican Party in Franklin, N.C., over the weekend, Cawthorn referred to jailed insurrectionists as "political prisoners," and suggested he wanted to "try and bust them out of jail." But even more alarming, he responded to a question from the crowd about a potential redo of Jan. 6 like this: "That—we are actively working on that one. We have a few plans in motion I can't make public right now, but this is something that we're working on." Then he took it a step further. "If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, it's gonna lead to one place, and it's bloodshed," said Cawthorn. "And I will tell you, as much as I'm willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there's nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American. And the way that we can have recourse against that is that we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states." In other words, do it our way…or else. Swell. —Insider

MORE: Trump's political operation paid more than $4.3 million to Jan. 6 organizers but questions remain about the full extent of its involvement —Center for Responsive Politics

Sargent: Fix the Electoral Count Act

"Well-meaning Republicans should support such changes. These vulnerabilities are exactly what enabled Trump to exert tremendous pressure on various actors to help him corrupt the election. Reform would protect good-faith Republicans from coming under such pressure again, since such a scheme would no longer be workable. This is why groups such as Republicans for Voting Rights support reforming the ECA, and why reform has the support of some right-leaning think-tank types. What's more, while there's no equivalence here, Democrats have at times objected to electors. Republicans who claim Democrats are just as prone to electoral shenanigans should want such reforms to safeguard against them." —Greg Sargent in The Washington Post

Greg Sargent is a columnist at The Washington Post and the author of "An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics."

MORE: Jan. 6 committee issues orders for 35 companies to preserve records —NPR

Another round in Florida's mask fight

The Florida Department of Education defied a circuit court judge's ruling yesterday and leveled sanctions against school board members who rejected Gov. Ron DeSantis' orders on local mask mandates. State officials withheld monthly salaries from board members in Alachua and Broward counties who support mask requirements. "We're going to fight to protect parents' rights to make healthcare decisions for their children," Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said in a statement. Judge John Cooper ruled on Friday that the DeSantis Administration lacks the authority to punish schools for implementing mask mandates. DeSantis vowed to appeal the decision, but the Education Department sanctions appear to be a direct repudiation of the judge's ruling. Stay tuned. —Politico

MORE: Even with the Delta variant, the ability of COVID-19 vaccines to prevent hospitalization hasn't significantly dropped, CDC scientist says —Yahoo! News

Focus on voting and elections

During the bitter legal battles over the 2020 presidential election, conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices signaled an embrace of a once-marginal legal doctrine that largely gives state legislatures power to set election rules. Known as the "independent state legislature doctrine," it's based in part on language in the U.S. Constitution that the "times, places, and manner" of federal elections "shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof." If applied aggressively by the court in upcoming suits, voting rights advocates fear that the doctrine could further empower states to limit voting rights at a time when Republicans are emboldened by Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.

• — The doctrine could limit the ability of courts to block voting rules that violate state law and make it harder to challenge the drawing of electoral districts to entrench one political party in power. The doctrine also threatens an avenue for challenging election restrictions and maps—state courts. Plaintiffs have increasingly turned to state courts for relief because, unlike the U.S. Constitution, which implies the right to vote but does not explicitly grant it, most state constitutions expressly protect that right.
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• — "It would give the legislatures the authority to pass any voting rules they want without meaningful oversight, particularly under the state constitution," said Josh Douglas, a voting rights expert at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law. This can undermine voting rights by letting legislators craft rules that help them win re-election, he added.
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• — "It is a ticking time bomb," says Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. But not all scholars agree. Michael Morley, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, who has published an article in support of the doctrine, said it is a misconception that it would let legislatures "run amok." Even without limits under state law, they would still be constrained by protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, Morley says. —Reuters

Grumbach & Schickler: In American democracy, Congress' role looms large

"American democracy is under threat, and all signs point to Congress as the pivotal actor. As the Senate negotiates over the For The People Act and alternative bills to protect voting rights, reduce gerrymandering, and prevent election subversion, will we see the 'First Branch' live up to its historical potential as a democratic champion? Or will its inaction—an echo of the Senate's failure to defeat the filibuster of the 1890-91 Elections Bill—lead to a diminished American democracy?" —Jacob Grumbach & Eric Schickler in The Hill

Jacob Grumbach is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Washington. Eric Schickler is a professor of political science and co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

MORE: New polls suggest broad support for Democrats' voting rights bills —NBC News

Republicans are up in arms about the situation in Afghanistan. They should be, but they have selective memories of what actually occurred. I disagree with President Biden's policy decision, and after he said that Afghan security forces were robust, they evaporated overnight. Trump, either through deliberate sabotage or incompetence, set the stage for what is happening now. Biden had a very difficult choice, because repudiating the surrender to the Taliban, to which Trump had agreed, would have meant an escalation, and would have required sending in massive new U.S. troop deployments. Whether I like it or not, Biden made the best decision that he thought he could.

The GOP seems upset by their recently discovered concern about our perceived lack of consistent support for our allies, but they must not remember how during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort provided polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, who was a Russian intelligence officer. The alleged trade-off for Vladimir Putin's aid in electing a U.S. president who was willing to degrade the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, involved a "peace accord" that would have ceded much of Ukraine's territory to Russia. The U.S. was a partner in the memorandum, which was enacted as a means of getting Ukraine to surrender it's inherited post-Soviet Union nuclear arsenal, instead of selling it to the highest bidder, as it had threatened to do. Russia also signed the agreement and promised to never invade Ukraine.

The current situation in Afghanistan is bad, but Trump's attempt to undermine our security pledge to Ukraine regarding Russia, in exchange for election assistance, was much worse. Trump's first impeachment had to do with his holding hostage military aid to Ukraine that Congress had authorized. The GOP was not concerned by that, and all but Sen. Romney voted to acquit him. To me, the only thing worse than the GOP's selective memory is their selective patriotism, as well as their selective concern for human rights and democracy, as displayed by their latest voter suppression efforts. —Bill M., Pennsylvania

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