Contributing Writers

We get reaction to the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan from British member of Parliament and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, one of the leading critics of the Afghan War in Britain. He says critics who warned against invading Afghanistan, and later Iraq, have been vindicated, and calls for an official inquiry into the war.

As the U.S. proceeds with evacuating people from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country, we speak with author and former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes, who covered the fall of the Taliban in 2001, then lived in Kandahar until 2009, where she ran a soap factory, and went on to become a special adviser to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mike Mullen in Kabul. She says it was apparent shortly after the U.S.

As the United States has begun the final phase of evacuations of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies from the Kabul airport, we speak with Obaidullah Baheer, an Afghan academic who has decided to stay in Kabul despite the risks. Baheer’s grandfather, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former mujahideen fighter once nicknamed the “Butcher of Kabul,” now among the senior political figures in the country attempting to shape a post-U.S. government with the Taliban.

We speak with Stéphane Vincent, a Haitian citizen journalist who is helping the BBC to cover the aftermath of the devastating August 14 earthquake for the BBC and says the destruction in Les Cayes is reminiscent of the 2010 earthquake that struck the country. “To relive that again was very heart-wrenching,” he says. “The people have been feeling left out and abandoned by government.

We go to Les Cayes, Haiti, to speak with a doctor about the conditions near the epicenter of the massive August 14 earthquake, as the death toll passes 2,200, with thousands of survivors growing increasingly desperate. Over 12,000 people were injured and an estimated 53,000 homes were destroyed by the 7.2 magnitude quake.

We look at the situation in Afghanistan, and pressure on Biden to stay longer, with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, who for years has called for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. “We didn’t want it to end like this, and there should have been better planning in terms of getting people out of the country, but we were very clear we never wanted the U.S. to go in to begin with,” says Benjamin.

The United States has helped evacuate over 75,000 people since the end of July from the Kabul airport, but the Taliban is now allowing passage only to people with foreign passports or an invitation from the U.S. or one of its allies. President Joe Biden says U.S. troops are on pace to leave the country by the August 31 deadline, despite pressure from U.S. allies in the G7 to stay longer to help more people flee the country.

Civil rights and voting rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife have been hospitalized with COVID-19 in Chicago. Jackson is fully vaccinated and has Parkinson’s disease.

With the Democratic-led House of Representatives expected to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, pressure is growing on the Biden administration and Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster, without which new voting rights legislation and other Democratic priorities have no hope of passing the Senate. We speak with Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way and former president of the NAACP, as voting rights groups protest in front of the White House.

Outgoing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used his final hours in office to grant clemency to six men, including former Weather Underground member David Gilbert, who was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for his role in a 1981 robbery of an armored truck that left a security guard and two police officers dead. Gilbert, who is 76 years old and has been incarcerated for four decades, will now be able to apply for parole.

In response to the Food and Drug Administration’s full authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for U.S. residents aged 16 and over, Doctors Without Borders is calling on Pfizer-BioNTech to immediately share the vaccine technology with manufacturers on the African continent, where less than 2% of the population is fully vaccinated. Dr.

The United Nations warns Afghanistan is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, as the country faces political upheaval, a worsening economic crisis and a devastating drought. Humanitarian groups are vowing to keep working in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, but they are facing new hurdles, from working under Taliban rule to concerns about the international community providing much needed foreign aid to restrictions at the Kabul airport.

As Republicans raise concerns that Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops will turn Afghanistan “back to a pre-9/11 state — a breeding ground for terrorism,” Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Spencer Ackerman lays out how the U.S. war on terror after the September 2001 attacks actually fueled white, right-wing extremism. Ackerman says U.S.

As thousands of Afghans try to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban seized control, we look at the roots of the longest U.S. war in history and spend the hour with Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Spencer Ackerman.