With the official end of the War in Afghanistan, we speak with Rafia Zakaria, author of “Against White Feminism,” about how U.S. officials used the plight of the women in the country to justify the 2001 invasion and subsequent occupation. “Feminism has been delegitimized in Afghanistan because it is associated with an occupying force,” says Zakaria. “Now Afghan women are left to pick up the pieces and deal with the Taliban.

Mahbouba Seraj, president of the Afghan Women’s Network and a longtime advocate for women’s rights, says the Taliban have already restricted women’s freedoms since taking over the country, despite their assurances that they have shifted their views since the last time they were in power. “If they continue like this, … Afghanistan will go back another 200 years,” says Seraj.

Three police officers and two paramedics in Colorado have been criminally charged in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who was tackled by police, placed in a chokehold and later injected with a large amount of the powerful sedative ketamine. McClain, who was not suspected of any crime, suffered a cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and died several days later.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to let stand a new anti-abortion law in Texas, which bans all abortions in the state after six weeks — before most people even realize they are pregnant — and allows for private citizens to sue anyone who “aids and abets” a person in getting an abortion. Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, says, “It is clearly an unconstitutional law” that must be reversed.