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The Republican National Committee removed a page hailing Trump's 2020 deal with the Taliban.

The removal was made on Sunday, amid scenes of chaos in Kabul as the Taliban seized power.

The RNC said the page was removed as part of routine web maintenance

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A bipartisan group of 55 senators is urging President Joe Biden to quickly evacuate Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and their families and fully implement changes to the program signed into law in late July.

"The Taliban's rapid ascendancy across Afghanistan and takeover of Kabul should not cause us to break our promise to the Afghans who helped us operate over the past twenty years and are counting on us for assistance," the lawmakers, led by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, wrote in a letter obtained by CNN Thursday.
"American inaction would ensure they become refugees or prime targets for Taliban retribution," they wrote.

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Groups of armed Afghans attacked the Taliban on Friday, driving Afghanistan's new rulers out of three northern districts, the first assault against the Islamist militants since they swept into Kabul last week and seized control of the government.

“We have ignited something that is historic in Afghanistan,” said Sediqullah Shuja, 28, a former Afghan soldier who took part in Friday’s uprising. “Taliban fighters had armored vehicles, but people threw stones at Taliban fighters and drove them out.”

“As long as we are alive,” he said, “we do not accept the Taliban’s rule.”

Friday’s attack is the latest sign of defiance toward the Taliban, ranging from Afghans refusing to fly the white Taliban flag to women protesting to preserve their rights. Together, they illuminate some of the obstacles the Taliban faces as it seeks to form a government deemed acceptable by a broad spectrum of Afghans and by the international community, especially donors.

But whether Friday’s attack is a sign of an emerging new military front against the Taliban remains to be seen.

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U.S. defense officials say that the military is looking for alternative ways to get Americans, Afghans and third-country nationals safely to the airport in Kabul following threats from the Islamic State, according to reporting from NBC News.

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Originally posted by pianojuggler:

...I don't think Biden was planning to run for re-election anyway. But if he was, this may have killed his chances.

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Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered six commercial airlines to provide passenger jets to help with the growing U.S. military operation evacuating Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul, the Afghan capital, the Pentagon said on Sunday.

Mr. Austin activated Stage 1 of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, created in 1952 after the Berlin airlift, to provide 18 airliners to help ferry passengers arriving at bases in the Middle East from Afghanistan, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement....

Capt. John Perkins, a spokesman for the military’s Transportation Command, said on Sunday that the commercial airliners would begin service on Monday or Tuesday and that they would fly evacuees both from the Middle East to Europe and from Europe to the United States.

Captain Perkins said in a telephone interview that the military had requested wide-bodied, long-haul aircraft capable of carrying several hundred passengers. He said that discussions started with the airlines last week and that some carriers had volunteered planes for the evacuation. But, he added, the demand was great enough for Mr. Austin to order more airlines to honor their obligations under the reserve fleet program.

Civilian planes would not fly into or out of Kabul, where a rapidly deteriorating security situation has hampered evacuation flights. Instead, commercial airline pilots and crews would help transport thousands of Afghans who are arriving at U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

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RADDATZ: We have all watched with horror the scenes playing out in Afghanistan. But for the former chairman of the joint chiefs, it is especially jarring. Admiral Mike Mullen was the president’s top military adviser 10 years ago. At the time, he supported the strategy to stay in the country and train the Afghan military.

But this week, we asked him to reflect on those decisions after watching the Taliban swiftly take over.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RADDATZ: You in 2011 said the strategy was right one to try and train up the Afghan forces.

ADM. MIKE MULLEN, FORMER CHAIR, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: Right.

RADDATZ: When you look back now?

MULLEN: The capitulation of the Afghan forces obviously is getting great focus right now.

In retrospect, you know, it didn’t work because they stood down. I think they actually stood down so that they individually could survive given the Taliban were coming back in.

I thought we could build the army and give them a chance to create structures which would run a country in a much more modern fashion. That just is not the case.

RADDATZ: So, when you look back on -- on those years, are you really kind of beating yourself up over that?

MULLEN: Well, I am, yes. What I thought we could do and I advised President Obama that -- accordingly is I thought we could turn it around. Obviously, I was wrong.

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CIA Director William J. Burns held a secret meeting in Kabul on Monday with the Taliban’s de facto leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden administration since the militants seized the Afghan capital, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

President Joe Biden’s decision to dispatch his top spy, a veteran of the foreign service and the most decorated diplomat in his Cabinet, comes amid a frantic effort to evacuate people from Kabul international airport in what the president has called “one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history.”

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How Mexico Helped The Times Get Its Journalists Out of Afghanistan

A humanitarian effort led by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard gave Afghans and their families a sanctuary amid the fast-unfolding crisis.

A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, touched down safely early Wednesday — not in New York or Washington, but at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City.

The arrival of the 24 families was the latest stop in a harrowing escape from Kabul. And Mexico’s role in the rescue of journalists from The Times and, if all goes as planned, The Wall Street Journal offers a disorienting glimpse of the state of the American government as two of the country’s most powerful news organizations frantically sought help far from Washington.

Mexican officials, unlike their counterparts in the United States, were able to cut through the red tape of their immigration system to quickly provide documents that, in turn, allowed the Afghans to fly from Kabul’s embattled airport to Doha, Qatar. The documents promised that the Afghans would receive temporary humanitarian protection in Mexico while they explored further options in the United States or elsewhere.

“We are right now committed to a foreign policy promoting free expression, liberties and feminist values,” the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said in a telephone interview. Citing a national tradition of welcoming everyone from the 19th-century Cuban independence leader José Martí to German Jews and South Americans fleeing coups, he said Mexico had opened its doors to the Afghan journalists “in order to protect them and to be consistent with this policy.”

Mr. Ebrard added, explaining the country’s swift work, “We didn’t have time in order to have the normal official channels.”

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Two members of Congress secretly traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan, as the U.S. evacuates tens of thousands of Americans and vulnerable Afghans after the country fell to the Taliban.

Representatives Seth Moulton, a Democrat, and Republican Peter Meijer, both Iraq War veterans, made a stealth visit to the Hamid Karzai International Airport on Tuesday "to conduct oversight" on the evacuation, their offices said in a statement after they departed Afghanistan.

"There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more. We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand," the statement said.

"We left on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence," the statement added.

Both lawmakers wanted President Joe Biden to extend his August 31 deadline of withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan and expressed doubt after their trip that the U.S. would be able to finish the evacuations in time.

"After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won't get everyone out on time, even by September 11. Sadly and frustratingly, getting our people out depends on maintaining the current, bizarre relationship with the Taliban," they said.