The Afghanistan Mess: With Chaos and desperation growing outside the airport in Kabul, President Biden said yesterday that the US will airlift all Americans and Afghans who helped the US in the past 20 years. He said that includes women who have been leaders in Afghanistan and people who’ve helped US news organizations.

  Yesterday an American soldier was seen lifting a baby over the barbed wire into the safety of the perimeter. CNN’s gutsy Clarissa Ward tweeted a picture of her transport plane jammed with refugees.

  The operation is removing 5,000 to 6,000 people a day. “This evacuation mission is dangerous,” Biden said. “It involves risks to armed forces and it’s being conducted under difficult circumstances. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or what it will be, that it will be without risk of loss.”

  In the midst of a messy and tragic end to the war, Biden said, “The past week has been heartbreaking. We’ve seen gut-wrenching images of panicked people acting out of sheer desperation.” He said, “I don’t think anyone, I don’t think any one of us can see these pictures and not feel that pain on a human level.”

  In response to a reporter’s question Biden defended his decision to pull out, saying, “You’ve known my position for a long, long time. It’s time to end this war. The estimates of the cost of this war over the last 20 years range from a minimum $1 trillion to a think tank at one of the universities saying $2 trillion.”

  The fighting isn’t over. The Washington Post reports that Afghans in three provinces took up their guns and drove out the Taliban.

Covid Nation: The University of Virginia has disenrolled 49 students who didn’t meet the vaccination requirement for the fall semester. They have until August 25^th the get vaccinated and get back into school.

  Rice University announced that it’s going to online classes for the first two weeks of school.

  The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is meeting some stiff vaccine resistance among the 1.3 million people on active duty. Seventy percent of the Navy is vaccinated and just 60 percent of the Marines.

  As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attempts to prohibit mask mandates in schools, a sixth school board has decided to defy him. While DeSantis says parents should decide whether their kids wear masks, school districts in Alachua and Broward counties made them mandatory.

  Yesterday, Florida’s Board of Education said two school districts would lose some state funding if they did not reverse their mask mandates within two days.

  In the past week, both new cases and hospitalizations are up more than 11 percent. Deaths are up 43.4 percent, now totaling 627,862 in the United States since the start of the pandemic. 

The Spin Rack: Connecticut and Massachusetts are bracing for what could be the first hurricane to make landfall in those states for 30 years. Tropical Storm Henri is gathering force and expected to hit tomorrow.  — The NY Post reports with glee that NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who will be out of the governor’s mansion by Monday, is homeless and dumped his stuff at the home of his sister, Maria Cole, who’s married to the fashion designer Kenneth Cole. — Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied a petition to stop the building of an Obama presidential library in Chicago. The advocacy group Protect Our Parks led the effort to stop construction of the Obama presidential library in Chicago’s Jackson Park. 

Final Jeopardy: Mike Richards, the man chosen to replace Alex Trebek as the host of the game show Jeopardy! only nine days ago, has bowed out after the revelation of some ugly and stupid things he said on a podcast years ago.

  Richards made insulting remarks about Jews, women, and other groups in episodes of the comedy podcast “The Randumb Show” recorded in 2013 and 2014.

  Sony will have to run the episodes Richards taped to maintain contestant continuity. Richards will continue, for now, as the show’s executive producer, but As NPR’s Linda Holmes  inquired, “How do you make someone the boss who didn’t meet the character requirements to be the host?”

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