AP (“2 National Guard members shot in an ambush attack just blocks from the White House“):
Two West Virginia National Guard members who deployed to the nation’s capital were shot Wednesday afternoon just blocks from the White House in a brazen act of violence that the mayor described as a targeted attack.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said they were hospitalized in critical condition.
The rare shooting of National Guard members, on the day before Thanksgiving, comes as the presence of the troops in the nation’s capital and other cities around the country has been a flashpoint issue for months, fueling court fights and a broader public policy debate about the Trump administration’s use of the military to combat what officials cast as an out-of-control crime problem.
A suspect who was in custody also was shot and had wounds that were not believed to be life-threatening, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
The 29-year-old suspect, an Afghan national, entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said.
WaPo (“Trump orders more troops to D.C. after gunman critically wounds 2 Guard soldiers“):
President Donald Trump ordered 500 more National Guard troops to the capital after two Guard soldiers were shot near the White House on Thanksgiving eve.
NBC News (“Trump says U.S. must ‘re-examine’ everyone who came from Afghanistan under Biden after National Guard shooting“):
President Donald Trump called for a “re-examination” of all Afghan nationals who came to the U.S. during the Biden administration, hours after an Afghan man was named as the suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X that the suspect came to the U.S. in September 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program designed to help Afghans who assisted U.S. forces and were facing a Taliban takeover.
“We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden,” Trump said in an address Wednesday night in which he called the shooting an “act of terror.”
Shortly after his remarks, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it was halting the processing of immigration from Afghanistan to the U.S.
“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols,” the agency, known as USCIS, said on X.
Given that more information is likely to come available soon, I’ll refrain from speculating on the motives of the shooter. Obviously, we all hope the wounded Guardsmen pull through. Whatever one thinks of their deployment to patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, they were simply doing their job.
As to Operation Allies Welcome, I fully support it. If anything, we were too slow and stingy in granting asylum to those whose lives were put in danger supporting the US mission in Afghanistan. Leaving their fate in the hands of the Taliban government would have been a death sentence.
That one of them committed a horrific crime is regrettable. But we let in some 200,000 under the program. If our vetting process prioritized speed over thoroughness, that would likely have been my instinct as well. It would be quite reasonable if this incident prompted a second look to see whether we missed any obvious red flags. It would be a shame, though, if this became an excuse to deny sanctuary to innocents escaping horrors of our making.
