Let's save a network of safe houses
Also: Where they're going next after Roe, and a startling admission from Jay Powell
After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, there was an outpouring of support for Afghans who all of a sudden found themselves at risk of retribution for having worked with the Afghan army, the U.S., or any NGOs. Charitable drives sprang up and heroic efforts rescued thousands of people. Now that we’re approaching a year later, concern has dwindled. I wrote this week about a network of safehouses put together last summer that is beginning to collapse amid this apathy. Since the story came out, though, donations from readers have started to come in and, for instance, I heard from one Afghan father of four that as a result is now able to stay at least for an extra month while he figures out what to do next.
If you want to help, this is a rare moment where a relatively small amount of money really can save lives, or at a minimum can buy time for people to save themselves.
My story is here and the charity running the network can be found here, where you can still donate if you want. I can confirm the funds are being immediately sent to Afghanistan to keep the families fed and housed. (And I’ll stay in touch with the Afghans on the receiving end to make sure the money continues to flow.)
I don’t know if there’s much I can add on the catastrophe that was the Supreme Court ruling on Roe yesterday – a decision that somehow managed to come as a shock even though we had seen the draft six weeks ago and could see it coming from years away.
It broke while we were doing our show Rising yesterday morning, and my conservative co-host talked openly about where the movement wants to go next: contraception, IVF, marriage equality – all of it. The segment is worth watching so that we all have a clear-eyed understanding that overturning Roe and turning things back to the states is absolutely not the limits of the ambitions of this movement.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is on the brink of bringing about a global recession in an attempt to treat a symptom – inflation – despite being fully aware that the tools at its disposal won’t actually address the major drivers of price increases. In a remarkable exchange this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell admitted as much to Elizabeth Warren at a Senate hearing. You have to see it to believe it. (Yesterday’s full show is here.)
To me this is an "early 1930s Weimar Republic" moment, with Biden an unlikely man to play Hindenburg to whomever might turn out to be our Hitler, but there you go.
The Democrats that may be against this state of affairs ("the extreme left-wing radicals" of the Trumpist Party rhetoric) are too occupied contemplating their belly-buttons and extolling the many virtues of Veganism (as Orwell described their like, all these many years ago) to do anything useful to stop this fatal drift into darkness. Action is needed, diet is optional.