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A growing number of conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill are rallying to the cause of a Marine lieutenant colonel jailed this week for his outspoken and repeated criticism of his superiors and what he said was their failure to take responsibility for mishandling the chaotic final days of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller lost his job as commander of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune after posting a video demanding accountability from top military leaders after the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan. The attack killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghan citizens. Col. Scheller followed up his criticism with several more online videos and even wrote about the gag order his sup...

Disney’s “Aladdin” shut down on Broadway just two nights into its long-awaited reopening, Harvard Business School moved its MBA classes online, and a State Department spokesman kicked off this week by saying he had to quarantine for 10 days. The common thread? Infections in people who have been vaccinated, which are being reported with increasing frequency and are complicating efforts to reopen society and promote the shots. Disease trackers in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere say vaccinated people have much better protection against COVID-19 than unvaccinated people and even greater protection against the worst outcomes. But the vaccines’ ability to prevent infection waned during the delta surge over the summer. The trend reveals itself in a steady trickle of reports of symptoms or pos...

Congress narrowly avoided a government shutdown on Thursday by passing a stopgap funding bill with back-to-back votes in the House and Senate, just hours before the midnight government funding deadline. President Biden was expected later Thursday to sign the legislation, which will fund the government through Dec. 3. The bill also includes $6.3 billion for the relocation of Afghan refugees and $28.6 billion in federal disaster relief in response to recent hurricanes and wildfires. But as lawmakers breathed a sigh of relief over averting a shutdown, the Democratic-run Congress still must address the debt limit by Oct. 18, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the government will run out of money to pay the country’s obligations. SEE ALSO: Senate passes stopgap spending bill hours b...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: In a remotely honest world, the Virginia governor’s race would already be over. But this is politics, and NBC’s greasy Chuck Todd is the referee.  During a debate this week between retread Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin, the Macker made a stunning admission. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” Mr. McAuliffe declared in public on live television. It was a gaffe of epic proportions — the perfect political gaffe in the most honest sense in that it really does reveal Mr. McAuliffe’s true beliefs. Nobody can claim Mr. McAuliffe was taken out of context. In fact, the larger the context, the more devastating the quote. Mr. Youngkin had just finished making a simple point that nobody in a free country could possib...

Being in the U.S. illegally is no longer enough to earn deportation, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday, releasing new guidelines that limit Immigration and Customs Enforcement targets for arrest and ouster from the country. With Democrats in Congress trying to legalize most illegal immigrants, Mr. Mayorkas said, pursuing them would be working at cross-purposes. National security threats and those deemed risks to public safety remain priorities, as is anyone who jumped the border after Nov. 1. That’s similar to the rules ICE had been following since interim guidance came out in February. But Mr. Mayorkas changed the public safety category to a broader assessment of criminal history. He told officers that if anyone was hurt or weapons were used, it weighs in favor ...

Senators voted Thursday to give Afghan evacuees a speedier path to getting driver’s licenses, overcoming objections of Republicans who said they were being granted a shortcut around the usual security checks. The vote came as part of a broader debate on government funding for the coming fiscal year, which pumps billions of dollars into assistance for Afghan evacuees and speeds their path toward asylum. One of those moves is to waive requirements of the REAL ID law, put in place after the 2001 terrorist attacks to try to keep bad actors from getting identification documents. Sen. Rob Portman said that shortcuts one of the vetting checks the Biden administration had promised. He and other Republicans backed an amendment that would have required Afghan evacuees to meet the same standards as a...

Homeland Security announced Wednesday that it has formed a task force to “rebuild” the Remain in Mexico policy the Trump administration used to solve the last border surge — though the department said it needs Mexico‘s cooperation in order to move forward. At the same time the Department said it still intends to issue a new memo canceling the policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, “in the coming weeks.” The confusing — and seemingly conflicting — announcements come as Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tries to battle a court ruling that ordered him to re-start MPP. The judge said he must act in “good faith” to revive the program. Under MPP, illegal immigrants are pushed back across the border into Mexico to wait for their immigration court dates in the U.S. The policy eff...

Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe is running for a return to Virginia’s top job, but an analysis of his record shows he has exaggerated some of his accomplishments from four years ago. The Democrat fell short on his spending on schools and has flipped positions on issues such as right-to-work laws, according to fact-checkers and an analysis by The Washington Times. Mr. McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, has painted himself as an experienced leader in his campaign, touting his record of putting money into schools and handling the state budget in a fiscally responsible way. “When I took office, I inherited an economy that was in chaos. I got to work. I got out of bed every single day fighting for you. I worked in a bipartisan manner. And guess what? We created 120,000 new jobs. P...

President Biden was making scant visible progress Wednesday on his make-or-break domestic agenda despite months of meeting repeatedly with Democratic factions that can’t agree on two major spending bills that form the centerpiece of his presidency. After another day of fruitless negotiations and intramural Democratic feuding, Mr. Biden appeared no closer to getting either a House vote on his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan or a final framework for his proposed companion 10-year, $3.5 trillion social safety net package. Months after Mr. Biden initially announced tentative agreements on those crucial elements of his “Build Back Better” agenda, the impasse Wednesday was essentially unchanged. Liberal Democrats were refusing to approve the roads-and-bridges infrastructure plan wit...

Sen. Joe Manchin III said there’s no chance of reaching a framework on President Biden’s $3.5 trillion social welfare package Wednesday, ending his party’s hopes of a double-victory on the budget and a separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. That leaves House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out on a limb, having promised her caucus’ more moderate members a vote Thursday on the infrastructure bill, but telling her liberal members it would be coupled with a deal on the budget. The progressives say they’ll tank the infrastructure bill if Mrs. Pelosi moves ahead, which would signal a searing defeat for the California Democrat. The White House and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill had hoped to reach a “framework” on the budget, figuring that locking in the big details would be enough to assuage the l...