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US Adds 12,000 Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans; Advocates Say More Needed

washington — U.S. lawmakers included in the $1.2 trillion package of spending bills an additional 12,000 Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghans who supported the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and extended the program through the end of 2025. While advocates welcomed the news, they said it is still 20,000 short of what they requested.

President Joe Biden signed the much-awaited spending bills into law Saturday, hours after Congress approved them, avoiding the possibility of a partial government shutdown.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a refugee resettlement agency, wrote in a statement that it is “encouraging” to see congressional bipartisanship.

“But it’s still deeply concerning that it took the Biden administration and Congress being on the brink of a government shutdown to take action.”

The SIV program is a congressionally authorized program with a limit of 38,500 SIVs available. It offers a path to permanent residence that can eventually lead to U.S. citizenship. The application process for SIVs, including decision-making and approval, takes an average of three years, while resettlement through the refugee program can take up to five years. Applications to either program begin outside the United States.

Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the 12,000 extra SIVs is a “great response” to the promise of evacuating Afghans who worked for the U.S. government in Afghanistan.

“Well, we promised them, we will get them out. The Afghan partners, the interpreters, we left them behind,” McCaul told the CBS news show “Face the Nation” in an interview broadcast Sunday. “And that’s the biggest sin of the Afghan evacuation. I think the 12,000 SIVs is a great response and a great start to that.”

The Biden administration and Senate Republican lawmakers had asked for 20,000 SIVs.

“These visas are essential to enable our wartime allies to receive the opportunity they earned to resettle in the United States, and will ensure the SIV program remains viable,” Shawn VanDiver, president of the U.S.-based NGO #AfghanEvac, wrote in a statement.

The United States and its allies left Afghanistan in August 2021 after nearly 20 years of war, evacuating nearly 130,000 people in the chaotic last weeks in Kabul. Through Operation Allies Welcome, about 88,500 Afghan nationals arrived in the U.S. and resettled in communities across the country.

VanDiver said there is still work to be done, including passing the remaining provisions in the Afghan Allies Protection Act (AAPA) of 2023 and the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would allow a pathway to permanent residency for tens of thousands of Afghans admitted to the U.S. in 2021 and 2022 for humanitarian reasons.

“While this won’t be enough visas to help all our Afghan allies, this gives us some breathing room and will show our partners in America’s longest war that we won’t leave them behind,” VanDiver wrote.

Vignarajah said if the remaining provisions of the AAPA and the Afghan Adjustment Act were in place, it would reduce the demand for Special Immigrant Visas from Afghan evacuees seeking long-term stability in this country.

“The additional Afghan visas are a welcome stopgap measure, but since the budget negotiations are already underway for fiscal year 2025, we call on Congress to continue working to secure protections for vulnerable Afghans who need to seek refuge in the U.S. so that they aren’t living in legal limbo,” she added.

US High Court Again Confronts Abortion, This Time Over Access to Medication 

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will again wade into the fractious issue of abortion this week when it hears arguments about a medication used in the most common way to end a pregnancy.

The case has profound implications for millions of women and, perhaps, for the race for the White House.

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for bans or severe restrictions on abortion in many Republican-led states, abortion-rights opponents on Tuesday will ask the high court to ratify a ruling from a conservative federal appeals court that would limit access to the medication mifepristone, which was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States last year.

That decision to reverse Roe had immediate political consequences, with Democrats making the case that the court had taken away a right that women held for half a century, and party members won some elections as a result. Even conservative-leaning states like Kansas and Ohio voted against abortion restrictions. If the court were to uphold restrictions on medication abortions, it could roil the election landscape in races for Congress and the presidency.

By rolling back Food and Drug Administration changes to the use of mifepristone, the ruling would cut off access to the drug through the mail and impose other restrictions, even in states where abortion remains legal. The restrictions would shorten the time when mifepristone can be used in pregnancy, to seven weeks from 10 currently.

Belief in safety

Most adults in the U.S., 55%, believe medication abortion pills are very or somewhat safe when taken as directed by a doctor, according to a KFF poll from May 2023.

A decision should come by late June. But no matter the outcome, the Supreme Court has not seen its last abortion case. Legal battles are pending over state restrictions, and new federal limits are likely if former President Donald Trump, Republicans’ presumptive nominee for 2024, returns to the White House.

Next month, the justices will hear arguments about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals must include abortions, even in states that have otherwise banned them.

Mifepristone, made by New York-based Danco Laboratories, is one of two drugs, along with misoprostol, used in medication abortions. Their numbers have been rising for years, and they accounted for 63% of the more than 1 million abortions in the U.S. last year, according to an estimate by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. More than 5 million people have used mifepristone since 2000.

Mifepristone is taken first to dilate the cervix and block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken 24 to 48 hours later, causing the uterus to contract and expel pregnancy tissue.

Misoprostol only

Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

The number of medication abortions is rising for several reasons. Taking pills at home to end a pregnancy is less invasive than surgery, more convenient than having to travel to an abortion clinic and more private, allowing women to avoid anti-abortion-rights protesters who picket clinics.

It’s becoming even easier to get the two drugs in some states now that CVS and Walgreens have announced pilot programs to dispense the pills at their pharmacies.

For women living in states with abortion bans or restrictions, mail order delivery may be their only practical option, said Julie F. Kay, executive director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine.

The medication is sent by providers in states that have laws meant to shield them from any legal trouble for working with people who live in states that don’t permit medication abortions. The pills cost $150 and usually arrive within three to five days, Kay said. 

Last year, 85,000 women worked with order-by-mail abortion provider Aid Access to obtain the medication, said Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the group’s founder. Of those, 50,000 live in states with abortion restrictions, she said.

The current case followed closely the Supreme Court decision in June 2022 that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. That ruling has led to bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, with some exceptions, and once cardiac activity can be detected, which is around six weeks, in two others.

Abortion opponents filed their challenge to mifepristone the following November and initially won a sweeping ruling six months later from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, which would have revoked the drug’s approval entirely. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.

The Supreme Court put the appeals court’s modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.

Jeopardy seen

The doctors and groups that initially wanted mifepristone pulled from the market now say, in their main Supreme Court brief, that those recent changes “jeopardize women’s health throughout the nation” and didn’t follow the rigorous procedures required by federal law to alter safety restrictions on drugs.

“The Supreme Court’s got a chance to decide whether some agencies get a pass in decision-making,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, a lawyer at the Heritage Foundation who supports the challenge.

Pregnant women who wish to take mifepristone, for example, no longer need an in-person visit with a doctor before getting a prescription, said Erin Hawley, the Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer who is representing the abortion-rights opponents at the Supreme Court.

“Our clients are asking the FDA to put back in place safeguards that were there for nearly 20 years,” Hawley told The Associated Press.

But the administration said the elimination of doctor visits and the other changes were the product of more than 20 years of experience in regulating mifepristone, including evaluating safety data and studies of thousands of women. Its view is shared by several leading medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Seven former FDA commissioners said in a court filing that the agency exercised special care in its initial approval of mifepristone because it was dealing with an abortion drug. Subsequent changes were “driven by a straightforward and thorough application of the expert scientific review process that Congress entrusted to FDA,” they wrote.

US and UK Announce Sanctions Over China-Linked Hacks on Election Watchdog and Lawmakers

london — The U.S. and British governments on Monday announced sanctions against a company and two people linked to the Chinese government over a string of malicious cyberactivity targeting the U.K.’s election watchdog and lawmakers in both countries.

Officials said those sanctioned are responsible for a hack that may have gained access to information on tens of millions of U.K. voters held by the Electoral Commission, as well as for cyberespionage targeting lawmakers who have been outspoken about threats from China.

The Foreign Office said the hack of the election registers “has not had an impact on electoral processes, has not affected the rights or access to the democratic process of any individual, nor has it affected electoral registration.”

The Electoral Commission said in August that it identified a breach of its system in October 2022, though it added that “hostile actors” had first been able to access its servers in 2021.

At the time, the watchdog said the data included the names and addresses of registered voters. But it said that much of the information was already in the public domain.

In Washington, the Treasury Department said it sanctioned Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd., which it calls a Chinese Ministry of State Security front company that has “served as cover for multiple malicious cyberoperations.”

It named two Chinese nationals, Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, affiliated with the Wuhan company, for cyberoperations that targeted U.S. critical infrastructure sectors including defense, aerospace and energy.

The U.S. Justice Department charged Zhao, Ni, and five other hackers with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud. It said they were part of a 14-year long cyber operation “targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses and political officials.”

“Today’s announcements underscore the need to remain vigilant to cybersecurity threats and the potential for cyber-enabled foreign malign influence efforts, especially as we approach the 2024 election cycle,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said.

British authorities did not name the company or the two individuals. But they said the two sanctioned individuals were involved in the operations of the Chinese cyber group APT31 — an abbreviation for “advanced persistent threat.” The group is also known as Zirconium or Hurricane Panda.

APT31 has previously been accused of targeting U.S. presidential campaigns and the information systems of Finland’s parliament, among others.

British cybersecurity officials said that Chinese government-affiliated hackers “conducted reconnaissance activity” against British parliamentarians who were critical of Beijing in 2021. They said no parliamentary accounts were successfully compromised.

Three lawmakers, including former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, told reporters Monday they have been “subjected to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time.” Duncan Smith said in one example, hackers impersonating him used fake email addresses to write to his contacts.

The politicians are members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international pressure group focused on countering Beijing’s growing influence and calling out alleged rights abuses by the Chinese government.

Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said his government will summon China’s ambassador to account for its actions.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said ahead of the announcement that countries should base their claims on evidence rather than “smear” others without factual basis.

“Cybersecurity issues should not be politicized,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said. “We hope all parties will stop spreading false information, take a responsible attitude and work together to maintain peace and security in cyberspace.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated that China is “behaving in an increasingly assertive way abroad” and is “the greatest state-based threat to our economic security.”

“It’s right that we take measures to protect ourselves, which is what we are doing,” he said, without providing details.

China critics including Duncan Smith have long called for Sunak to take a tougher stance on China and label the country a threat — rather than a “challenge” — to the U.K., but the government has refrained from using such critical language.