Happy Monday. Let’s get to the news.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
The Taliban continued to march through Afghanistan over the weekend, capturing Kabul on Sunday as the Afghan government collapsed and its president, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country. President Joe Biden deployed an additional 1,000 troops to the region in an effort to aid the evacuation of the United States’ embassy in the capital city.
Nearly 1,300 people are dead and tens of thousands more injured or displaced after Haiti was rocked by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Saturday. The country—still reeling from the assassination of its president last month—is expected to be hit by a tropical depression later today.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data on Friday showing that, globally, July 2021 was the hottest month in at least 142 years, outpacing July 2016, July 2019, and July 2020 by 0.02° F.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to House Democrats on Sunday asking the Rules Committee to “explore the possibility” of advancing the bipartisan infrastructure deal and Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package simultaneously. Two days earlier, a group of nine centrist House Democrats had made clear to Pelosi they wouldn’t vote for the larger package until the bipartisan deal was signed into law.
A federal judge on Friday rejected a request to block the Biden administration’s revised eviction moratorium on technical grounds, but the landlord groups involved appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court on Saturday and could receive a ruling within the week.
New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said in a statement Friday that lawmakers would suspend their impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo after the governor announced his resignation last week. “We have been advised ... of the belief that the constitution does not authorize the legislature to impeach and remove an elected official who is no longer in office,” the statement read.
A 22-year-old man shot and killed five people in the United Kingdom on Friday—including his own mother and a 3-year-old girl—in the country’s largest mass shooting in over a decade. The gunman allegedly shot and killed himself before police arrived.
At least 28 were killed and dozens more injured when a fuel-filled warehouse exploded in northern Lebanon on Sunday.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau triggered a snap election over the weekend, gambling that his Liberal Party will pick up enough seats in the September 20 vote to regain a majority in Parliament.
Kabul Falls, Ghani Flees, Taliban Assumes Control
For the first time in nearly 20 years, Kabul has fallen under Taliban control.
When we wrote to you Friday about the Taliban’s blitzkrieg into Afghanistan’s urban centers, the jihadist group had seized 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals over the course of one week.
