Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) will attend the Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony on Tuesday honoring the 13 service members who died during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan .
The pair’s attendance makes them the two highest-ranking Democrats to meet with the Gold Star families since President Joe Biden attended a dignified transfer ceremony for the service members shortly after their deaths in 2021. The ceremony will take place inside the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday and will be attended by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and families of the 13 service members .
The ceremony comes as Republicans look to highlight the Biden administration’s role in the Afghanistan withdrawal that ended in a suicide bombing outside Kabul International Airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and left several others behind as the Taliban regained control.
The ceremony also follows the long-awaited release of House Republicans’ report on their investigation into the withdrawal, which placed much of the blame on the Biden administration and minimized the role of former President Donald Trump, who initially signed the withdrawal deal.
“Our investigation reveals the Biden-Harris administration had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) said in a statement . “At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security.”
The report did not provide much new information, but it concludes a yearslong investigation into the withdrawal that began when House Republicans were in the minority between 2021 and 2023. However, lawmakers worked quickly to release the report before the 2024 election, hoping to tie Vice President Kamala Harris to Biden’s decisions as commander in chief. They argued that there was no evidence that she disagreed with his actions.
As a result, the report repeatedly refers to the “Biden-Harris administration,” a nod to the GOP’s efforts to blame the new Democratic nominee for the unpopular policies they previously used to criticize Biden. The GOP Foreign Affairs Committee staff told reporters they made that decision because the Biden administration has referred to itself as the “Biden-Harris” administration.
The report details the months leading up to the removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, accusing the Biden administration of ignoring warnings from high-ranking officials as the Taliban seized key cities faster than the United States expected.
“It has damaged U.S. credibility,” McCaul said. “It has emboldened our adversaries, and it has made the United States more at risk of an attack emanating from Afghanistan. And the moral injury to our veterans and servicemembers is generational. The administration’s unconditional surrender and the abandonment of our Afghan allies, who fought alongside the U.S. military against the Taliban – their brothers in arms – is a stain on this administration.”
The Biden administration pushed back against the report, decrying it as comprising “cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and preexisting biases.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Because of the bad deal former President Trump cut with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan by May of 2021, President Biden inherited an untenable position,” White House spokeswoman Sharon Yang said in a statement.
Other investigations have concluded that the chaotic withdrawal was a result of systemic failures spanning the last four presidential administrations, with Biden and Trump holding the heaviest blame.
Local News
