Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Five members of the same Texas family were arrested Tuesday and charged for their alleged participation in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to newly-unsealed charging documents.

Kristi Munn, Tom Munn, Dawn Munn, Josh Munn and Kayli Munn — described by prosecutors as a nuclear family from Borger, Texas — are now each facing four federal charges over their alleged illegal entry and alleged disorderly conduct in the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday afternoon.

A 34-page affidavit for their arrest details their movements while inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, based on surveillance and social media posts.

The affidavit also indicates that the family brought an unidentified minor child into the building with them, who is not being charged.

While there have previously been arrests of family members including fathers and sons, mothers and sons, and husbands and wives, the Munn family is thus far the largest single family unit out of the more than 530 arrests made so far from the Justice Department’s investigation of the Capitol riot.

FBI officials say they first received a tip that Kristi Munn participated in the Capitol riot just three days after the insurrection, from a tipster who captured screenshots of Munn’s Facebook and Snapchat accounts. Investigators then combed through public Facebook posts from Munn’s family members to track their journey from Texas to D.C. as they amplified calls for a march on Congress on Jan. 6.

“We made it to our hotel just outside D.C.,” Tom Munn allegedly wrote in one post on Jan. 5. “1,600 miles in 24 hrs!”

After the riot, investigators found posts from the family where they discussed joining in the insurrection.

“The only damage to the capital building was several windows and sets of doors,” Tom Munn wrote on Facebook. “Nothing inside the capital was damaged. I can tell you, patriots NEVER made it to the chamber. There was no violence in the capital building, the crowd was NOT out of control … they were ANGRY!!!”

Prosecutors have said in recent court filings that the riot caused at least $1.5 million in damage to the U.S. Capitol, including damage from those who made it into the Senate chamber. At least 140 law enforcement officers suffered injuries from the riot and more than 100 people have been charged so far with direct assaults on police, according to the DOJ.

After gathering screenshots showing the five members of the Munn family inside the Capitol, investigators say they further confirmed the family members’ identities through interviews with three people familiar with the family in Texas — including two employees at a local Borger high school “who had taught multiple Munn children,” and an employee at a college who taught two of the Munn children.

None of the members of the family have entered pleas in their case, and attorney information was not immediately available for them as of Tuesday afternoon.

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(WASHINGTON) — Texas Democrats spent Tuesday in Washington pressuring Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation and calling for an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule blocking Democrats from moving forward with a measure they say would stop GOP-led efforts to restrict voting in Texas and nationwide.

The state lawmakers were expected to meet with a key Democrat who has resisted changing the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. He and Arizona Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are playing a pivotal role in the ongoing congressional negotiations over a national voting rights bill.

It is unclear if the Texas Democrats will hold meetings with Sinema. If both she and Manchin were to agree to an exception to the rule — Senate Democrats with their 50 votes, along with Vice President Kamala Harris — could pass the bill congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden have made a top priority.

Biden was making his case in a high-profile speech in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon.

“If you can have a carve-out for a right-wing Supreme Court justice, why can’t you have a carve-out to protect the very fundamentals of our democracy?” State Rep. Chris Turner said at a Capitol Hill news conference, referring to making an exception to the filibuster for voting rights.

“If Mitch McConnell did a carve-out for Amy Coney Barrett, then we ought to do a carve-out for the black and brown people that live in Texas, Georgia, Florida, that live in all these states trying to make it harder for our constituents to exercise their right to vote,” State Rep. Marc Veasey added. “Time is of the essence. We cannot wait. States are going to start to ramp up these efforts.”

More than 50 Texas House Democrats fled the state Monday evening, depriving the state legislature of a quorum, and must now remain out of Texas for the duration of the ongoing special legislative session, which ends on August 6.

In their absence from the Austin state capitol on Tuesday, a majority of Republican House lawmakers passed a procedural measure that allows authorities to go out and find the absent Democrat House members.

Texas law authorities may even utilize arrest warrants in their efforts to compel the lawmakers back, if such action is deemed necessary. However, it remains unclear whether this order can affect the Democrats while they are out of state and outside of the jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement.

The state legislators pointed to the spread of what they called former President Donald Trump’s ‘big lie’ that falsely asserts his claim of winning the 2020 election as a partial catalyst for their decision to leave their home state.

“We are not going to buckle to the ‘big lie’ in the state of Texas — the ‘big lie’ that has resulted in anti-democratic legislation throughout the United States,” Mexican American Legislative Caucus Chair Rafael Anchía said.

Texas House Dean Senfronia Thompson further echoed Anchia’s comments and put a spotlight on the impact revisions to voting access in her state would have on people of color.

“I’m not here to take a vacation in Washington, D.C. When I looked at the African American Museum, I thought about the struggle my people fought in this country to get the right to vote. And that right is sacred to my constituents that I represent in Houston, Texas, and I’m up here because I don’t plan to be a sitting person in that legislature,” Thompson said.

Seventeen states had enacted 28 new laws that restrict access to the vote, as of June 21, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The latest versions of Republican-backed legislation aimed at revising Texas voting and election laws included several provisions that voting rights advocates say would detrimentally affect the abilities of people of color to vote.

Among them are provisions that appear to be aimed at practices utilized by Democrat-leaning Harris County during the 2020 election. Both bills ban 24-hour voting availability, which offered greater ballot access to Houston-area shift workers when implemented in the fall. Each of the proposals coming from the Republican majorities in the Texas House and Senate also aim to end drive-thru voting, another popular voting method in the diverse county.

Additionally, the dual bills included provisions that granted expanded access to partisan poll watchers, which voting rights advocates decried for potentially opening the door to in-person voter intimidation.

On Monday, Texas Democrats did not indicate specific plans for what they aim to do after the special session ends. They also did not directly offer insight into whether they intend to continue breaking quorum going forward, given that GOP Gov. Abbott has the power to call for as many special legislative sessions as he wants.

“We know that’s exactly what he’s going to do, we went in his eyes wide open,” Texas House Democratic Chair Turner told reporters.

“Our intent is to stay out and kill this bill this session, and use the intervening time — I think 24 or 25 days now — before the other session to implore the folks in this building behind us to pass federal voting rights legislation to protect voters in Texas and across the country,” he added.

Vice President Harris will meet sometime this week with the Texas legislators, according to an official in Harris’ office.

ABC News’ Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — With GOP-led legislatures advancing new voting laws and Congress deadlocked over proposed legislation, President Joe Biden is expected to deliver a major speech on voting rights in Philadelphia on Tuesday as his administration wades more aggressively into the fight over ballot access at the urging of civil rights groups and Democrats.

Previewing his remarks on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would directly call out lies from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, and “decry efforts to strip the right to vote as authoritarian and anti-American.”

“He’ll call out the greatest irony of the ‘big lie’ is that no election in our history has met such a high standard with over 80 judges, including those appointed by his predecessor, throwing out all challenges,” Psaki said.

National Urban League CEO Marc Morial, who was one of a handful of civil rights leaders to meet with Biden at the White House last Thursday, told ABC News the group asked Biden “to put the full moral prestige and the power of the presidency” behind voting rights, to help frame the debate for the American people.

“As a candidate, he talked about the soul of the nation. And I think this is a soul of the nation issue,” he said.

Along with Biden’s White House meeting last week, Vice President Kamala Harris also announced plans for the Democratic National Committee to spend $25 million to expand its voter outreach campaign and support future litigation.

The Justice Department has also sued the state of Georgia over its new voting law, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced plans to beef up the department’s Civil Rights Division to help defend voting rights.

Biden’s speech on Tuesday comes as Democrats in the Texas State Legislature fled the state for Washington, D.C., the second such effort in recent weeks to derail the passage of sweeping GOP-authored voting legislation by trying to prevent Republicans from taking up the proposals in a special legislative session.

Roughly 17 states have enacted 28 laws that would restrict voting access, out of hundreds that have been introduced throughout the country, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

“You can’t disassociate Jan. 6 with what is happening in the states,” Morial said of the Capitol riot that sought to disrupt the Electoral College count. “This is all sour grapes over losing an election.”

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld two GOP-backed voting restrictions in Arizona, imposing new limits on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Liberals on the court argued that the decision would weaken protections against racial discrimination.

That ruling, together with the flurry of state-level actions on voting, has led civil rights advocates to push the White House to more vocally make the case for federal voting rights legislation.

“The Court has put the ball in Congress’ court, and now it’s on Congress and the administration to actually take that up now,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center.

In March, House Democrats advanced HR 1, the For the People Act, an expansive package that would transform federal elections, voting and congressional redistricting. But it has stalled in the Senate after failing to advance in a procedural vote late last month, over opposition from all Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., panned the bill and accused Democrats of attempting a “power grab” with the proposal.

A more measured proposal named for the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., which would restore pieces of the Voting Rights Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, has also failed to advance through Congress.

In light of the GOP opposition, Democrats have pushed for the Senate to reform the legislative filibuster, with House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., a key Biden ally and endorser during the 2020 Democratic primary, suggesting Democrats create an exception to the 60-vote threshold for election reform and other constitutional issues.

When asked about Clyburn’s call for a filibuster exemption for voting rights, and if the president agreed, Psaki punted the issue back to Congress.

“I will say, though, in terms of how this works, the filibuster is a legislative process tool, an important one, that warrants debate but determination about making changes will be made by members of the Senate, not by this president or any president, frankly, moving forward,” Psaki said Monday.

“There are two pathways forward” for voting rights reform,” Morial said. “Either you try to find an agreement with Republicans, so you have a bipartisan bill, or the pathway forward is to create a carve out for the filibuster.”

Asked how Biden responded in their meeting last week, Morial told ABC News the president “simply made a comment that, ‘I know the Senate better than anyone,’ and that’s probably true.”

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(WASHINGTON) — For the second time since May, Texas House Democrats will break quorum in protest against state Republicans’ push to revise the election and voting laws in the Lone Star State.

The much-speculated move was officially announced by Democrats Monday afternoon, a day before the Texas House was slated to be back in session to continue working through the items set by Gov. Greg Abbott for the ongoing, 30-day special session agenda.

“Today, Texas House Democrats stand united in our decision to break quorum and refuse to let the Republican-led legislature force through dangerous legislation that would trample on Texans’ freedom to vote,” a joint statement from several high-profile Texas House Democrats read.

The group of lawmakers — including Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner, Mexican American Legislative Caucus Chair Rafael Anchía, Texas Legislative Black Caucus Chair Nicole Collier, Legislative Study Group Caucus Chair Garnet Coleman and Dean Senfronia Thompson — also announced plans to head to Washington as they break quorum.

“We are now taking the fight to our nation’s Capitol. We are living on borrowed time in Texas. We need Congress to act now to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to protect Texans — and all Americans — from the Trump Republicans’ nationwide war on democracy,” the group said in a statement.

Vice President Kamala Harris, praised the Democrats’ efforts to break quorum and head to Washington to push Congress to pass election reform.

“I applaud the effort of the Texas legislators who are standing in the way of a blatant attempt to suppress the vote,” she said.

After spending the day in Michigan, the vice president told reporters that her conversations were meant to “remind voters — to remind people that their voice is important and that they are at risk of having legislative bodies impede the right to vote, if we don’t stand up and understand what’s happening, see it for what it is and obviously, be more engaged.”

The move is being met with strong opposition from across the aisle, and it remains unclear what the state’s executive branch will do next. In a statement following the Democrats’ announcement, the Republican governor blasted the legislators, accusing them of engaging in “partisan political games.”

“Texas Democrats’ decision to break a quorum of the Texas Legislature and abandon the Texas State Capitol inflicts harm on the very Texans who elected them to serve. As they fly across the country on cushy private planes, they leave undone issues that can help their districts and our state,” Abbott said in a statement.

One of the issues that remains on the agenda is reinstating government funding, which Abbott vetoed in response to House Democrats last quorum break in May. The issue is already emerging as a focal point for House Republicans, with the Texas House Speaker chiding Democrats over the decision to break quorum.

“These actions put at risk state funding that will deny thousands of hard-working staff members and families a paycheck, health benefits and retirement investment so that legislators who broke quorum can flee to Washington, D.C. on private jets,” Phelan said in a statement.

According to House rules, at least two-thirds of the chamber’s 150 members must be present to conduct business. The rules also outline that if there are absent lawmakers “for whom no sufficient excuse is made,” a vote can be held just among the members in attendance for those absent lawmakers to “be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found.”

For now, Democrats, like Texas Rep. Gene Wu, who represents southwest Houston and is among those heading to the nation’s capital, indicate the potential risk is worth it.

“This is the only tool that Republicans have left Democrats and we intend on it,” Wu said.

ABC News Political Director Rick Klein and Deputy Political Director Averi Harper contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell and her legal team clashed repeatedly with a federal judge Monday during a hearing to determine if sanctions are warranted against her and other attorneys who filed a lawsuit in Michigan based on false claims of election fraud in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the City of Detroit have requested that Federal Judge Linda V. Parker sanction Powell, attorney Lin Wood, and other members of the legal team that were involved in the efforts to have Michigan’s presidential election returns decertified due to unsubstantiated claims of voting irregularities.

Monday’s nearly six-hour hearing, at which Powell appeared virtually, quickly spiraled into chaos as attorneys from both sides shouted accusations at each other about the merits of the lawsuit at hand, which sought to block certification of the election and was subsequently denied.

David Fink, a lawyer for the city of Detroit, called the lawsuit “an embarrassment to the legal profession.”

“It was sloppy, it was unreadable, it was mocked in the public … it never should have been filed,” Fink said. “These lawyers should be punished for their behavior.”

Powell, who served on then-President Donald Trump’s legal team before being removed for pushing outlandish conspiracy theories, vigorously defended the lawsuit and the diligence that went into producing it, saying she “would file these same complaints again.”

Her statements came three months after she filed a motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, arguing that “no reasonable person” should have believed her election theories were “truly statements of fact.”

The City of Detroit is also seeking to have the attorneys prohibited from practicing law in the district and wants the various attorneys’ local state bar associations to undertake their own investigation — a process that recently led to attorney Rudy Giuliani’s temporary ban from practicing law in New York.

The effort, if successful, would mark the first financial penalty against those who sought to challenge the 2020 election in court based on false claims of election fraud or other election misconduct. In all, Trump and his supporters filed over 50 lawsuits across the country.

Judge Parker poured over one of those suits during the hearing, peppering Powell and her team with dozens of questions in an effort to determine if sanctions are warranted. The judge expressed skepticism about the legal basis for Powell’s suit, the various claims of fraud, and the evidence submitted to support them.

“The court is concerned these affidavits were submitted in bad faith,” Parker said of the suit, which was filed in in November and was dismissed by a judge after it was found to be riddled with factual errors and inaccuracies.

A number of the affidavits submitted to support allegations of fraud were debunked by local election officials, and questions were raised about credentials of a number of the expert witnesses used in the suit. The lawsuit’s anonymous military intelligence expert, for example, was reportedly a Dallas-based IT consultant who never even worked in military intelligence, according to a Washington Post report.

“How can any of you as officers of the court present this type of affidavit?” Parker asked at one point about a separate affidavit. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an affidavit with more leaps. This is pure speculation.”

“We did a ton of due diligence,” said Howard Kleinhendler, a lawyer on the Powell team. “We did not submit falsehoods,” said Julia Haller, another attorney on the team.

Several attorneys, however, attempted to distance themselves from the suit. Wood, a staunch supporter of the president who filed multiple suits in the wake of the 2020 election, said he had “nothing to do” with the suit at issue in the hearing.

“My name was placed on there, but I had no involvement whatsoever,” he told the judge, claiming that he had offered general assistance to Powell but was not involved in this suit.

Another attorney said the team had spent no more than five hours total on the suit.

Parker did not issue a decision, or give an expected timeline for one.

ABC News’ Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — As part of his effort to get out in front of a politically sensitive issue, President Joe Biden on Monday convened a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland, law enforcement leaders and elected officials to discuss rising crime rates across the country.

Glancing at Garland at the top of the meeting, Biden opened his remarks by acknowledging that he’s been trying to solve this problem for many years.

“We’ve been at this a long time, a long time. Seems like most of my career I’ve been dealing with this issue. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, we know there are some things that work. And the first of those that work is stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violent crimes,” Biden said.

“It includes cracking down on holding rogue gun dealers accountable for violating the federal law. It includes the Justice Department creating five new strike forces to crack down on illegal gun trafficking,” Biden said, without directly acknowledging more meaningful gun control is impossible without getting Senate Republicans to go along.

While Biden said he’d be asking the experts he assembled what else they believe should be done on the federal level to address rising crime rates, he did not directly address Congress or put any pressure on lawmakers to act on a national level.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki previewed the meeting at an earlier press briefing and said the group will discuss Biden’s “comprehensive plan to reduce gun violence and violent crime.”

Biden’s plan, unveiled last month, targets law-breaking gun dealers, provides federal resources to police departments for gun-crime enforcement and allows communities to repurpose millions of dollars of federal coronavirus relief funding for programs proven to prevent gun violence.

“During the meeting, the president will discuss his crime reduction strategy — strategy which gives cities and states historic funding through the American Rescue Plan, and a range of tools they can use to improve public safety in their communities including support for community violence intervention programs, summer employment opportunities and other proven methods to reduce crime,” Psaki said.

“I’ll underscore his commitment to ensuring their state and law and local law enforcement have the resources and support they need to hire more police officers and invest in effective and accountable community policing,” Psaki said.

Notably, Biden has not taken the same stance as some progressives who’ve called to “defund the police,” a position that gained traction last year during what many deemed to be a racial reckoning in the country.

Still, Republicans have attacked Biden for being “soft on crime.”

Psaki said Biden is stressing partnerships with local leaders on the effort. Attendees at the White House included Washington Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who just won New York’s City Democratic mayoral primary. Unlike other progressive candidates, Adams did not run on a “defund the police” agenda but instead cited “public safety” as his top priority for the city and Democrats in general.

“This president is making it clear,” Adams said following the meeting, “he’s going to redefine the ecosystem of public safety, and that includes identifying the role of police, schools, families, resources, employment.”

“Why did it take so long before we heard the gunshots that families were listening and hearing every night? Other communities are waking up the alarm clock, communities of Black, brown and poor people are waking up to gunshots and this president says this is not the America we’re going to live in,” he continued.

Police chiefs, including David Brown, superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, along with a community-based violence intervention expert, also attended the White House meeting.

Psaki said the group would talk about what the federal government is doing to stem the flow of guns used in crimes, “including the administration’s zero-tolerance policy for dealers who willfully sell guns illegally, the Department of Justice’s gun trafficking strike forces, as well as previous steps the White House has announced like cracking down on ghost guns, which are increasingly used in violent crimes.”

Biden’s session comes as the country faces a rise in violent crime, particularly in those involving firearms.

According to a study released earlier this year by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, homicides spiked by 30% in 2020 compared to the year before.

And in the first three months of 2021, the number of homicides increased by 24% compared to the same period in 2020 and by 49% compared to the start of 2019, the researchers said.

ABC News’ Ben Gittleson and Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The top U.S. military general leading the withdrawal in Afghanistan stepped down during a ceremony in Kabul Monday, a sign that America’s longest war is nearing its end.

Gen. Austin Scott Miller has commanded U.S. Forces−Afghanistan and the NATO-led Resolute Support mission since the summer of 2018. At Monday’s ceremony, Miller handed his responsibilities off to Gen. Frank McKenzie, who leads U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from its headquarters in Tampa, Florida.

“I need to let you know that command of this coalition has been the highlight of my military career,” Miller told a small audience at Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul.

“The countries that have served here, many have lost service members, civilians; our Afghan partners have lost service members, they’ve lost civilians,” Miller said. “And as we’ve spoken about it previously, on this very ground with this group over time, our job is now just not to forget.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin thanked Miller for his leadership in Afghanistan in a Monday afternoon tweet.

“I want to thank Gen. Miller for three years of exceptional leadership in Afghanistan. That we have been able to secure our interests in Afghanistan, as well as those of our allies and Afghan partners, stands as testament to his operational acumen and strategic vision,” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s also worth noting that we have conducted our retrograde safely and orderly, and the transfer in command from Gen. Miller to Gen. McKenzie does not signify the end of our drawdown process, only the next milestone. We remain on track to meet @POTUS’ end of August goal.”

A Pentagon spokesperson said Miller left Afghanistan following the ceremony and was traveling back to the United States.

As the U.S. military finishes its withdrawal from the country, an emboldened Taliban has ramped up attacks and gained ground.

“I’m one of the U.S. military officers who’s had the opportunity to speak with the Taliban,” Miller told the audience in Kabul. “I said, it’s important that the military sides set the conditions for a peaceful and political settlement in Afghanistan, we can all see the violence that’s taking place across the country, but we know that with that violence, that what is very difficult to achieve is a political settlement. So again, what I tell the Taliban is they’re responsible too.”

McKenzie, who traveled to Kabul to attend the handover ceremony, said that while Miller’s departure is a milestone in the U.S. withdrawal, it also signifies “our renewed commitment to our Afghan partners.”

“The most important thing that continues is our support to the people of Afghanistan and to its armed forces,” McKenzie told the audience, which included Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, chief of Afghanistan’s National Council for Reconciliation, and other Afghan officials.

“We are confident in you. We are confident you have what it takes to protect your country,” McKenzie said. “Our support will be different than what it was in the past, but we know how much you love your country, and we know the sacrifices that you have made in the past and that you’re going to be willing to make in the future to do that. You can count on our support in the dangerous and difficult days ahead. We will be with you.”

McKenzie will maintain the ability to launch counter-terrorism operations from bases and ships outside of Afghanistan as needed, but a major post-war concern is maintaining the U.S. diplomatic mission

To that end, a detachment of about 650 U.S. troops will remain in the country indefinitely to protect the U.S. embassy as well as the airport in Kabul, which is critical to keep the mission running.

The embassy announced Sunday that it had resumed in-person interviews for immigrant visas, including those Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghan translators, guides and other contractors who worked for the U.S. military and diplomatic missions.

Interviews are a key part of the visa application process, but they had been halted for a month because of a significant COVID-19 outbreak throughout Afghanistan, including the U.S. embassy there.

There are approximately 18,000 Afghans seeking SIVs: 9,000 who haven’t finished their application and 9,000 who are waiting for the U.S. government to move their case forward, according to a State Department spokesperson.

This resumption does not yet extend to everyone. For now, the embassy is only rescheduling applicants who had their interviews postponed and appointment capacity remains limited, the embassy said Sunday.

In the meantime, the U.S. will relocate a group of SIV applicants and their families out of the country to safe locations to await their cases being processed, President Joe Biden confirmed last week. While he said those relocations will begin before the end of this month, it’s still unclear how many applicants that will involve, where they will go and when.

Despite pressure from lawmakers and activists, the Biden administration has emphasized SIVs as the way to help Afghans whose lives are at risk, instead of evacuations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has assigned 50 more staffers in Washington to help process paperwork and work through the enormous backlog.

But even with all that, critics said time is running out for the Afghans who risked theirs and their families’ safety by working for the U.S., as American forces draw down and the Taliban gain control of more districts.

ABC News’ Aleem Agha contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Monday released a statement in solidarity with the thousands of Cubans who protested over the weekend about shortages and rising prices for food and medicine amid the coronavirus pandemic in what’s being called an unprecedented rejection of the island nation’s government.

Cuba’s communist leadership has already denounced the protests as a “systemic provocation” by Cuban dissidents and the U.S. government, encouraged its supporters to counter protests, and sent its armed forces into the streets, risking clashes with demonstrators.

“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” Biden said in a statement Monday.

“The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves,” he said.

Sunday’s protests, in several cities across the island, are some of the biggest anti-government demonstrations in Cuba’s recent history, and Biden had been called on to show support for the protests.

While he helped the Obama administration’s efforts to ease tensions with Cuba and reopen trade and travel, Biden has kept most of former President Donald Trump’s sanctions and restrictions in place on America’s close neighbor and longtime adversary.

The administration says it is still reviewing its Cuba policy, earning the ire of progressives in the Democratic Party, but with these nearly unprecedented demonstrations, it may have to move more quickly than it hoped.

So far, the administration has voiced support for the Cuban people’s right to peacefully assemble and condemned any violence. Prior to Biden’s statement, acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Julie Chung and Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan weighed in with that sentiment.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged public grievances over blackouts and food and medicine shortages during a televised address Monday, but he blamed the island nation’s problems on the long-standing U.S. embargo and accused American “imperialists” of stoking tensions on social media.

“Yesterday, Cuba lived the most heroic day. Thousands of patriotic people defend the Revolution,” he said on state television, referring to pro-government demonstrations in Havana later on Sunday.

“We do not want to hurt our beloved people,” added Díaz-Canel, who assumed the presidency in 2019 and became the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party this April, officially taking over for Raúl Castro.

Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla had even sharper words Monday, firing back at Sullivan and Chung’s statements of support for protests by saying the White House has “no political or moral authority to speak about Cuba.”

“His government has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to promote subversion in our country & implements a genocidal blockade, which is the main cause of economic scarcities,” he tweeted, referring directly to Sullivan’s statement.

Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, with its economy contracting by double-digits last year. But along with the economic crisis, the country is dealing with another deadly surge of COVID-19.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Monday released a statement in solidarity with the thousands of Cubans who protested over the weekend about shortages and rising prices for food and medicine amid the coronavirus pandemic in what’s being called an unprecedented rejection of the nation’s government.

“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” Biden said in a statement.

“The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves,” he said.

Sunday’s protest was one of the biggest anti-government demonstrations in Cuba in recent history and Biden has been called on to show support for the protests.

One of the first responses from the U.S. government came overnight from Julie Chung, the acting assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, who tweeted out support for the Cuban people’s right for peaceful assembly but condemned any violence — a sentiment echoed by national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla threw cold water on the U.S. statements on Monday, saying the White House has “no political or moral authority to speak about Cuba.”

“His government has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to promote subversion in our country & implements a genocidal blockade, which is the main cause of economic scarcities,” he tweeted, referring directly to Sullivan’s statement.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, in a televised address earlier Monday, acknowledged public grievances relating to blackouts, food and medicine shortages, but defended the regime’s leadership and, instead, blamed many of the island’s problems on the U.S. embargo.

Díaz-Canel also accused the “imperialists” — a term commonly used to refer to the U.S. — of interfering by stoking tensions on social media, allegedly urging the public to go out onto the streets.

Along with experiencing an economic crisis, the country is dealing with another deadly surge of COVID-19.

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(New York) — Eric Adams, the moderate Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, said Sunday that members of his party should see from his victory that “we can’t be so idealistic that we’re not realistic.”

“Cities are hurting all across America and New York personifies that pain — the inequalities, the gun violence, the lack of really looking after everyday blue-collar workers, I like to say,” Adams told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “And we have failed for so many years. And we’ve allowed the fallout of the Trump administration to have an overreach in philosophy and not on-the-ground, real issues that are facing everyday New Yorkers.”

“So is it — is it fair to call you an anti-woke Democrat?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“No, I — I’ve — some of us never went to sleep. That’s the problem,” Adams responded.

“A 35-year record of fighting for reform, for public safety, a person who was arrested by police, assaulted by police, but also lost a child of a friend to gang — to gang violence. And so I never went to sleep,” he continued. “And people who have finally realized that there are issues out here believe that they can carve the entire Democratic agenda.”

Adams won the city’s Democratic primary for mayor by a narrow margin. He will face Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, in the general election, but Adams is widely considered the favorite to replace outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As a former police captain, combating the rise in violent crime while balancing racial justice has been a focal point of Adams’ campaign.

“You didn’t back away from stop and frisk — took some heat for that during the campaign. How do you balance preventing crime and police reform?” Stephanopoulos asked Adams.

“It’s possible they go together, you can have public safety and reform, I know it,” Adams replied.

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