A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 29 , 2022issue by pointing to his county
judge record of investing in new
voting machines, that he says
are considered among the safest
in the nation, and reviewing
voter data to assure ballot
accuracy.
That let those Trump voters
know he understood their
concerns without buying into
their false conspiracy. “The
focus is,” he said, “what can we
do from this point forward?”
Democrats in the long-shot
race criticized Moran for
accepting support from
corporate PACs and the
nominee, Jrmar Jefferson, who
was a delegate for Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) at the 2016
Democratic convention, accused
local GOP officials of
suppressing Black votes by
placing more election spots in
wealthy, Whiter neighborhoods.
“Any act of obstruction of our
voting rights is an attack on
your children,” Jefferson told
local media.
Moran, 47, pays respect to
Gohmert without embracing his
more outlandish behavior,
praising his “stalwart
conservative” record that
worked on “liberty” issues.
But there will be some big
policy differences.
Gohmert has opposed half of
the 16 bills approved by the
House to condemn Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. Cawthorn
and Brooks have voted against
six of those anti-Russia
measures.
Moran said he rejects that
part of the “America First”
movement and wants more
sanctions against Russia and
more U.S. troops in Europe, a
national security outlook in line
with the Reagan-Bush world
view.
“We also need to take
personal sanctions against
[Russian President] Vladimir
Putin, who is at the center and
heart of this. We need to push
back hard against this,”
Moran said during a local
media appearance earlier this
year.
Even though his November
race is all but assured, Moran
thinks it’s too soon to talk
publicly about his committee
assignments. He’s happy to go
wherever the leadership think
he can make a difference.
“I’ve got to find the right role
for me so that, as a team, we can
move the needle forward,” he
said. “I want to be authentic to
who I am.”Facebook posting last year did
include a line that Trump “IS
our President and will be
again!”
He will have to get past a
more conspiratorial candidate
in the runoff, Casey Wardynski,
who was assistant secretary of
the Army in the last two years of
the Trump administration.
Wardynski has questioned
whether the “FBI had
provocateurs in the crowd” on
Jan. 6, 2021, and his campaign
lists “restoring election
integrity” as a top issue.
But this trend isn’t playing
out everywhere, and GOP
leaders face a difficult situation
in Georgia’s 10th Congressional
District, where staunch
conservative Rep. Jody Hice (R)
lost his bid for secretary of state.
In the race to succeed Hice,
both Republicans who advanced
to the runoff have embraced
Trump’s election falsehoods and
both want to deny McCarthy the
big gavel. “I would like to have
President Trump as speaker of
the House,” Vernon Jones,
whom the ex-president
endorsed, said during the
campaign.
In East Texas, Moran said he
wants no part of that internal
drama. He has already launched
a leadership PAC so that he can
raise and donate money to other
Republican candidates to try to
win the majority.
His path to winning the
nomination to succeed Gohmert
could serve as boilerplate for
other candidates who do not
want to run as mini-Trump
clones.
Raised outside Tyler, Tex., not
far from the Louisiana border,
Moran came up through
traditional conservative ranks,
volunteering as a Boy Scout
leader and serving in several
local GOP posts. He spent four
years on the city council and the
past six years as county judge,
an executive post with lots of
responsibility but not much
direct power.
The former high school
quarterback said it requires
“persuasive authority” to get
things done, proclaiming that
his deeply held faith taught him
to treat “everyone with respect.”
The business community
gravitated toward Moran when
Gohmert announced he would
leave his seat, but he also went
to every possible meeting with
far-right conservative groups
devoted to Trump.
He defused the 2020 electionbeing a performative politician
who devoted little time to
constituent services and whose
personal behavior embarrassed
western North Carolina.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) —
who spoke at the pre-riot rally
and asked attendees if they were
“willing to do what it takes to
fight for America” — had so
easily won his six elections to
his North Alabama district that
Democrats didn’t bother to field
a challenger in 2020. He
frequently clashed with Boehner
and Ryan, and after the Capitol
riot, GOP leaders privately
questioned whether his
comments put people in danger.
Like Gohmert, Brooks left
behind his safe House seat for a
statewide office, finishing
second in Tuesday’s Senate
primary and heading to a runoff
next month.
In the race to succeed Brooks,
Dale Strong, chairman of the
Madison County Commission,
led the rest of the field by more
than 20 percentage points,
finishing a bit shy of the 50
percent mark needed to avoid a
runoff.
Strong presents as a fervent
supporter of Trump — he hosted
him at a 2016 rally before
20,000 people in North
Alabama — and ran an ad
touting himself as “Trump
conservative Dale Strong for
Congress.”
But his campaign launch
focused much more on his
Christian values and his years
spent as a firefighter. His
website does not list “election
integrity” among his most
important issues, although aRepublicans have ended up with
far more rabble-rousers — and
rule-breakers, norm-crushers
and white-supremacy-
embracers — who caused
endless headaches the past
decade for two GOP speakers,
John A. Boehner (Ohio) and
Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), and now
Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy (Calif.).
Two years ago Rep. Marjorie
Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) defeated a
brain surgeon in a runoff to
claim the seat of a retiring 10-
year veteran who devoted his
final two years in office to a
bipartisan effort to make
Congress function better.
Greene, who easily beat several
GOP primary challengers this
week, has suggested she will
issue a set of demands before
voting for McCarthy for speaker
if Republicans win the majority.
Gohmert is one of 16 House
Republicans who decided to
retire or seek a different office,
almost all from safe GOP seats.
So these Republican primaries
will help determine whether
Greene ends up with more
agitator allies or if their
numbers will be small enough
that GOP leaders can avoid
kowtowing to their purity
demands.
So far this spring, the GOP’s
governing wing has had some
success.
Earlier this month Rep.
Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.),
whose actions have landed him
in an ethics investigation just 16
months into office, lost to an
establishment-backed state
senator, Chuck Edwards. The
victor accused Cawthorn ofsaid he considers his mission to
be a “principled conservative”
who works to find “pragmatic”
solutions to help East Texas.
“I really can be a true
conservative and a thoughtful
policymaker,” he added.
In early March, Moran won
the primary by almost 40
percentage points, setting
himself on course for what
should be an easy November
victory. Gohmert won by at least
45 percentage points in his last
seven elections.
Moran’s easy victory went
largely overlooked by the
national media, campaign
operatives and many
lawmakers, because the reliably
red district will play no role in
determining the majority in
midterm elections.
But races like these can have
an outsize impact on the
internal dynamics of House
caucuses, especially when
primary voters pick firebrands
who attract attention through
cable news and social media.
Democrats have had their
share of left-wing victors who
caused trouble for House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
these past four years, butFor almost 18
years, East Texas
has sent Rep.
Louie Gohmert
(R) to Congress
with little hesitancy despite a
colorful and often controversial
career.
Gohmert questioned Barack
Obama’s citizenship. He
suggested a 2012 mass shooting
in a Colorado theater could have
been thwarted if movie guests
just had guns with them. A few
days before the Jan. 6, 2021,
Capitol riot, he urged Donald
Trump’s supporters to “go to the
streets” and be “violent” to
protest President Biden’s
victory.
So, after Gohmert launched
his unsuccessful bid for state
attorney general, would voters
in Texas’s 1st Congressional
District want another
provocateur to succeed him?
Not a chance.
Republican primary voters
instead backed Nathaniel
Moran, county judge of Smith
County.
“I’m a person that loves to be
part of a team,” Moran said in a
telephone interview Friday. As
an evangelical Christian, MoranSome far-right members are being replaced by more traditional conservatives@PKCapitol
PAUL KANEAMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) at a hearing on March 17. Many far-
right Republicans are being edged out by new lawmakers who don’t
prescribe to the same outlandish behavior of their predecessors.checkpoints and the airport
entrance. (The Washington Post
has previously reported that
Afghan special forces trained by
the CIA helped evacuate more
than 2,000 American citizens
and permanent residents.)
U.S. officials say many of the
Afghans in this category would
have been eligible to apply for
SIVs but had never thought of
getting the documents as they
had planned to remain in the
country indefinitely. But their
identities had been kept in
government databases, and they
had been vetted constantly when
they worked for the U.S.
government, so compared with
other Afghan refugees, their
paperwork for resettlement is
considered in pretty good shape.Category 3: Visa recipients
The third category contains
people who already held an SIV
— the document that is supposed
to be the main pathway into the
United States for Afghans who
worked for the U.S. government.
The number in the category
made up just about 5 percent of
the evacuees: 3,290.
One issue with SIVs is that
they expire six months after
being issued. But experts say
many Afghans eligible under this
category were unable to make it
onto the airlift planes.
A February report by AWA
estimated that of 81,000 people
in Afghanistan with visa
applications pending as of Aug.
15, 2021, the day Kabul fell,
78,000 were left behind.
U.S. officials say they are
unable to replicate these
estimates and that many people
may have had incomplete
applications, specifically not
having chief of mission approval.
Such approval can be difficult to
obtain. It requires verification of
employment for the United
States or the International
Security Assistance Force in
Afghanistan, a letter of
recommendation from a direct
U.S. supervisor and a statement
of threats received because of the
job he or she did for the United
States.fleeing Afghanistan, according to
the DHS report and U.S. officials.
Nevertheless, they are being fast-
tracked for SIVs and
resettlement in the United
States.
More than 30,000 of these
people, and their families, are
associated with the CIA,
according to U.S. government
officials who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
of the sensitivity of the matter.
The officials said this group of
evacuees consisted of members
of a controversial paramilitary
group known as the Khost
Protection Force (KPF) as well as
people who worked directly with
U.S. forces while employed by
the National Directorate of
Security (NDS), the former
Afghan national intelligence and
security service.
Senior administration officials
declined to discuss on the record
the fact that many evacuees had
CIA connections. But officials
pointed to bureaucratic-
sounding language buried in a
Department of Homeland
Security report that cites a figure
of 36,821 to describe this
category: “Afghan evacuees who
have applied to the SIV program
on the basis of having been
employed by or on behalf of the
U.S. Government or the
International Security Assistance
Force, or by a successor mission
in certain capacities in
Afghanistan, as well as Afghan
evacuees who are known to be
eligible to apply to the SIV
program, had not yet applied at
the time this report was
produced, and are expected to do
so.”
Matt Zeller, an adjunct fellow
at the America Security Project
who is associated with the
Association of Wartime Allies
(AWA), a nongovernment group,
said he has frequently
encountered former members of
the KPF, with their distinctive
tiger-stripe uniforms, when he
visited U.S. bases housing
Afghan refugees. He said the
soldiers told him they had
helped set up a security
perimeter between the Talibanalready in the United States,
according to U.S. officials. These
officials said the evacuees are
being treated as if they are
refugees, receiving all of the
same benefits, and many have
been advised to apply for asylum.
The pace of processing the
evacuees has been slow. As of
May 8, according to U.S. officials,
5,046 Afghan evacuees have
submitted I-485 (permanent
residence) applications; of those,
477 have been approved.
Meanwhile, 661 Afghans have
submitted I-589 principal
asylum applications; of those, 60
have been approved. An
additional 512 Afghans have
sought to adjust their immigrant
status through a family member
already legally in the United
States.Category 2: On the visa fast
track
The second category includes
almost 37,000 people who
worked for the United States but
had not applied for visas before“humanitarian parole,”
according to the DHS report.
This status is granted to those
who have a “compelling
emergency” and show an “urgent
humanitarian reason or
significant public benefit” to
gain temporary entry to the
United States, according to U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration
Services. That means they can
live and work in the United
States for two years but do not
yet have a direct pathway to
secure permanent legal
residency.
Some might have been related
to U.S. citizens or permanent
residents or were extended
family members of SIV
applicants, according to the DHS
report. Others do not fit in any
category but boarded the planes
anyway.
Some in this category of the
Afghan citizens who have arrived
in the United States might have
qualified as refugees, but under
the law, they cannot be processed
as refugees because they arereport, about 76,000 Afghans
were evacuated during the airlift
with the goal of reaching the
United States before U.S. forces
departed Afghanistan on Aug.- An additional 9,000 have left
the country since then,
according to the officials.
The numbers fall into three
main categories. Let’s take a look
at each category in order.
Category 1: No direct U.S.
government service
The most opaque category
includes more than 36,
Afghan evacuees, or about 40
percent of those rescued, who
could not claim any direct U.S.
government service but
managed to get on the planes
anyway, according to U.S.
officials who helped interpret
figures in a Department of
Homeland Security report
submitted to Congress in
December.
All of these people — along
with the vast majority of other
evacuees — have been granted“We got out
thousands of
citizens and
diplomats from
those countries
that went into
Afghanistan with
us to get bin
Laden. We got out
locally employed
staff of the United
States Embassy
and their families, totaling
roughly 2,500 people. We got
thousands of Afghan translators
and interpreters and others who
supported the United States out,
as well.”
— President Biden, remarks
on the end of the war in
Afghanistan, Aug. 31Nine months after the chaotic
U.S. withdrawal from
Afghanistan, a question still
lingers: Which Afghans actually
managed to get on the planes
after the fall of Kabul?
The numbers often are
obscured in reports written in
dense government prose, and
U.S. officials are reluctant to
discuss the figures in on-the-
record interviews.
But a review of these reports
and extensive interviews with
U.S. officials with direct
knowledge of the process —
several of whom spoke on the
condition of anonymity to
disclose information that has not
yet been made public — show
that the evacuees can be broadly
fit into three categories, with the
smallest containing qualified
Afghans who already held a
special visa to come to the
United States because they
worked for the U.S. government.
The special immigrant visas
(SIV) program, reserved for
people who in most cases worked
at least a year for the U.S.
government, provides
permanent admission to the
United States, without requiring
that the applicants demonstrate
economic self-sufficiency.
Spouses and children may
accompany the applicant.
All told, according to the U.S.
officials interviewed for thisNumbers behind last year’s c haotic Afghanistan evacuation come into focusThe Fact
Checker
GLENN
KESSLERDEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Biden speaks Aug. 31 at the White House on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden h ailed
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