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The YOLO economy paradox Sep 09, 2021

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What the mismatch between the number of people employed and the number of jobs available tells us about America’s reassessment of work. Plus, how the pandemic has set women in the workforce back globally.
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There is a mystery at the center of the economic recovery in the U.S. — 8 million people are unemployed, but there are 11 million jobs open. Senior economics correspondent Heather Long explains that this is all part of the overall rethinking of American life and labor.
There has been a lot of reporting on the impact of the pandemic on women’s careers and livelihoods, especially here in the U.S. But Emily Rauhala and Anu Narayanswamy wanted to look at the problem globally — and what they found is that the pandemic has derailed a slow crawl toward equality for women in the workforce.

The legal limbo for Afghan evacuees Sep 08, 2021

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For many Afghan evacuees arriving in the United States, escaping the Taliban was just the beginning. Now, they face the uncertainty of a tenuous legal status with little financial support unless Congress acts.
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The Biden administration is preparing to screen and resettle tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees in the United States over the coming months, but the majority will arrive without visas as “humanitarian parolees,” not refugees. Reporter Nick Miroff explains what this means.
Volunteers are working to help the thousands of Afghan refugees who are starting new lives in the United States, but the transition is still a difficult one. Jorge Ribas has been interviewing Afghan evacuees who have recently arrived in the country. You can see more of his reporting here.

The beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade? Sep 07, 2021

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Life in Texas under the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. Plus, the unusual legal strategy that allowed the law to go into effect and how it could be a blueprint for other states to circumvent Roe v. Wade.
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The nation’s most restrictive abortion law is now in effect in Texas after the Supreme Court refused to block it, banning abortions after six weeks. Hours before S.B. 8 went into effect, abortion clinics were packed — and now that abortion providers can be sued, they’re recommending people go across state lines to get the procedure if they’re more than six weeks pregnant. Caroline Kitchener traveled to Texas to report on what it's like for patients and clinics.
This law is a huge win for antiabortion activists throughout the country, and it provides a blueprint for other states to use the same legal strategy. Ann E. Marimow reports on what this could mean for the future of Roe v. Wade.

What is ISIS-K? Aug 27, 2021

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What we know about the Thursday bombing near the Kabul airport. Plus, an Afghan journalist who left Kabul just before its collapse tells us why she fears for the family and friends she left behind.

A bombing outside the Kabul airport Thursday left more than a hundred people dead, including civilians and U.S. service members. Military reporter Dan Lamothe says the attack was “a nightmare scenario” for the United States, making the mission to evacuate Afghans and U.S. personnel much more difficult.

Journalist and Fulbright scholar Nasrin Nawa’s flight left Kabul right before the capital fell to the Taliban. In an op-ed she wrote for The Post, Nawa says her parents and sister tried to follow her but didn’t make it out.

Who decides who gets evicted? Aug 26, 2021

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The future of a federal ban on evictions is in the Supreme Court’s hands. But in many cases, whether a person gets evicted is up to a judge’s discretion, as our reporter found in Mississippi.

A federal ban on evictions has been in place in one form or another since the beginning of the pandemic. But after spending a day in an eviction court in Mississippi, reporter Marissa Lang found it’s often left up to individual judges whether to enforce it.

“So many of these cases are judge dependent, the outcome really varies, not just county by county, but judge by judge,” Lang said. She followed a woman facing eviction — and spoke to the judge who decided her fate.

The Full Comirnaty Aug 25, 2021

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What the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine means. Plus, big business pledged nearly $50 billion for racial justice after George Floyd’s killing. Where did the money go?

Goodbye, “emergency use authorization.” Hello, “full approval.” On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, commercially called Comirnaty. The four-month evaluation process was fast by the FDA’s usual standards, but regulators have emphasized that they did not sacrifice any kind of rigor in the process. Health and science writer Ben Guarino reports on the effect that full approval could have on vaccine mandates –– and whether it will change the hearts and minds of the vaccine-hesitant.

After the murder of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests, corporate America promised to take an active role in confronting systemic racism. Now, more than a year after leading businesses pledged money toward racial-justice causes, reporter Tracy Jan analyzes where that money actually went.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court said the Biden administration must comply with a ruling from a lower court to restart President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers. This was the program that forced people seeking asylum in the United States to wait on the other side of the southern border, in Mexico. It’s unclear what this new mandate will mean for the controversial program, but last month our podcast aired a two-part story about what living under this program is actually like for an asylum seeker. To better understand what it means to “remain in Mexico,” you can find those episodes — “Marooned in Matamoros,” Parts 1 and 2 — at this link.

The choice to stay in Kabul Aug 24, 2021

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What the return of the Taliban means for women in Kabul. And, the story behind a secret meeting between the CIA director and the leader of the Taliban.
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Mahbouba Seraj, activist and director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center, weighs the dire stakes for the women in Afghanistan — and explains why she chooses to stay in the country as dangers mount.
President Biden said Tuesday he will stick to the Aug. 31 deadline to fully withdraw from Afghanistan. The Taliban has said U.S. troops staying any longer would be crossing a “red line.”
As pressure to safely evacuate people from Kabul mounts, national security reporter John Hudson reports that CIA Director William Burns held a secret meeting with the leader of the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradar. It is the highest-ranking official within the administration to meet with the Taliban since the takeover of the country.

Is this a new Taliban? Aug 23, 2021

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The Taliban insists it has changed. Afghanistan’s future hinges on whether that’s true.
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Frenzied evacuations from Afghanistan continue as the U.S. scrambles to meet its Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all troops. But it’s still unclear what the country will look like after that. Taliban leaders say they will refrain from retaliatory violence and respect women’s rights. Griff Witte, The Post’s former Kabul bureau chief, evaluates those promises.

The Afghanistan Papers, revisited Aug 20, 2021

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This week, Americans watched in disbelief as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in a matter of days — and we wondered what Craig Whitlock was thinking. Two years ago he and a team at The Post published a prescient and ground-breaking project called “The Afghanistan Papers,” revealing hundreds of secret interviews with U.S. officials candidly discussing the failures of the war.
The interviews with some 400 people were part of a project called “Lessons Learned,” undertaken by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, and The Post obtained them after a three-year legal battle. These Afghanistan papers are a secret history of the war, Whitlock tells Martine Powers, and “they contain these frank admissions of how the war was screwed up and that what the American people were being told about the war wasn’t true.”
“They really do bring to mind the Pentagon Papers, which were the Defense Department’s top-secret history of the Vietnam War,” Whitlock says.
These recordings have new resonance this week.
Read excerpts from Craig Whitlock’s new book, ‟The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War”.Deceptions and lies: What really happened in Afghanistan
The grand illusion: Hiding the truth about the Afghanistan war’s ‘conclusion’

Disaster on repeat in Haiti Aug 19, 2021

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Haitians face devastation after two natural disasters hit the island. And what the tragedies have exposed about the country’s preparedness.
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Last weekend, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake caused widespread destruction and death in Haiti. Then, torrential rain from Tropical Storm Grace hit the island. Now, Haitians are recovering from two back-to-back natural disasters while reeling from political turmoil caused by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last month. Caribbean bureau chief Anthony Faiola reports on how public officials and citizens living close to the epicenter of the earthquake are grappling with the compounded loss and tragedy.
When an earthquake hits, it’s not the quake itself that kills people — it’s often the rattled buildings that collapse with people inside, or on top of them. And in Haiti, earthquakes are more dangerous than in other countries, because buildings there aren’t designed to withstand them. Reginald Desroches is a Haitian American engineer and provost of Rice University. After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, he traveled there about a dozen times to investigate why the damage was so severe and to figure out how to reinforce the structures that remained standing.
Listen to our episode on the assassination of Haiti’s president and how years of U.S. intervention in the Carribean country contributed to the chaos we’re seeing now.

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