‘We Have to Try’: Lawmakers Rush to Assist in Afghanistan Evacuations.

Frustrated with the Biden administration’s plans and inundated with requests for help, members of Congress in both parties have thrown themselves into extraction efforts.

WASHINGTON — Consumed with trying to help dozens of Afghans escape their country as U.S. troops prepared to withdraw, aides to Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, shifted their work schedules, coming in after midnight so they could talk evacuees through Taliban checkpoints. Representative Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, and her staff began what she called “a tense, 10-day odyssey” involving two nations’ militaries and several nongovernmental organizations to help evacuate 114 Afghans from Kabul. Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, called a former military officer working for a private company as part of a frantic effort to try to extract two orphans lost in a crowd at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.