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With help from Renuka Rayasam

GOING HOME — It took weeks, from April to July, for the Pentagon to remove just 1,500 troops and their equipment from Afghanistan — dropping the number from 2,500 when President Joe Biden took office to just under 1,000 when Kabul fell nine days ago. So when the White House announced today that it would not immediately be extending an Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, it not only prompted concerns that thousands of American citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies could be left stranded in Kabul, it also meant, for logistical reasons, that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan had to accelerate.

For that reason, the deadline isn’t really next week. It’s this week. The evacuation will actually have to end sometime before Aug. 31 in order to get all the troops out, White House press secretary Jen Psaki conceded in a briefing with reporters today.

Here’s why. In order to get all the troops out by next Tuesday, the military needs to start redeploying personnel and equipment by Friday, according to multiple reports. The Pentagon confirmed today the departure of several hundred troops who had completed their mission, including headquarters staff, maintenance and other “enabling functions.”

There are roughly 6,000 service members currently on the ground at Kabul airport helping with the evacuation effort, all but 1,000 of which were rushed there from prepositioned locations in the Middle East over the past week, along with armored vehicles and aircraft.

Biden is not quite ruling out adjusting the timeline. As Psaki told reporters, the president conveyed to the G-7 leaders this morning that “we are currently on pace to finish by Aug. 31,” but stressed that the mission “will end based on the achievement of our objectives,” and that completing the evacuation depends on “continued coordination with the Taliban.”

Biden has also asked the Pentagon and State Department for contingency plans so that he can adjust that timeline if necessary, Psaki said.

The president was set to address the nation about the situation in Afghanistan at noon in Washington, but the speech was rescheduled twice — first to 2 p.m., then again to 4:30 p.m. He began speaking just after 5 p.m.

The Taliban has threatened “consequences” if American troops stay past the Aug. 31 deadline Biden set earlier this year. White House and military officials are fearful of a Taliban or terrorist attack that could set back the evacuation efforts and draw the United States back into a prolonged conflict they are trying to end after two decades.

While the situation in and around the Kabul airport deteriorates, White House officials continue to project optimism — leading some experts to accuse them of “gaslighting,” POLITICO reported today. The evacuation has significantly picked up speed in recent weeks, but there are still reports of squalid conditions at the airport, violence at the gates, and even American citizens being turned away by Afghan guards. Three sources told me and POLITICO’s Alex Thompson today that the Taliban had begun halting people trying to get through the airport gates, including both Afghans and American citizens.

The window for evacuating the thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies left in Kabul may be narrowing even further. The Pentagon warned today in a new intelligence assessment briefed to lawmakers that threats from the Islamic State to the airport are now jeopardizing the evacuation effort, your Nightly host, Andrew Desiderio and Alex Ward scooped this evening.

The security situation at the airport deteriorated so drastically today that the military may now have to wrap up its evacuation by the end of the week, the assessment warned.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. A note for next week: Nightly won’t be publishing from Monday, Aug. 30-Monday, Sept. 6. We’ll be back and better than ever Tuesday, Sept. 7. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] and on Twitter at @laraseligman.

FRANK ASSESSMENT — All House Democrats voted today to pass a $3.5 trillion budget framework, capping off several days of furious negotiating and ending a weekslong stalemate between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a band of Democratic centrists who threatened to upend Biden’s domestic agenda. The House vote clears the way for Democrats to pursue a massive social spending package that could pass both chambers without Republican support, write Heather Caygle, Sarah Ferris, Nicholas Wu and Anthony Adragna.

Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam reached out to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, today to get his take on the negotiations with the House’s “Mod Squad.” This conversation has been edited.

Were you surprised to see House moderates publicly flex their strength?

I wasn’t shocked. A lot of those people didn’t vote for her as speaker. Isn’t that a bigger repudiation than differing over the strategy in legislation? Why were you surprised that people who didn’t vote for her to be speaker don’t agree with everything she does?

You have negotiating postures and you say things. It was the left that first started threatening to hold the legislation hostage. They were the ones who said, after they put together the Senate infrastructure bill, that they wouldn’t vote for it until they got their 3.5. You don’t practice unilateral disarmament if you want to get ahead in politics.

Not all of those guys and women were determined to kill the thing. Many of them thought, Well this could be a good thing, but they want to increase their leverage. This was not a case of people angry about something. They are not all Kyrsten Sinema. And even she’s going to vote for 3 plus trillion.

I talked to one of the moderate members involved. They wanted to say yes.

Who did you talk to and what did you say?

I talked to Jared Golden at an event last week in Maine. He has a tough district. I said it’s in everyone’s interest to find a way to say yes.

Do House Democratic moderates have more power than Pelosi or others realized?

Anybody who counts knew they had power. The smaller the majority, the greater the influence of individual members. Of course the speaker had to negotiate. Members have to worry about constituents. For a speaker, the constituents are her members. People have an exaggerated notion of the power of leadership.

It is important for the left to understand we need everybody in this operation. The story here is how well they performed in getting this together and accommodating everybody.

Do you think passing this massive spending package could backfire on Democrats in 2022?

It’s good for Democrats because we’re the party of government. This is a great victory for Democrats who think government should be a positive role in our lives. What we are going to see is the first major set of advances in the role of government that’s going to be both effective and popular in a very long time. This could be transformative politically. This is a chance to vindicate the role of government.

The biggest reason why this is going to go through is that it’s popular with the majority. Public opinion counts more than people think, especially on big issues.

Politically if this thing blows up, it’s very bad for the Democrats especially after the fiasco in Afghanistan. Looking incompetent is never good for a political party.

Nightly asks you: Did you, or someone you know, initially decide not to get vaccinated but then got the shot? If so, what happened to change your mind (or theirs)? Send your response using our form, and we’ll include select answers in Friday’s edition.

— New CDC studies point to waning immunity from vaccines: Two new studies from the CDC show fully vaccinated Americans’ immunity to Covid-19 is waning. One study, which focused on health care workers, found that vaccine effectiveness in preventing infection declined by nearly 30 percentage points against the Delta variant. The analysis also concluded that the Covid-19 vaccines were 80 percent effective in preventing infection among frontline health care workers against all strains. The vaccines have continued to be highly effective in preventing hospitalization and death.

— NIH director: Vaccine approval for kids unlikely before late 2021: One of the federal government’s top public health experts predicted today that it is unlikely children under the age of 12 will be eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine before late 2021, contradicting the speedier timelines offered by other Biden administration officials. Vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna are currently studying the shot’s safety and efficacy in younger children and infants, with Pfizer expected to deliver the results of its trials for 5- to 11-year-olds to the Food and Drug Administration sometime in September.

— Herschel Walker files for Georgia Senate race: Former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star Herschel Walker has officially filed to run for Senate in Georgia, adding a dose of celebrity to the Republican bench in one of the nation’s premier midterm races. Walker, who plans to announce his candidacy Wednesday, enters a multi-candidate GOP primary for the right to take on Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock with two crucial advantages the others can’t match: high poll numbers and the full-throated endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly urged him to run.

— VP Harris’ trip to Vietnam temporarily delayed: Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Vietnam was pushed back for several hours today due to what the U.S. embassy in Hanoi said was an “anomalous health incident” there. Reporters accompanying the vice president were ushered to their hotel rooms before being ferried back to the airport more than three hours later. Anomalous health incidents is the phrase the U.S. government uses to classify the mysterious brain injuries referred to as “Havana syndrome,” first reported by U.S. officials stationed in Cuba.

— Andrew Cuomo loses Emmy following scandal, resignation: The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the revocation today, hours after Cuomo stepped down as New York governor in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal. The Academy awarded Cuomo its Founders Award in November “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world,” according to the press release issued at the time.

MORE KABUL TROUBLE — As conditions deteriorate in Kabul, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has acknowledged that Taliban reprisals have begun against U.N. staff. A group of U.N. staffers has urged Guterres to order their evacuation, Ryan Heath writes.

Around 720 foreign staff working for the U.N. have been offered support to evacuate Afghanistan. Deborah Lyons, the Canadian head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, is already working out of Almaty, Kazakhstan. But for the 3,000 Afghans working for the U.N., mostly out of Kabul, there is little or no assistance.

Advice from U.N. management is inconsistent: staff at some agencies have been told to continue arriving at their offices each day, while others have been told to “hibernate” because the U.N. cannot guarantee their safety.

Official letters seen by POLITICO, which have been sent to some local U.N. staff, verify their employment status, but do not include any request that the staffers be granted asylum or other visa support to leave Afghanistan.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE SAIGON — In the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon, home to the largest number of Vietnamese Americans outside of Vietnam, the GOP is quietly conducting an experiment that will go a long way toward determining the future of the party, Catherine Kim writes from Westminster, Calif.

In a strip mall storefront off Bolsa Avenue, the Republican National Committee in June opened its first Asian Pacific American community center, designed to organize, recruit and train AAPI volunteers, in addition to providing a gathering place for local grassroots activists.

The idea is to use the center to build the GOP’s ground game, but that’s only part of what’s happening here. People who identify as Asian are the fastest-growing racial group in the nation, according to recently released Census figures, and the Republican Party is floundering in its attempts to win them over.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by 69 percent to 25 percent among AAPI voters nationally. Trump ran ahead of that pace in 2020 but still lost by a landslide margin — 61 percent to 34 percent, according to exit polls. In California, the result was even worse: Biden won 3 out of every 4 Asian American voters.

Even in Orange County, among the Vietnamese American voters who have long been a part of the Republican coalition, the GOP has been losing ground. After an election year in which AAPI voters turned out across the nation in record numbers, there is greater urgency than ever for the party to rethink its approach.