Quick Takes: Republicans and Trump desperate to blame Biden for shooting

According to new reporting from The New York Times, the alleged D.C. shooter served in a CIA-trained Afghan special unit — one repeatedly accused of human-rights violations. That’s not a minor detail. That’s the kind of background that should set off every alarm in our vetting system.

So, yes, the Biden administration vetted him but also opened the door for him during the post-withdrawal resettlement wave. That part is true.

But here’s the piece disingenuous, sycophantic Republicans keep leaving out while twisting themselves into pretzels online and on cable news: it was Donald Trump’s administration that granted him asylum in April. That’s in the public record. If we’re going to point fingers, we’re at least going to start with the facts.

And let’s not ignore the broader security picture. Trump has flooded D.C. with troops, gutted domestic counterterrorism staffing, and reassigned thousands of FBI agents away from national-security work so they could focus on deportations instead. Those decisions matter. They weaken the very systems designed to catch someone exactly like this before violence happens.

So if we’re having a real conversation about responsibility, it can’t just be about who opened the door. It has to be about who dismantled the guardrails that were supposed to protect the country.roles.