Biden administration

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports, days after a shooting in the nation’s capital that left one National Guard member dead and another in critical condition.

Investigators continued Saturday to seek a motive in the shooting, in which the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, faces charges including first-degree murder.

Lakanwal is a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan war. He applied for asylum during the Biden administration, which was granted this year under President Trump, according to #AfghanEvac, a group that assists with resettlement of Afghans who helped U.S. forces in their country.

The Trump administration has seized on the shooting Wednesday several blocks from the White House to intensify efforts to rein in legal immigration, promising to pause entry from some poor countries and review Afghans and other legal migrants already in the country. That is in addition to other measures, some of which were previously set in motion.

Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died after Wednesday’s shooting, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains hospitalized in critical condition. They were deployed with the West Virginia National Guard as part of Trump’s mission in Washington, D.C., which he says aims to combat crime. The president also has deployed or tried to deploy National Guard members to other Democratic-run cities to assist with his mass deportation efforts but has faced court challenges.

U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office said the charges against Lakanwal also include two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed. In an interview on Fox News, she said there were “many charges to come.”

Asylum decisions halted

Trump called the shooting a “terrorist attack” and criticized the Biden administration for enabling entry by Afghans who worked with U.S. forces.

The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, said Friday in a post on the social platform X that asylum decisions would be paused “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

Experts say the U.S. has rigorous vetting systems for asylum seekers. Asylum claims made from inside the country through USCIS have long faced backlogs. Critics say the slowdown has been exacerbated during the Trump administration.

Also Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his department was pausing “visa issuance for ALL individuals traveling on Afghan passports.”

Shawn VanDiver, president of San Diego-based #AfghanEvac, which has coordinated with the U.S. government on its Afghan resettlement efforts, said in response: “They are using a single violent individual as cover for a policy they have long planned, turning their own intelligence failures into an excuse to punish an entire community and the veterans who served alongside them.”

The suspect

Lakanwal lived in Bellingham, Wash., about 80 miles north of Seattle, with his wife and five children, former landlord Kristina Widman said.

Neighbor Mohammad Sherzad said Lakanwal was polite and quiet and spoke little English.

Sherzad said he attended the same mosque as Lakanwal and heard from other members that he was struggling to find work. He said Lakanwal “disappeared” about two weeks ago.

Lakanwal worked briefly this summer as an independent contractor for Amazon Flex, which lets people use their own cars to deliver packages, according to a company spokesperson.

Investigators are executing warrants in Washington state and other parts of the country.

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that resettled Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal, officials said. Lakanwal applied for asylum during that administration, but his asylum was approved this year under the Trump administration, #AfghanEvac said in a statement.

Lakanwal served in a CIA-backed Afghan army unit, known as one of the specialized Zero Units, in the southern province of Kandahar, according to a resident of the eastern province of Khost who identified himself as Lakanwal’s cousin and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The man said Lakanwal started out working for the unit as a security guard in 2012 and was later promoted to a team leader and a GPS specialist.

Binkley and Finley write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sarah Brumfield, Siddiqullah Alizai, Elena Becatoros, Randy Herschaft, Cedar Attanasio and Hallie Golden contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Charges against the man accused of shooting two National Guard members have been upgraded to first-degree murder after one of the soldiers died, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia announced Friday.

Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, were hospitalized in critical condition after the Wednesday afternoon shooting near the White House. President Trump announced Thursday evening that Beckstrom had died.

U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office said the charges against Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan war, now include one count of first-degree murder, three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence and two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed.

Beckstrom and Wolfe were deployed with the West Virginia National Guard as part of Trump’s mission in the nation’s capital that federalized the D.C. police force, which he says is a crime-fighting campaign. The president has deployed National Guard members to many Democratic-run cities, including Los Angeles, to assist with his mass deportation efforts.

Trump called the shooting a “terrorist attack” and criticized the Biden administration for allowing Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the Afghanistan war to enter the U.S. The president has said he wants to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations and expel millions of immigrants from the country.

In an interview on Fox News, Pirro said there are “many charges to come” beyond the upgraded murder charge. She said her heart goes out to the family of Beckstrom, who volunteered to serve and “ended up being shot ambush-style on the cold streets of Washington, D.C., by an individual who will now be charged with murder in the first degree.”

Pirro, a former Fox News host, declined to discuss the suspect’s motive, saying officials have been working around the clock on that question. Investigators are continuing to execute warrants in Washington state, where Lakanwal lived, and other parts of the country, she said.

Wolfe remains in “very critical condition,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said Friday. He ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in recognition of Beckstrom’s death.

“These two West Virginia heroes were serving our country and protecting our nation’s capital when they were maliciously attacked,” Morrisey said. “Their courage and commitment to duty represent the very best of our state.”

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said.

Lakanwal applied for asylum during the Biden administration, but his asylum was approved under the Trump administration, #AfghanEvac said in a statement. #AfghanEvac is a nonprofit organization that has worked with the U.S. government to resettle more than 195,000 Afghan evacuees, according to its website.

Lakanwal has been living in Bellingham, Wash., about 80 miles north of Seattle, with his wife and five children, said his former landlord, Kristina Widman.

Mohammad Sherzad, a neighbor of Lakanwal’s in Bellingham, told the Associated Press in a phone interview Friday that Lakanwal was polite, quiet and spoke very little English.

Sherzad said he attended the same mosque as Lakanwal and had heard from other members that Lakanwal was struggling to find work. Some of his children attended the same school as Lakanwal’s children, Sherzad said.

“He was so quiet and the kids were so polite, they were so playful. But we didn’t see anything bad about him. He was looking OK,” Sherzad said. Sherzad said Lakanwal “disappeared” about two weeks ago.

In his address to the troops Thursday, Trump said that Lakanwal “went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts.”

People who knew Lakanwal say he served in a CIA-backed Afghan army unit before immigrating to the United States. Lakanwal worked in one of the special Zero Units in the southern province of Kandahar, according to a resident of the eastern Afghan province of Khost who identified himself as Lakanwal’s cousin. He said Lakanwal was originally from the province and his brother had worked in the unit as well.

The cousin spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He said Lakanwal had started out working as a security guard for the unit in 2012 and was later promoted to a team leader and a GPS specialist. A former official from the unit, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said Lakanwal’s brother was a platoon leader.

Zero Units were paramilitary units manned by Afghans and backed by the CIA that also served in front-line fighting with CIA paramilitary officers. Activists had attributed abuses to the units. They played a key role in the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021, providing security around Kabul International Airport as the Americans and Afghan evacuees withdrew from the country.

Beckstrom is remembered

Beckstrom enlisted in 2023, the same year she graduated high school, and served with distinction as a military police officer with the 863rd Military Police Company, the West Virginia National Guard said in a statement.

“She exemplified leadership, dedication, and professionalism,” the statement said, adding that Beckstrom “volunteered to serve as part of Operation D.C. Safe and Beautiful, helping to ensure the safety and security of our nation’s capital.”

The president called Beckstrom an “incredible person, outstanding in every single way.”

On Wednesday night, Trump called for the reinvestigation of all Afghan refugees who had entered under the Biden administration initiative that brought roughly 76,000 people to the country, many of whom had worked as interpreters and translators.

The program has faced intense scrutiny from Trump and others over allegations of gaps in the vetting process, even as advocates say there was extensive vetting and the program offered a lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.

The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Joseph Edlow said in a statement that the agency would take additional steps to screen people from 19 “high-risk” countries “to the maximum degree possible.”

Edlow didn’t name the countries. But in June, the administration banned travel to the U.S. by citizens of 12 countries and restricted access from seven others, citing national security concerns.

Binkley and Finley write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sarah Brumfield, Siddiqullah Alizai, Elena Becatoros and Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.

JD Vance, it seems, is everywhere.

Berating Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. Eulogizing Charlie Kirk. Babysitting the Middle East peace accord. Profanely defending the aquatic obliteration of (possible) drug smugglers.

He’s loud, he’s obnoxious and, in a very short time, he’s broken unprecedented ground with his smash-face, turn-it-to-11 approach to the vice presidency. Unlike most White House understudies, who effectively disappear like a protected witness, Vance has become the highest-profile, most pugnacious politician in America who is not named Donald J. Trump.

It’s quite the contrast with his predecessor.

Kamala Harris made her own kind of history, as the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to serve as vice president. As such, she entered office bearing great — and vastly unrealistic — expectations about her prominence and the public role she would play in the Biden administration. When Harris acted the way that vice presidents normally do — subservient, self-effacing, careful never to poach the spotlight from the chief executive — it was seen as a failing.

By the end of her first year in office, “whatever happened to Kamala Harris?” had become a political buzz phrase.

No one’s asking that about JD Vance.

Why is that? Because that’s how President Trump wants it.

“Rule No.1 about the vice presidency is that vice presidents are only as active as their presidents want them to be,” said Jody Baumgartner, an East Carolina University expert on the office. “They themselves are irrelevant.”

Consider Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who had the presence and pizzazz of day-old mashed potatoes.

“He was not a very powerful vice president, but that’s because Donald Trump didn’t want him to be,” said Christopher Devine, a University of Dayton professor who’s published four books on the vice presidency. “He wanted him to have very little influence and to be more of a background figure, to kind of reassure quietly the conservatives of the party that Trump was on the right track. With JD Vance, I think he wants him to be a very active, visible figure.”

In fact, Trump seems to be grooming Vance as a successor in a way that Joe Biden never did with Harris. The 46th president practically had to be bludgeoned into standing aside after the Democratic freakout over his wretched, career-ending debate performance. (Things might be different with Vance if Trump could override the Constitution and fulfill his fantasy of seeking a third term in the White House.)

There were other circumstances that kept Harris under wraps, particularly in the early part of Biden’s presidency.

One was the COVID-19 lockdown. “It meant she wasn’t traveling. She wasn’t doing public events,” said Joel K. Goldstein, another author and expert on the vice presidency. “A lot of stuff was being done virtually and so that tended to be constraining.”

The Democrats’ narrow control of the Senate also required Harris to stick close to Washington so she could cast a number of tie-breaking votes. (Under the Constitution, the vice president provides the deciding vote when the Senate is equally divided. Harris set a record in the third year of her vice presidency for casting the most tie-breakers in history.)

The personality of their bosses also explains why Harris and Vance approached the vice presidency in different ways.

Biden had spent nearly half a century in Washington, as a senator and vice president under Barack Obama. He was, foremost, a creature of the legislative process and saw Harris, who’d served nearly two decades in elected office, as a (junior) partner in governing.

Trump came to politics through celebrity. He is, foremost, a pitchman and promoter. He saw Vance as a way to turn up the volume.

Ohio’s senator had served barely 18 months in his one and only political position when Trump chose Vance as his running mate. He’d “really made his mark as a media and cultural figure,” Devine noted, with Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” regarded as a kind of Rosetta Stone for the anger and resentment that fueled the MAGA movement.

Trump “wanted someone who was going to be aggressive in advancing the MAGA narrative,” Devine said, “being very present in media, including in some newer media spaces, on podcasts, social media. Vance was someone who could hammer home Trump’s message every day.”

The contrast continued once Harris and Vance took office.

Biden handed his vice president a portfolio of tough and weighty issues, among them addressing the root causes of illegal migration from Central America. (They were “impossible, s— jobs,” in the blunt assessment that Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, offered in her recent campaign memoir.)

Trump has treated Vance as a sort of heat-seeking rhetorical missile, turning him loose against his critics and acting as though the presidential campaign never ended.

Vance seems gladly submissive. Harris, who was her own boss for nearly two decades, had a hard time adjusting as Biden’s No. 2.

“Vance is very effective at playing the role of backup singer who gets to have a solo from time to time,” said Jamal Simmons, who spent a year as Harris’ vice presidential communications chief. “I don’t think Kamala Harris was ever as comfortable in the role as Vance has proven himself to be.”

Will Vance’s pugilistic approach pay off in 2028? It’s way too soon to say. Turning the conventions of the vice presidency to a shambles, the way Trump did with the presidency, has delighted many in the Republican base. But polls show Vance, like Trump, is deeply unpopular with a great number of voters.

As for Harris, all she can do is look on from her exile in Brentwood, pondering what might have been.