August 30, 2021

The lights are out in New Orleans. Power is down across the entire city and half the state of Louisiana as Hurricane Ida leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. Ida has now been downgraded to a tropical storm as it continues its path across the U.S., and the Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi joins the show to assess the storm's impact and what’s to come.

As many as five rockets were fired at Kabul Airport this morning before being intercepted by a U.S. defense system. Moreover, according to local journalists, nine members of a family were killed in a U.S. drone strike the Pentagon said targeted a suspected ISIS-K suicide bomber. Mike Rogers, former Republican congressman and chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, joins to discuss.

Many trying to leave Afghanistan will be left behind as of tomorrow’s evacuation deadline. According to the Pentagon, the State Department will continue working to get them out. Officials are saying at least 34 unaccompanied Afghan children have arrived in the U.S. For more on all this, we’re joined by Mark Hetfield, who heads a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to refugees.

The Taliban already have begun imposing harsh restrictions on Afghans not seen since 2001. One Taliban spokesperson told the New York Times that they still consider music forbidden in Islam. Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, founder of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and his former student, Zarifa Adiba, who has conducted the school’s trailblazing all-female Zohra Orchestra join the show to discuss.