This is Brian Lair's Daily Politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, August 26th.

I'm Bridget Bergen from the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, filling in for Brian Lair, who's got the week off. As of this week,

President Biden has reaffirmed his commitment to withdraw most U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

August 31st, this comes despite a swift and unexpected takeover of the country by Taliban forces.

And it comes amid more than a week of ongoing chaos on

the ground as the U.S. scrambles to evacuate Americans as well as Afghans who are eligible to leave

the country. Two members of Congress who traveled to the country earlier this week said they don't

believe the U.S. have, they don't believe the U.S. will be able to evacuate remaining citizens by that deadline.

And yet a spokesman for the Taliban has said, if the U.S. government delays its departure,

there could be consequences should they remain in Kabul into September.

Of course, Biden's planned exit was scheduled to precede the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks, which drew the country into this longest war ever.

And yet late Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned Americans trying to depart from the airport to evacuate immediately because of an unspecified terror threat.

So many questions remain about what comes next for the country, its people, and the Americans still on the ground there.

Missy Ryan is a reporter for the Washington Post covering diplomacy and national security who joins us now to help explain how we got here and what she'll be watching for in the days and months ahead.

Missy, welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you.

I want to start with a little bit of context.

President Biden announced back in April that the U.S. would withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this month,

and that was actually pushing back the date the Trump

administration had originally negotiated with the Taliban for a troop withdrawal. Can you remind us

of the background there? Yeah. So President Biden came into office promising to get the United

States out of Afghanistan. It was a long held belief the president, going back to the early days of the Obama

...