Afghan Asylum Seeker’s Attack Exposes Vetting Failure Near DC

America woke up this week to the awful truth that our servicemen and women are not safe even two blocks from the White House after two West Virginia National Guard members were ambushed while on duty, leaving Specialist Sarah Beckstrom dead and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe fighting for his life. This was not a random act on a bad day — it was a targeted attack on the thin blue and green line that stands between the American people and chaos.

The suspect has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the United States under the chaotic evacuation program in 2021 and later secured asylum — a trajectory that raises urgent questions about how we vetted those who came through Operation Allies Welcome. Reports that the attacker previously worked with U.S.-backed units in Afghanistan make this an intelligence and vetting failure that should alarm every patriot.

President Trump moved quickly and rightly to order tougher immigration and vetting measures, pausing asylum decisions and suspending visas for Afghan passport holders while deploying additional National Guard troops to protect the capital. Americans expect their leaders to act decisively when policies put lives at risk, and this administration has at least taken the first step to secure the homeland in the wake of a preventable tragedy.

On Fox News Live, law professor John Yoo and correspondent Danamarie McNicholl laid it out plainly: the autopen controversy surrounding former President Biden isn’t a quaint bureaucratic quibble — it’s a symptom of a much larger problem about who really calls the shots in modern Washington. Conservatives have warned for years about hollowed-out accountability in the executive branch; watching officials hide behind machines and memos while our soldiers bleed in the streets should be the final straw for every voter demanding transparency.

Legal experts have long documented that autopens have historical precedent and can be lawful, but legality does not erase the unmistakable optics and the broader governance crisis they represent when combined with stories of suspicious vetting and whistleblower concerns. The issue isn’t just technical paperwork — it’s whether the American people can trust that the person whose name is on the document is the person who made the judgment, and right now too many Americans don’t believe that trust is deserved.

Our answer must be forceful: overhaul vetting procedures, restore political accountability, and stop treating national security like a talking point while troops do the dangerous work on our streets. If Washington won’t protect our soldiers and citizens, then patriotic Americans must demand leaders who will put safety and sovereignty ahead of open-borders ideology and bureaucratic cover-ups.