The storm over National Guard deployment will only grow more intense

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It’s taken less than a year for a sense of chaos and confusion to descend upon Donald Trump’s second spin in the White House — at least in his home base in Washington, D.C.

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Barely a week after the end of the nation’s longest-ever government shutdown, the fall-out from the never-ending Jeffrey Epstein saga and Trump’s bafflingly feel-good meeting with nemesis Zohran Mamdani, Washington is now convulsing from a shooting yesterday of two National Guard troops mere moments from the Oval Office.

While details of the attack remain murky, the identity of the shooter is now clear: 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the US in 2021.

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The specifics around Lakanwal’s brief history in the U.S. reveal the very chaos and dysfunction that both propelled Trump back to the presidency — and continue to complicate the wide-reaching ambitions of his second term.

Lakanwal arrived to the U.S. as part of a wave of Afghans allowed into the country following former president Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Kabul after some two decades of failed military and political intervention. Having worked alongside U.S. forces — including the CIA — Lakanwal entered the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome, which assisted Afghans who helped the U.S. establish new lives in America.

President Trump has since criticized the program’s ineffective screening policies, which failed to prevent potential criminals from gaining U.S. residency. But Lakanwal later applied for and was granted asylum by the Trump administration, reflecting both the deficiencies of the Biden-era scheme that got Lakanwal to America — and the lack of comprehensive oversight under Trump that kept him here.

National Guardsmen made for........

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