Lawmakers from both parties aired worries Tuesday about Americans unable to leave the war-torn Middle East, with Democrats more pointedly outraged that the Trump administration provided tardy warnings to U.S. citizens in the region.
Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., a former diplomat, told reporters the number of Americans who need to get out of the region could grow if, as Trump administration officials have predicted, the war widens or intensifies in the more than a dozen countries now being hit by missiles, drones or shrapnel. Kim said up to 1 million Americans may potentially be in harm’s way.
He called the belated advisories to depart those nations and evacuate nonessential personnel from embassies “one of the biggest derelictions of duty I ever saw.”