this week on speaker kevin mccarthy s plan to raise the debt ceiling also ahead, the state department pulls u.s. personnel out of the embassy in sudan amid fierce fighting in the country we ll have the latest on the deadly conflict and what s next for thousands of americans who are still over there plus, we ll dig into new reporting on a possible spring counteroffensive from ukraine. looks like the russians are actually retreating or starting to evacuate people from areas around kherson, which suggests a retreat is coming up for the russians. ukraine, again, is trying to regain land controlled by russian forces, and that will ultimately, in the end, whenever that is, it s going to involve some very, very deep negotiations as it pertains to land they took. yeah. now opposed to crimea. good morning welcome to morning joe. it is monday, april 24th there s our good morning. good morning. happy monday with us, the host of way too early, bureau chief at q poli
strategic communications at the white house, retired rear admiral john kirby admiral, can you tell us about the evacuations and how risky they were, and what now are the options for other americans still in sudan this was a very risky operation to get our diplomats out over the weekend, mika that s why we did it during a period of darkness they why we made it clear to both warring factions, what we were doing and, just as critically, what we weren t doing. we were sipamply getting our diplomats out and urged them to let us do it safely. we made it clear we d protect ourselves if we came under foir. it was a dangerous mission, but nobody hurt, injured, and everybody out safely look, we are still looking at options. we have military assets still in the region nearby, should they be needed. but this is not the time to be conducting some sort of mass evacuation you ve seen the images out of
where americans were warned in the harshest terms for six months to get out of afghanistan. they didn t get out of afghanistan, then we had people screaming on other networks, you left people behind in afghanistan. of course, we won t talk about we were critical of afghanistan, so i m not giving a free pass. i m just asking, why do americans continue to stay in these countries when they are warned repeatedly to get out how many americans are still in sudan? you re right. we did really ramp up the warnings back in the fall, in october, advising americans, again, repeatedly not to travel to sudan if you were, get out thedeteriorating. the fighting broke out a week ago saturday, joe, but it is very, very dangerous we don t know how many americans are in sudan they don t have to register with us and tell us they are. there s estimates of more than 10,000, anywhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 to 16,000 potentially. it s important for people to remember that the vast majority of those
legislatures and anti-abortion groups are trying to stay one step ahead by making it harder to pass the measures or to get them on the ballot at all. the first state to test this new strategy is ohio a coalition of abortion rights groups pushing to get a vote on a constitutional amendment in november that would stop the state from being able to ban abortion before 24 weeks. why i ll tell you why. because 65% of americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and that means it would very likely pass in ohio they just need a simple ma majority as the new york times writes, mika, republicans in the state legislature are advancing a ballot amendment on their own that would raise a percentage of votes required to pass future measures to a super majority because they know they re in the minority. similar efforts to block citizen votes are happening in
meat to the republican base. that s a really, really good question i mean, i think the way for them to play this is to sort of stick to principles in terms of fighting racism, homophobia, misogyny, and defending women s right to choose and so forth these are essential on principle grounds but also, you know, popular, i think, with a majority of americans. also, not to fall into the trap of the deceesantis and trumps, f becoming caricatures of themselves, in terms of getting stuck on debates about the trans issues they should have their position, which is to defend trans rights, but to treat this as a sort of the overwhelmingly important issue of our time is going to put people off. so you have to thread a needle there that shows support for the ordinary people of america, whatever color and whatever