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Top generals told lawmakers under oath on Tuesday that they advised President Joe Biden early this year to keep several thousand troops in Afghanistan — directly contradicting the president’s comments in August that no one warned him not to withdraw troops from the country.

The remarkable testimony pits top military brass against the commander-in-chief as the Biden administration continues to face tough questions about what critics are calling a botched withdrawal that directly led to the deaths of 13 American service members, scenes of chaos at the Kabul airport, and the abandonment of American citizens and at-risk Afghans in the war-torn country.

Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services in a hearing Tuesday that he recommended maintaining a small force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan earlier this year.

He also noted that in the fall of 2020, during the Trump administration, he advised that the U.S. maintain a force almost double the size, of 4,500 troops, in Afghanistan.

In answering questions from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) about his advice, McKenzie said he would not share his “personal recommendation” to the president.

But he went on to say that his “personal view,” which he said shaped his recommendations, was that withdrawing those forces “would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and, eventually, the Afghan government.”

McKenzie also acknowledged that he talked to Biden directly about the recommendation by Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan until July, that the military leave a few thousand troops on the ground, which Miller detailed in closed testimony last week.

“I was present when that discussion occurred and I am confident that the president heard all the recommendations and listened to them very thoughtfully,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie’s remarks directly contradict Biden’s comments in an Aug. 19 interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in which he said that “no one” that he “can recall” advised him to keep a force of about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.

During the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Biden point blank: “So no one told — your military advisers did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that”?

Biden answered: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”

During the hearing on Tuesday, Inhofe next asked Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he agreed with the recommendation to leave 2,500 troops on the ground. Milley answered affirmatively.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) attempted to pin Milley down on Biden’s August remarks, repeatedly asking the general whether the comments constituted “a false statement.”

Milley declined to give a direct answer, saying only that “I’m not going to characterize a statement of the president of the United States.”

Sullivan then grilled McKenzie about the accuracy of the president’s statement, stressing that the general does not “have a duty to cover for the president when he’s not telling the truth.”

McKenzie again declined to criticize the president, saying only that “I’ve given you my opinion and judgment.”

Later in the hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Milley if he should have resigned when the president decided to fully withdraw from Afghanistan against the generals’ advice.

Milley argued that resigning in protest would have been a “political act,” and that the president has no obligation to agree with his military advice. “It would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to just resign because my advice is not taken,” Milley said. “This country doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we are going to accept and do or not. That’s not our job.”

Milley added that his decision was also informed by the experience of his father, who fought at Iwo Jima.

“[My father] didn’t get a choice to resign,” Milley said.

“Those kids there at Abbey Gate, they don’t get a choice to resign,” Milley said, referring to the 13 American service members who died during the evacuation from Kabul in late August when an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest. “They can’t resign so I’m not going to resign. There’s no way.”

Colorado’s new independent redistricting commission passed a congressional map late Tuesday that would give Republicans a decent shot at controlling four of eight House seats in a fast-growing state that’s become reliably blue.

In a marathon, six-and-a-half-hour Zoom meeting, all but one of the 12 commissioners agreed on one of nine proposals just minutes before their midnight Mountain Time deadline. The map now goes to the state Supreme Court, which is almost certain to give its sign-off.

The new map’s breakdown: four Democratic-leaning seats, three where the GOP has an advantage and one competitive district. It’s a disappointing result for Democrats who have been ascendant in the state over the last four years, winning a House seat, a Senate seat and notching their largest presidential victory margin in decades.

Yet even as Colorado grows more blue, Democrats may still only control four of the state’s eight House seats. They currently have a 4-3 edge over the GOP and hoped that the state’s new House seat gained through reapportionment would be a blue district. Instead, it’s likely to be among the mostly closely contested seats in the country.

The commissioners’ virtual meeting Tuesday oscillated between friendly banter, terse sniping and emotional pleas as the hours ticked by. But, ultimately, their seventh round of voting resulted in an 11-1 tally for the new map, with only one Democratic commissioner opposing it.

“We had our spats. We had our Kumbaya moments,” said Simon Tafoya, the Democratic commissioner who voted against the plan. “And I think at the end of the day we’ve all learned a lot, and through this experiment we call democracy.”

Barring the unlikely event that the state Supreme Court determines the commission “abused its discretion” in applying the criteria for the new map — these will be the new set of political boundaries for the next decade in a rapidly diversifying swing state.

The new redistricting marks the first time that Colorado amended its boundaries through an independent commission. Its creation was a bipartisan compromise from 2018. The Democratic state house and the GOP state Senate referred an amendment creating the commission to the ballot that year, and voters overwhelmingly approved it.

The commission includes four Democrats, four Republicans and four unaffiliated members.

Privately, some Democrats in the state were wary of ceding control over redistricting in a year when it seemed likely they would control both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship when it came time to draw the maps

In considering a new map, the commission had to take into account communities of interest, the location of existing counties and towns and the competitiveness of a given district. They are not, however, allowed to enact any map that has “been drawn for the purpose of protecting one or more members of or candidates for congress or a political party.”

“The plan we have is competitive,” said Danny Moore, a GOP commissioner, “But we didn’t sacrifice community of interest for competitiveness. No plan itself is perfect, but I believe this plan reflects the will of the people of the state of Colorado.”

This map would leave all incumbents in a strong position to win reelection. According to a POLITICO analysis, Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Jason Crow would all have districts that Joe Biden won by at least 25 points. Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter would have a seat Biden won by about 15 points.

Republican Reps. Doug Lamborn and Ken Buck would represent districts Donald Trump carried by double-digits; he would have carried fellow GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s seat by roughly 8 points.

The new 8th District would be the most competitive seat in the state by far. Joe Biden would have carried that by roughly 5 points last year, though now-Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper won it by only 2 points in the same election.

Blue-state Democrats are fighting hard to repeal a cap on how much of their state and local taxes Americans can deduct from their federal taxes. Often left unspoken is that the tax most at issue isn’t state income taxes, it’s local property taxes.

Reinstating the full deduction would make a hypocrite of any Democrat who claims to care about income inequality or systemic racism. That’s because the deduction is one of the biggest drivers of inequality in blue states.

In fact, unlike most debates in Congress, this one doesn’t actually pit red states against blue states. Rather, it pits the interests of wealthy blue districts against less wealthy ones. That’s why liberals who care about inequality and systemic racism should be willing to let go of the deduction.

Better known by its acronym, SALT, the deduction allows taxpayers to subtract their local and state tax bills from their income and reduces the amount that they pay in federal taxes. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by former President Donald Trump limited that deduction to $10,000. Trump’s motives weren’t egalitarian — he imposed the cap to help offset the costs of the other tax cuts in the package, tax cuts that went primarily to the wealthy and large corporations. Many Democrats saw that move as a partisan financial hit aimed at blue states, and many now want to eliminate the limit.

But while Trump may have done the right thing for the wrong reason, lifting the cap now would be doing the wrong thing, full stop. Here’s why.

Property taxes are a large non-federal tax bill for many American homeowners. And the largest benefits of the deduction go to homeowners with the highest property taxes: residents of middle-class and wealthy communities that impose higher taxes to fund local priorities like better schools.

Consequently, places that can afford those higher taxes end up with better schools. When the unlimited SALT deduction was in place, the federal government essentially gave up being paid taxes by the homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods so that those homeowners could fund those better schools.

Many liberals are beneficiaries of this system. Many take out large mortgages to send their children to the public schools funded by those high property taxes. New York Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents a wealthy part of Long Island, argued that Congress should repeal the state and local tax deduction limits because “we built a whole system around it.”

He’s right: We have built our whole housing system around it. That‘s why it’s called “systemic” racism.

The footings of this system of inequality reach deep into the ground of history. Developers on Long Island like Levitt & Sons put racial covenants in their deeds to prevent anyone except white people from living in them. The company had a financial reason to prevent Black residents from moving in: The Federal Housing Administration guaranteed loans only to areas that limited a neighborhood to white residents. The Levitts weren’t alone; most large developers on Long Island did the same thing. One of the effects is that residents of places like Levittown paid only to fund their own schools, which served only white students.

The inequality created by the system persists today. A major investigation by Newsday showed that, as recently as 2019, real estate agents didn’t show Black homebuyers houses in white neighborhoods. White Americans, meanwhile, rarely move into neighborhoods with more than a token number of neighbors of color. Home values in integrated neighborhoods, as a result, rise slower than in all-white neighborhoods and generate fewer property taxes to invest in schools.

This perpetuates systemic racism in two ways. First, it means that students of color disproportionately enroll in schools with fewer resources. And second, Black Americans and other Americans of color for decades were locked out of the real estate market and the opportunity to build equity and generational wealth. Well into the 20th century, in both the North and the South, federal, state and local governments allowed the seizure of Black Americans’ property at the same time that racial covenants and the racist basis for FHA loans that Levitt and others used locked out Black Americans from real estate markets.

Because FHA loans were central to this wealth, the federal government was the architect of the huge Black-white wealth gap built on the system Congressman Suozzi described. The wealth of Long Island villages like Manhasset, Great Neck and Glen Cove were built on this system. The system has also prevented Black Americans from enjoying the benefits of homeownership like increasing wealth and well-funded schools.

Let’s be clear: At this point, preventing the SALT deduction from returning will not reduce inequality between school districts. But by letting taxpayers keep money they would otherwise pay to the IRS, the federal government would continue to subsidize this system that maintains wealth inequality between white and Black Americans.

No evidence exists that the Republicans removed the SALT deduction to reduce inequality, and the rest of their tax cut legislation increased inequality. And the Republican Party opposes efforts to increase federal spending to improve educational outcomes while complaining any time racial inequality is even mentioned.

But just because Republicans bumbled into doing the right thing doesn’t mean that Democrats should reinstate the SALT deduction. Reinstating the SALT deduction would cede ground to Republicans who could call out Democratic hypocrisy — correctly.

By removing the SALT deduction, Congress dismantled one pillar of a racist system, one that impedes racial equality. We should not rebuild it. Instead, let’s fund programs that will actually take steps to make America more equitable.

National politics seeped into Tuesday night’s Virginia governor debate, with the candidates weighing in on the reconciliation price tag, the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and a potential 2024 presidential run for former President Donald Trump.

Former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe said he thought $3.5 trillion was “too high” for the Democrats‘ reconciliation bill.

“They got to stop their little chitty-chat up there, and it is time for them to pass it. Let’s get this infrastructure bill passed for America,” McAuliffe said, slamming lawmakers for this week’s chaotic back-and-forth on how to get President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package through Congress.

Republican Glenn Youngkin, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump earlier this year, also didn’t avoid taking his time to weigh in on the national political scene. When asked about Afghan refugees in Virginia, Youngkin took the opportunity to slam Biden on the Afghanistan withdrawal and an influx of migrants at the southern border.

“We saw an abject failure of leadership from Joe Biden: He abandoned our military. He abandoned American citizens. He abandoned our allies, and he abandoned Afghans who had gone shoulder to shoulder with us, trying to make a way forward,” Youngkin said, before turning to Texas’ “open borders” — tapping into another common Trump talking point.

McAulliffe frequently criticized Youngkin as a “wannabe Trump” during the debate, prompting Youngkin to call out how often his opponent said the former president’s name.

During one of the final questions, Youngkin was asked whether he would support Trump as the nominee in 2024. Youngkin, who has made somewhat of an effort to pivot toward the center of the Republican Party after winning the GOP nomination, gave a shaky response.

“Who knows who is going to be running for president in 2024?” Youngkin said, before being pressed again on whether he’d support the former president as the nominee.

“If he’s the Republican nominee,” Youngkin said, “I’ll support him.”

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin bickered their way through the second and final debate of Virginia’s competitive governor’s race on Tuesday, trading attacks and accusations from the start of the hourlong meeting.

They called each other liars. McAuliffe accused Youngkin of skirting local taxes by housing “fancy horses” on his Northern Virginia property and running a company that performed root canals on “babies.” Youngkin said McAuliffe would end Virginia’s “right-to-work” status and supports President Joe Biden’s “failure of leadership” and “open borders.”

Beginning with an argument over vaccine mandates for workers — McAuliffe supports them, Youngkin opposes them — and ending with hot-button national concerns, the two men disagreed throughout the debate. And McAuliffe frequently returned to his refrain in a state Biden carried by 10 points: tying Youngkin to former President Donald Trump.

“We need leadership as governor, not trying to be a Trump wannabe and doing the talking points,” McAuliffe said while attacking Youngkin over vaccine mandates.

Youngkin has been endorsed by Trump and has accepted his endorsement, but bristled when McAuliffe raised the former president on the stage, accusing him of trying to take attention away from state issues. “There’s an over and under tonight on how many times you are going to say ‘Donald Trump,’ and it was 10,” Youngkin said Tuesday night. “And you just busted through it. You are running against Glenn Youngkin.”

The debate was held in vote-rich Northern Virginia, an area that would be key to any potential Democratic victory. The sprawling region is one that heavily favors McAuliffe and is emblematic of the shift of suburban voters throughout Trump’s tenure in the White House.

And Democrats’ surrogates ahead of the debate also point to the type of voters they are trying to keep in their camp with Trump out of the White House — squishy suburbanites who broke away from the GOP due to Trump. The state party held a press availability ahead of the debate, trotting out former Republican state Del. David Ramadan and Bill Kristol, the longtime neoconservative never-Trump pundit, and McAuliffe shouted out both men on stage.

“Northern Virginia, if not the state overall, is still in my opinion, a third, a third and a third,” said Ramadan, referencing a third for either party and a third independent. “Both parties are going to bring out their bases, right? But what it comes down to here is, are the independents going to come out?”

The question is, however, how much of that swing toward Democrats has stuck with Trump out of office. Public and private polling has suggested that this race will be closer than Biden’s blowout win in 2020. The latest sign was a poll from Monmouth University released on the eve of the debate that had McAuliffe up 5 points over Youngkin among registered voters — a narrow yet stable lead compared to an earlier August poll from the university.

Republicans are hoping that with Trump gone, they can claw back some ground. And Democrats have relentlessly been trying to turn the November election into a referendum on Trump’s sway on the commonwealth, casting Youngkin as an acolyte of Trump.

For his part, Youngkin — a former private-equity executive — tried to stick to his core message, focused on the economy and crime. He hit McAuliffe for saying he would support a bill repealing the state’s “right-to-work” law.

“This bill is going to come to his desk, and Terry McAuliffe will sign it. He said that, and the minute he said he would sign it, every union in America endorsed him,” Youngkin said. “It will be the death blow for Virginia’s business climate. This is why every business organization in Virginia that has offered an endorsement so far has given it to me. Not to you, Terry, but to me.”

McAuliffe, who had previously said he supports repealing the right-to-work law, didn’t explicitly say again if he would or would not back it, saying it has no political path in the state legislature.

On the airwaves, Youngkin has been focused on a message surrounding law enforcement. Over the last week, nearly 70 percent of his TV ad airings in the race have been a variation of a spot that has a former Richmond police officer talking about when she was shot, according to data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact, attacking McAuliffe over the state’s parole board and saying the state “won’t be safe” with him.

Youngkin’s campaign sought to drive that focus home before the debate, announcing the endorsement from the state Fraternal Order of Police on Tuesday morning, following earlier endorsements from the state’s Police Benevolent Association and a sheriff’s association. “Youngkin is the only gubernatorial candidate to sit down with the Fraternal Order of Police and outline his goals as governor,” Virginia FOP President John H. Ohrnberger said in a statement circulated by the campaign.

On the debate stage, the two men also sparred over abortion: McAuliffe hit Youngkin for supporting additional restrictions on abortion rights, while Youngkin called McAuliffe’s position “extreme.” And Youngkin spun a question about Afghan refugees being housed in Virginia into a lengthy and strenuous criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the troop pullout.

Near the end of the hour, the moderator, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, sought to pin the candidates down on national issues. Asked about Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill currently working through Congress, McAuliffe said it was too costly. Youngkin, meanwhile, told Todd he would support Trump if the former president was Republicans’ nominee in 2024.

The debate was produced by Washington’s WRC-TV and aired on NBC affiliates throughout Virginia.

The next five weeks of the campaign are expected to attract a windfall of attention — and money — from national organizations in an already incredibly expensive race that has saturated the airwaves and mailboxes of voters in the region.

The state has no contribution limits, and both parties’ national gubernatorial committees have given their candidate and state parties millions: $6.6 million from the Republican Governors Association, and $4.7 million from their Democratic counterparts, according to data from the Virginia Public Access Project. And strategists at the upper echelon of both parties have said they have no plans to shut off that fire hose anytime soon.

The final stretch of the race is also expected to draw increased attention from the White House, POLITICO previously reported, which is fearful that a McAuliffe loss could kick off a cascade of second-guessing and nervousness from Democrats across the country.

And other groups are increasingly getting involved, as well. The Virginia branch of the Service Employees International Union will roll out a $4 million field, paid media and Get Out the Vote campaign on Wednesday morning. The plan, shared first with POLITICO, includes $400,000 budgeted for English- and Spanish-language digital ads and direct mail.