National security adviser: U.S. taking terrorism threat at Kabul airport 'deadly seriously'

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN's Brianna Keilar on Sunday's edition of State of the Union that the United States is taking the threat of a possible terrorist attack at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport "absolutely, deadly seriously" amid the chaotic evacuation process.

There have been unsubstantiated reports that the Islamic State, which has continued to operate in Afghanistan in recent years, is looking to take advantage of the situation. Sullivan shed a little more light on the possibility (though he didn't reveal any specifics), telling Keilar that the threat is "real," "persistent," and remains a major area of a focus for both the military commanders on the ground at the airport and the U.S. intelligence community. "It is something that we are placing paramount priority on stopping and disrupting," he said. "We will do everything that we can for as long as we are on the ground to keep that from happening." 

National security adviser Jake Sullivan on the threat of ISIS attacking the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan: "The threat is real. It is acute. It is persistent. And it is something that we are focused on with every tool in our arsenal." 

Analysts, meanwhile, have cautioned that while ISIS plotting an attack is plausible, some of the reports that have made their way to social media should be met with skepticism.

It really is conceivable #ISKP would try something in this chaos in Kabul; it has been using urban attack cells in and around the capital for some time, notably in targeting the electricity grid. But you'd want to be really, really certain before spreading that news.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CBS News' Major Garrett on Sunday's edition of Face the Nation that data suggest the South's current COVID-19 epidemic is contracting. However, there should still be some "very hard weeks ahead" for the region as hospitalizations, which lag behind case numbers, continue to rise before peaking themselves.

Gottlieb then zeroed in on Florida, where he said that nearly every age group is showing declines in day-to-day case numbers. That's a good thing, of course, except for the fact that the trend doesn't hold for one demographic: school-aged children. 

The Rt in Florida (reflects if epidemic expanding or contracting) is below 1.0 per https://t.co/Au398UtkeQ - reflecting an epidemic now contracting. Day-over-day cases are down for every age category in FL, except school aged kids 12-19, the only places cases still rise sharply.

"That's the only category that's still expanding, and expanding very quickly," Gottlieb said, explaining that the Delta variant has been getting into schools, which reopen in the South earlier. "It's proving to be hard to control in schools ... I think that this is a harbinger of the challenges that we're gonna face nationally as schools reopen. The schools could become focal points of community transmission, and could become environments that aren't safe for children if we can't control very large outbreaks." 

The way to avoid those outbreaks without closing schools, Gottlieb reiterated, is to test aggressively and utilize other mitigation techniques such as mask-wearing and "proper ventilation."