Democrats said they did emerge from the call convinced that the military would hold on to the airport for a while, even if the Taliban took full control of the government. But that is no guarantee that all Afghans who want to get out will be able to do so.

“It is overwhelmingly clear to me that this has been a cascade of failures at the Defense Department, with the intelligence community and within our political community,” Mr. Meijer said. “And nothing on the call gave me the confidence that even the magnitude of the failures has been comprehended.”…

Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said his office had been bombarded with calls from the large Afghan population in his East Bay district because the repatriation assistance page of the State Department website included a broken link that had gotten them nowhere. Mr. Khanna was given a single point of contact at the State Department for all of his callers, but that person was soon overwhelmed.