The Protests Spread – The New York Times

The protests, once contained to small corners of Los Angeles, have spread across the country. And cities are waking up to more.

Downtown Los Angeles is currently under a curfew. Police officers wrestled protesters to the ground in New York, used chemical agents in Atlanta and monitored large demonstrations in Chicago, where people vandalized vehicles and threw water bottles at them. In Los Angeles, the police flew in a helicopter and threatened over a loudspeaker to arrest anyone who broke the curfew downtown.

The fight between California and the Trump administration has also escalated. In a nationally televised speech, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who may have presidential ambitions, argued that Trump’s deployment of nearly 5,000 federal troops to Los Angeles had put the U.S. on the verge of authoritarianism. “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “The moment we’ve feared has arrived.”

The protests are expected to continue today: Marines will be in Los Angeles to protect immigration agents and federal buildings, expanding the government’s rare use of military forces on domestic soil. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has called in the National Guard ahead of protests planned in San Antonio. Trump threatened that protesters across the country would be met with “equal or greater force” than those in Los Angeles, which he called “a trash heap.” He promised to “liberate” it.

Below, we explain what is happening.

The raids continue

The protests are a widespread rebuke of Trump’s immigration policies. The president won the election on a pledge to conduct mass deportations, and he has used cinematic raids to signal he’s making good on that promise.

As anger spreads in cities, Trump is digging in. Agents are rushing to arrest undocumented migrants, and he has sent federal troops to work with them. National Guard troops accompanied federal immigration officers on raids across Los Angeles. The Marines will also provide security to ICE agents as they do their work today, a government spokeswoman said.

Since Trump took office, ICE has arrested more than 100,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to data obtained by The Times. Former government officials said the push to detain record numbers of undocumented immigrants increases the chances of mistakes, my colleague Hamed Aleaziz reports. The Trump administration said it is taking steps to mitigate that risk.

Hamed went with ICE officers as they tracked down and arrested people in Miami. In one case, a Honduran man who was the brother of an ICE target was arrested when he happened to show up to drive him to work — an example of how the agency is making collateral arrests to increase its numbers. See a video of the arrests.

Not all government advisory panels are created equal. Some offer comfy posts where allies of the president can spitball about big ideas. In other cases, agencies rely on outside advisers to get the job done. The committee that recommends vaccines is in the latter category — and the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired its members this week despite having promised during his confirmation that he wouldn’t meddle with the group.

The body that Kennedy hollowed out, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, decides what shots you get. To understand how, it helps to know more about how vaccines are developed.

First, researchers come up with a new medicine and try it on animals. That usually takes more than a decade. Then the Food and Drug Administration gets involved: It signs off on clinical trials. If those go well and the factory passes hygiene checks, a drugmaker can begin manufacturing.

A.C.I.P. comes near the very end. It’s part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose director has to sign off on its findings. The 17 members are scientists, epidemiologists and clinicians. They recommend who should receive the vaccine (for instance, kids), when (every decade for your tetanus shot) and whether it’s safe to take alongside other shots. According to the law, if A.C.I.P. says that teens should get the HPV vaccine to stop the spread of cervical cancers, for example, then insurance companies must cover it.

What now?

Kennedy is expected to name new members of the panel before its next meeting on June 25. I spoke with Apoorva Mandavilli, who covers infectious diseases for The Times, about the stakes.

Could they change what vaccines we get?

They could revise current recommendations for vaccines, yes. That’s not unheard-of — A.C.I.P. does sometimes revisit decisions. The members initially voted that some people 60 and older should get the vaccine for a respiratory disease, for instance. But in April, they heard new data suggesting that it was also helpful for people 50 and older at high risk. So they changed their advice.

That means they could take a second look at the measles vaccine?

Yeah, they could revisit every recommendation they have ever given. Kennedy has disparaged most childhood vaccines, including for measles and polio, and it’s a good bet his appointees will agree with him.

Could my kids still get polio shots if they’re no longer recommended?

Probably. The government’s advice might be: “Talk to your doctor.” That’s where they eventually landed with the Covid vaccine. Most doctors would endorse measles and polio shots, but some might defer to patients who are on the fence. It leaves the door open for a lot more decision-making — and confusion — at the local level.

Would it cost me more?

Right now, insurance companies cover the four-dose polio series. But without an A.C.I.P. recommendation, the shots might cost you more than $300.

The C.D.C. director doesn’t always follow the panel’s recommendation.

That’s true. In 2021, the C.D.C. director overrode advice that frontline workers could skip a Covid booster.

Kennedy said A.C.I.P. members had conflicts of interest — and you showed in your story how that was wrong. He says advisers should be unbiased.

Kennedy has his own conflicts of interest: He was getting money from plaintiffs to sue Merck over an HPV vaccine. Also, he may name vaccine skeptics to the committee. Isn’t that a form of bias?

Kennedy has already ended work to develop an H.I.V. vaccine and killed a contract for a bird-flu vaccine. What’s the outlook for our population immunity overall?

This really discourages vaccine development in a big way. The government is making sudden decisions but without showing the data they’re based on — and without consulting staff scientists or external advisers. That makes vaccines an unpredictable business proposition. Companies may decide it’s not worth the trouble to invest in them.

A former student at a high school in Austria shot and killed 10 people on campus before apparently killing himself.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a former president of Argentina, was sentenced to prison for corruption and barred from public office for life by the country’s Supreme Court.