
Why the COVID Deniers Won
Five years ago, the coronavirus pandemic struck a bitterly divided society.
Americans first diverged over how dangerous the disease was: just a flu (as President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted) or something much deadlier.
Then they disputed public-health measures such as lockdowns and masking; a majority complied while a passionate minority fiercely resisted.
Finally, they split—and have remained split—over the value and safety of COVID‑19 vaccines. Anti-vaccine beliefs started on the fringe, but they spread to the point where Ron DeSantis, the governor of the country's third-most-populous state, launched a campaign for president on an appeal to anti-vaccine ideology.
Five years later, one side has seemingly triumphed. The winner is not the side that initially prevailed, the side of public safety. The winner is the side that minimized the disease, then rejected public-health measures to prevent its spread, and finally refused the vaccines designed to protect against its worst effects.
David A. Graham: The noisy minority
Ahead of COVID's fifth anniversary, Trump, as president-elect, nominated the country's most outspoken vaccination opponent to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He chose a proponent of the debunked and discredited vaccines-cause-autism claim to lead the CDC. He named a strident critic of COVID‑vaccine mandates to lead the FDA. For surgeon general, he picked a believer in hydroxychloroquine, the disproven COVID‑19 remedy. His pick for director of the National Institutes of Health had advocated for letting COVID spread unchecked to encourage herd immunity. Despite having fast-tracked the development of the vaccines as president, Trump has himself trafficked in many forms of COVID‑19 denial, and has expressed his own suspicions that childhood vaccination against measles and mumps is a cause of autism.
The ascendancy of the anti-vaxxers may ultimately prove fleeting. But if the forces of science and health are to stage a comeback, it's important to understand why those forces have gone into eclipse.
From March 2020 to February 2022, about 1 million Americans died of COVID-19. Many of those deaths occurred after vaccines became available. If every adult in the United States had received two doses of a COVID vaccine by early 2022, rather than just the 64 percent of adults who had, nearly 320,000 lives would have been saved.
Why did so many Americans resist vaccines? Perhaps the biggest reason was that the pandemic coincided with a presidential-election year, and Trump instantly recognized the crisis as a threat to his chances for reelection. He responded by denying the seriousness of the pandemic, promising that the disease would rapidly disappear on its own, and promoting quack cures.
The COVID‑19 vaccines were developed while Trump was president. They could have been advertised as a Trump achievement. But by the time they became widely available, Trump was out of office. His supporters had already made up their minds to distrust the public-health authorities that promoted the vaccines. Now they had an additional incentive: Any benefit from vaccination would redound to Trump's successor, Joe Biden. Vaccine rejection became a badge of group loyalty, one that ultimately cost many lives.
We want to believe that somebody is in control, even if it's somebody we don't like. At least that way, we can blame bad events on bad people.
A summer 2023 study by Yale researchers of voters in Florida and Ohio found that during the early phase of the pandemic, self-identified Republicans died at only a slightly higher rate than self-identified Democrats in the same age range. But once vaccines were introduced, Republicans became much more likely to die than Democrats. In the spring of 2021, the excess-death rate among Florida and Ohio Republicans was 43 percent higher than among Florida and Ohio Democrats in the same age range. By the late winter of 2023, the 300-odd most pro-Trump counties in the country had a COVID‑19 death rate more than two and a half times higher than the 300 or so most anti-Trump counties.
In 2016, Trump had boasted that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. In 2021 and 2022, his most fervent supporters risked death to prove their loyalty to Trump and his cause.
Why did political fidelity express itself in such self-harming ways?
The onset of the pandemic was an unusually confusing and disorienting event. Some people who got COVID died. Others lived. Some suffered only mild symptoms. Others spent weeks on ventilators, or emerged with long COVID and never fully recovered. Some lost businesses built over a lifetime. Others refinanced their homes with 2 percent interest rates and banked the savings.
We live in an impersonal universe, indifferent to our hopes and wishes, subject to extreme randomness. We don't like this at all. We crave satisfying explanations. We want to believe that somebody is in control, even if it's somebody we don't like. At least that way, we can blame bad events on bad people. This is the eternal appeal of conspiracy theories. How did this happen? Somebody must have done it—but who? And why?
Compounding the disorientation, the coronavirus outbreak was a rapidly changing story. The scientists who researched COVID‑19 knew more in April 2020 than they did in February; more in August than in April; more in 2021 than in 2020; more in 2022 than in 2021. The official advice kept changing: Stay inside—no, go outside. Wash your hands—no, mask your face. Some Americans appreciated and accepted that knowledge improves over time, that more will be known about a new disease in month two than in month one. But not all Americans saw the world that way. They mistrusted the idea of knowledge as a developing process. Such Americans wondered: Were they lying before? Or are they lying now?
In a different era, Americans might have deferred more to medical authority. The internet has upended old ideas of what should count as authority and who possesses it.
The pandemic reduced normal human interactions. Severed from one another, Americans deepened their parasocial attachment to social-media platforms, which foment alienation and rage. Hundreds of thousands of people plunged into an alternate mental universe during COVID‑19 lockdowns. When their doors reopened, the mania did not recede. Conspiracies and mistrust of the establishment—never strangers to the American mind—had been nourished, and they grew.
The experts themselves contributed to this loss of trust.
It's now agreed that we had little to fear from going outside in dispersed groups. But that was not the state of knowledge in the spring of 2020. At the time, medical experts insisted that any kind of mass outdoor event must be sacrificed to the imperatives of the emergency. In mid-March 2020, federal public-health authorities shut down some of Florida's beaches. In California, surfers faced heavy fines for venturing into the ocean. Even the COVID‑skeptical Trump White House reluctantly canceled the April 2020 Easter-egg roll.
And then the experts abruptly reversed themselves. When George Floyd was choked to death by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, hundreds of thousands of Americans left their homes to protest, defying three months of urgings to avoid large gatherings of all kinds, outdoor as well as indoor.
On May 29, the American Public Health Association issued a statement that proclaimed racism a public-health crisis while conspicuously refusing to condemn the sudden defiance of public-safety rules.
The next few weeks saw the largest mass protests in recent U.S. history. Approximately 15 million to 26 million people attended outdoor Black Lives Matter events in June 2020, according to a series of reputable polls. Few, if any, scientists or doctors scolded the attendees—and many politicians joined the protests, including future Vice President Kamala Harris. It all raised a suspicion: Maybe the authorities were making the rules based on politics, not science.
The politicization of health advice became even more consequential as the summer of 2020 ended. Most American public schools had closed in March. 'At their peak,' Education Week reported, 'the closures affected at least 55.1 million students in 124,000 U.S. public and private schools.' By September, it was already apparent that COVID‑19 posed relatively little risk to children and teenagers, and that remote learning did not work. At the same time, returning to the classroom before vaccines were available could pose some risk to teachers' health—and possibly also to the health of the adults to whom the children returned after school.
David Frum: I moved to Canada during the pandemic
How to balance these concerns given the imperfect information? Liberal states decided in favor of the teachers. In California, the majority of students did not return to in-person learning until the fall of 2021. New Jersey kept many of its public schools closed until then as well. Similar things happened in many other states: Illinois, Maryland, New York, and so on, through the states that voted Democratic in November 2020.
Florida, by contrast, reopened most schools in the fall of 2020. Texas soon followed, as did most other Republican-governed states. The COVID risk for students, it turned out, was minimal: According to a 2021 CDC study, less than 1 percent of Florida students contracted COVID-19 in school settings from August to December 2020 after their state restarted in-person learning. Over the 2020–21 school year, students in states that voted for Trump in the 2020 election got an average of almost twice as much in-person instruction as students in states that voted for Biden.
Any risks to teachers and school staff could have been mitigated by the universal vaccination of those groups. But deep into the fall of 2021, thousands of blue-state teachers and staff resisted vaccine mandates—including more than 5,000 in Chicago alone. By then, another school year had been interrupted by closures.
By disparaging public-health methods and discrediting vaccines, the COVID‑19 minimizers cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. By keeping schools closed longer than absolutely necessary, the COVID maximizers hazarded the futures of young Americans.
Students from poor and troubled families, in particular, will continue to pay the cost of these learning losses for years to come. Even in liberal states, many private schools reopened for in-person instruction in the fall of 2020. The affluent and the connected could buy their children a continuing education unavailable to those who depended on public schools. Many lower-income students did not return to the classroom: Throughout the 2022–23 school year, poorer school districts reported much higher absenteeism rates than were seen before the pandemic.
Teens absent from school typically get into trouble in ways that are even more damaging than the loss of math or reading skills. New York City arrested 25 percent more minors for serious crimes in 2024 than in 2018. The national trend was similar, if less stark. The FBI reports that although crime in general declined in 2023 compared with 2022, crimes by minors rose by nearly 10 percent.
People who finish schooling during a recession tend to do worse even into middle age than those who finish in times of prosperity. They are less likely to marry, less likely to have children, and more likely to die early. The disparity between those who finish in lucky years and those who finish in unlucky years is greatest for people with the least formal education.
Will the harms of COVID prove equally enduring? We won't know for some time. But if past experience holds, the COVID‑19 years will mark their most vulnerable victims for decades.
The story of COVID can be told as one of shocks and disturbances that wrecked two presidencies. In 2020 and 2024, incumbent administrations lost elections back-to-back, something that hadn't happened since the deep economic depression of the late 1880s and early 1890s. The pandemic caused a recession as steep as any in U.S. history. The aftermath saw the worst inflation in half a century.
In truth, the story of COVID is a story of strength and resilience.
In the three years from January 2020 through December 2022, Trump and Biden both signed a series of major bills to revive and rebuild the U.S. economy. Altogether, they swelled the gross public debt from about $20 billion in January 2017 to nearly $36 billion today. The weight of that debt helped drive interest rates and mortgage rates higher. The burden of the pandemic debt, like learning losses, is likely to be with us for quite a long time.
Yet even while acknowledging all that went wrong, respecting all the lives lost or ruined, reckoning with all the lasting harms of the crisis, we do a dangerous injustice if we remember the story of COVID solely as a story of American failure. In truth, the story is one of strength and resilience.
Scientists did deliver vaccines to prevent the disease and treatments to recover from it. Economic policy did avert a global depression and did rapidly restore economic growth. Government assistance kept households afloat when the world shut down—and new remote-work practices enabled new patterns of freedom and happiness after the pandemic ended.
The virus was first detected in December 2019. Its genome was sequenced within days by scientists collaborating across international borders. Clinical trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine began in April 2020, and the vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the FDA in December. Additional vaccines rapidly followed, and were universally available by the spring of 2021. The weekly death toll fell by more than 90 percent from January 2021 to midsummer of that year.
The U.S. economy roared back with a strength and power that stunned the world. The initial spike of inflation has subsided. Wages are again rising faster than prices. Growth in the United States in 2023 and 2024 was faster and broader than in any peer economy.
Even more startling, the U.S. recovery outpaced China's. That nation's bounceback from COVID‑19 has been slow and faltering. America's economic lead over China, once thought to be narrowing, has suddenly widened; the gap between the two countries' GDPs grew from $5 trillion in 2021 to nearly $10 trillion in 2023. The U.S. share of world economic output is now slightly higher than it was in 1980, before China began any of its economic reforms. As he did in 2016, Trump inherits a strong and healthy economy, to which his own reckless policies—notably, his trade protectionism—are the only visible threat.
In public affairs, our bias is usually to pay most attention to disappointments and mistakes. In the pandemic, there were many errors: the partisan dogma of the COVID minimizers; the capitulation of states and municipalities to favored interest groups; the hypochondria and neuroticism of some COVID maximizers. Errors need to be studied and the lessons heeded if we are to do better next time. But if we fail to acknowledge America's successes—even partial and imperfect successes—we not only do an injustice to the American people. We also defeat in advance their confidence to collectively meet the crises of tomorrow.
Perhaps it's time for some national self-forgiveness here. Perhaps it's time to accept that despite all that went wrong, despite how much there was to learn about the disease and how little time there was to learn it, and despite polarized politics and an unruly national character— despite all of that —Americans collectively met the COVID‑19 emergency about as well as could reasonably have been hoped.
The wrong people have profited from the immediate aftermath. But if we remember the pandemic accurately, the future will belong to those who rose to the crisis when their country needed them.
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Forbes
21 minutes ago
- Forbes
LA Protests: National Guard Troops Have Detained Protesters (Live Updates)
The National Guard has at times detained protesters in its deployment to Los Angeles, an official said Wednesday, as demonstrations against Immigration and Customs enforcement raids spread to other major cities. Protesters face members of the California National Guard and US Customs and Border Protection agents ... More in Los Angeles. June 11, 4:30 p.m. EDTMaj. Gen. Scott Sherman of the National Guard told reporters federal troops have made brief detainments of protesters in Los Angeles before handing them over to law enforcement for arrests, adding about 500 National Guard troops have been trained to assist immigration operations, the Associated Press reported. 5 a.m. EDTAn LAPD spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times they arrested 25 people for violating the curfew in the city's downtown area on Tuesday night. In a post on X on Tuesday night, the agency said 'multiple groups' were continuing to 'congregate on 1st St between Spring and Alameda' and added 'Those groups are being addressed and mass arrests are being initiated.' 2.30 a.m. EDTTexas Gov. Greg Abbott said he will deploy the Texas National Guard across several parts of his state 'to ensure peace & order,' as protests against ICE are planned in parts of San Antonio on Wednesday. In an X post, Abbott wrote: 'Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest.' June 10, 11.45 p.m. EDTIn a televised address on Tuesday evening, Newsom blasted Trump and described him as 'a president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.' Newsom said, 'California may be first, but it clearly won't end here,' adding that other states and eventually democracy itself were 'next.' The governor added: 'Democracy is under assault right before our eyes — the moment we've feared has arrived.' Newsom also hit out at Trump for pardoning the perpetrators of the January 6 Capitol riots, saying: 'Trump, he's not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th.' 11.30 p.m. EDTA significant portion of downtown Los Angeles is under a curfew, which was announced earlier in the evening by the city's Mayor Karen Bass, who said the restriction will be in effect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time. Bass said she has introduced to the curfew 'to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President's chaotic escalation,' and added: 'Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted.' 4:56 p.m. EDTU.S. District Judge Charles Breyer turned down Newsom's request for an emergency ruling that would have blocked federal troop deployment in Los Angeles, giving Trump until Wednesday at 2 p.m. EDT to file a response to Newsom's lawsuit (Newsom can file his response to Trump by Thursday at 12 p.m. EDT). 4:47 p.m. EDTThe Trump administration asked the judge to reject Newsom's request and allow it to respond by Wednesday, calling Newsom's attempt to block the deployment of federal troops 'legally meritless' and saying it would jeopardize the safety of Homeland Security personnel and interfere with the government's ability to carry out operations. 2:20 p.m. EDTNewsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in a filing at the U.S. District Court for Northern California, requested the federal judge quickly block the Trump administration's deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, arguing the order is 'unlawful' as there 'is no invasion or rebellion' in the city and asking the judge to act by 4 p.m. EDT 'to prevent immediate and irreparable harm.' 11:30 a.m. EDTInterim Defense Department comptroller Bryn MacDonnell told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense the cost of sending federal troops to Los Angeles was estimated at $134 million, 'which is largely just [temporary duty assignment] costs, travel, housing, food, et cetera.' 10:44 a.m. EDTHouse Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Newsom should be 'tarred and feathered' for how he has handled the protests, in response to a question about calls for the governor's arrest, provoking a response from Newsom, who said Johnson gave a 'fitting threat given the GOP want to bring our country back to the 18th Century.' 8:27 a.m. EDTIn a Truth Social post, Trump claimed Los Angeles 'would be burning to the ground right now' if he didn't deploy the National Guard to the city and appeared to reference wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes earlier this year, suggesting city and state permits are 'disastrously bungled up and WAY BEHIND SCHEDULE' to rebuild. About 700 active-duty Marines could start arriving in the Los Angeles area as soon as Tuesday, defense officials told CBS and the BBC, after a spokesperson for U.S. Northern Command told the New York Times the troops would arrive in the city overnight. 7:30 a.m. EDTSecretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will participate in the first of a series of congressional hearings he is scheduled to face this week, where he is expected to be grilled about the deployment of the Marines in Los Angeles—he will appear before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on Tuesday. Hegseth was the first Trump administration official to suggest the deployment of active duty Marines to tackle the protests in an X post. 4 a.m. EDTThe Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, on Tuesday addressed the incident involving Australian news reporter Lauren Tomasi, who was struck on her leg by a rubber bullet while covering the protests on Sunday, saying the incident was 'horrific' and claimed footage showed that police had 'targeted' the journalist. Albanese said he has raised the matter with the Trump administration, and added: 'We don't find it acceptable that it occurred, and we think that the role of the media is particularly important.' 3 a.m. EDTThe San Francisco Police Department issued a statement about the demonstrations taking place in the city in support of the Los Angeles protests and said: 'Thousands of people participated in today's demonstrations, which were overwhelmingly peaceful.' However, the police arrested 'multiple individuals' at the end of the night 'two small groups broke off' and allegedly 'committed vandalism and other criminal acts.' 1:30 a.m. EDTAccording to the U.S. Northern Command, the 700 Marines being deployed in Los Angeles are from the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Marines Regiment, 1st Marine Division, and they will 'seamlessly integrate' with the 1700 California National Guard unit deployed to protect 'federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.' 12:40 a.m. EDTThe San Francisco Chronicle reported that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote a letter to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth on Sunday, asking him to order the military to detain or arrest 'lawbreakers' in Los Angeles. Legal experts cited by the report said Noem's letter may be attempting to circumvent federal laws, which prevent the military from participating in domestic law enforcement, by invoking the Insurrection Act. 12 a.m. EDTIn an interview with CNN, Trump's border czar Tom Homan defended the troop deployment plan and when asked about the role the Marines will play, he said: 'It all depends on the activities of these protesters – I mean, they make the decisions.' 'We don't know what's going to happen tonight – it seems like at night, the crowds get bigger, the violence be well prepared for the military here to protect government property and protect officers' lives,' Homan added. Earlier on Monday, LAPD chief Jim McDonnell said 'The possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us tasked with safeguarding this city.' June 9, 11.30 p.m. EDTNewsom criticized the move to deploy Marines, saying the 'The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend.' The governor said the state would sue to stop what he described 'a blatant abuse of power,' as he urged Courts and Congress to 'act.' 4 p.m. EDTUp to 700 Marines from a battalion based out of Twentynine Palms, California, were mobilizing to respond to the protests, according to ABC News, and are expected to deploy to the city within 24 hours. The Marines will aid the more than 2,000 members of the National Guard Trump deployed to Los Angeles, according to CNN. 2 p.m. EDTBonta announced he is filing a lawsuit against Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, alleging Trump's order to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles was 'trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends' while federalizing the National Guard 'is an abuse of the President's authority under the law.' Bonta claims the deployment deprived California of emergency response resources, infringed on Newsom's authority and violates the state's 'sovereign right to control and have available' the National Guard. 9:40 when asked about Newsom daring Homan to arrest him, said he 'would do it if I were Tom—I think it's great,' claiming Newsom is 'grossly incompetent.' Earlier on Monday, Homan told Fox News that while 'no one's above the law,' there was 'no discussion' about arresting Newsom. 9:40 a.m. EDTWaymo removed vehicles from the downtown Los Angeles area and suspended service 'out of an abundance of caution' following guidance from the Los Angeles Police Department, though the robotaxi firm noted it was still operating in the greater Los Angeles region. At least six Waymo vehicles set ablaze Sunday and the company was in touch with the Los Angeles Police Department for an investigation, Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli told Forbes, as law enforcement warned burning lithium-ion batteries used in the cars release toxic gases, posing possible health risks, and to avoid the area. 8:54 a.m. EDTNewsom signaled he would sue Trump over his decision to send the National Guard into the state, alleging Trump 'flamed the fires and illegally acted.' June 9, 5 a.m. EDTAt least 60 people were arrested in San Francisco after police reportedly clashed with a group of protestors who gathered to show solidarity with the Los Angeles protestors and oppose the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and deployment of National Guard troops to quell protests. 4 a.m. EDTIn a post on his Truth Social platform Trump mentioned the LAPD's comments from the press conference about reassessing the situation about bring in the National Guard, and wrote 'He should, RIGHT NOW!!! Don't let these thugs get away with this.' In follow up posts Trump wrote: 'Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS,' and 'ARREST THE PEOPLE IN FACE MASKS, NOW!' 3:30 a.m. EDTThe LAPD told reporters at a late night press conference that it had arrested 10 people on Sunday, bring the day's total tally to 27 after adding to the California Highway Patrol's 17 arrests. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told reporters that he was aware of the 'deep fear and anxiety' among the immigrant community, and said the department is 'committed to transparency, accountability, and treating every Angeleno with respect, regardless of their immigration status.' When asked about the need for National Guard presence, McDonnell told reporters, 'tonight this thing has gotten out of control' but he would have to know more about their intended role before making that determination and added: 'we got to make a reassessment.' 2:30 a.m. EDTLos Angeles Police Department said an 'UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY' declaration has been issued 'for the area of the Civic Center part of Los Angeles' and said people with with 'Cell Phones in the received the alert.' 1:30 a.m. EDTAccording to the New York Times, a man tried to aim his van at protesters near a gas station in downtown Los Angeles, but it is unclear if any people were harmed. The LAPD later told the Times that it had detained the van driver, and noted 'multiple charges to follow.' 12:30 a.m. EDTThe Los Angeles Police Department has announced that gatherings at Downtown Los Angeles have 'been declared as an UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY,' as it ordered people to 'leave the Downtown Area immediately.' June 8, 11.45 p.m. EDTIn an interview with MSNBC, Newsom dared the Trump administration to come and arrest him in response to earlier comments by the president's border czar Tom Homan threatened to go after any official who interferes the immigration crackdown. Newsom told MSNBC, 'Come after me, arrest me, let's just get it over with, tough guy...I don't give a damn, but I care about my community.' In his interview, Newsom once again accused Trump of 'putting fuel on the fire,' with his actions and confirmed that his state will file a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday. 11.30 p.m. EDTCalifornia's Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis told CNN that she expects state officials to file a federal lawsuit on Monday against the Trump administration's move to federalize and deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles. Kounalakis said the lawsuit will say that the president did not have the 'authority to call in the National Guard for 400 people protesting in a way that local law enforcement could clearly handle it.' Earlier in the evening, Newsom said he had made a formal request to the White House to 'rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles county and return them to my command,' The governor said: 'This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they're actually needed.' 4 p.m. EDTWhen asked by reporters whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, the law that gives presidents the authority to deploy the military domestically, Trump said, 'Depends on whether or not there's an insurrection,' adding he does not think the Los Angeles protests are an insurrection, though he said there are 'violent people, and we're not going to let them get away with it.' Trump said he called Newsom and told him he had to 'take care' of the protests, otherwise he would 'send in the troops,' and he told a reporter who asked whether California officials who obstruct deportations would face federal charges: 'If officials stand in the way of law and order, yeah, they will face charges.' 1:30 p.m. EDTAbout 300 members of the National Guard have been stationed across Los Angeles so far, The New York Times reported, the first soldiers as part of the 2,000 Trump has promised to station across the city as more protests are expected to take place this afternoon. 1 p.m. EDTLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told the Los Angeles Times said she tried to talk to the Trump administration to 'tell them that there was absolutely no need to have troops on the ground here in Los Angeles,' stating the protests on Saturday were 'relatively minor' and 'peaceful,' with about 100 protesters. 3:22 a.m. EDTBass appeared to rebuff Trump's claim the National Guard did a 'great job' in the city, stating in a post on X that the National Guard had not yet been deployed at that time in Los Angeles, while praising Newsom and local law enforcement. 2:41 said in a late-night Truth Social post the National Guard did a 'great job' in Los Angeles, while slamming Newsom and Bass and the 'Radical Left' protesters and stating protesters will no longer be allowed to wear masks: 'What do these people have to hide, and why???' 12:14 slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for 'threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens' as 'deranged behavior.' June 7The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it had arrested two people Saturday evening for alleged assault on a police officer, stating multiple officers had been injured by a Molotov cocktail, the Los Angeles Times reported. 10:34 exhibited 'violent behavior' toward federal agents and local law enforcement, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement, while clarifying it is not involved in federal law enforcement response and is instead focused on crowd and traffic control. 10:22 a post on X, Newsom said the federal government is taking over the California National Guard and deploying soldiers in Los Angeles solely to create a 'spectacle.' 10:06 announced in a post on X the Department of Defense is 'mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles,' stating Marines are standing by for deployment in case of violence. 9:17 House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Trump would deploy 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to address 'lawlessness,' citing protests targeting immigration officers. Similar protests have spread to other cities across the U.S., including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston, Santa Ana, California, and parts of Texas, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. At least 80 protesters were arrested in New York, while 15 were arrested in Philadelphia, more than a dozen were arrested in Austin and one was detained in Dallas. At least two police officers were injured during protests in Philadelphia. Los Angeles Metro Police officers stand on the road in front of city hall Tuesday night. People take part in an anti-ICE protest in New York City on Tuesday. Protesters walk by the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago on Tuesday. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Protests broke out Friday and Saturday in Paramount and Compton, cities adjacent to Los Angeles, over immigration raids conducted by ICE, during which the agency detained 44 immigrants Friday and 118 immigrants Saturday, the Associated Press reported. Police and protesters clashed over the weekend, according to local reports and videos on social media, with law enforcement using tear gas and flash grenades to break up the crowds while some protesters threw rocks and lit vehicles on fire. Glendale, California, announced Sunday the city had terminated an agreement with Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allowed the agencies to house federal detainees at the city's police facility. Glendale officials said the move was 'a local decision and was not made lightly,' as the city 'recognizes that public perception of the ICE contract—no matter how limited or carefully managed, no matter the good—has become divisive.' Glendale's city manager opted to end the contract after 'careful evaluation of legal, operational and community considerations,' the city said, noting the decision was not 'politically driven.' Trump reportedly said in a memo he is invoking Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which allows the federal government to deploy the National Guard if the United States is 'invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation,' or if there is a 'rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.' Vice President JD Vance said in a post on X on Saturday night the influx of immigrants, which he called 'Biden's border crisis,' amounts to an 'invasion,' rebuffing critics who have questioned whether Trump had the authority to deploy troops. Trump's move has faced some pushback from constitutional scholars. 'For the federal government to take over the California National Guard, without the request of the governor, to put down protests is truly chilling,' Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told the Los Angeles Times. The legal issues raised by Trump sending the National Guard to L.A. (Los Angeles Times)


The Hill
21 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump EPA moves to repeal climate rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from US power plants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas, an action that Administrator Lee Zeldin said would remove billions of dollars in costs for industry and help 'unleash' American energy. The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants that can harm brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other health problems in adults. The rollbacks are meant to fulfill Republican President Donald Trump's repeated pledge to 'unleash American energy' and make it more affordable for Americans to power their homes and operate businesses. If approved and made final, the plans would reverse efforts by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration to address climate change and improve conditions in areas heavily burdened by industrial pollution, mostly in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities. The power plant rules are among about 30 environmental regulations that Zeldin targeted in March when he announced what he called the 'most consequential day of deregulation in American history.' Zeldin said Wednesday the new rules would help end what he called the Biden and Obama administration's 'war on so much of our U.S. domestic energy supply.' 'The American public spoke loudly and clearly last November,' he added in a speech at EPA headquarters. 'They wanted to make sure that … no matter what agency anybody might be confirmed to lead, we are finding opportunities to pursue common-sense, pragmatic solutions that will help reduce the cost of living … create jobs and usher in a golden era of American prosperity.' Environmental and public health groups called the rollbacks dangerous and vowed to challenge the rules in court. Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, called the proposals 'yet another in a series of attacks' by the Trump administration on the nation's 'health, our children, our climate and the basic idea of clean air and water.' She called it 'unconscionable to think that our country would move backwards on something as common sense as protecting children from mercury and our planet from worsening hurricanes, wildfires, floods and poor air quality driven by climate change.' 'Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law,' added Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. 'If EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we'll see them in court.' The EPA-targeted rules could prevent an estimated 30,000 deaths and save $275 billion each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press examination that included the agency's own prior assessments and a wide range of other research. It's by no means guaranteed that the rules will be entirely eliminated — they can't be changed without going through a federal rulemaking process that can take years and requires public comment and scientific justification. Even a partial dismantling of the rules would mean more pollutants such as smog, mercury and lead — and especially more tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs and cause health problems, the AP analysis found. It would also mean higher emissions of the greenhouse gases driving Earth's warming to deadlier levels. Biden, a Democrat, had made fighting climate change a hallmark of his presidency. Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a strict EPA rule issued last year. Then-EPA head Michael Regan said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting a reliable, long-term supply of electricity. The power sector is the nation's second-largest contributor to climate change, after transportation. In its proposed regulation, the Trump EPA argues that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-fired power plants 'do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution' or climate change and therefore do not meet a threshold under the Clean Air Act for regulatory action. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired plants 'are a small and decreasing part of global emissions,' the EPA said, adding: 'this Administration's priority is to promote the public health or welfare through energy dominance and independence secured by using fossil fuels to generate power.' The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to limit emissions from power plants and other industrial sources if those emissions significantly contribute to air pollution that endangers public health. If fossil fuel plants no longer meet the EPA's threshold, the Trump administration may later argue that other pollutants from other industrial sectors don't either and therefore shouldn't be regulated, said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Justice Department lawyer now in private practice. The EPA proposal 'has the potential to have much, much broader implications,' she said. Zeldin, a former New York congressman, said the Biden-era rules were designed to 'suffocate our economy in order to protect the environment,' with the intent to regulate the coal industry 'out of existence' and make it 'disappear.' National Mining Association president and CEO Rich Nolan applauded the new rules, saying they remove 'deliberately unattainable standards' for clean air while 'leveling the playing field for reliable power sources, instead of stacking the deck against them.' But Dr. Howard Frumkin, a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said Zeldin and Trump were trying to deny reality. 'The world is round, the sun rises in the east, coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change, and climate change increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms and many other health threats,' Frumkin said. 'These are indisputable facts. If you torpedo regulations on power plant greenhouse gas emissions, you torpedo the health and well-being of the American public and contribute to leaving a world of risk and suffering to our children and grandchildren.' A paper published earlier this year in the journal Science found the Biden-era rules could reduce U.S. power sector carbon emissions by 73% to 86% below 2005 levels by 2040, compared with a reduction of 60% to 83% without the rules. 'Carbon emissions in the power sector drop at a faster rate with the (Biden-era) rules in place than without them,' said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research institution and a co-author of the Science paper. The Biden rule also would result in 'significant reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, pollutants that harm human health,' he said.
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
OSU falls victim to budget cuts, putting a damper on scientific research
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The awarding of an OSU microfluidics research fund of $45 million has been called off by the Trump administration, leaving researchers fumbling for options. Microfluidics, the scientific study of the behavior of liquid on a microscopic level, is a recently established field and is hoped to aid in the medical realm as well as the manufacturing of semiconductors, a partially conductive component of many day-to-day electronic devices. The grant's cancellation has been a source of upset for researchers, but OSU is already looking ahead to future opportunities. Anti-ICE protests escalate outside Southwest Portland facility 'While we are disappointed in the notification of the EDA award cancellation for CorMic [Corvallis Microfluidics Tech Hub], we fully intend to participate in the EDA's next Notice of Funding Opportunity and remain well positioned to further national security interests as a global leader in microfluidics for semiconductor manufacturing, ' Tom Weller, Gaulke Professor and Head said. 'Oregon State University will continue to work alongside HP and other partners to further the commercialization of new microfluidics-connected technologies for semiconductor manufacturing, biotechnology, and advanced materials manufacturing.' This is not an isolated incident, with Trump having attempted to cut billions in allocated federal funding to scientific research since the beginning of his current term. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, 'The Trump administration is spending its first few months reviewing the previous administration's projects, identifying waste, and realigning our research spending to match the American people's priorities and continue our innovative dominance.' Universities are getting hit with the full force of these budget cuts, with biomedical research being classified as 'waste.' Just in February, the National Institutes of Health proposed cutting billions of dollars to OHSU research looking at cancer and heart disease, among other afflictions. These cuts were immediately met with lawsuits from, but not limited to, the Association of American Universities and 22 state attorneys general. These lawsuits are still in progress. The Association of American Universities' lawsuit called the NIH cuts 'flagrantly unlawful' and expressed concern that 'our country will lose its status as the destination for solving the world's biggest health problems.' Scientists of the NIH itself have begun to speak out, publicly disagreeing with the institute's actions, claiming that the cuts 'undermine the NIH mission.' Cuts to scientific research are becoming a recurring source of contention as Trump's second term continues. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.