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1News
4 hours ago
- 1News
Trump once hailed mRNA vaccines as 'miracle', RFK now halting advancement
President Donald Trump hailed as a 'medical miracle' the mRNA vaccines developed to combat the deadly Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Now, his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is effectively halting the vaccine technology's advancement. Kennedy announced Wednesday that the federal government is cancelling US$500 million (NZ$843 million) worth of mRNA research development contracts, putting an end to US-backed hopes for the vaccine technology to prevent future pandemics, treat cancer or prevent flu infections. It's a sharp pivot from how Trump and top officials described the technology during his first term. Here's a look at what Trump and some of his closest advisers have said about mRNA vaccines that were credited with slowing the pandemic five years ago. Robert Redfield, Trump's director of the Centers for Disease Control ADVERTISEMENT 'A Covid-19 vaccine is the thing that will get Americans back to normal everyday life,' said Redfield, in a September 16, 2020, statement. Americans were still donning face masks as one of the few ways of protecting themselves from a virus that had killed nearly 200,000 in just over six months. Redfield promised that the new vaccines — developed for the first time using mRNA technology — would offer a return to normalcy. Trump wanted to make sure Biden didn't get credit 'Don't let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccines ... because the vaccines were me, and I pushed people harder than they've ever been pushed before. The vaccines are — there are those that say it's one of the greatest things. It's a medical miracle.' Trump said on November 26, 2020, during a news conference in the White House. Weeks earlier, Trump had lost the election in a bitter race against Democrat Joe Biden. As the Republican grappled with leaving Washington and continued to plan for the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines, he reminded reporters that he oversaw the development of the new shots. 'They say it's somewhat of a miracle and I think that's true,' Trump said on December 8, 2020, during a speech at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The event celebrated Operation Warp Speed, the government-funded project that accelerated vaccine development with pharmaceutical companies. Trump was promoting the shots as the government prepared to offer them to frontline health workers. ADVERTISEMENT Trump's first-term health secretary, Alex Azar 'It's clear that many Americans are learning these vaccines are safe and extraordinarily effective,' Azar said on December 16, 2020, at a news conference. The government was shipping out mRNA vaccines to states, preparing to distributed it to the masses. Azar noted that a vast majority of Americans — between 70% to 80%, according to polls — intended to get the new Covid-19 vaccine that would be available to the public in the coming months. Gen. Gusave Perna, Trump's chief operating officer for pandemic response 'It takes somewhere between five and 10 years to put a vaccine on the street. Look what we did. Now, that's because of the great work of the scientists who had done the research on mRNA vaccines and others because of industry working on this, they just didn't wake up one day and start working on it,' Perna said during a podcast interview that aired on May 9, 2023. Reflecting in an interview about his time overseeing Operation Warp Speed, Perna credited the mRNA technology with the government's ability to get shots in arms mere months after the pandemic started claiming lives in the US in 2020. Trump supporters boo his vaccine accomplishments ADVERTISEMENT 'Take credit because we saved tens of millions of lives. Take credit. Don't let them take that away from you,' Trump said on December 19, 2021 during a live interview with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. Daily Covid-19 deaths had ticked down to 1500 compared to 3000 from a year earlier after Americans began receiving their first doses of the mRNA vaccines. Trump revealed to O'Reilly and the audience that he had just gotten a Covid-19 booster. The crowd booed.
RNZ News
6 hours ago
- RNZ News
Why is the Trump administration threatening to deport this Iranian man to Australia?
By Brad Ryan , ABC Reza Zavvar has been an active contributor to his local community for years, his loved ones say. Photo: Supplied The US government is threatening to deport an Iranian man to Australia - even though he has no connection to Australia and has lived in the US since 1985. Reza Zavvar, a 52-year-old recruiter from Maryland, has been targeted for deportation because of a marijuana possession conviction from the 1990s, his lawyer says. A court order means he cannot be returned to Iran because of the risk of persecution there. So immigration authorities say they are sending him to either Australia or Romania after arresting him in the street near his home in late June. "They got him while he was walking his dog in his quiet suburban neighbourhood," his lawyer, Ava Benach, told the ABC. "And they detained him and sent him to Texas to hold him, and they said: 'We're gonna deport you to Australia or Romania.' "How they picked those countries is a mystery to me." His family, friends and locals are fundraising for a legal fight. They say Mr Zavvar had been quietly contributing to his community for years, helping out his elderly neighbours and making sandwiches each week for those in need of food. He had adopted his dog from a local shelter and recently moved in with his mother to help care for his grandmother. "After 40 years of living in the US, Reza knows no other home," his sister, Maryam, wrote as part of an online petition. "He waits in a privately run detention centre, thousands of miles from anything familiar, while bureaucrats decide his future." Mr Zavvar's case has highlighted a controversial strategy increasingly used by the Trump administration as part of its mass deportation regime - sending migrants to countries they have no connection to, sometimes using historical low-level misdemeanours as justification. But immigration lawyers said they had not seen Australia listed as a destination before. "Most of us in the immigration bar have been hearing about cases being sent to Central and South America," said Mahsa Khanbabai, an elected director on the American Immigration Lawyers Association board. "Normally, what we've been seeing is that the Trump administration is targeting countries where they feel they have some leverage, that they feel they can push around and bully. "Australia is not a country that we would normally consider to be in such a position." A DHS Notice of Removal document, dated July 1, says ICE intends to deport Reza Zavvar to Australia. Photo: Supplied The Australian government said it had not been contacted by US authorities about the case. "There have been no new agreements made with the Trump administration on immigration," a government spokesperson said. Despite repeated requests for clarification, neither Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) nor the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explained why Australia had been selected. But in a statement, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: "ICE continues to try and find a country willing to accept this criminal illegal alien." Mr Zavvar's sister said her brother had "built his life in Maryland, surrounded by his loving family, including his parents, sister, and cousins". "He was a natural athlete, excelling in football during high school, where he was affectionately known as a 'gentle giant' - competitive on the field but kind and warm-hearted off." He had a green card, allowing him permanent residence in the US - but his lawyer says his past marijuana-related conviction was later used to jeopardise that status. In 2004, an airport agent noticed his conviction and started a process that could have led to deportation. Reza Zavvar was arrested by immigration agents while walking his dog. Photo: Supplied But three years later, a judge issued a "withholding of removal" order, preventing his return to Iran. DHS says his previous conviction - for attempted possession of a controlled substance - remains a reason to deport him. "Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US," the department's Ms McLaughlin said. "Zavvar had almost 20 years to self-deport and leave the United States." The Trump administration has been pushing other countries to accept deportees who cannot return to their countries of origin: either because those countries will not take them back, or because of protection orders like Mr Zavvar's. The "withholding of removal" orders theoretically allow the US to deport the migrant to a different country, but that is historically rare. "We've never really seen people being sent to third countries in my 25 years of practice," Ms Khanbabai said. "When the UK started doing that a few years ago, I remember thinking, what a horrendous situation, thank God the United States doesn't do that. And now here we are seeing the US carry out these very same inhumane, what I would consider illegal, practices." The US government recently struck deals with several African countries, which have opened the door to more of these deportations. Small numbers of migrants - from countries including Vietnam, Cuba and Jamaica - have been sent to South Sudan and Eswatini. And on Wednesday, local time, Reuters reported that Rwanda had said it would accept up to 250 deportees, "in part because nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement, and our societal values are founded on reintegration and rehabilitation". The Trump administration says it is delivering on an election promise to crack down on the millions of people in the US who don't have legal rights to live there, and especially those with criminal convictions. "Under President Trump … if you break the law, you will face the consequences," Ms McLaughlin said. "Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US." But immigration lawyers and advocates say Mr Zavvar is among what appears to be a growing number of Iranians detained since the US air strikes on Iran in June. Green card and student visa holders, many of whom have clean records, are among them, Ms Khanbabai said. The Trump administration says it is delivering on an election promise. Photo: AFP The lawyer, who is Iranian American and has many Iranian clients, said the community felt it was being targeted. "The Trump administration claimed that they were going to be going after criminals, yet the vast majority of people, including the Iranians, don't have any serious criminal offences or any at all," she said. "And so we're trying to figure out, is there an uptick of this focus on Iranians … or is this just part of the massive targeting of and scapegoating of immigrants?" Mr Zavvar's lawyer hopes her client's arrest will prove to be a publicity stunt that doesn't lead to his deportation. "I honestly think that they wanted to make a show of arresting Iranians in the wake of our bombing of the Iranian nuclear facility," Ms Benach said. "What people are going to remember is that the administration was arresting Iranians when they were certain that the Iranians were going to retaliate … and then six months from now, they might have to release them under the law, but we'll have moved on to something else." - ABC
NZ Herald
9 hours ago
- NZ Herald
A Republican Congressman faced hometown voters. It wasn't pretty
'If we didn't pass the big, beautiful bill,' Flood said, 'there would have been a US$1600 tax increase to every Nebraska family.' In response, the packed auditorium erupted in a chant of 'Tax the rich', and Flood finally had to pause his slides. 'The only way we're going to get through tonight,' he said, 'is if I get a chance to tell you how I voted.' Representative Mike Flood speaks from the stage during a town hall meeting with constituents in Lincoln. Photo / Terry A. Ratlzlaff, The New York Times This was exactly the kind of reception many Republicans dreaded as they headed home to their districts for their six-week summer break. Faced with selling a major piece of legislation that polls show is broadly unpopular and confronted with ruptures in Trump's base over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, they risk being met with angry questions for which they have no easy answers. And town halls have proven to be a perfect outlet for a wave of energy from Democrats who see an opportunity to knock Republicans off balance more than a year ahead of the midterm elections. The result has been a gradual disappearance of the open town hall as an exercise in democracy, with fewer elected officials willing to face the wrath of opponents in an era of supercharged polarisation. For months, Republican lawmakers have stumbled in particular while trying to answer pointed questions from voters about unpopular cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance system increasingly relied on by working families as well as the poor. 'Well, we all are going to die,' Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told a crowd at a town hall in Butler, Iowa, in May, when someone in the audience yelled that the potential cuts meant that 'people are going to die'. Flood admitted to voters earlier this northern summer at a town hall that he had not read the entire bill before voting to pass it. The August recess marks the first extended period of time that lawmakers have returned home since Trump signed the bill into law on July 4. The line to get into Flood's event on Monday afternoon local time, which was held in a more progressive city in his red district, snaked all the way around the block and looked from the outside like the size of one for a presidential campaign event. The crowd, encompassing some supporters but by and large made up of critics, arrived heated, ready to express their fear and anger. Every answer from Flood seemed to turn it up a notch. 'How can you stand behind this bill that erodes the very services that people like me, my family and our families, younger vets coming home today, rely on?' John Keller, 76, a veteran, asked. 'Our veterans affairs are going to be better than they've been in a long time,' Flood responded. 'We do not have unlimited money in the US,' he said when asked why he voted for cuts to Snap, the food stamp programme, and healthcare research. When pressed on Trump's decision to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labour Statistics, Flood said he gave the President the benefit of the doubt. 'There's always two sides to every story,' he said. 'If all the person did was get the data out there, I would not have fired them. But I don't know; things are complicated.' When another attendee pointed out that tariffs were driving up the price of cars to the point at which they wiped out 'any tax savings I will see from the bill which recently passed,' Flood simply repeated a Trump talking point. 'We need to be a country that makes things,' he said. Flood bristled when one attendee called him a fascist. 'Fascists don't hold town halls with open question-and-answer sessions,' he said. And when he was pressed on why he was 'covering up the Epstein files', he assured them he was for full transparency. It did not seem that many in the crowd awarded him much credit for showing up. 'He's coming here to be able to say that he's listening, but he's not,' said Jackson Hatcher, a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 'Everyone here who asked a question, he gave a canned response.' Joyce Kubicek, a retired social worker, said she left unconvinced by his answers. 'I don't understand how he can say some of the things he's saying; it seems false,' she said. Earlier this year, Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the chair of the House Republican campaign arm, discouraged members from holding in-person town halls such as this. He said the sessions were being filled with Democratic activists, generated negative headlines and that a better way to communicate with voters was to hold telephone town halls where questions could be filtered by a moderator. Many House Republicans have taken his advice. Of the 35 House Republicans who hold seats that Democrats are targeting in 2026, only one, Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, has held an in-person town hall. (He, too, was booed and jeered.) But the concerns over the bill and the economy appear to be so widespread that they cannot be screened out — even in the controlled environment of tele-town halls. An audience member stands up to shout during a town hall meeting with Representative Mike Flood in Lincoln, Nebraska. Photo / Terry A. Ratlzlaff, The New York Times An attendee at a recent tele-town hall told Representative Ryan Mackenzie, a vulnerable Republican from Pennsylvania: 'You and other Maga talk about monitoring and cutting welfare for poor people, but you don't talk about the high tax breaks that overwhelmingly help the rich people'. And Representative Eli Crane, a hard-right Republican from Arizona, was confronted by a constituent on a tele-town hall who said he was 'concerned' that the bill added 'significantly to the national debt' while cutting healthcare benefits. In an interview on Tuesday, Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan, the No. 4 House Republican who oversees messaging for the conference, said she was weary of the topic of town halls. 'I don't understand why everyone is fixated on the town hall piece,' she said, when there were other ways to connect with voters. 'Maybe it's site visits; maybe it's field hearings. Why aren't people doing more op-eds?' she said. 'I don't understand this fixation with town halls. You should do what's best for your district. There's 100 different ways to market.' Trump, for his part, is not doing any marketing of his own bill. 'It's been received so well, I don't think I have to,' he said on Meet the Press when asked why he was not doing events to promote his own agenda. McClain, who plans to visit three manufacturing sites this month with vulnerable members in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, said she had not heard any concerns from lawmakers about how to take on tough questions from voters back home. 'What I really heard more than anything from members was, 'Give me the data and the specifics as it pertains to my district,'' she said. 'You really have to break it down into bite-size pieces that's applicable for their districts.' As they seek to turn around public opinion on the bill, Republicans are trying to focus on new data from the US Chamber of Commerce that found that voters favoured the tax provisions in the bill, even if they had a negative view of the agenda overall. A memo from the National Republican Campaign Committee released last week encouraged members to focus on how the bill made the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent and cut taxes on tips. In offering advice to members on how to get their message out to voters, it notably did not recommend holding in-person town halls. Speaking to reporters after his event, Flood said he still believed that showing up was part of the job, even though the session ended with a chant of 'Vote him out!' 'This doesn't get better unless we show up in the town square,' he said. 'If you feel strongly about what you're doing in Congress, then stand in the town square, tell them why you voted that way.' Flood said he had anticipated a rocky reception and admitted he was not satisfied with his answer on veteran benefits. 'I need to put my notes out,' he said. 'I need to be very clear on why I think our veterans are being taken care of.' Further engagement this year with his constituents, he suggested, may be online, in smaller groups or even on a tele-town hall. 'This is my third and final one for the year,' he said of in-person town halls. 'We're going to give you all a break.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Annie Karni Photographs by: Terry A. Ratlzlaff ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
