--:-- Yasmin Khan: Good morning. It's Wednesday, June 11th. I'm Yasmin Khan, in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: On today's show, dangerous conditions reported at ICE detention centers. After a Trump takeover, it's opening night for Les Mis at the Kennedy Center. And why singing, even if you're bad at it is good for your health. But first, to the Los Angeles protests and the federal government's continued military presence in the city.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Last night, Mayor Karen Bass declared a local emergency and a curfew for a small segment of downtown L.A. between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. Bass said there had been significant damages in parts of downtown. Arrests have risen from 27 on Saturday to well over 300 across the previous two days, and more than 20 businesses have been looted.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So my message to you is, if you do not live or work in downtown LA, avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted. But she reiterated her criticism of Trump, saying there were families afraid to go to work because of the ICE raids.
--:-- Donald Trump: What you're witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order, and a national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country. We're not going to let that happen.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Governor Newsom, meanwhile, released his own video saying the president was engaged in a, quote, brazen abuse of power. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that it will cost an estimated $134 million to deploy roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: This all comes as there is a wave of misinformation online, with many incorrectly painting a picture of Los Angeles as an all-out war zone. But as the Los Angeles Times explains, L.A. is a sprawling city of more than 500 square miles, and the curfew applies to just one square mile. There has been some vandalism and isolated events of violence, but local officials say the narrative is being manipulated for political gain.
--:-- Elizabeth Findel: In late May, Stephen Miller, who is, of course, the architect of President Trump's immigration agenda, went down to ICE headquarters to address supervisors from around the country. And he told them that not enough people were being deported. Miller told agents that they could break with the longstanding practice of developing target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. without documentation.
--:-- Elizabeth Findel: He said the focus should not only be on gang members and criminals, but on anyone. He told them that agents should be going to places like Home Depot and 7-Eleven. Just days later, ICE agents carried out immigration sweeps at a Home Depot in Westlake. The move set off a weekend of protests in L.A. County, including near a federal detention center downtown.
--:-- Elizabeth Findel: More people have been taken into custody who aren't people who would have been targeted in the past. That has really led to tremendous backlash. The Trump administration's approach to immigration enforcement marks a sharp departure from previous government practices.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: You have federal agents making warrantless arrests masked agents taking people into custody without identifying themselves and plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities arresting migrants at their court hearings.
--:-- Elizabeth Findel: We had people who we talked to in the story who were talking about the Trump administration emphasis on optics And they really want to make it look like their deportations are happening on an extreme level.
--:-- Elizabeth Findel: Certain cities may also be getting increased ICE attention because the White House deems them as obstructive. Some states, including California, have brought in so-called sanctuary policies, which restricts the extent to which local law enforcement can work with federal immigration enforcement.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: A couple of weeks ago, the White House published a list of more than 500 sanctuary jurisdictions. These were basically areas it was putting on formal notice for being uncooperative.
--:-- Elizabeth Findel: As this strategy continues to play out, Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, has made clear that the administration will focus on areas they believe to be opposing this federal crackdown, raising the prospect of further protests and resistance elsewhere.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Let's stick with immigration. As protests in L.A. and now many other cities have been drawing attention to ICE raids and arrests, NPR has been looking at the conditions people detained by the administration are living in.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: More than 100,000 immigrants have been arrested by ICE during Trump's second term so far, and roughly half are still in detention today. That's about a 20 percent increase in detentions since January, according to NPR.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: But the rate of deportations is not keeping pace with detentions. NPR immigration reporter Jasmine Garst found ICE facilities nationwide are getting so overcrowded that in some cases, conditions are dire for people detained.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: She told us about one facility in Miami. It's so crowded that people are sleeping on the floor. There's not beds. People sleeping in buses outside of the detention facilities.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: When you have that amount of people in a small space, obviously it's a health concern. NPR received several messages about this particular facility, the Chrome Service Processing Center.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: One came from a woman named Maria, who told Garst about her brother, who's been detained there for more than two months. Her message was about how he had a very severe eye infection in both eyes and a fever for two weeks, and he was getting no medical attention, and she was very desperate.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: NPR spoke with more than a dozen detainees at Chrome, their family members and lawyers, who described similar conditions.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: I heard from one attorney who told me his client was fed a cup of rice a day and sometimes rotting food as well, or undercooked meat or food that was just rotten and people would get sick from it.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: In May, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, visited the facility. She told NPR she saw two to three dozen men crammed into a small area for 48 hours. She says they, quote, defecate in front of each other. They eat. They sleep on stone floors.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: She called the conditions, quote, really inhumane. Chrome has faced allegations of inhumane conditions for years. It was investigated by the Department of Justice in 2000 over accusations of sexual abuse.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: And this year alone, there have been two deaths there. At ICE detention facilities nationwide, there have been nine deaths this year, which puts 2025 on track to be the deadliest since 2020.
--:-- Jasmine Garst: And the advocacy director of the Detention Watch Network told Garst they are increasingly hearing reports from people at detention facilities who say they starving
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In response to NPR reporting ICE conceded that some of its facilities are overcrowded as detentions climb, which it described as temporary.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But policy experts told Garst they're concerned the situation won't improve because deportations at the level the administration has promised, one million people, simply aren't realistic.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And this is where the issue of self-deportation comes into play. This is a really important part to understand about the Trump administration's policy, which is to make the lives of immigrants miserable enough that they will self-deport.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Or in the case of these detention centers, I heard over and over again of people asking for deportation. deportation. The administration is offering a $1,000 stipend and travel assistance to incentivize people to self-deport.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: To make those funds available, the State Department repurposed hundreds of millions of dollars that, historically, has been used to aid refugees who have been uprooted by war and natural disasters.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Tonight, President Trump plans to attend a fundraiser performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. His first appearance there as the new board chair after ousting the sitting president, the chair, and 18 board members.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Tonight's performance is Les Miserables, the hit 1986 musical based on the 1862 novel by French writer and activist Victor Hugo. President Trump is said to love Les Miserables.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The Wall Street Journal reports that staff from the 80s Broadway production remember him attending a performance. And one of the musical's most famous songs, Do You Hear the People Sing, has become something of a rallying cry for his bass, with the song played at rallies and even by the U.S. Army Chorus at a White House event earlier this year.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Graham Robb, a critic specializing in French literature, writes about the contrast between the story of Les Mis and the appeal it seems to have to Trump and his supporters.
--:-- Graham Robb: The heart of the story centers on an uprising in 1848 against the French monarchy by starving, unemployed citizens living in the Paris slums. It's a fierce defense of the poor and the powerless.
--:-- Graham Robb: The protagonist, Jean Valjean, is imprisoned in brutal conditions for 19 years after stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children and making several escape attempts.
--:-- Graham Robb: It's a story that emphasizes redemption and the societal pressures that can cause crime, in contrast to ideas that favor zero tolerance and stricter punishments.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Rob argues these themes put the story's messaging at odds with the Trump administration's agenda.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: After President Trump announced he would be taking over as chair of the board at the Kennedy Center, CNN cultural correspondent Jamie Gengel reported that several cast members pulled out of tonight's Les Mis performance in protest.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: So what we've been told is that the production company gave the actors the option of whether or not to perform that night, and at least 10 to 12 have opted out. They include some major roles, some ensemble.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: We don't know yet. And back when Trump used the music in his campaign Les Mis producer Sir Cameron McIntosh and lyricist Elaine Bubliel publicly protested Trump use of the music
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But they both appear in a new promotional video for the Kennedy Center to promote the current production Bubliel is pictured sitting in red plush theater seats with sounds from the music he wrote playing underneath him.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The nature of any creation is to find an audience. When you don't have an audience, it's nothing.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And tonight, that audience includes President Trump, the First Lady, the Vice President, and the Second Lady.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: This evening's performance is the start of a month-long run of the musical at the Kennedy Center. The Wall Street Journal reports that the center depends on ticket sales for about half of its budget, and that the first two weeks of theater sales for the upcoming season are down 82% compared to last year.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But tonight's performance is sold out.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. First, staying with cultural institutions, the Wall Street Journal exclusively reports that the Smithsonian is conducting a review of all of its content in its 21 museums to eliminate apparent political influence and bias.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The board, of which J.D. Vance and Florida Republican Carlos Jimenez are advisory members, voted in favor of the review in a closed-door session on Monday.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: It comes days after the president attempted to fire the national portrait director, Kim Sayet, in a social media post, though he lacks the authority to do so.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: The Smithsonian said it retained the power over personnel and reaffirmed its status as an independent entity, and in a briefing to the journal said no decision had been made about Sayet's future.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Next, to some promising health news. Recent CDC data shows fatal drug overdoses among Gen Z are slowing.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Overdoses killed more than 30,000 people under the age of 35 in 2021, but that number was nearly half as much in 2024.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: A huge contributor to drug-related deaths is fentanyl, often disguised as counterfeit prescription pills like OxyContin or Percocet.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But NPR found that awareness of the drug's toxic effects has risen, which may be creating a deterrence.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: Other reasons for the drop are complex and still somewhat unknown, but there is greater knowledge and distribution of Narcan, a medicine that can reverse the effects of drug overdose.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: There's also more accessible addiction health care and less deadly fentanyl being sold.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And finally, for everyone out there who loves to sing in their car or shower, the Washington Post has good news.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: That singing also comes with some real health benefits. Studies show that just listening to music can reduce stress, improve your overall well-being, and make positive emotions feel even better.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: But actually singing along and making music yourself adds another layer of benefit.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And if you're jamming out with a group, the beat will help you sync up with the people around you, decreasing stress hormones and releasing ones important for social bonding.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around for a narrated article.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: As intimacy coordinators become a more regular feature on Hollywood sets, a writer at The New Yorker decided to take a crash course and learn firsthand what they really do.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Yasmin Khan: and we'll be back with the news tomorrow.
