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--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): President Trump sends active duty Marines to respond to immigration protests in L.A. He's not for peacemaking. He's here for war. He wants a civil war on the streets. What will the Marines be allowed to do?
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): I mean, Martinez, that is Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed all members of a CDC vaccine advisory committee. We are heading in the direction of U.S. vaccine policy becoming the laughingstock of the globe. What's the reason for the dismissal?
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): And federal overdoses from fentanyl are down among young people. What we're seeing is a massive reduction in overdose risk among Gen Z in particular.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Stay with us. We've got news you need to start your day.
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--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): For the fourth straight night, people in Los Angeles took to the streets to protest ICE immigration raids. President Trump is now sending hundreds of active-duty Marines into the city and an additional 2,000 National Guard troops, doubling the amount he mobilized over the weekend.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Trump says it's to control the protests. California's governor and L.A.'s mayor, both Democrats, are calling this an unnecessary escalation.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): NPR's Adrienne Florito is in Los Angeles and is with us now to tell us more about all this. Good morning, Adrienne.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Good morning, Michelle.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): So what's the latest on these Marines heading into the city?
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Well, the Defense Department said it's bringing 700 active duty Marines in from 29 Palms, a military base 150 miles east of L.A. A defense official told NPR they will be working with the already deployed National Guard troops.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: So this is a combined 4,700 military troops being deployed to Los Angeles for what so far have been largely peaceful protests with flare-ups of violence and vandalism.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: What do we know about what these Marines will be allowed to do?
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Well, for now, the Pentagon says that they will be working with the National Guard troops to protect federal buildings and federal agents carrying out immigration enforcement.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: It's uncertain how much more they can do. Federal law generally bars active duty forces from domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Trump has not done that yet but has suggested that he could. He already called these protesters insurrectionists.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: So what's been the response of California governor Gavin Newsom who is as we said a Democrat?
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Well, he's been saying since the weekend that the president is trying to sow chaos. He calls this escalation unneeded and provocative.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: He said local and state police have been able to handle protesters who have turned violent and that they've been working to keep the peace on the streets.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: But here's what Newsom said to Fox's LA affiliate KTTV.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: That's not what Trump is after. He's not for peacemaking. He's here for war. He wants a civil war on the streets.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Newsom filed suit challenging Trump's decision to take over the state National Guard without his authorization and has said that he'll also sue over the deployment of the Marines.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: For his part, Michelle, Trump yesterday endorsed the idea of arresting Gavin Newsom, which is an extraordinary thing to say about a sitting governor.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: And so you've been talking to a lot of people who've been participating in these protests. What are they saying about these thousands of troops being sent into the city?
--:-- Adrienne Florito: A lot of them are saying they fear that these troops coming in will inflame tension on the streets even further.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Like Sandra Martinez. She was out peacefully protesting last night.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: They're going to make it worse. Look at what everybody's doing. People are just going to wild up. There are people protesting, but with that also comes people that they don't hold back.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Michelle, said that the Trump administration is trying to see how far it can go to take control away from cities and states.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: I don't think that our city should be used for an experiment to see what happens in the nation's second-largest city.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Well, maybe we can do this to other cities.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: She called on ICE to end its raids in Los Angeles. She said it conducted at least five yesterday.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Adrienne, before we let you go, I understand that these protests against ICE raids are now spreading to other cities?
--:-- Adrienne Florito: They are. There were protests in at least two dozen cities across the country yesterday.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: And officials in different places are starting to express concern that things could get out of hand if the Trump administration continues down this path.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Last night, Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the president is using the military as a political weapon, which Reid said could, quote, turn a tense situation in L.A. into a national crisis.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: That is NPR's Adrienne Florito in Los Angeles. Adrienne, thank you so much.
--:-- Adrienne Florito: Thank you, Michelle.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is removing all 17 members of a key vaccine committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): NPR Health correspondent Will Stone is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Will.
--:-- Will Stone: Good morning.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): First, would you just tell us what the committee does or what it's supposed to do and why it's important?
--:-- Will Stone: Yeah, this group of outside experts has a big hand in vaccine policy. It's called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP for short.
--:-- Will Stone: They review evidence, make recommendations to the CDC on the vaccine schedule for children and adults.
--:-- Will Stone: This also helps determine which vaccines get covered by health insurance.
--:-- Will Stone: The members tend to be experts in vaccines, immunology, pediatrics.
--:-- Will Stone: And the committee has been around since the 60s, actually, but they got a lot of visibility during the early days of the COVID pandemic.
--:-- Will Stone: As Secretary of Health, Kennedy does have the authority to replace anyone on the committee because his department oversees the CDC.
--:-- Will Stone: And that's what he decided to do yesterday when he got rid of everyone.
--:-- Will Stone: What was his rationale? Did he explain why?
--:-- Will Stone: Yes, Kennedy was very clear in a press release.
--:-- Will Stone: He said, quote, a clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science, end quote.
--:-- Will Stone: It's worth noting that Kennedy himself spent years undermining confidence in vaccines.
--:-- Will Stone: He also claimed the committee was rubber-stamping recommendations and had conflicts of interest.
--:-- Will Stone: Kennedy has made these allegations of conflicts of interest before.
--:-- Will Stone: My NPR colleague, Ping Huang, looked into this and found that a government report Kennedy brings up doesn't back up his claim.
--:-- Will Stone: There are ethics rules members have to disclose if they have any conflict before they take a vote and recuse themselves if they do.
--:-- Will Stone: The possibility that Kennedy would replace everyone on the committee with his choices is what some politicians and public health experts worried about when he was originally nominated.
--:-- Will Stone: And now that he's gone ahead and done it, what's been the reaction?
--:-- Will Stone: Well, very quickly, prominent groups like the American Medical Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America denounced the move, as did some past directors of the CDC.
--:-- Will Stone: They warn it's reckless, short-sighted, could undermine confidence in vaccine recommendations and efforts to get more kids vaccinated, especially during a measles outbreak.
--:-- Will Stone: I spoke with Dr. Jonathan Temte, who's at the University of Wisconsin.
--:-- Will Stone: He's no longer on ACIP, but he served as chair of the committee from 2012 to 2015.
--:-- Will Stone: ACIP has been across the entire world the paragon of good, solid, well-thought-out, evidence-based vaccine policy.
--:-- Will Stone: I hate to say this, we are heading in the direction of U.S. vaccine policy becoming the laughingstock of the globe.
--:-- Will Stone: And I wrote to another former ACIP chair, Grace Lee, who's at Stanford, to get her reaction.
--:-- Will Stone: I got a one-word reply from her, speechless.
--:-- Will Stone: So what's next?
--:-- Will Stone: Kennedy has said there are new members under consideration.
--:-- Will Stone: We don't know who those people will be.
--:-- Will Stone: Will they have the vaccine-related expertise that you typically expect committee members to have?
--:-- Will Stone: Kennedy did make the point that the entire committee he's replacing was appointed by Biden, many of them just last year.
--:-- Will Stone: We do know the next official meeting will be later this month at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.
--:-- Will Stone: That is NPR Health correspondent Will Stone.
--:-- Will Stone: Will, thank you.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): There is more hopeful news about America's fentanyl crisis, this time about young people.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Yeah, after a decade of carnage when more than 230,000 people under the age of 35 died from overdoses in the U.S., drug deaths are finally dropping fast.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): NPR Addiction correspondent Brian Mann is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Brian.
--:-- Brian Mann: Good morning, Michelle.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): So how big and how promising is this shift?
--:-- Brian Mann: Well, this is an extraordinary moment.
--:-- Brian Mann: Fentanyl killed young Americans at a rate unlike anything the U.S. or really any other country had ever seen, devastating families and whole communities.
--:-- Brian Mann: But Navaranda Skupta, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, says federal data shows a huge pivot.
--:-- Brian Mann: What we're seeing is a massive reduction in overdose risk among Gen Z in particular.
--:-- Brian Mann: Ages 20 to 29 lowered their risk by 47%, cut it right in half.
--:-- Brian Mann: And teenagers, too, have finally seen a big drop in fatal overdoses.
--:-- Brian Mann: Taken together, Michelle, this is saving about 15,000 lives among young people per year.
--:-- Brian Mann: Well, it's remarkable.
--:-- Brian Mann: So, Brian, could you just remind us again why, for young people in the U.S., the fentanyl crisis was different and deadlier than what we saw with, say, heroin or crack cocaine?
--:-- Brian Mann: Yeah, for decades, it's been fairly common for many young Americans to experiment with drugs, you know, trying cocaine, trying maybe a pill they got from a friend at a party.
--:-- Brian Mann: Noah Kravchak studies overdose patterns at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
--:-- Brian Mann: She says after 2014, as much more powerful and lethal fentanyl started turning up everywhere, mixed into drugs teens and 20 were really vulnerable.
--:-- Brian Mann: Whatever drugs they are using, whether intentionally or not, it is mostly fentanyl.
--:-- Brian Mann: In your generation, people use drugs. In my generation, people use drugs. You just didn't die as much from them.
--:-- Brian Mann: And Crab Check study published last month in the journal Pediatrics found fentanyl deaths among people aged 15 to 24 nearly quadrupled over a five-year period through 2022.
--:-- Brian Mann: It seemed unstoppable at times.
--:-- Brian Mann: Then finally last year, we saw this national recovery.
--:-- Brian Mann: Again, thousands, fewer teens and young adults dying.
--:-- Brian Mann: So do researchers know why this improvement is happening?
--:-- Brian Mann: There are a lot of theories.
--:-- Brian Mann: You know, there's better addiction to healthcare now.
--:-- Brian Mann: Narcan, also known as naloxone, is being widely distributed.
--:-- Brian Mann: It's this medication that reverses fentanyl overdoses.
--:-- Brian Mann: Tragically, one factor scientists are looking at is that many vulnerable kids are already gone.
--:-- Brian Mann: But there is one more thing.
--:-- Brian Mann: There's growing evidence that young people are being more careful.
--:-- Brian Mann: Studies show they're using fewer hard drugs that might be laced or contaminated with fentanyl.
--:-- Brian Mann: After a decade of all this death from fentanyl, at least some young people seem to be a lot more cautious.
--:-- Brian Mann: So let's look forward.
--:-- Brian Mann: Is this recovery likely to continue?
--:-- Brian Mann: A lot of the parents and frontline health workers I've been talking to say more needs to be done.
--:-- Brian Mann: Remember, the U.S. still saw more than 17,000 drug deaths among people under age 35 last year.
--:-- Brian Mann: That's according to provisional data from federal health agencies.
--:-- Brian Mann: Now, that's the lowest number since 2015, but it's still a lot of loss, a lot of sorrow.
--:-- Brian Mann: So more work to be done here.
--:-- Brian Mann: But one concern I'm hearing from experts and families, the Republican budget, Michelle, passed by the House, it would cut billions of dollars from Medicaid and from public health and science agencies.
--:-- Brian Mann: There's fear that grants for fentanyl and other addiction programs will dry up and this recovery could unravel.
--:-- Brian Mann: The Trump administration says it's simply looking for efficiencies and ways to consolidate programs.
--:-- Brian Mann: That is NPR's Brian Mann.
--:-- Brian Mann: Brian, thank you.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): And that's Up First for Tuesday, June 10th.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): And I'm E. Martinez.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): How about listening to Consider This from NPR?
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): We hear it up first give you the three big stories of the day.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Or Consider This colleagues take a different approach.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in less than 15 minutes.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get those podcasts.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Today's episode of Up First was edited by Eric Westervelt, Jane Greenhalgh, Andrea DeLeon, Lisa Thompson, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): It was produced by Zia Budge, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): We get engineering support from Zoe Vangenhoven and our technical director is Carly Strange.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Sources and methods. The crown jewels of the intelligence community.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Shorthand for how do we know what's real? Who told us?
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): If you have those answers, you're on the inside.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): And NPR wants to bring you there.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): From the Pentagon to the State Department to spy agencies, listen to understand what's really happening and what it means for you.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Sources and methods. The new national security podcast from NPR.
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--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): And we will pull back the curtain on what they're thinking on Sources and Methods, NPR's new national security podcast.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Our team will help you understand America's shifting role in the world.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Listen to Sources and Methods from NPR.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Congress is back from its summer recess with a lot on its agenda.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): What's all in store for lawmakers and what does their work mean for you?
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Every weekday, the NPR Politics Podcast unpacks Washington's inner workings.
--:-- Host (Michelle Martin): Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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