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      Biden Is Running on His Record as President. Here’s Where He Stands.

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      President Biden has acknowledged that he has not accomplished all he wished to. But that, he maintains, is an argument for his re-election.WASHINGTON — Just hours after formally kicking off his re-election campaign, President Biden appeared on Tuesday before a crowd of union supporters chanting “four more years” to outline his case for a second term.In his telling, unsurprisingly, the record sounds pretty good — more jobs, more roads and bridges, more clean energy, more opportunities for workers without college degrees. In just two and a half years, he argued, he has helped restore America following a debilitating pandemic and societal collapse. “Our economic plan is working,” he maintained.But as with any incumbent seeking a renewal by voters, there is the record he is running on and the record he is running away from. During his address to more than 3,000 members of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Mr. Biden made no mention of the promises he has failed to achieve so far or the setbacks that have left him with some of the lowest approval ratings of a president at this point in their term.Mr. Biden’s record looks different depending on the angle from which it is viewed, all the more so in polarized times when voters and viewers migrate to their own corners of the information world for radically different vantage points. The president is either the mature leader fixing the country as he stands against the forces of evil or he is the leader of the forces of evil destroying the country.“Under my predecessor, infrastructure week became a punchline,” Mr. Biden told the union members, mocking former President Donald J. Trump’s failure to pass legislation rebuilding the nation’s worn public facilities that his successor did succeed in enacting. “On my watch, infrastructure has become a decade headline — a decade.”Mr. Trump, now seeking a rematch against Mr. Biden in 2024, gave his potential opponent no credit. “When I stand on that debate stage and compare our records,” he said in a statement, “it will be radical Democrats’ worst nightmare because there’s never been a record as bad as they have, and our country has never been through so much.”Along with the $1 trillion infrastructure package, which passed with Republican votes, Mr. Biden can boast of sweeping legislative victories that would have seemed improbable when he took office. Among other measures he pushed through a Congress with narrow Democratic majorities were a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package; major investments to combat climate change; lower prescription drug costs for seniors; increased corporate taxes; expanded treatment for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and incentives to turbocharge the semiconductor industry.He has been unable, however, to fulfill other major promises, including an assault weapons ban; an immigration overhaul providing a path to citizenship for migrants in the country illegally; two years of free community college; free universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds; national paid sick leave; greater voting rights protections; and policing changes to counter excessive force. Some of those were never realistic in the first place, but Mr. Biden was the one to highlight them as priorities.His economic record is similarly complicated. More than 12 million jobs have been created since he took office as the economy bounced back from the pandemic, and unemployment is at or near its lowest level in a half-century. But inflation rocketed up to its highest level in four decades, which some critics blamed on excessive federal spending under Mr. Biden, although cost increases have been a global phenomenon. Likewise, gas prices shot up to record levels. While both have begun to come back down — inflation has fallen from 9 percent to 5 percent — Americans remain skittish about the economy, according to polls, and economists still worry about a possible recession.After fitful starts, Mr. Biden has presided over the easing of the Covid pandemic and accompanying restrictions despite vaccine resistance among many, especially on the political right. But he has failed to quell a surge of migration at the southwestern border, where attempted crossings have hit record highs, and Republicans blame him for a wave of crime, which actually began while Mr. Trump was still in office.Mr. Biden has worked to reverse Mr. Trump’s impact on the judiciary, pushing through more judicial appointments through the Senate in his first two years than his predecessor had, but the pipeline has slowed in recent months with the absence of an ailing Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, from the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Biden fulfilled his promise to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson.Where he has not been able to work his will on lawmakers, he has relied on an expansive interpretation of his executive power to achieve policy goals, most notably his decision to forgive $400 billion in student loans. But such actions are inherently subject to court challenges, and analysts expect the Supreme Court to overrule the student loan decision.In the international arena, Mr. Biden worked to revitalize international ties that had frayed under Mr. Trump, recommitting to NATO and rejoining the Paris climate change accord. But his effort to resurrect the Iran nuclear agreement abandoned by Mr. Trump has gone nowhere.Mr. Biden’s withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan after 20 years turned into a debacle, leading to a swift and brutal takeover of the country by the Taliban and a chaotic withdrawal of troops and allies, with fleeing Afghans swarming American planes and a suicide bomber killing 13 American troops and 170 civilians.Although Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. Biden over the episode, the president was carrying out a pullout deal that his predecessor struck with the Taliban, a pact that one of Mr. Trump’s own national security advisers called a “surrender agreement.” Some experts argue the fiasco at the Kabul airport emboldened President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to assume that Mr. Biden was weak.But Mr. Biden rallied the world when Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine last year to isolate Moscow and cut off much of its financial ties with the West. With bipartisan support, Mr. Biden has committed more than $100 billion to arm Ukraine’s military and enable its government and people to survive the Russian onslaught. American assistance helped the Ukrainians surprise Russian invaders by preventing the takeover of their capital and most of the country, but the situation remains volatile.It remains volatile at home as well. Mr. Biden made the theme of his inaugural address his desire to unite the country after the divisions of the Trump years. And while he has to some extent lowered the temperature in Washington and worked at times with Republicans, America remains deeply polarized.Republicans accuse Mr. Biden of being the divisive one, citing his rhetoric assailing “MAGA Republicans” and blaming him for the investigations of his rival, Mr. Trump, although there is no evidence of involvement by the president.In his campaign kickoff video and subsequent speech on Tuesday, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he has not accomplished all he wished to. But that, he maintained, was an argument for his re-election. “We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said. More

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      Your Monday Briefing: Evacuations from Sudan

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      Also, China suppressed Covid-19 data.A building that was damaged during battles in Khartoum.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEvacuations from SudanThe U.S. evacuated its diplomats from Sudan yesterday, starting an exodus of foreign diplomats from the country as fighting there stretched into a second week.Officials said almost 100 people — mostly U.S. Embassy employees — were evacuated by helicopters that arrived from Djibouti, where the U.S. has a base. More than 100 special operations troops were involved in the operation. Within hours after the U.S. announced the move, a swell of countries, including France, Britain and Germany, followed suit.India said that it had two military aircraft and a naval vessel on standby to prepare for the evacuation of its citizens. China issued a notice via its embassy in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, asking its citizens to register if they wanted to be rescued.As helicopters and planes swept away foreigners, Sudanese citizens continued to flee. They often face greater risks than diplomats or aid workers, and many have been trying to leave through land borders, but the journeys are dangerous.Sudan’s challenges: Many of those still stranded in their homes in Khartoum are without electricity, food or water. The health care system is on the verge of a breakdown, medical workers say.Context: The evacuations came on the ninth day of brutal fighting between the Sudanese Army and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, whose leaders are vying for supremacy. At least 400 people have been killed in the violence and more than 3,500 injured, according to the U.N.A patient in a hospital in Wuhan in January 2020.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChina rewrites the Covid-19 storyIt is well documented that China muzzled scientists, hindered international investigations and censored online talk about Covid-19. But Beijing’s censorship goes far deeper than even many pandemic researchers are aware of.Chinese researchers have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions, shaking the foundations of shared scientific knowledge, a Times investigation found. Western journal editors enabled those efforts by agreeing to those edits or by withdrawing papers for murky reasons.Notably, in early 2020, a team of scientists from the U.S. and China released data on the coronavirus, which showed how quickly the virus was spreading and who was dying. But days later, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper.It’s now clear that the paper was withdrawn at Beijing’s direction amid a crackdown on science, starving doctors and policymakers of critical information about the virus when it was most needed.Analysis: The censorship helped China control the narrative about the early days of the pandemic, especially the timeline of early infections. Beijing has faced criticism over whether it responded to the virus quickly enough.The military junta has escalated its attacks on civilians.Aung Shine Oo/Associated PressAn assassination in MyanmarA rebel group in Myanmar claimed responsibility for the assassination of a high-ranking election official for the military junta. The attack on Saturday, by bicycle-riding gunmen, came as violence escalated on both sides of the country’s internal conflict.The official, Sai Kyaw Thu, was fatally shot while he was driving his wife to her job in Yangon. He had worked on elections before the 2021 coup and had testified at the trial of the ousted civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the ousted president, U Win Myint. The junta convicted them of election fraud.The resistance group, “For the Yangon,” targeted him for his testimony and accused him of being complicit in “oppressing and terrorizing” the public. The killing is one of several recent high-profile assassinations. It comes as the junta faces growing resistance from pro-democracy forces and ethnic rebel groups, which have long fought for autonomy.Recent context: The military has responded in recent months with an increasing number of atrocities, including the beheading, disembowelment or dismemberment of rebel fighters, as well as attacks on civilians.THE LATEST NEWSThe War in UkraineThe funeral for Oleksandr Dykiy, 41, a Ukrainian soldier killed last week near Bakhmut.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesRussian troops are forcibly relocating people from areas near Kherson, a Ukrainian official said. The moves suggest Russian troops could be preparing to withdraw further ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.President Volodymyr Zelensky banned Russian place names and made knowledge of Ukrainian language and history a requirement for citizenship.My colleagues spoke to a Ukrainian soldier who rescues the wounded from the front lines. “It’s difficult to see young boys die,” he said, in a video. “Sometimes I cry quietly.”Many Russian prisoners are H.I.V. positive. They were promised anti-viral medications if they agreed to fight.Asia PacificThe wreck of a Japanese ship that was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine in 1942 was found. When it sank, it was carrying more than 1,000 prisoners of war, most of whom were Australian.The Australia Letter: Natasha Frost went looking for darkness ahead of the solar eclipse.Other Big StoriesSifan Hassan was as stunned as everyone else when she crossed the finish line first in the women’s race.John Walton/Press Association, via Associated PressSifan Hassan, of the Netherlands, won the women’s race in the London Marathon after training during Ramadan. Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum won the men’s race, posting the second-fastest time on record: 2:01:25.The Red Cross expressed alarm about the health of aging prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.Britain’s deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, resigned on Friday after an investigation that found he had bullied subordinates.A Morning ReadAnn Peetermans hosts three boarders with mental illness.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesFor centuries, families in the Belgian town of Geel have taken in people with mental illnesses. The approach has often been regarded with suspicion, but more recently the town has come up for reconsideration as an emblem of a humane alternative to neglect or institutionalization.Lives lived: Bruce Haigh, an Australian diplomat, helped offer covert support to anti-apartheid figures in South Africa. He died at 77.ARTS AND IDEASWomen inspiring womenT magazine asked 33 mid- and late-career female artists (the majority of them over 45 years old) to identify a younger female creative person who inspired them. The artists didn’t have to know each other or even be in the same field.Hanya Yanagihara, the editor in chief of T, wrote that she was struck by how many of these artists’ younger counterparts saw the lives of those who picked them as models of self-possession and assuredness, even as the older artists themselves claim this wasn’t the case.For instance, both Margaret Cho, 54, and Atsuko Okatsuka, 34, imagined each other was born confident. But it took years for each to find her voice.“I had a hard time understanding, or committing to, artistic integrity, whereas Atsuko already has the presentation down,” Cho said. “She knows who she is. She has a strong sense of self that took me a long time to develop.”For more: T also talked to seven artistic mother-and-daughter groups and explored how female mentor-mentee relationships have shaped artistic history.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookChris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Pappas.To order the best thing on a menu, look for sleeper hits, like these citrus-glazed turnips.What to WatchIn “Other People’s Children,” a Parisian teacher falls for a father — and his young daughter — in a subtle, deeply felt drama.What to Listen toOur pop critics recommend these new songs. Here’s their playlist, on Spotify.The News QuizHow well did you follow last week’s headlines?Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Trail trekker (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. My colleague Kim Severson talked to Marketplace about her reporting on Gen Z saying no to milk.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the leaked documents. Or, listen to the story of an Italian town where people pelt each other with oranges.I’m always available at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Makes His White House Run Official

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      Announcing his long-shot bid to challenge President Biden, he spoke to a crowd of people who voiced their shared skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.More than half a century after his father sought the White House to end a calamitous war in Vietnam and to salve the country’s racial wounds, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a presidential campaign on Wednesday built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science.Mr. Kennedy, a California resident, traveled to Boston, once the citadel of his family’s power, to declare that he would challenge President Biden for the Democratic nomination in a long-shot bid for the White House.Appearing at the Park Plaza Hotel — a favorite fund-raising venue of his uncle Ted Kennedy’s — he sought to wrap himself in the Kennedy political luster.The event was saturated, in words and images, with reminiscences of Mr. Kennedy’s father as well as another uncle, President John F. Kennedy.In a rambling speech lasting nearly two hours, Mr. Kennedy, 69, evoked his father’s 1968 campaign and death, and spoke in detail about his career as an environmental lawyer decades ago. He also aimed criticisms at the pharmaceutical industry, big social media companies that he accused of censorship, Mr. Biden’s commitment to the war in Ukraine and former President Donald J. Trump’s “lockdown” of the country early in the pandemic.“This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years,” Mr. Kennedy said, a reference to his complaint that social media platforms and the mainstream media have not given him a fair hearing. “I got a lot to talk about. They shouldn’t have shut me up for that long because now I’m really going to let loose on them for the next 18 months. They’re going to hear a lot from me.”Late in his speech, an alarm sounded and an announcement asked people to evacuate. Nobody moved. “Nice try,” Mr. Kennedy said, and continued to speak.Numerous attendees, who had come from Boston, neighboring New England states and Florida, recounted in interviews their skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.While polls show that up to half of Democrats want someone besides Mr. Biden as their 2024 nominee, no party leader has stepped up with a challenge, and past opponents have rallied to the president’s side. Mr. Kennedy is the latest in a history of fringe presidential aspirants from both parties who run to bring attention to a cause, or to themselves.For Mr. Kennedy, that cause is vaccine skepticism, which he cloaked in terms of truth-seeking and free speech, a crusade that in the past led him to falsely link childhood vaccines to autism. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he sought to undermine public trust in vaccines, comparing government efforts to impose mandates in some places to “Hitler’s Germany.” Both Facebook and Instagram took down accounts of a group he runs for spreading medical misinformation.Family members have accused Mr. Kennedy of sowing distrust in the science behind vaccines. His campaign has appalled members of his famous Democratic clan.“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information,” Kerry Kennedy, a sister of Mr. Kennedy’s, said in a statement.Bob Shrum, a former aide to Ted Kennedy, said Mr. Kennedy’s attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and the federal government’s top medical and scientific agencies would have infuriated his uncle. “It’s contrary to everything his uncle Ted Kennedy ever did,” he said. “He called health care the cause of his life.”In a statement of his own, Mr. Kennedy said he had made a “difficult choice to put my principles ahead of my personal affections” for Mr. Biden. “Some members of my family agree with me and others do not,” he added. “I bear them no ill will.”On Wednesday in Boston, Mr. Kennedy was introduced by his wife, Cheryl Ruth Hines, an actress, and he pointed out his children and grandchildren seated in a balcony of the hotel ballroom. But there was a notable absence of members of his family who have made careers in politics. A number of them affirmed their support for Mr. Biden’s re-election in recent days, part of a decades-long alliance between the Biden and Kennedy families.Ted Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, is Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Austria. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President Kennedy, is ambassador to Australia. And Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, is Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, who flew with him this month to Belfast.Though his campaign is unlikely to pose a serious threat to Mr. Biden, the strength of emotions expressed by his supporters on Wednesday pointed to a group that is angry and distrustful of traditional Democrats when it comes to vaccines. Any link between childhood vaccines and autism has been widely rebuked by peer-reviewed scientific studies. Covid vaccines, which have been administered to millions of Americans, are safe and effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Nonetheless, misinformation about vaccines swirls online.Attendees, echoing Mr. Kennedy, took aim at a corrupt alliance of big business and government.“The Covid vaccines are not effective and not safe,” maintained Claire Mortimer, 69, a nurse practitioner who drove from Brooklin, Maine, to hear Mr. Kennedy. “I believe that only Bobby Kennedy Jr. is capable of getting rid of the corruption that is so deeply embedded in every agency of our government.”Andy Migner, 67, who works in regenerative healing in Boston, described herself as a “lifetime Democrat” who now feels politically homeless. She said “our ability to question,” as well as journalism and public debate, “has gone down the tubes.” More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Soon to Announce White House Run, Sows Doubts About Vaccines

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      Mr. Kennedy, a Democrat who plans to kick off his campaign this week, says he wants to make vaccines safer, but he is spreading misinformation by twisting facts out of context.WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood before the Lincoln Memorial in January 2022 and condemned the federal government’s coronavirus response by railing against totalitarianism. Jews in Nazi Germany, he suggested, had more freedom than Americans facing vaccination mandates and school, church and business closures in the era of Covid-19.“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland,” he told a crowd of flag-waving anti-vaccine enthusiasts at a “Defeat the Mandates” rally. “You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”Mr. Kennedy later apologized, though it was not the first time he had invoked the Holocaust. Over the past two decades, as he has pursued what he calls “safe vaccine activism,” Mr. Kennedy has evolved from an environmental lawyer concerned about mercury poisoning into a crusader for individual liberty — a path that has landed him, a scion of a storied Democratic clan, in the unlikely embrace of the American political right.On Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy plans to formally announce that he is challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination for president. His vaccine skepticism gives him something in common with another candidate: former President Donald J. Trump, who like Mr. Kennedy has blamed childhood vaccines for autism — a discredited theory that has been repudiated by more than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific studies in multiple countries.“Robert F. Kennedy could jump into the Republican primary for president and only DeSantis and Trump, I think, would do better,” Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, said recently on his podcast, referring to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Bannon said Mr. Kennedy had a “massive following” with his audience. “People love this guy,” he said.Vaccination is a singular public health success that has saved untold millions of lives. Vaccines have eradicated smallpox, averted millions of deaths from measles and sent naturally occurring polio cases plummeting, from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to six reported cases worldwide in 2021, according to the World Health Organization.Mr. Kennedy condemned the federal government’s coronavirus response in front of the Lincoln Memorial in January 2022.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy has insisted that he is not opposed to vaccines and that his sole interest is in making them safer. “I’m not anti-vaccine, although I’m kind of the poster child for the anti-vax movement,” he said during a recent speech at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college in Michigan.But through his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and his movies, speeches and books — including one that portrays Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry — Mr. Kennedy has used his platform and his family’s star power to sow doubts about vaccine safety, spreading misinformation by twisting facts out of context.In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named him one of its “Disinformation Dozen” — the 12 people whom the organization found to have been responsible for roughly three-quarters of anti-vaccine content on Facebook.Facebook and Instagram have removed the accounts of Children’s Health Defense, and Mr. Kennedy has accused them of censorship. He is also suing the Biden administration and Dr. Fauci, who for decades led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, accusing them of pressuring social media companies to censor free speech.Mr. Kennedy declined to be interviewed. In an email message, he said Children’s Health Defense had “an extremely robust fact-checking operation.” He also pointed to a response by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, disputing the “Disinformation Dozen” report. Meta critiqued the study’s design, saying that focusing on just 12 people “misses the forest for the trees.”Family BacklashMr. Kennedy, 69, is the third-eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who urged Americans to take the Salk polio vaccine and signed the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 to help states and cities carry out childhood immunization programs.His activism, and now his political aspirations, have been wrenching for his family. Some of his family members have publicly rebuked him. His sister Rory Kennedy told CNN she was backing Mr. Biden, while his sister Kerry Kennedy said in a statement, “I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues.”Ahead of his White House bid, Mr. Kennedy is playing up his family history. He lives in California but plans to make his announcement in Boston, a city closely identified with the Kennedys. He recently tweeted a photo of himself in a vintage “Kennedy for President” T-shirt.His name and family reputation have opened doors for him. Dr. Fauci said he had met with Mr. Kennedy several times and had told him “that I believe that his intentions are not evil, but his information is incorrect, and he’s misguided and can inadvertently cause significant harm.” Dr. Fauci said that when Mr. Kennedy’s book about him, titled “The Real Anthony Fauci,” came out in 2021, he was “really shocked.”“The entire book is such a complete lie,” Dr. Fauci said.Mr. Kennedy, top left, is the third-eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy.Associated PressMr. Kennedy’s messages often have a grain of truth. The Children’s Health Defense website, for instance, says “vaccines contain many ingredients, some of which are known to be neurotoxic, carcinogenic and cause autoimmunity.” Vaccines do contain preservatives and additives, such as aluminum salts, which have been in use in vaccines for decades. Studies show adverse reactions are rare and typically involve skin allergies.The Children’s Health Defense website also states that certain vaccines are not tested against placebos in clinical trials, citing polio, hepatitis and meningitis vaccines as examples. That is misleading. Brand-new vaccines — from polio to measles to Covid-19 — are tested in large clinical trials that include placebo groups. But scientists agree it would be unethical to withhold lifesaving vaccines from study participants. For that reason, when older vaccines are reformulated or updated, studies do not include a placebo group.“Vaccine injuries can and do happen,” the website declares. That is true as well, but the federal government has an aggressive system to track and detect side effects so they can be addressed.The measles vaccine, for instance, lowers the platelet count in about one in every 25,000 to 30,000 people. That can cause red spots from bleeding under the skin — a problem that is usually “short-lived and self-resolving,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But measles causes that problem in one in 3,000 children — roughly 10 times as many as the vaccine, he said.“There are no risk-free choices, just choices to take different risks,” said Dr. Offit, who has been a vocal critic of Mr. Kennedy. “You could argue the greatest risk of vaccines is driving to the office to get them.”A Movement GrowsBy his own account, Mr. Kennedy was at first a reluctant critic of vaccination. He got involved in 2005, when he was an environmental lawyer suing coal-fired power plants to force them to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals.The anti-vaccine movement in the United States had been growing amid debate over a rise in cases of autism. In 1998, a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a study of 12 children in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, that suggested a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism.The article was retracted in 2010, and Mr. Wakefield was later barred from practicing medicine. But in the years after its publication, another theory began to take hold: that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that had been used for decades to prevent bacteria from growing in multiple-dose vials of vaccines, caused autism.Mr. Kennedy examining a canal that supplied water from a natural spring to a Palestinian village in 2019. He got involved in the anti-vaccine movement when he was an environmental lawyer.Daniel Rolider for The New York TimesThe measles, mumps and rubella vaccine never contained thimerosal, but other vaccines given to infants did. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is “no evidence” that the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines cause harm, “except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.”But in 1999, after Congress directed the Food and Drug Administration to look at mercury in all products, the American Academy of Pediatrics, federal health agencies and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be removed from childhood vaccines. The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.But the move alarmed parents. As Mr. Kennedy traveled the country giving speeches, he has said, mothers of intellectually disabled children began buttonholing him, pressing him to investigate vaccines.“They would say to me in a very respectful but also kind of vaguely scolding way, ‘If you’re really interested in mercury exposures to children, you need to look at vaccines,’” he told the Hillsdale College audience.In 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon copublished an article by Mr. Kennedy, headlined “Deadly Immunity,” that blamed thimerosal in vaccines for fueling the rise in autism. Salon later retracted the article. Mr. Kennedy insisted Salon caved to pressure from government regulators and the pharmaceutical industry.Thimerosal is still used in flu vaccines. In 2015, shortly after Mr. Kennedy published a book about the preservative, he met Eric Gladen, an engineer who believes he was sickened by thimerosal in a tetanus vaccine and who made a film about his experience. The two joined forces. Mr. Gladen’s advocacy group, World Mercury Project, was later rebranded as Children’s Health Defense.“We had two huge tools to raise funds; we had my film, which is about 10 years of research put into 90 minutes, and his book,” Mr. Gladen said in an interview, adding, “Between him being a Kennedy, the film and his book, it compelled a lot of people to get involved.”The anti-vaccine movement was, at the time, largely the province of the political left. Mr. Kennedy found allies in Hollywood celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. In California, he waged an unsuccessful fight against a bill to eliminate the “personal belief” exemption that allowed parents to opt out of vaccinating their children.Mr. Kennedy speaking to an anti-vaccine rally at the New York State Capitol in Albany in 2020.Hans Pennink/Associated PressMr. Kennedy has been a vocal opponent of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, a 1986 federal law intended to promote the development of vaccines by shielding manufacturers from lawsuits. In 2003, at the height of the thimerosal controversy, a bipartisan measure to update the law by offering immunity to vaccine additive manufacturers collapsed in Congress.Mr. Kennedy points to such efforts as evidence that lawmakers and federal regulators are conspiring to protect drug companies, which he says lack incentives to focus on safety. During the fight over the California legislation, he invoked those arguments, said Dr. Richard Pan, a former state senator who was an author of the bill and met with Mr. Kennedy at the time.“He mainly focused on the F.D.A. being corrupt and in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies to hide the danger of vaccines,” Dr. Pan said.Meeting With TrumpShortly before Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Mr. Kennedy met with him at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Mr. Kennedy said afterward that the president-elect wanted him to lead a “vaccine safety and scientific integrity” commission. He told Science magazine that Mr. Trump had told him he had five friends whose healthy children “developed a suite of deficits” after being vaccinated.The commission never came to pass, but the coronavirus pandemic gave Mr. Kennedy an even bigger platform. As the country grew ever more polarized, with many of Mr. Trump’s followers shunning the vaccines and Dr. Fauci becoming a lightning rod, Mr. Kennedy’s book about Dr. Fauci became a best seller.Another book by Mr. Kennedy is due out in June, this time focusing on the controversy over the origins of the coronavirus. Titled “The Wuhan Cover-Up,” it claims that federal health officials “conspired with the Chinese military” to hide the pandemic’s origins — an assertion that appears to conflate experiments by the Chinese military at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with other work there funded by the U.S. government.How much Mr. Kennedy will talk about vaccine safety during his presidential campaign remains unclear. As he did during the rally at the Lincoln Memorial, he used his talk at Hillsdale College to cloak his activism in a broader point — that the government, the press and social media companies are trying to silence him, pushing the United States toward tyranny.“The founders, specifically Hamilton, Madison, Adams, said, ‘We put freedom of expression in the First Amendment because all the other amendments are dependent on it,’” Mr. Kennedy said. “Because if you give a government the right to silence their opponents, they now have a license for any atrocity.” More

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      This Philosopher Wants Liberals to Take Political Power Seriously

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      America today faces a crisis of governance. In the face of numerous challenges — from climate change, to housing shortages, to pandemics — our institutions struggle to act quickly and decisively. Democratic processes often get captured by special interests or paralyzed by polarization. And, in response, public faith in government has reached a new low.For the political philosopher Danielle Allen, this crisis requires a complete transformation of our democratic institutions. “Representation as designed cannot work under current conditions,” she writes. “We have no choice but to undertake a significant project of democracy renovation.” Allen’s most recent book — “Justice By Means of Democracy” — puts forth a sweeping vision of what she calls “power-sharing liberalism,” which aims to place political equality, power and participation at the center of liberal thinking.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]But Allen isn’t just a theorist of liberal governance; she’s actively applying her insights in the real world. As the director of Harvard’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, she’s convened interdisciplinary groups to tackle a range of challenges from building Covid-19 testing infrastructure to innovating in A.I. governance. She was co-chair of the “Our Common Purpose” commission, which put forward over 30 specific policy recommendations for reinventing American democracy. She even ran for governor of Massachusetts.So this is a conversation about what it would mean to build a better, more responsive and inclusive government — and the numerous challenges standing in the way of doing that. Along the way, we discuss liberals’ failure to take power seriously, Colorado’s experiments with “plural voting,” Seattle’s efforts to publicly finance elections through “democracy bucks,” Taiwan’s groundbreaking innovations in deliberative democracy, whether most citizens actually want deeper participation in government — or just better results from it, what it would mean to democratically govern AI development and much more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Courtesy of Danielle AllenThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Kristin Lin, and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      The One Thing Trump Has That DeSantis Never Will

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is in a trap of his own devising. His path to the Republican presidential nomination depends on convincing Donald Trump’s base that he represents a more committed and disciplined version of the former president, that he shares their populist grievances and aims only to execute the Trump agenda with greater forcefulness and skill. But it also depends on convincing a G.O.P. elite grown weary of Mr. Trump’s erratic bombast (not to mention electoral losses and legal jeopardy) that he, Mr. DeSantis, represents a more responsible alternative: shrewd where Mr. Trump is reckless; bookish where Mr. Trump is philistine; scrupulous, cunning and detail-oriented where Mr. Trump is impetuous and easily bored. In short, to the base, Mr. DeSantis must be more Trump than Trump, and to the donors, less.Thus far, Mr. DeSantis has had greater success with party elites. By pairing aggressive stances on the culture wars with free-market economics and an appeal to his own competence and expertise, Mr. DeSantis has managed to corral key Republican megadonors, Murdoch media empire executives and conservative thought leaders from National Review to the Claremont Institute. He polls considerably higher than Mr. Trump with wealthy, college-educated, city- and suburb-dwelling Republicans. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, retains his grip on blue-collar, less educated and rural conservatives. For the G.O.P., the primary fight has begun to tell an all-too-familiar story: It’s the elites vs. the rabble.Mr. Trump, for his part, appears to have taken notice of this incipient class divide (and perhaps of the dearth of billionaires rushing to his aid). In the past few weeks, he has skewered Mr. DeSantis as a tool for “globalist” plutocrats and the Republican old guard. Since his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, Mr. Trump has sought to further solidify his status as the indispensable people’s champion, attacked on all sides by a conspiracy of liberal elites. While donors and operatives may prefer a more housebroken populism, it is Mr. Trump’s surmise that large parts of the base still want the real thing, warts and all.If his wager pays off, it will be a sign not just of his continued dominance over the Republican Party but also of something deeper: an ongoing revolt against “the best and brightest,” the notion that only certain people, with certain talents, credentials and subject matter expertise, are capable of governing.During his second inaugural speech in Tallahassee in January, Mr. DeSantis embraced the culture wars pugilism that has made him a Fox News favorite; he railed against “open borders,” “identity essentialism,” the “coddling” of criminals and “attacking” of law enforcement. “Florida,” he reminded his audience, with a favored if clunky applause line, “is where woke goes to die!”But the real focus — as with his speech at the National Conservatism conference in Miami in September — was on results (a word he repeated). Mr. DeSantis promised competent leadership; “sanity” and “liberty” were his motifs. For most of the speech, the governor sounded very much the Reaganite conservative from central casting. “We said we would ensure that Florida taxed lightly, regulated reasonably and spent conservatively,” he said, “and we delivered.”In general, Mr. DeSantis’s populism is heavy on cultural grievances and light on economic ones. The maneuvers that tend to endear him to the nationalist crowd — flying a few dozen Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, attempting to ban “critical race theory” at public colleges and retaliating against Disney for criticizing his “Don’t Say Gay” bill — are carefully calibrated to burnish his populist bona fides without unduly provoking G.O.P. elites who long for a return to relative conservative normalcy.Indeed, Republican megadonors like the Koch family and the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin appear to admire Mr. DeSantis in spite of the populist firebrand he periodically plays on TV. Mr. Griffin recently told Politico’s Shia Kapos he aims, as Ms. Kapos described it, to “blunt” the populism that has turned some Republican politicians against the corporate world. Mr. Griffin gave $5 million to Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign.Mr. DeSantis’s principal claim to being Mr. Trump’s legitimate heir, perhaps, is his handling of the Covid pandemic in Florida. Mr. DeSantis depicts his decision to reopen the state and ban mask mandates as a bold move against technocrats and scientists, denizens of what he calls the “biomedical security state.”But his disdain for experts is selective. While deciding how to address the pandemic, Mr. DeSantis collaborated with the Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya (“He’d read all the medical literature — all of it, not just the abstracts,” Dr. Bhattacharya told The New Yorker) and followed the recommendations of a group of epidemiologists from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford who pushed for a swifter reopening. Mr. DeSantis’s preference for their recommendations over those of Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t signify a rejection of expertise as such, only an embrace of alternative expertise. Mr. DeSantis wanted to save Florida’s tourism economy, and he found experts who would advise him to do so.In reality, Mr. DeSantis is not against elites, exactly; he aims merely to replace the current elite (in academia, corporations and government) with a more conservative one, with experts who have not been infected, as Mr. DeSantis likes to say, by “the woke mind virus.” The goal is not to do away with the technocratic oligarchy, but to repopulate it — with people like Ron DeSantis.Earlier generations of American thinkers had higher aspirations. “The reign of specialized expertise,” wrote the historian Christopher Lasch in 1994, “is the antithesis of democracy.” In the 19th century, European visitors were impressed (and unnerved) to find even farmers and laborers devouring periodicals and participating in the debating societies of early America. The defining feature of America’s democratic experiment, Mr. Lasch insisted, was “not the chance to rise in the social scale” but “the complete absence of a scale that clearly distinguished commoners from gentlemen.”Twentieth-century capitalism, Mr. Lasch thought, had resulted in a perilous maldistribution of intelligence and competence; experts had usurped governance, while the value of practical experience had plummeted.Mr. Lasch briefly came into vogue among conservatives during the Trump years, but they never grasped his central claim: that generating equality of competence would require economic redistribution.In his 2011 book, Mr. DeSantis railed against the “‘leveling’ spirit” that threatens to take hold in a republic, especially among the lower orders. His principal target in the book is “redistributive justice,” by which he apparently means any effort at all to share the benefits of economic growth more equitably — whether using government power to provide for the poor or to guarantee health care, higher wages or jobs.The essential ingredients of his worldview remain the same. Mr. DeSantis has adopted a populist idiom, but he has no more sympathy now than he did 12 years ago for the “‘leveling’ spirit” — the ethos of disdain for expertise that Mr. Trump embodied when he burst onto the national political stage in 2015. In fact, Mr. DeSantis’s posture represents a bulwark against it: an effort to convince G.O.P. voters that their enemies are cultural elites, rather than economic ones; that their liberty is imperiled, not by the existence of an oligarchy but by the oligarchs’ irksome cultural mores.Mr. DeSantis has honed an agenda that attacks progressive orthodoxies where they are most likely to affect and annoy conservative elites: gay and trans inclusion in suburban schools, diversity and equity in corporate bureaucracies, Black studies in A.P. classes and universities. None of these issues have any appreciable impact on the opportunities afforded to working-class people. And yet conservative elites treat it as an article of faith that these issues will motivate the average Republican voter.The conservative movement has staked its viability on the belief that Americans resent liberal elites because they’re “woke” and not because they wield so much power over other people’s lives. Their promise to replace the progressive elite with a conservative one — with men like Ron DeSantis — is premised on the idea that Americans are comfortablewith the notion that only certain men are fit to rule.Mr. Trump, despite what he sometimes represents, is no more likely than Mr. DeSantis to disrupt the American oligarchy. (As president, he largely let the plutocrats in his cabinet run the country.)Few politicians on either side appear eager to unleash — rather than contain — America’s leveling spirit, to give every American the means, and not merely the right, to rule themselves.To break through the elite standoff that is our culture war, politicians must resist the urge to designate a single leader, or group of leaders, distinguished by their brilliance, to shoulder the hard work of making America great. It would mean taking seriously a proverb frequently quoted by Barack Obama, but hardly embodied by his presidency: that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” It would also mean, to quote a line from the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle favored by Christopher Lasch, that the goal of our republic — of any republic — should be to build “a whole world of heroes.”Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) is a writer and a co-host of “Know Your Enemy,” a podcast about the conservative movement.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr., a Noted Vaccine Skeptic, Files to Run for President

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      While he has not yet announced his plans, he filed the federal paperwork for a campaign to run as a Democrat.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political activist known most recently for his campaign to discredit coronavirus vaccines, filed paperwork on Wednesday to run for president as a Democrat, offering a potential long-shot challenge to President Biden.Mr. Kennedy, the son and namesake of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated while running for president in 1968, has not made a formal announcement. However, he teased a run at a political gathering in New Hampshire last month, telling a crowd: “I’ve passed the biggest hurdle, which is, my wife has greenlighted it.” He has set up a website to solicit donations and volunteers for a potential run, and a tweet pinned to his Twitter account says he will run if “I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win.”Mr. Kennedy, 69, was once a top environmental lawyer, but his interests veered away from the Democratic mainstream into conspiracy theories, for which he has earned the public rebuke of some members of his prominent family. A longtime vaccine skeptic, he linked childhood vaccinations to autism, a claim thoroughly rebuked by medical experts. In a recent book, he claimed that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who was President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, conspired with drug companies to profit from vaccines. Instagram blocked Mr. Kennedy’s account for spreading vaccine misinformation in 2021.If he becomes a candidate, Mr. Kennedy wrote on Twitter, his top priority will be to “end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power.”While many Democrats express concerns about Mr. Biden as a candidate in 2024, when he would be 81 on Election Day, no major party leaders are actively exploring a primary challenge. The only well-known announced challenger to date is the author Marianne Williamson, who also ran in 2020. More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Covid Origins Hearing Opens in the U.S.

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      Also, protests in Georgia and armed villagers in Kashmir.Witnesses testified about the origins of the coronavirus before a House subcommittee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesDid a lab leak cause Covid?U.S. lawmakers opened hearings yesterday into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The hearing, which quickly became politically charged, underscored how difficult it may be to ascertain the origins of Covid-19.Republicans on the House panel investigating the pandemic’s origins made an aggressive case that the virus may have been the result of a laboratory leak. The lab-leak hypothesis recently gained a boost after new intelligence led the Energy Department to conclude, albeit with low confidence, that a leak was the most likely cause.The first public hearing came as the debate intensifies about one of the great unsolved mysteries of the pandemic. The committee is made up of seven Democrats and nine Republicans, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is known for her embrace of conspiracy theories.Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about the origins of the pandemic.Two theories: The lab-leak hypothesis centers largely around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studied coronaviruses. But some scientists say the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans at a market in Wuhan, China.Stakes: A lab-leak consensus could further roil U.S.-China relations.Related: Starting tomorrow, the U.S. will no longer require a negative test for travelers from China.Protesters with flags from Georgia, Ukraine and the E.U. outside Georgia’s parliament building.Zurab Tsertsvadze/Associated PressProtesters in Georgia chant ‘No to the Russian law’Thousands of demonstrators marched toward Georgia’s Parliament yesterday, a day after a bill on “foreign agents” passed first reading. Critics say the measure would replicate legislation in Russia that has been used to restrict civil society.Last night, a group of protesters tried to storm the government building, but were repelled by police officers who used water cannons, stun grenades and tear gas. On Tuesday, riot police officers had also used tear gas and water cannons to disperse a large rally in Tbilisi. Waving Georgian and European flags, the protesters chanted, “No to the Russian law!” as they walked down the main avenue in Tbilisi.The country’s pro-Western opposition sees the bill as following the model of Russian legislation passed in 2012, pushing the country closer to Moscow and highlighting democratic backsliding. Under the measure, nongovernmental groups and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from a “foreign power” would be required to register as “agents of foreign influence.”What’s next: The bill, backed by the governing Georgian Dream party and the prime minister, was expected to be approved. The president said she would veto it, but the governing party has enough votes to override the veto.In just the Rajouri district, about 5,200 volunteers are being rearmed.Atul Loke For The New York TimesIndia arms Kashmir villagersThe Indian government has started reviving local militias in the Muslim-majority region after a series of deadly attacks on Hindus. The strategy casts doubt on the government’s claims that the region is enjoying peace and prosperity, nearly four years after India revoked its semiautonomous status.Over the past several months, there have been repeated attacks on civilians in the Jammu part of Kashmir, one of the world’s most militarized places. Many of the region’s Hindus, who fled violence in the 1990s, again feel under threat. Large numbers have left the valley or gathered for protests to implore the government to move them to safer places.India first created local militias in Jammu in the 1990s, at the militancy’s peak. Now, many have again been enlisted to provide their own protection, albeit with limited training and unsophisticated weapons.Religious tensions: Local Muslim leaders said that only Hindu groups had been armed. Security officials justified that decision by saying that the recent attacks had targeted only Hindus.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldPresident Biden will unveil his budget proposals today. They are expected to feature tax increases on corporations and high earners.More than 100,000 WhatsApp messages show British government officials scrambling to formulate policies during the coronavirus pandemic.Protests have erupted in more than a dozen cities across Iran over the suspected poisoning of thousands of schoolgirls.The War in UkraineThe Pentagon is blocking the U.S. from sharing evidence on Russian atrocities with the International Criminal Court, officials said.Russia lacks the ammunition and troops to make major gains in Ukraine this year and could shift to a hold-and-defend strategy, Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said.South Korea said that it had given Poland approval to send howitzers that used South Korean components to Ukraine.The founder of the Russian private military company Wagner claimed that his forces had taken the eastern part of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.Other Big StoriesGreece’s new transport minister said that last week’s fatal train crash “most likely would not have happened” if the rail system had been upgraded as planned.Adidas is still deciding what to do with nearly $1.3 billion worth of sneakers and sportswear from Kanye West’s Yeezy brand.Elon Musk apologized after mocking a disabled employee of Twitter.Science TimesAs countries plan lunar missions, the European Space Agency says that creating a moon time zone may simplify coordination.A team of scientists announced a breakthrough in superconductors for electricity, but faces some skepticism because a previous discovery was retracted.A Morning ReadTourists in Nepal have become lost and sometimes died while hiking alone.Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesNepal will ban international tourists from hiking alone in its national parks. The tourism board noted that deadly incidents involving solo trekkers had spread the misperception that the country was unsafe.Some criticized the new rules. “I’m an advanced trekker,” said one would-be solo hiker. “I don’t need a nanny.”Lives lived: Georgina Beyer, who is widely believed to have been the world’s first openly transgender member of Parliament, fought for the rights of sex workers, L.G.B.T.Q. and Maori people in New Zealand. She died at 65.ARTS AND IDEASNajia, 28, is a former radio journalist. “Talibs do not feel comfortable talking with women reporters, they think their leaders might insult them for it.”For Afghan women, losses mountThe Taliban’s takeover ended decades of war in Afghanistan. Many women have since watched 20 years of gains made under Western occupation unravel under the new government. Afghanistan is now one of the most restrictive countries for women, according to rights monitors.The Times photographed and interviewed dozens of Afghan women about how their lives have changed.Keshwar, who is in her 50s, lost her son during the Taliban’s first regime. “There will be no peace in Afghanistan in my lifetime.”“There is no income, no job opportunities for me,” said Zulaikha, 25, who went into hiding after the Taliban seized power. “I don’t know how I’m going to survive.”“Those of us in grade 12 are standing above a ditch,” said Parissa, 19, a former university student. “You don’t know if you should jump over or throw yourself into the ditch.”Aziza, 35, lost her husband — a Taliban fighter — during the war. “Now we can go out, but there is no job for us, no school for our children.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJim Wilson/The New York TimesFor muffins that stay moist and fresh longer, put mashed blueberries in your batter.What to Read“You Are Here: Connecting Flights” links 12 stories by Asian American authors that deal with racism, cultural expectations and adolescent insecurities.What to Watch“Therapy Dogs,” made by two high schoolers, is a bracing portrait of one class’s senior year.PhotographyTommy Kha’s portraits blend his Asian heritage with the mythology of the American South.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Dog doc (three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. My colleague Hannah Dreier won the March Sidney Award for uncovering the growth of migrant child labor throughout the U.S.“The Daily” is on a Times investigation into attacks against the Nord Stream pipelines.We welcome your feedback. Please write to me at briefing@nytimes.com. More