Today’s Big Story

Gilead’s HIV Breakthrough

The world’s only shot to prevent HIV could stop transmission, if people can actually get it

This is big news for the world as a whole: The Food and Drug Administration has officially approved a powerful new drug that provides nearly complete protection against HIV infection with just a single administration every six months. You’ve maybe heard about this before, as the testing and FDA approval process garnered plenty of headlines over the last few years.

The injection, known chemically as lenacapavir and to be marketed as Yeztugo, has been hailed as the closest thing the field has ever had to a vaccine—a groundbreaking intervention that, if rolled out properly, could bring a 45-year-old pandemic to heel. Drugs to prevent HIV, called PrEP, have been around for a decade, but they generally require taking a daily pill and have not substantially curbed global infections. The academic journal Science dubbed the experimental drug the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year.

Reuters reports that Gilead has plans for a rapid launch in the United States as well as a wider rollout of the drug in collaboration with global partners. But it won’t be cheap: the drug has an annual list price of $28,218 in the U.S. before insurance, reports CNBC. “We are working to make Yeztugo accessible for anyone who needs or wants it and expect to see broad insurance coverage,” the Gilead spokesperson said, adding that there is already broad insurance coverage for existing prevention options.

Gilead has signed royalty-free licensing agreements that will allow six generic manufacturers to sell the drug in more than 120 lower-income countries. It will also manufacture enough shots for two million people in those countries at no profit until the generics are available. That’s good, of course, but The Guardian reports that analysis from the University of Liverpool and others suggests that the drug could be manufactured for only $25 a year—and still include a 30% profit margin.

And then there’s the current upheaval in U.S. healthcare—including cuts to public health agencies and Medicaid—and slashing of American foreign aid to fight HIV which advocates say are clouding the prospects. Greg Millett, public policy director at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, told the Associated Press that “gaping holes in the system” in the U.S. and globally “are going to make it difficult for us to make sure we not only get lenacapavir into people’s bodies but make sure they come back” twice a year to keep up their protection.

NATO Agrees to a Big Increase in Military Spending

It’s a win for Trump, who’s long pushed allies to be more self-sufficient

This was a short NATO summit with a single, clear purpose. To deliver on the one thing President Donald Trump has been demanding for a while now, that Europe and Canada spend more on their own defense. And that’s just what happened. The alliance announced a new spending target—which requires each country to annually spend 5% of its national income on defense by 2035, up from the current 2%.

Trump hailed it as a personal triumph, reports the BBC, saying NATO was no longer a rip-off. “It’s a monumental win for the United States because we were carrying much more than our fair share … but this is a big win for Europe and for actually Western civilization”. NATO’s chief Mark Rutte heaped praise on the American President and gave him the credit, according to a message screenshot Trump shared on social media.

The increase in funding will go to traditional military needs like troops, weapons, shells and missiles. But it also includes “militarily adjacent” projects like improved roads and bridges, better emergency health care, better cybersecurity and civic resilience. Spain is declining to increase its spending, which Trump said was “terrible,” and that he would seek to punish the country in ongoing trade negotiations. The president is returning to the United States today, where he has been lobbying for passage of a huge tax and immigration package that is pending in the Senate.

ICE Is Holding a Record Number of Immigrants

And nearly half of them have no criminal record, internal data show

Despite Trump’s promise to remove the “worst of the worst,” the administration has arrested and detained a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants already known to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as having been convicted of violent crimes, according internal ICE data obtained by several media outlets.

The data is a tally of every person booked by ICE from Oct. 1 through May 31, part of which was during the Biden administration. It shows a total of 185,042 people arrested and booked into ICE facilities during that time. Almost half of the people currently in custody have neither been convicted of nor charged with any crime, other ICE data shows. And the most common categories of crimes among those with a record were immigration and traffic offenses.

As of Monday, June 23, ICE's detention level was—on paper at least—at over 140% capacity, reports CBS News. They found that ICE is holding around 59,000 detainees in facilities across the country, which likely sets a record high as the Trump administration continues to aggressively expand nationwide immigration arrests. Internal agency figures show ICE has averaged around 1,200 daily arrests so far in June, with arrests surpassing 2,000 on two days. That's nearly double the 660 daily arrest average during the first 100 days of President Trump's second administration, but it's still far below the 3,000 arrests top White House adviser Stephen Miller has said ICE should conduct every day.

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