Global News Podcast - Los Angeles: Clashes erupt for a third day as the US National Guard arrives

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Tensions escalate in LA as 2,000 National Guardsman arrive, and crowds protest for a third day against raids on undocumented migrants. Also: Palestinians shot dead near an aid site, and the Galapagos Islands' postman.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Julia McFarlane and in the early hours of Monday the 9th of June, these are our main stories. The National Guard are in Los Angeles, deployed on the orders of President Trump as protests against sweeping raids on undocumented migrants continue for a third day. In Gaza, there are reports of more Palestinians shot dead near food distribution sites. Also in this podcast, Ukraine's president says missiles promised by the previous US

administration have been diverted to the Middle East by President Trump. In tennis, Carlos Alcaraz wins the longest men's singles final at the French Open. And... They could stick their mail in this whiskey barrel, people would come past and they would pick it up and collect it and deliver it. How one man decided to personally deliver letters posted in the Galapagos Islands. We start in Los Angeles, where the National Guard has been deployed on the orders of President Trump as protests over raids on undocumented migrants continued for a third day.

The President's decision bypassed the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who called the move purposefully inflammatory and accused Mr. Trump of trying to manufacture a crisis. The protests largely involving members of the city's Hispanic community have been largely peaceful although there have been instances of people throwing rocks and clashing violently with local police. President Trump has said he may yet decide to widen the scope of the deployments and even send in US Marines if the protests grow. The speaker of the Housements and even send in US Marines if the protests grow.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has defended President Trump's intervention. He was speaking on ABC's This Week. The president did exactly what he needed to do. These are federal laws. We have to maintain the rule of law and that is not what is happening. And Gavin Newsom has shown an inability or unwillingness to do what is necessary there. So the president stepped in. That's real leadership and he has the authority and the responsibility to do it. You know, one of our core principles is maintaining peace through strength.

We do that on foreign affairs and domestic affairs as well. I don't think that's heavy-handed. I think that's an important signal. You don't think sending the Marines into the streets of an American city is heavy-handed? We have to be prepared to do what is necessary and I think the the notice that that might happen might have the deterring effect. Our correspondent Reagan Morris is in downtown LA and spoke to the BBC's John Donison. It changes so quickly. 20 minutes ago I was saying this is feels really festive and it really just started kicking off. They've sprayed some

tear gas and the National Guard has pushed out into the crowd and the road is now shut because there's pedestrians all through the street. I don't know what prompted it. I was here and suddenly there was tear gas being sprayed and the crowd being shoved back and people running across the street. So whereas 20 minutes ago it all I was like wow this is quite fun and festive and seems like a party. Somebody was putting out a barbecue, people were waving flags, mostly Mexican flags here, which does really irritate some people who will be watching this on social media. It looks like quite a lot of soldiers but not that many protests. Certainly over the

last few days we were talking about hundreds, weren't we? Yeah, it's a growing group of protesters but still I think the media and the military outnumber. I would say we just had a group march down the street in the last like five, ten minutes. And I think probably, unless you're seeing aerial, there's definitely now a couple hundred people here. And here comes some more police, federal authorities. And has there been any violence today? What are the National Guard or the police doing? Are they using tear gas again or rubber bullets?

They have these police DHS, Department of Homeland Security police coming out and I've actually just watched them shoot rubber bullets at someone. So the crowd is definitely changing now and there's a big national guard like kind of wagon pulling up outside and the national guard are armed and they're pushing people back and they've got riot gear and it's the Department of Homeland Security police shooting back. I got tear gas just before we got on air. I don't know where it came from. Gavin Newsom has been very critical of this move and I believe this is the first time the National Guard have been brought in without a request by the governor since

the 1960s in the civil rights protest. Yeah, it's incredible. It was President Lyndon Johnson was the last president to do this without the governor's request and consent. And that was during the civil rights movement to not to break up protests, but to protect Martin Luther King and others marching in Selma, Alabama. So this is a real different scene. Reagan Morris, Ronald Vitiello is a senior advisor to US Customs and Border Protection and served as director of ICE, the US Imm to US Customs and Border Protection and served as director of ICE, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during President Trump's first presidency. He says the actions of ICE and law enforcement have been proportionate.

What are the officers on the ground there, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the FBI, the DEA and the members of ICE, what are they supposed to do when citizen activists, these rent-a-mobs, get in the way of them performing what are actual lawful duties? ICE is charged with the lawful activity to find people who are in the United States illegally who have also committed crimes in places like Los Angeles. And it's disappointing to see people get active in order to help criminals stay in the United States. Let's hear now from someone taking part in the protests. Kuali is a Mexican-American who's lived in Los Angeles for most of her life. We're not afraid. We prepare. We don't get scared. And we've been dealing with border

patrol and ICE agents for decades now, disproportionately. So I think that our community just had enough and we're tired of seeing our families being ripped apart and thrown into those ice detention concentration camps and without any due process. Some of the workers who've been taking part in the protests are members of Service Employees International Union in California, the SEIU. On Friday, the union's president, David Huerta, was arrested during the protests. Luis Fuentes is a union regional vice president and he told the BBC what had happened to him. He is currently still in detention. He has a scheduled hearing tomorrow, Monday, here in Los Angeles.

And so we are standing by and calling for his release, immediate release, and a de-escalation of this unjust attack against our communities. And I think the governor talked about the inflammatory excuse to an abuse of power to militarize our communities and instill fear in workers. The reality is that we live in a city of Los Angeles where we take pride in our multicultural composition. We welcome people from all over the world and all over our country. You know, the administration has, you know, focused in on Los Angeles because of what

we represent. Louise Fuentes, the regional vice union president from the United Services Workers West. To Gaza now, and there have been reports on Sunday that more Palestinians have been shot dead near aid distribution sites. Several people were reportedly killed in southern Gaza as they headed towards two sites near Rafah and Khan Yunus run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation a controversial aid group run by American and Israeli contractors. Adam Dahman was injured as he went to collect aid at the site near Rafah. He said that the foundation had posted online there would be aid available but when the Palestinians arrived they were surrounded and shot at by soldiers and a tank. He goes

on to say the crowd was trapped and several people were injured and then killed. The Israeli military say it fired warning shots after people were ordered to leave the area but refused. Our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Usher, is in Jerusalem. He told me more about the incident near Raffa. At one main aid distribution site, the one where these deadly incidents have been happening on an almost daily basis in Raffa, people were gathering early in the morning at a time when they've actually been told by the IDF that it's a battle zone around there, that it's too dangerous for them to travel, that in order to

get to the aid distribution site, they really don't have any option except to go at those times. Four people were killed. The IDF gave a statement to journalists and to us at the BBC saying what they've said before that several suspects approached troops but the troops gave them a verbal warning not to come towards them to keep away from the area and when they didn't respond they fired warning shots the IDF doesn't go into any details beyond that we still don't have 100% clarity about what is happening. It is confusing because on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site, it told people first of all,

that they shouldn't go to this particular site at that time, that it wasn't open, that the only one that was open was higher up, was in the center of Gaza. Later on the day, it then said that this site and another would be open, but at around noon. But as you can understand, Palestinians who are desperate for food to give their families, start moving towards the sites that they've been to before in the hope that they will open at some point

and these incidents ensue. Meanwhile, Israel's defence minister has instructed the military to prevent this ship with pro-Palestinian activists, including Greta Thunberg, from reaching Gaza. They're trying to break the blockade. Is this freedom flotilla ever likely to reach Gaza? I think that the Israeli military, its navy, will intervene. It's a question of when and how. I mean the latest that I've seen from the boat, the Madeline, it's about 130 nautical miles from Gaza.

There's no doubt that Israel is going to stop this boat. The real question is will we see the kind of scenes that there were back in 2010 when the Mardin Mamara, a boat with Turkish activists, was a site in which 10 of the activists were killed as it was stormed by Israeli troops. I think it's very unlikely in this case that something like that will happen again. But just a few weeks ago, a boat again, which was coming with the same mission, the same group, was just moored off the coast of Malta and it was hit by drones. It's still unclear what caused it, who did it, but those who were on that boat blame Israel for doing so. So what's clear is that Israel is not going to allow them through. What happens next will be a big question.

Sebastian Usher. And as we record this podcast, the international group that's trying to send that ship carrying activists to Gaza with Greta Thunberg on board, they've reported that the alarm has been sounded on board. It says life jackets are on preparing for interception. Now, President Zelensky has said missiles promised to Ukraine by the previous US government have instead been redirected to the Middle East by the Trump administration. Mr Zelensky told the US news outlet ABC that the former defence secretary Lloyd Austin had agreed to send Ukraine 20,000 missiles. Our Europe regional editor Danny Eberhard told us more.

He didn't specify what type they were. He said they had special technology to target Shaheed drones. Now Shaheed drones obviously been sent sometimes in their hundreds in a night to attack areas of Ukraine causing deaths and injuries. Often they target civilian areas. So it really matters. And there was a report recently in the Wall Street Journal that said that US munitions to intercept drones had been redirected to American forces in the Middle East. So it sounds like that that's that that it's referring to. But obviously air defences are critically important to Ukraine. President Trump's administration is yet to comment on the specific claims by Mr. Zelensky.

And it was quite a wide ranging interview. What else did we learn? It certainly was. There was all sorts of things including more details about Operation Spider's Web, the attack on Russian air bases that caused such a stir. The ABC correspondent at one point asked Mr. Zelensky whether Mr. Trump felt that Russia was winning the war. He answered that Donald Trump has said as much in public but he also pushed back. He answered that Donald Trump has said as much in public but he also pushed back he said such an assessment was not true regardless of what Mr. Trump may have said. I mean this not about his wars yes just to be understandable yes about the real situation it's not a victory when you spend, really spend, one million people for getting some

thousands of kilometres. So there he's pushing back against the idea that anything Mr Putin may have achieved thus far amounted to a victory due to the massive cost in human lives. He said that Russia was the only party that still wanted to keep the war going. This is a constant theme of his in pushing for tougher sanctions to pressure Russia into accepting a ceasefire. Ukraine has repeatedly made it plain that it would accept a ceasefire, but that he said that US involvement in sanctions was essential if they were to have any impact. He's calling for things like a price cap on oil for example at $30 and there's

currently a bill in the US Senate where they're trying to tighten secondary sanctions on companies that deal with Russian oil. Kiev wants Mr. Trump to back that. There was other things as well so So for example, he pushed back against an assertion by President Trump, an analogy he made this week, trying to get Russia and Ukraine to stop fighting was like stopping kids fighting in a playground. That's a deeply offensive assertion to many Ukrainians. Danny Eberhard. To tennis now and the defending champion Carlos Alcaraz of Spain has won the French Open in Paris beating Italy's Yannick Sinner. It was a nail-biter of a match and the first Grand Slam final to feature two players born in the new millennium.

I heard more from our tennis correspondent Russell Fuller who's there in Roland Garros. The longest French Open final in history and also the first Grand Slam singles final to be decided by a 10-point tiebreak which was introduced universally by the Grand Slams five years ago as a way of deciding matches that might otherwise go on and on. And this one was very much in that category because the two players couldn't be separated after five hours and 29 minutes. But there had been so many twists over the course of the five and a half hours. Yannick Senna led by two sets to one, he had a 5-3 advantage, he had three championship points, it looked like he was going to win his third consecutive Grand Slam but Alcaraz saved them, ended up winning that fourth set on a tie break and then the fifth set tie break as well. Fairly comfortably in the end by 10 points to 2, but really nothing had been comfortable for either player on such a marathon afternoon. And Russell, I feel a little ill saying this, but these two finalists were also born after

the year 2000. I mean, they are such incredible players. Are we in a new era of tennis now? We most certainly are on the men's side. They are world number one and they are world number two and the fact that Carlos Alcaraz is 22 and Yannick Sinner is 23 suggests that they are going to play many many more of these finals. When they've met before the matches have always been close they've had some memorable Grand Slam matches but this was the first time they'd met in the final when they were competing for the trophy. It seemed very hard to separate them beforehand. Alcaraz is the defending champion, will remain the defending champion and has a little bit more clay court naus and expertise.

He's so comfortable on this surface having grown up in Spain. Yannick Sinner is particularly strong on the hard court so perhaps there was an argument that Alcarath would be able to win it given his extra clay court experience. But given that Sinner has only lost to one player since August of last year, Carlos Alcarath, it just seemed almost impossible to predict with any certainty who was going to come out on top. Russell Fuller. Russell Fuller. Still to come on this podcast, hopes to combat antibiotic resistant super bugs with a so-called poo pill. Syria's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharah, has promised to build an inclusive society but members of the Alawite sect of the former president Bashar al-Assad have fled to neighboring Lebanon. The Alawites, a minority Shia Muslim group, had

close links to his regime and have been persecuted in recent months. Emily Wither has been to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli where thousands of Alawites have found refuge. Her report begins with Angela Bilal, who's been listening to their testimony. Some of the details are distressing. They were humiliated. They were threatened, fired from their jobs. They killed the ones they loved in front of their eyes. One of the testimonies I've took that they have killed her baby in front of her. Many Alawites believed they would be safe after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad

in December last year. While he was from the minority Shia sect, Syria's new Sunni Islamist-led government, headed up by Ahmed al-Sharah, promised to protect minorities. And at first it was relatively calm, until the holy month of Ramadan. In early March, pro-government forces rampaged through Alawite towns and villages in Syria's coastal regions, killing more than 1,000 civilians,

including women and children. The violence started after fighters loyal to Assad had led a deadly ambush on Syria's new security forces. The new government called for support, but that escalated into a wave of sectarian anger aimed at Alawites. Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharah has promised to crack down, launching investigative committees in claiming the violence is limited to the Alawite areas on the coast. But killings, kidnappings and forced evictions of Alawites have continued across the country. Angelina leads me inside the cramped hall to speak to one of the recently arrived Alawites

from Syria. She doesn't want to share her name over fears for her safety. The reason why she flee her home in Syria was that groups with weapons, they came to the village, they were knocking the doors and demanding water and if there was a man in the house they would shoot him to take his wife. In her case she didn't have a man in the house. She has only her kids. One of them stepped in and raped her. And after one week another one of the same group

also stepped in and raped her. And the third one with him together. They threatened her that they have her number, they have her name and they would kill her if she doesn't obey what they're demanding from her. Other groups with weapons set fire in that village that immediately killed 60 people that day. Her house was burned. She managed to escape with her children. She walked about 16 to 17 kilometers knocking on doors, so demanding food and shelter and water and she kept walking until she reached the borders with Lebanon. We've come to the local mosque. I'm told it's actually the

first Alawite mosque that was built in Lebanon in the 1970s. It is now also home to over 20 Syrians that fled recently. There are mattresses lining the floor around the edges. There are plastic bags with the very few belongings that people were able to take with them when they left in a hurry. Men sheltering in the mosque crowd around my translator and I, keen to share their stories. They look exhausted. Do people here feel like they'll ever be able to go back to Syria? Will it be safe enough for them?

There's a man here that's just put his hand across his neck, which I think is very clear. Everyone's talking at once now. It's clearly a question that has really upset the people that are here. They cannot return back unless there is an international help, international protection, especially with all the killing that they saw. That report was from Emily Wither in Lebanon, and her documentary, The Future of the Alawites, can be heard on Heart and Soul on the BBC World Service. Italians voted on

Sunday and will continue on Monday in a referendum that could halve the time needed to become a citizen to five years of uninterrupted residency. Supporters of the move say it would help the army of immigrant workers that the country relies on to feel more at home in Italy. But the governing coalition of the far-right Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, has urged people to stay away, looking to keep the turnout below the minimum 50% threshold, which is needed for the measure to stand any chance of becoming law. Sarah Rainsford reports from Rome.

This vote could mean hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals now living in Italy are eligible for citizenship five years sooner. That would bring better security and political rights in line with other countries in Europe. It would prevent people waiting two or even three decades without citizenship, as they do now, and should help them to integrate instead to fill part of this country. But for a referendum like this to be valid, 50% of all voters in Italy have to turn out. And the far-right government of Giorgio Maloney has been trying to block that, first by ignoring the vote and then by calling on people to boycott it, to go to the seaside this weekend, not to the polls.

The Prime Minister argues that Italy's citizenship laws are already excellent and don't need changing. Some here fear making it easier to become Italian would attract more illegal migrants to the country. For those supporting the referendum say it's about improving life for the foreign workers who come here legally and who Italy now relies on as its own population shrinks and grows older. Sarah Rainsford in Rome. Now the Russian paramilitary group Wagner says it has left the West African state of Mali. A telegram account affiliated with Wagner said mission accomplished. Private military company Wagner is going home. Wagner's operations have been taken over by the Moscow run Africa Corps. So why has the infamous mercenary outfit

left the country? Here's Richard Hamilton. If you go back to 2020 and 2021, a military regime took power in Mali in separate coups and they kicked out French and United Nations troops saying that they had failed to defeat Islamists and this junta then pivoted towards Moscow so Wagner intervened in 2022 to try to defeat the militants and also bolster this new regime in return for lucrative mining contracts. The official line now is, as you say, mission accomplished. And they say they brought regional centers in the north back under the control of the Malian army,

and they've also killed commanders of the insurgents. But the reality is that Wagner never really had the capacity to defeat the jihadists. And there's been a spate of recent attacks that have been big setbacks for them. For example, there's one insurgent group called JNIM, and they killed more than a hundred Malian soldiers recently and some mercenaries as well. And also, Russia has been phasing out Wagner. And this is ever since the leader of Wagner, Evgeny Prigozhin, he died in a mysterious plane crash after staging

a 2023 coup against Vladimir Putin. So since then Wagner's being phased down and a bigger role is coming in from the Africa Corps. And who exactly are the Africa Corps? What will they be doing there? Well that's the key point. It's really a rebranding exercise. So analysts say that 70 to 80 percent of the Afrika Korps are actually Wagner mercenaries. Now the Afrika Korps is state controlled. It comes under the Russian Defense Ministry and Wagner mercenaries are sort of being absorbed into this Afrika Korps. So it's a sort of revamping of Wagner under a new name.

But the Afrika Korps does have a slightly different role. Experts say the Russian military engagement in Mali is still continuing, but it's more in terms of training and providing equipment for the Malian army and less actual fighting of jihadists. And one analyst at the German called Ulf Leysing from the Konrad Adanao Foundation, German think tank. He said the Africa core has a lighter footprint and they fight less than the Rambo type Wagner mercenaries.

Richard Hamilton. Now a little warning if you're listening to this podcast while eating. Doctors are hoping they can combat antibiotic resistant superbugs by using so-called poo pills made from the freeze-dried feces containing healthy bacteria. People with antibiotic-resistant intestinal infections take the pills, with the good bacteria driving out the resistant bugs. Drug-resistant infections are thought to kill a million people worldwide every year. Here's our health and science correspondent, James Gallagher. The dark murky depths of our bowels are a major hiding place for drug-resistant

superbugs. These can escape their intestinal home to cause trouble elsewhere in the body. So doctors at Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals in London are trying to flush them out with good bacteria. These come from a healthy donor's faeces which is checked for dangerous infections and then freeze-dried and packaged into so-called poo pills. It's thought the good bacteria compete for food and space in the bowels, making it harder for the superbugs to thrive. It would take larger trials to prove the effectiveness of the approach, but the researchers said it could one day be used in patients with hard-to-treat infections or in those needing other therapies that weaken the immune system,

such as cancer treatment. James Gallagher And finally, when was the last time you received a handwritten letter from a friend or relative? It is a dying form of communication. Not so for Kiwi Johnny Beardmore, nicknamed the Galapagos Postman. He's taken it upon himself to travel the world delivering letters from one of the world's oldest post boxes found on the remote islands. The aim is to raise money for motor neuron disease charities, the illness which killed his father. So how did it all get started? He spoke to the BBC's John Donnison. It was a few months after my father had passed away.

He'd been diagnosed with motor neurone disease back in 2014, just after I'd come back from my last sort of trip where I drove across Asia. And so I couldn't go anywhere big. And so once he passed, I was on the lookout for a new challenge, something that resonated with me that I could do something with my father in mind. And when I was in the Galapagos, I'd always wanted to go there. I came across this ancient post box on Isla Floriana. The post box has been there since 1793 and sailors and whalers used to stick their mail there. Everybody knew that when they were sailing on multi-year voyages,

they could go to that spot, they could stick their mail in this whiskey barrel. People would come past and they would pick it up and collect it and deliver it. Wow, and it's still there. Still there today. Now it's tourists and you go there and you stick a postcard in and you go through the postcards are there and you're encouraged to take them and deliver them. Right. So what did you do? I took a couple.

I brought them back here to London and went and delivered them and they were an amazing experience just rocking up on somebody's doorstep unannounced, old school and handing it over and the buzz I got from it was like, wow, this is amazing, maybe I could do this on a grander scale. So how many countries have you done? As a postman I did 52 countries last year. Which were the most memorable deliveries? Mexico was great, Norway was unique, Bergen I flew in and I turned up there knocked on the door explained to

the young lady that was at the thing that I'd come to deliver this letter and the recipient wasn't home and we'd had, I thought quite a friendly thing. I'd showed her the letter and I said, do you mind if I wait outside? She said, fine. She went inside, closed the door and then flipped out and they thought I was a knife wielding murderer because I saw my selfie stick poking out of my pocket and I thought it might've been a knife handle. So they rang the police, police turned up and I had to do a little bit of fast talking

to explain myself, but it all turned out brilliant in the end, because once they saw that it was legitimate what I was actually doing and the card was from a friend, then all concerns disappeared and they invited me in for a cup of tea. And Mexico? Mexico was special because a girl came down, young girl, she opens the door

and she's looking very suspicious at us, going, what's going on here? And we go, we're here to see Carmen. And she's going, there's no Carmen here. And this went backwards and forwards. We showed her the card and instantaneously, her entire demeanor changed from one of suspicion to one of joy, because she'd actually written the letter. So she recognized it. And it was a letter to her mum, thanking her to follow her dreams, because she'd been in

the Galapagos on a volunteer work placement in nature. And her mum had fallen and had a hip replacement operation while she was away. And she wanted to come back. And her mum said, no, stay finished. This is your dream. And she was writing a letter to say thanks. And she opened the door. It was her mum's house. We went went upstairs both her mum was there as well

so we got both the sender and the recipient and the whole thing I'm just getting goosebumps thinking about it all brought on because of a piece of paper with some writing on it. Now you must have clocked up a lot of air miles I mean how much is this cost you? It was a hundred thousand miles I went around the planet four times I you know took all sorts of forms of transport, but the big cost obviously was flights. But I'd saved up a million air miles and basically that paid for all the flights. So it cost me £4,000 for the flights for the whole trip for the year.

Now, of course, these days people just don't write as many letters do they? It's all emails or WhatsApp messages or whatever else. But the letter is powerful isn't it? Absolutely. The abiding thing from this is that people aren't writing those messages and so when somebody does and they receive it, the impression that it creates. Everybody was just blown away that they'd got something handwritten because in the world we live in now, we're not doing that anymore. Jonny Beardmore speaking to the BBC's John Donnison about delivering letters from an old whiskey barrel, a postal system used by sailors and whalers on the Galapagos Islands.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or any of the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag global news pod. This edition was mixed by resentment Darrell and producers were Marion Straughan and Stephen Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Julia McFarlane.

Until next time, goodbye.