Global News Podcast - Nationwide protests against President Trump's policies

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

In the United States hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in nationwide demonstrations against President Trump's policies; the so-called No Kings protests want to send the message that Donald Trump is not a king and to stand against his crackdown on undocumented migrants, the deployment of National Guard troops, and cuts to federal jobs. Also, the remains of two Israeli hostages are back in the country after being handed over by Hamas to the International Red Cross, thousands of people in Kenya have attended the final public send-off for Raila Odinga, one of the country's most influential political leaders; and the man who discovered his father had once been the heir to one of the richest Jewish families in Germany, before their fortune was stolen by the Nazis.

This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm going to sign five hours, GMT, on Sunday the 19th of October. These are our main stories. Hundreds of thousands of people across the US have taken part in No King's Street protests against Donald Trump. Israel says it has received the bodies of another two hostages from Hamas. And the US confirms that its military killed two people in a strike on a vessel it says was carrying drugs near Venezuela. Also in this podcast, I thank Raila Odinga for being one of the great freedom fighters.

He's made us know our rights. Kenyans pay final tribute to one of their most influential political leaders. And the Iran nuclear deal has officially ended. Can Tehran and Washington forge a new one? In the United States, hundreds of thousands of people took part in demonstrations against President Trump's policies in cities across the country, among them New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles. They've been dubbed the No King's protests

because the organizing coalition wants people to take to the streets to send the simple message that Donald Trump is not a king and to push back against what they see as his increasing authoritarianism. Senator Bernie Sanders addressed the crowds in Washington, D.C. No President Trump, we don't want you. or any other king to rule us. But we will maintain our democratic form of society. We will not move toward authoritarianism in America.

We, the people, will rule. I spoke to our correspondent in D.C. Nomi Igbal. It's actually the second time that no kings, this movement, have organized these sorts of marches this year. and basically they're this network of progressive organisations. They have accused the president of behaving more like a monarch than an elected official. It's been a very sort of carnival-type atmosphere. The people that have been joining the protest are from such a wide range of backgrounds

are talking about parents, they've been children, there's teachers, students, they're a former federal workers, a large swath of the public from different backgrounds. And like I say, they all are very concerned about the Trump administration right now. And on the other side of the fence, the Trump allies are condemning them as hate America rallies. But the core principle of No King's events is, like you said, nonviolence. So what have you made of that? Well, Donald Trump has repeatedly, you know, criticized these protests. He did it back in the, over the summer when they were held.

This was in June. And that was in response to a military parade that was held on the Army's 240. 50th anniversary, which coincided with Trump's 79th birthday. And people were very angry about that, saying that this was just a display of his own vanity. So Donald Trump is not a fan of these protests. He's not really a fan of anything that criticizes him, I would say. And yes, he's accused these people of hating America. He said that there's a lot of people involved in these protests who are, he calls Antifa, these left-wing radicals. And he has said that there are accusations that they're making, and this is what the Trump administration has generally said, that he's a dictator

or hysteria, and that he is basically trying to rebuild America. And just to give you a sense of the sorts of issues that people are protesting about, they're worried about immigration raids that are happening across the country, the deployment of troops to US cities like here in D.C., perceived threats to democracy. They're also worried about cuts to federal programs, particularly health care. So in terms of the impact, if any, what will they have the protest on Mr. Trump's perceived authoritarianism? And what do they also say and suggest about the current divisions in the country? It's a good question exactly, you know, how these rallies will have an impact.

I mean, they're not just being held in these sort of coastal cities, very liberal cities as in Democrat-led cities. There have been small rural towns as well. There are a lot of people who are concerned about Donald Trump's agenda who live in conservative parts of the country, you know, what impact that has, it's hard to say at this stage. I mean, if there is still this sort of anger, I guess, or if there's more of a momentum, if the Democrats, certainly, the opposition party sort of sees on them, who knows what impact it could have in the midterm elections next year. But I think what it says about America is that it's still very divided. These political tensions aren't going away anytime soon. And I think

that's, there's a reason why organisers wanted these events to be peaceful because they had said that Donald Trump had claimed the protests could be unsafe. He had framed these marches as anti-American where supporters say they're a patriotic defence of free speech. So they wanted them to be as peaceful as possible. You know, yes, the political tensions are still there. There are still huge divisions. But as far as the organizers of this march are concerned, they will be pretty glad that So far, it's gone peacefully and there's not been too many problems. Nomi Ekbal reporting from Washington. Next to Israel, and the remains of two Israeli hostages are back in the country

after being handed over by Hamas to the International Red Cross. But Hamas says further handovers could be delayed because of Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to open the rougher border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. The Israeli Prime Minister is frustrated over the slow progress in getting the bodies of all Israelis back, but Hamas insists it is looking for those who are still missing. The BBC and other news outlets are forbidden from entering Gaza. Our correspondent Hugo Bachega gave me this update from Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister's office is saying that two coffins that Hamas contain the remains of two deceased hostages are now in Israeli hands. So these bodies will now be taken to a forensic institute where they will be formally identified. And if these two bodies are confirmed to be from deceased hostages, it means that 16 remains still need to be returned to Israel. And this slow return of those bodies has angered many in Israel because the Israeli authorities are accusing Hamas of deliberately delaying this process. They say that Hamas knows where more bodies are located and they've been urging Hamas to release those bodies immediately. And what Hamas has been saying is that they need heavy equipment to retrieve some of those bodies that are believed to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza. They say that Israel has not allowed this kind of equipment to enter Gaza. So this is a dispute that is happening now.

International experts are expected to go to Gaza and helping these efforts to locate and retrieve those bodies. So I think this is bringing hope to those families still waiting for those bodies to be returned. And this is a crucial area as well, in particular the Rafa crossing. How has the ceasefire affected the flow of aid through? And why is the reopening of this crossing so important and crucial to Gazans? Yeah, it's very interesting that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the return of the bodies a conditioning of the reopening of Gaza's border with Egypt, because he obviously knows how vital the Rafa crossing is for Palestinians in Gaza.

So he's using this as a way to put pressure on Hamas to release those bodies. Now, this crossing is vital because it's the only connection that Gaza has with Egypt. It is very important for Palestinians in Gaza, especially those who need medical assistance. So this is going to be the way for them to leave Gaza. And Rafa will also be the way for Palestinians who want to go back to Gaza to enter the territory. So this is a vital crossing point. It remains closed. There is no date for it to be reopened.

The Israelis are saying that this crossing point will only be used for the entry and exit of Palestinians. It will not be used for the entry of humanitarian assistance. But still, it is a vital crossing point into Gaza. What more do we know around the circumstances which surround the Israeli tank shelling of a bus in Gaza? The deadliest single incident since the ceasefire began. The civil defense agency, which is run by Hamas, said 11 people were killed on Friday night when their bus was hit by an Israeli tank shell. The victims were all from the same family, the Abu Shaban family, and they included six children and four women. Now, the Israeli military issued a statement.

It said soldiers opened fire after the bus crossed the line that is demarcating the area under the ceasefire. Israel continues to occupy over half of Gaza's territory. And this is, you know, the so-called yellow line. There's nothing there to really mark this line, no physical presence telling Palestinians that this is the line that separates Israeli-controlled territory from territory that is now controlled by Hamas. And many Palestinians simply don't know where this line is

and where Israeli soldiers are located. Hugo Bachega in Jerusalem. Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed to an immediate ceasefire after a week of border clashes that have left dozens dead and many more injured. The breakthrough came during negotiations in Doha on Saturday. The Afghanistan Cricket Board has withdrawn from November's Tri-Nation T20 series after three local players were allegedly killed by Pakistani airstrikes on Friday. Our correspondent Caroline Davis spoke to me from Islamabad.

We heard from the Qatar Foreign Minister this morning saying that there has been an agreement that there has been a ceasefire agreed and that the two sides will continue to have further discussions in the course of the next few days. They phrased it to ensure the sustainability of the ceasefire. The key points between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Pakistan has repeatedly over the course of the last few years accused Afghanistan of harboring militant groups that it says come across into Pakistan, carry out the attacks and then go back into Afghanistan, which presents a problem for Pakistan when they are trying to stop those groups. That is something that, the Taliban government have repeatedly denied. They say they do not provide a safe haven for these militant

groups. And this has been this is a real point of tension. There's been diplomatic efforts previous to this as well. But we have seen militancy in Pakistan becoming increasingly deadly. 2024 was a decade high in terms of the number of people killed from militant attacks in Pakistan, including security services. And at the moment, 2025 is on track to be at least the same, if not potentially higher with three months left of the year. So this is the background to the issue. And Pakistan have repeatedly said that what they want to see is more of a sort of concerted effort from the Taliban government to stop those militant groups.

But as long as the Taliban government say that they don't have those groups in the country, that seems to be a very difficult point. So exactly what these two sides have agreed on, that is what we're waiting to hear more information about. And that will be key in whether the ceasefire is able to provide some form of lasting resolution between the two countries. So you talked about a number of factors there. In order to reach a stable peace deal between the two countries, what would need to happen?

I guess then a further question to that is, will these talks be likely to be extended in the coming days and how crucial Qatar's role be or continued role in this? Yes, and I think it is interesting that this is obviously taking place in Doha. It took us a little while to confirm from both sides officially that they were traveling to do we are hard to have these discussions. And this particular announcement has come from Pakistan's defence minister. But we've also heard from the Qatar foreign ministry. And in their statement, they have said that there will be these follow-up meetings in the coming days. This is clearly a sort of early announcement that things are going well. But I think that those follow-up meetings

are going to be really crucial in the longevity of this ceasefire between these two neighbours. Caroline Davies from Islamabad. Donald Trump has said it was his great honor to destroy a drug-smuggling submarine in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela this week. Two men were killed and two others were detained after U.S. forces fired on the vessel. This comes as the U.S. ramps up its fight against drug trafficking in Latin America. Peter Goffin told me more. This attack happened on Thursday when American forces fired on a vessel that Washington says was carrying a load of the drug fentanyl bound.

for the U.S. As you mentioned, two people on board were killed. Two others were detained on a U.S. Navy ship. And President Trump has said the U.S. is sending them back to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia, respectively, to be prosecuted. Now, we do know that drug trafficking gangs in Latin America regularly use, not full submarines, but semi-submersible boats to move drugs across the Caribbean Sea up towards the U.S. They're slow moving. They sit low in the water. They're meant to sneak past patrols. Here's what the president had to say when asked about the strike on this semi-submersible this week. We attacked a submarine, and that was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs.

Just so you understand. This was not an innocent group of people. I don't know too many people that have submarines. Now, Peter, this is becoming a regular. occurrence, the U.S. military firing on boats off Venezuela, that it says are carrying drugs. Yeah, that's right. Donald Trump sent warships to the region in August. He said to stop narco-terrorists, in his words, bringing drugs into the U.S. Since then, the U.S. military has fired on at least six ships, killing at least 27 people. Mr. Trump has said these are acts of

self-defense. The problem, according to many human rights observers, is that the U.S. has not publicly provided evidence showing those people were members of drug gangs or that they posed an imminent risk to U.S. security. The United Nations has rapporteurs who described at least one of these strikes as extrajudicial killings. So where's all this heading then? Well, President Trump has talked about ramping up his campaign by launching attacks on Venezuelan land, but even more significantly, he said this week that he'd authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela. It could just be saber-rattling, but it But has Venezuelans worried about sovereignty and regime change?

Because remember, the Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro, is wanted in the U.S. on narco-terrorism and other drug charges dating back to 2020. He recently made comments to the effect that no one wants to see a U.S.-led coup d'etat anywhere in the world. And look, the international community has long questioned the legitimacy of Mr. Maduro's presidency and whether he was fairly elected. But even the suggestion of U.S. intelligence running missions in Latin America, a region with a long and painful history of CIA-backed coups, dating back to the 1950s, has people there extremely concerned about what happens next.

Peter Goffin reporting. Still to come on this podcast. It was his working suitcase, and he ended up putting into it basically his life story. Rediscovering a family secret history of long. and survival. Thousands of people in Kenya have attended the final public send-off for one of the country's most influential political leaders. Raila Odinga died this week at the age of 80.

He served as Prime Minister from 2008 to 2013, but spent decades as a key opposition figure, helping to shape Kenya's modern political landscape. On Saturday, crowds streamed into a stadium in the western city of Kisumu to pay tribute. I thank Raila Odinga for being one of the great freedom fighters who spearheaded the changing of the Kenyan constitution. He's made us know our rights. He really contributed to a lot of changes. We are remembering Raiila Odinga as a symbol of democracy with the unity of this country.

The constitution that we are enjoying today, Raiila Odinga went through a lot, and bought it to Kenya, so we cannot take it for granted that we are losing a hero like this. There were concerns about public safety ahead of the event. Earlier in the week, police in the capital of Nairobi opened fire to disperse the crowd as huge numbers of mourners turned out to see his body. At least three people died in the chaos. A correspondent, Shingai Nyoka, was in Kisumu and described this scene to my colleague Valerie Sanderson. Well, it didn't pass off peacefully, although at the stage we haven't had any confirmations

of deaths, as we'd heard in the previous public viewings that were held in Nairobi over the last two or three days. What I did see, though, was just surges, crowd surges, people jostling in line to try to view the body. And so people were collapsing. They were injured. Some medical emergency services also told me that some of them had camped at the stadium from the previous night, and so they hadn't eaten anything.

And so they were exhausted, it was hot, and so they were collapsing as a result of that as well. But there were dozens of people that I personally saw that were on stretches, that were lying in the field that were being attended to by medical services. There was a degree of calm in the sense that we really didn't see the level of stampedes that we saw in Nairobi. So, Shengai, Raila Dinga, a giant political figure in Kenya. What do you think his legacy is? I think if you look at the fact that just his staying power, he was able to remain the major political figure in Kenyan opposition politics for 30 years. He was imprisoned prior to that. He competed for the elections as a presidential candidate, never won alleged electoral fraud.

But he was also co-opted into government by some of his opponents. We've been hearing some tributes from people including former president Barack Obama who said that he essentially was a reconciler. He was a champion for democracy. He learned to put Kenya first. Those are some of the things that we've been hearing for people, that he was a person who, even though he was in the opposition, he was able to agitate for democratic reforms in Kenya, for multi-party democracy and also for constitutional reform. forms. There was one person that the BBC spoke to today, an ordinary young woman, who said that he was resilient. He just didn't give up. Shingai Nyoka reporting. Iran has announced the official end of the nuclear agreement signed with Western leaders 10 years ago. Back in 2015, Iran

signed up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which in general terms limited Iran's nuclear development program for 10 years in return for some sanctions relief. There were high hopes. at the time that it might help soothe tensions in the Middle East. Three years later, President Trump pulled out of the deal. The Iran deal is defective at its core. In just a short period of time, the world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons. Without U.S. involvement, the deal has been seen as essentially toothless.

And on Saturday, with that original 10-year period expiring, Tehran declared that it was no longer bound by any JCPOA restrictions. So where does this leave Iran and the threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East? Owen Bennett-Jones spoke to Natalie Torci, who was a special advisor to the EU when the JCPOA was signed and the BBC's international correspondent, Leis Doucette. He began by asking Lees about the promise the deal held when it was first struck. It meant a lot for Iran. It meant a lot for the international community.

It was hailed as a landmark, multinational weapons control agreement. And also, Owen, this was meant to create a new window to work with Iran, to establish confidence to deal with issues like ballistic missiles, like Iran's proxies across the region. And it's a sad, sad comment that here we are at the 10-year mark, when the JCPOA expires, that Iran's proxies have been weakened, if not destroyed in some ways, but the region is on. in a very, very difficult place.

Natalie Tochie, you were there when it was being negotiated. I think President Trump's point was it was only 10 years, so therefore it was not a great deal. What do you think of that? Well, I mean, obviously it was only, quote, unquote, 10 years, which is kind of better of getting rid of it altogether, right? And the plan obviously always was to use those 10 years to then further negotiations,

not just on the nuclear question, but also on those other issues that Lee's was really, referring to, you know, Iran's regional role, its ballistic missiles program. And in fact, throughout the years that it survived, so for the first three years, up until when Trump withdrew, it actually held. So Iran actually respected the terms of the agreement. Obviously, what we have seen since then has been the progressive dismantling, you know, from Trump's withdrawal to the European incapacity to basically compensate for that withdrawal, through to Biden's failure to reanimate the deal onto a war with Iran while negotiations were going on with the United States.

So ultimately there's been this sort of progressive dismantling of the whole concept of diplomacy and multilateral diplomacy and non-proliferation. And, you know, in a sense, the final nail on the coffin came only a few weeks ago when the Europeans actually declared, in a sense, implicitly the JCPOA dead with a snapback of UN Security Council sanctions. And of course, Iran itself has been violating the deal since 2018 since the US's withdrawal. Lees, we've got a situation where Iran is saying it wants a diplomatic solution still. And President Trump said, you know, he's up for a deal on Iran nuclear. Is it possible? President Trump began in his election campaign, and then when he came into the White House, he kept saying Iran is such an extraordinary country, such talented people. He said that again in Charmel Sheik, the Egyptian

Red Sea Resort Hermione, such nice people, engineers, doctors, professionals. I think they want to deal. Wouldn't a deal be nice? And it's quite extraordinary how he vacillates between I want a deal and then almost taking credit when he saw the success of the first strikes in what turned into the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. The problem, Owen, is that We see parts of it when in fact we see it on full display in President Trump's boasts that he ends a war every month is that he doesn't get into the details. He just wants the handshake, he just wants to say

the war is over, now there's peace. And the Iranians are completely confused and frustrated because the Iran file in particular is highly technical. The man negotiating it on the Iran side, Abbasarachi, knows every inch of the nuclear program. And so President Trump's envoy, Steve Whitkoff, who arrives with a piece of paper which says, you know, maximalist demands, zero enrichment, give up your ballistic missiles.

And Iran starts to say, well, we have to discuss the we have said. And in five rounds of talks, which were shattered when there were the militancy strikes, he only once brought a nuclear expert with him. Lisa Jocet and former EU advisor, Natalie Torti. The more medical science advances there are, the more we find out just how much information is carried in. in our blood. The latest breakthrough concerns a simple blood test for many cancers which can't be detected by conventional screening programmes. It can pick up cancers that would

otherwise be missed and can detect a range of different cancers in one go. The technology was developed by the American firm Grail. Sir Harpal Kumar is a senior executive there and a former head of Cancer UK. He's been speaking to my colleague Owen Bennett Jones. The vast majority of people who die from cancer do so because we find those cancers very late. And by adding this type of test to existing screening programs, we can find seven times as many cancers as those other screening programs put together. The fact that it is a blood test means that it's relatively straightforward to do. We don't require people to go into a hospital or a major scanning centre, for example. It identifies DNA in the blood that has been shed by a cancer

cell and when do cancer cell start shedding that DNA? The most aggressive cancers tend to shed DNA very, very early. And so that offers us the opportunity to find the really important cancers like ovarian cancer and pancreas cancer and liver cancers as early as stage one, which are relatively unknown in the clinical community. And so this offers us the opportunity to start treating those cancers effectively. This test is very, very good at saying you don't have a cancer. So, you know, if it says you're clear, you're very likely to be clear.

If it says you might have a cancer, it's about, what, six out of ten will be correct and four out of ten will be wrong. So people will worry in four out of ten cases needlessly, is that right? Yeah, but let's put that into context. The fact that you can have a test that says, actually, it's very, very likely that this is a real cancer, is a really important development. Mammography, which is probably the most well established of all our cancer screening programs, has what we call the positive predictive value. an order of magnitude lower than that. So it's in the single digits, whereas this is above 60%. So it's substantially more efficient at saying this is a real cancer than any other screening

program we have currently. We are absolutely clear that this needs to be offered at a price that is going to be cost-effective for health systems. And indeed, we'll also save money on treating late-stage cancers that are inherently very expensive to treat. So Harpal Kumar. Now when Anthony Easton's father died, he found a brown leather suitcase under his bed in the southern English town of Limington. Inside were piles of neatly stacked German money, pages of handwritten notes, and his father's birth certificate bearing a different surname. His dad had a secret past he knew nothing about. It turns out that his father,

Peter, had been born in pre-war Germany as Peter Hans Rudolf Eisner and had once been the heir to one of the richest Jewish families in Germany, but then lost everything under the Nazis. The story has been turned into a podcast called The House at Number 48. Anthony has been speaking to the BBC's Catherine Bia Ruhanger. It was actually my dad who was in travel PR. It was his working suitcase. And towards the end of his life, it sort of ran out of service. And he ended up putting into it, basically his life story. So it's, he had these envelopes that divided his life into decades and, you know, medals and old German banknotes. And it was like a kind of box of story, really. And it's important to say that your father never, even though he kept all these

documents, never actually told you about his history, your family's history. What have you found out? Well, I really had no idea that what they'd left behind was, at the scale it was left behind because they really lost everything. And they built kind of an incredible business over the previous 50, 60, 70 years. And what really actually propelled this was a painting I found of one of their steelworks in a German museum. And it's called Eisenvalt's work, which translates as rolling iron mill. And it was painted in 1910 by an artist called Hans Balichick.

And it was commissioned by my great grandfather. I found out down all these rabbit holes I went down. And, you know, this is really the... the story of the Eisner family, my dad's birth family, and this is what they built. And what happened to the painting, which was also stolen, looted, is what happened to them? You know, everything was pretty much taken away.

And, you know, it's hidden under, even post-war German bureaucracy, really. It's not solely a pre-war story, which is also an interesting nuance to it. As well as the items, have you found relatives through this process and what have you learned about them and their lives today? I knew some people. It was a very broken family. My family, I grew up on my dad's side, but I found a group of people who I knew little about whose lives had been kind of erased by history. And I wanted to bring them back into the light. Why do you think your father held on to so much of what he experienced? Did you find any answers? I'm reading between the lines. He was relatively self-contained my dad.

I mean, he's stood for Parliament and stuff, but I think it's what I think it's what would now be called in the 70s. intergenerational trauma. I think he was just so traumatised and he just wanted to become a new person. You know, when he joined the army, he was in the British army in the war. You know, he changed his name. And I don't think he wanted to be, have anything to do with his old personality. I think he wanted to be a new person. And that's why he struck out like that and didn't go back into the past. And maybe it's left for me. Anthony Easton. 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 episode, all the topics covered in it, you can send

us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.com.com. And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service. And you can use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock and produced by Peter Goffin and Stephen Jensen. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm Ankara. Until next time, goodbye.