Global News Podcast - US judge temporarily blocks Trump's freeze on federal funding

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

A US judge has paused the enforcement of a sweeping White House order freezing federal grants and loans. Also: Israel says Netanyahu invited to meet Trump at White House next week, and should we all sleep like a caveman?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.

I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil and in the early hours of Wednesday the 29th of January these are our main stories. A US judge temporarily blocks a sweeping White House order to pause federal grants, loans and other financial assistance that could have put trillions of dollars on hold. Rwandan-backed rebels are getting closer to taking complete control of Goma in eastern

Congo. The head of the UN's Palestinian Refugee Agency has accused Israel of carrying out a relentless assault against it ahead of Thursday's ban. Also in this podcast we hear how a pioneering computer-controlled brain implant has transformed the life of a man with Parkinson's disease. It was instant. Yeah, I just stopped shitting, my legs stopped shitting, my voice was better. It's been a chaotic and confusing start to Donald Trump's plan to pause billions, possibly even trillions of dollars in U.S. government funding. Just minutes before the government freeze on federal loans, grants and other assistance was due to go into effect on Tuesday evening Washington time, it was blocked by a federal judge who's now delayed it until next week. Democrats had said the

freeze was illegal. Before the judge's decision, the senior Democrat and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer had this to say. In an instant, Donald Trump has shut off billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that directly support states, cities, towns, schools, hospitals, small businesses, and most of all, American families. This is a dagger at the heart of the average American family in red states, in blue states, in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. It is just outrageous.

The White House had said the freeze was intended to bring spending into line with President Trump's anti-woke executive orders. The White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, who at 27 is the youngest person ever to hold that post, said during her debut media briefing that the freeze would not affect payments to individuals for crucial things like pensions, health care and food assistance. This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump administration. Individual assistance that includes Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits, assistance that is going directly to individuals will not be impacted by this pause.

And I want to make that very clear to any Americans who are watching at home who may be a little bit confused about some of the media reporting. This administration, if you are receiving individual assistance from the federal government, you will still continue to receive that. I asked our correspondent in Washington, Caroline Hawley, if she could clarify the confusion. Honestly, there is still confusion. I think why it's being done is easier than the what of it, if you know what I mean. So essentially this has been paused so the new administration can check that government spending aligns with its conservative policies and they've also promised to make the government more efficient. They've made clear that there's going to be no more funding for diversity and inclusion for many environmental programmes.

What the White House press secretary called transgenderism and wokeness. I had another White House official saying there would be no more funding for left-wing NGOs. But there is confusion and uncertainty. For example, Meals on Wheels, which you can work out from the title what it does, they don't know what this means for them. So many, many people were trying to work out what exactly this means as it goes into effect. Although, Jeanette, we are just hearing now that a judge has temporarily paused part of the freeze. So watch this space for what happens next.

And adding to the confusion and alarm is the report that the online portal for Medicaid, which is the public health insurance programme for the poor, has suffered an outage. That's right, but I think you heard Caroline Levitt say there that Medicare was not affected. So there's been, this is kind of added to the chaos and you you heard from the Democrat Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer who said that this was causing cruel, nasty and illegal chaos. Chaos it certainly is. He was talking about how it affects Americans. What about foreign aid? Good question. Well all foreign aid has been paused and that is an absolutely

huge deal because the US is the biggest foreign aid donor in the world. I spoke to somebody, he didn't want to be identified but he's a long-time aid worker and he said this had caused an earthquake in the sector and a couple of things that Caroline Levitt mentioned in her press conference she said that there was a money about to go out for the World Health Organization 37 million dollars she said that had been halted and then she spoke about 50 million dollars bizarrely that she said was going to go out of the budget for

condoms for Gaza. That's also been halted. So those were the two things she specifically mentioned at that press conference today on foreign aid. Caroline Hawley. Well, this comes as the Israeli Prime Minister's office says that Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to a meeting at the White House in Washington with President Trump next week. Mr Trump has repeatedly taken the credit for the fragile Gaza ceasefire deal which came into effect the day before he took office. And in recent days he's floated the idea of Egypt and Jordan taking in most of the population

of Gaza to the outrage of Arab countries and Palestinians. Vera Davis in Jerusalem says the announcement of the visit is a big coup for Mr Netanyahu. It's difficult to interpret this as anything other than a huge boost for Netanyahu. He'll be the first foreign leader to be welcomed by Donald Trump in his second term, so it just shows the closeness of their relationship, how much I think Mr Netanyahu can rely on Donald Trump's support. Publicly, I think we'll hear calls for an end to the war, certainly calls for all hostages to be released by Hamas

unequivocally. What I think a lot of people observers would like to hear what the two men talk about is the future for Gaza and the future for Israel's relationship with Palestinians. Donald Trump of course said the other day that he thought one of the ways that Gazans could be helped at least in the short term was for neighboring Arab countries to take them in. Now that would be welcomed by hardliners in Mr Netanyahu's government. Arab countries and other countries around the world have said that simply can't happen.

So will Mr. Trump refloat that idea? He's also, remember, appointed an ambassador to Israel in Mycocoby, an ambassador to the UN, people who believe personally that Israel should be given full or at least partial control over what the rest of the world regards as the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Now, will Mr Trump say anything about that to Mr Netanyahu? So it'll be fascinating, but the first thing to say is that this is a huge coup for Mr

Netanyahu because he's the first foreign leader to go to the United States to be invited by Mr Trump. We're at Davis. Well, this comes as the head of the UN's Agency for Palestinian Refugees has condemned what he describes as Israel's relentless assault against it. Philippe Lazzarini was speaking at a UN Security Council meeting called to discuss Israel's ban on UNRWA working in Israel and East Jerusalem from Thursday. Mr. Lazzarini said the move would cripple the organisation's ability to work in the occupied territories and jeopardise prospects for peace. The Knesset legislation defies the resolution of this Council and the General Assembly.

It flouts the ruling of the International Court of Justice. It disregards that UNRWA is a mechanism established by the General Assembly to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees pending a political answer to the question of Palestine. Jonathan Cricks is the Head of Communications for the UN's children's charity UNICEF in the region and is currently in Rafa in southern Gaza. Rebecca Kersby asked him if they've been able to get the aid they need to into the territory. I mean since the beginning of the implementation of the ceasefire UNICEF managed

to get 350 trucks entering inside the north and the south of the Gaza Strip. It's way more than what we have witnessed in the past weeks and months of the war. And this is really absolutely crucial because the needs are immense. Children are still suffering from malnutrition. There is not enough water and the level of destruction, especially as the North is so huge that, yes, it is absolutely critical that all of the hostages are released and it's critical that humanitarian aid can continue to enter at scale. Yeah, you mentioned the North there and hardly any aid has got there over the

past few months, has it? What sort of conditions are you finding there? Last time I went to the north of the Gaza Strip a few months ago, I really witnessed with my own eyes the level of destruction and you have entire neighborhoods which have completely been flattened. And yesterday when I was among those families who were walking back to their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip, I could really wonder what are they going to find because many of them have probably lost their houses.

And when I was asking them that, they were saying that they prefer to have a tent built on the rubble of their houses instead of having that tent elsewhere. So the level of destruction and the lack of services are really a challenge. What is really key is that we are ramping up our support to the north of the Gaza Strip. We are bringing in tarpaulins, we are bringing in warm clothes, we are organising water tracking to distribute water. So there are many challenges facing aid workers trying to bring in aid and also distributing that aid to pretty desperate people.

One of the challenges I guess would be things like unexploded ordinance. Is that a concern you have for your workers? This is first and foremost I would say a concern for the children and yesterday when we were on the road among the people were walking up north we were distributing for example leaflets to raise the awareness of the parents and the children on the dangers of unexploded ordnance and remnants of war. We know that between five and ten percent of the ammunition which have been dropped on the Gaza Strip have not exploded and we know the injuries, the terrible injuries that this can provoke to children. So this is really

the first preoccupation and then in addition for our trucks and for our missions to go in the different parts of the Gaza Strip. This is also a concern. A second concern is the fact that the roads are heavily damaged. That is very often limiting our capacity to move from one area to the other. The infrastructure has been damaged so much in the Gaza Strip that, for example, it's not necessarily easy to find a warehouse to store all the supplies.

That was Jonathan Cricks of UNICEF. Let's turn now to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where in a country scarred by decades of conflict, Rwandan-backed rebels who say they've captured the airport in the key eastern regional hub of Goma are continuing to battle Congolese government forces on the streets of the city. Congolese government forces on the streets of the city.

Days of intense fighting involving mortars and gunfire have left many bodies lying on the ground and hospitals overwhelmed. The UN says there have been reports of rapes carried out by fighters. On the other side of this vast country in the capital Kinshasa, a string of embassies has been attacked, including those of Rwanda, the capital Kinshasa, a string of embassies has been attacked, including those of Rwanda, the United States, France and Uganda. Congo has accused its tiny neighbour of trying to steal its mineral wealth. Rwanda denies the claim, saying it's fighting an armed group formed in the wake of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Both countries are being urged to restart peace talks that broke down last year. Alona Sienko is a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross. It's been very chaotic several days. We are seeing people who are fleeing the conflict and also our surgical team that is working in Doshu Hospital has been receiving dozens and dozens of wounded people, a lot of women and children. And what is extremely worrying is that these people, they come with severe wounds from explosive devices. And this shows that there is a lot of fighting and a lot of artillery used in heavily populated areas. And that is creating a lot of casualties and especially among civilian

population. Well, as the rebels advance in Goma, our reporter in Kinshasa, Emry Makumeno, told us what he'd been able to find out. What I can tell you is that Goma is still under one part, under the control of the regular army and the other part is under the control of the M23. It's been five days that people have been locked inside their homes without electricity, without running water. These last two days without internet.

So today, even if they were still fighting and gunshots and everything, but you do have some people who have managed to go out, fetch water and try to find some food within that intense fighting going on. And Emery, in Kinshasa where you are, there have been a number of attacks on Western embassies and African embassies allied to Rwanda. Tell us about those. Today was supposed to be what we call here a dead day or a ghost day where people were supposed to stay home in solidarity with residents of Goma. So the city was very much paralyzed and as they here in the city center where I am which is also the embassy area. The protesters went to the French embassy and started burning tires in front of the

embassy and then they also managed to climb the walls and put one section of the embassy on fire before the embassy managed to put that off. Then they proceeded to the Ugandan embassy where they invaded the premises and entered the embassy and vandalized. Many of them have been seen going out with the stationery, with the chairs and everything they could find. There have also been some shops that have been vandalized, looted here and there. So all the afternoon the Kinshasa police was busy dispersing and

and we don't know how many people might have been arrested but the governor of Kinshasa as we speak has banned any protest here in Kinshasa until further order. Emory Makumeno. Well Michaela Rong has written extensively about Congo and Rwanda. She says many in Congo blame the international community because of its close relationship with Rwanda. The Congolese are furious because this has been going on for three years. The M23 first started reactivating. I mean, it was active 13, 14 years ago, but it began to reactivate three years ago. And throughout, people have been saying, to the West, you can stop this because Rwanda is your close ally. It gets millions in dollars of

aid from you. It gets military support from countries like the US. It is very aid dependent. You can stop this if you want to. The Congolese are aware of that. There's been really no muscular response from the international community. There's this huge fury on the part of the Congolese population that sees Rwanda as the donor darling that is helping itself and possibly attempting to annex the mineral-rich part of Eastern Congo. There's going to be a Security Council meeting and we know that the Congolese government is pushing for really tough sanctions because

so far we've only seen strong words and it's pushing for sanctions. Rwanda for example is a state that regularly provides peacekeepers to UN forces that go into action across Africa but also elsewhere and Congolese are saying, you know, you cannot have it both ways. I mean, a Rwandan-supported rebel movement has been opening fire on the UN peacekeepers. There have been deaths. Monusco and South African peacekeepers have been killed by the M23 and by its Rwandan supporters. So you can't have it both ways. You can't then also be a contributor to peacekeeping operations. Michaela Rong. Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic, has said he'll decide in the next

10 days whether to hold parliamentary elections or form a new government following the resignation of the prime minister on Tuesday. Miloš Vucic stood down after months of anti-government protests. They were sparked by the collapse of a train station roof which killed 15 people and led to allegations of widespread corruption and incompetence. Serbia's main opposition party has dismissed the resignation as an attempt to buy time. Our Bolskan's correspondent is Guy Delaney. Prime Minister Miloš Vucvic said that he was resigning not in response to the protests or the blockade as such, but rather in response to an attack on some students in Serbia's second city Novi Sad,

because overnight some students were there putting some stickers near the building which houses the local office of the governing progressive party and people emerged from that building and attacked the students and one of them, the least, was hospitalised with a suspected broken jaw. Mr Vucovic said this was not acceptable, that he was going to be resigning in order to calm the passions that had arisen in Serbia and called on people to return to dialogue. After last night's incident in Novi Sad, my irrevocable decision is to resign as Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia. I had a long conversation this morning with the president. We talked about everything and he accepted my decision and accepted my arguments.

So he's trying to make it seem like he's doing the honourable thing and not responding to any of these protesters' acts of pressure on him. But I don't think anybody's going to be particularly fooled by that. And what about this claim being made by the authorities that foreign powers are backing the student protesters? Is there any evidence for that? No, there's no evidence for it whatsoever, but they have been doing their best to make out that these things have been happening. So for example, last week they deported people from a number of different European countries, including several from

neighbouring Croatia, and all of those people had been attending a workshop for non-governmental organisations in Belgrade. They were removed from Serbia by the internal security forces on the grounds that they represented a threat to the security of the country. This has been part of a narrative which has been building up for weeks that's been emanating from the Progressive Party and Mr Vucic, that somehow the protests, even though at various points we've had more than 100,000 people on the streets of Belgrade, for example,

in one protest just before Christmas, that somehow these protests weren't indigenous, that they were imposed externally or stirred up by external powers, that they weren't a true representation of the feelings of a large section of Serbian people. It's obviously a move which is attempting to appeal to both the progressive party's base of supporters and also to discredit the protesters and what they're calling for. Guy Delaney. Now to a new development that may help those suffering from Parkinson's disease.

A man fitted with a pioneering computer-controlled brain implant here in the UK says it works so well that he's sometimes able to forget he has the condition. Kevin Hill started getting symptoms in his 40s. He was shaking so badly that his wife wouldn't allow him into the kitchen because of fears he might hurt himself. Now, at the age of 65, after years of sleepless nights and uncontrollable shaking, he can once again do many of the things he used to, including going for a drink with friends. Surgeons in Newcastle in Northern England hope the implant that's worked so well for Kevin will help many others. Our health correspondent Sharon Barber went to meet him.

Kevin has his life back thanks to a computerised implant in his brain. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2017. Struggling to hold a pint of beer, he stopped going out altogether and at home he was banned from the kitchen. I dropped things, spilled things, hot water. Who banned you? The wife. Kevin had first noticed something was wrong with his thumb. And then my arm was then, what's next?

Then his hands started to shake and he recalls being told what it was. Well the tetra was, it was Parkinson's obviously and there was no cure for it. I was shocked, very shocked. You don't know what's in store for you. But he'd heard about a new treatment, deep brain stimulation, and around a year ago he underwent surgery. Well, Kevin described it as like a Jaffa cake inside his chest wall, but what it is in fact is a battery with a computer inside and that sends signals to his brain to control his Parkinson's symptoms.

But the newly approved programme does more than just send signals deep into the brain. It can read a patient's brain signals and responds by sending the exact electrical pulses needed to control Parkinson's. When Kevin first had his computer in his chest switched on, he couldn't believe what happened. The violent shaking of his arms and legs stopped. It was instant. My hand just stopped shaking, my legs stopped shaking, my voice was better. But even during our interview, his legs started to shake. I'm starting to shake now.

A reminder of the Parkinson's he still has. That report by Sharon Barber. Still to come... The creation of these new rooms should enable the Mona Lisa to be installed in a special area, accessible independently from the rest of the museum. We'll tell you why the Mona Lisa is getting its own room in the Louvre. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed, and in this new series we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry,

following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice the only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. NATO's Secretary General has said the alliance needs to strengthen its defences in the Arctic. Mark Rutte was speaking after a meeting with Denmark's Prime Minister where they discussed Donald Trump's threats to take over Greenland despite it being under Danish sovereignty.

Here's our Europe Regional Editor Paul Moss. The timing of this announcement means everything. Donald Trump says the US should take over Greenland because its Arctic location is strategically important. So having America in charge there would, as he put it, protect the free world. But Greenland is Danish territory. And Denmark's Prime Minister, Metta Fredriksen, spent Tuesday racing around European capitals, shoring up support for its sovereignty over the island. Now she and NATO's Secretary General have emphasised the Alliance's defence of the Arctic

region, implicitly negating the need for a unilateral American takeover. Paul Moss, after a turbulent year, the US plane maker Boeing has reported annual losses of nearly $12 billion. It's the company's worst performance since the pandemic. Boeing is grappling with a number of issues, including concerns about safety after a series of accidents and a strike by its factory workers in the US. Its chief executive says the firm is making progress in restoring stability to production lines.

Andrew Peach heard more from Judson Rollins of Lehm News and Analysis. The financials are even worse than anyone could have expected. You cannot overstate what an annus horribilis 2024 was for Boeing. You had the door plug that blew off the Alaska Airlines plane. You had the commercial crew spacecraft that were stranded at the International Space Station, you had a CEO change, 777X flight testing program ground to a halt, Union Strike which crippled their production plants, and then the Capstone was a massive equity sale in October and what really the upshot of that equity sale was Boeing almost literally ran out of cash

in the fourth quarter of last year. So it's still one of the huge names in aviation. It's just when these individual incidents happen, it makes people less likely to invest. That's right. And investors are showing a lot more skepticism than they ever would have before COVID. And I would say probably even immediately after COVID, there's just a real lack of belief that even the new CEO can pull off the turnaround that's required. Is this all about Boeing or does it tell us something about the aviation sector more broadly? I would say this is a story that is 80% about Boeing and 20% about the sector. The sector is, of course, prone to materials and supply chain shortages

driven in part, although not entirely by the war between Russia and Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia. But even with the supply chain issues, the vast majority of Boeing's problems would still have existed. Judson Rowlings of Lehm News and Analysis. For the first time since the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a Russian diplomatic delegation has been in Damascus for talks. The Kremlin was a key ally of Mr. Assad's and is trying to retain its military presence in Syria, as Lina Sinjab reports. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, along with President Putin's special advisor

on Syria, areon Damascus. There's been no direct confirmation from the Syrian authorities on who they are meeting. Relations between the two sides are tense. Many Syrians want Bashar al-Assad, who's been given asylum in Russia, to be prosecuted. It's hard to tell whether the Syrian government will raise this issue or discuss the money the ousted leader fled with, leaving the country in poverty. The Russians will probably focus on their naval presence on Syria's coast, as reports suggest Moscow's military equipment has been removed from the

port of Tartuus. Lena Zinjab. It's probably the world's most famous painting and now in recognition of the huge crowds it draws, the Mona Lisa is to be moved to what's being described as its own special space within the Louvre Museum in Paris. It's all part of a plan to renovate the world's most visited museum, announced by the French president Emmanuel competition to reduce the huge crowds of people beneath the famous glass pyramid. The creation of these new rooms should enable the Mona Lisa to be installed in a special area, accessible independently from the rest of the museum, with its own access ticket. But it will also create conditions that will enable it to be visited in a different and perhaps more peaceful way.

With more, here's Hugh Schofield in Paris. This is President Macron's new grand projet, big cultural plan, and it's been drawn up in response to warnings from management that right now the Louvre is cracking under the strain. Visitor numbers have shot up to nine million a year. That's a person a second, while the building and its infrastructure are aging badly. The main announcement is an architectural competition to design a new entrance, which will be at the eastern end of the museum, where there's now a wide classical colonnade.

Inside there'll be new underground spaces, one of which will be for the rehoused Mona Lisa. The painting is by far the Louvre's biggest attraction but visitor numbers are simply too big. So it'll get its own exhibition room, hopefully relieving pressure on the rest of the Renaissance collection. Hugh Schofield. The panel of scientists behind the symbolic doomsday clock that shows how close humanity is to a global catastrophe has announced that it's ticked one second closer to our destruction. They say concerns about the risk of nuclear war, rapid climate change, the rise of disinformation and President Trump's radical policies have led them to set the time to one minute and 29 seconds to midnight.

Richard Howells reports. The doomsday clock started ticking, metaphorically, in 1947. It was started by a group of scientists in America worried about the threat to humanity from the nuclear arms race and the Cold War. But they started the clock at seven minutes to midnight. Now the scientists who monitor the trends and events, which guide their decisions about how close to annihilation the planet is, have set the clock closer to catastrophe than ever before. Professor Daniel Holtz, one of the scientists involved in setting the clock, said the new time was a stark warning to everyone about how close to the precipice of destruction

the world has recently moved. Richard Howes. Now, if you're a shift worker, like many of us 24-hour news journalists, you may worry that you're not getting enough sleep. And even if you're not a shift worker, it's sometimes hard to turn off the screens, go to bed early and get that solid eight hours of rest that we're all told is essential to health. But one sleep scientist, Marjan Vandelaar, says it might not matter as much as we think. He's the author of a new book, How to Sleep Like a Caveman. The thing about the sleep of cavemen is we don't know how they slept exactly. But what we do know is we studied people in Tanzania. so the Hazard tribe, and they still live in the same circumstances as probably we did when

we were cavemen. And what you can say is that they were actually quite a lot awake during the night, so that being awake during the night was quite normal. Also, if you look at data from the Western population, you see that actually being awake up to 20% of the time that you're in the bed is quite normal, but we've lost touch with that. And I think there's a lot of perfectionism going round around sleep and sleeping between six and eight hours per night is actually quite average. And I think the rule really stems from Robert Owen, who was a social reformer, and he said you have to work for eight hours, sleep for eight hours and rest or leisure for eight hours. So if we keep on saying that everybody needs to sleep eight hours without any interruptions, then I think a lot of people will get more

stressed out. And a lot of people are very active before they go to bed. They look at their social media, they're still very busy with a lot of things like on television. And for some people that works quite well because if you have a very busy mind, then actually getting a little bit of distraction can help you fall asleep quicker. So there you go, if you like watching some TV or looking at your phone just before you go to bed. That was Sleep Scientist Marge Van de La. 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 one you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on x at global news pod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Liam McShepard. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jaleel. Until next time. Goodbye. What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Piastri. Your head's trying to get rid of one way, your body's trying to go another.

Lance Stroll. It's very extreme in the sense of how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin. I'm Landon Ars. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and have fun in. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, Back at Base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.