Anti-Trump protests in all 50 US states

Anti-Trump protests in all 50 US states

April 05, 2025 33m

Protesters across the US have taken to the streets in a show of defiance against Donald Trump’s policies. Also: what’s so compelling about jazz, and is British English slang being adopted across the Atlantic?

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Explore more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs at asuonline.asu.edu. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Sunday, the 6th of April.
Opponents of President Trump have held rallies across the US to protest against government cuts and efforts to consolidate power. The president himself has urged Americans to hang tough in the face of the turmoil triggered by his tariffs.
And Israel has admitted giving an inaccurate account of the killing of 15 medical workers in Gaza

after a video emerged which undermined its claims. Also in the podcast, we remember the Malian musician Amadou Bagayoko, who's died at the age of 70.
In contrast to his first term in office, President Trump has faced relatively little opposition since he was sworn in 76 days ago. Republicans, many Democrats, tech giants, universities and even law firms have been accused of caving into his demands.
The only real challenge has come from a handful of judges.

But on Saturday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets across America

to voice their anger at the way the country is heading.

Donald Trump has got to go.

Hey, hey, ho, ho.

Hey, Trump, you liar.

We set your ass on fire.

No Trump, no K-P-P.

The so-called hands-off events

were organised in every congressional district,

with protesters criticising the doge cuts

Thank you. The so-called hands-off events were organized in every congressional district, with protesters criticizing the doge cuts, Donald Trump's economic policy, and what some see as a slide towards authoritarianism.
These protesters are among those concerned that America's democracy is at risk. The stock market's crashing, the economy's going to crash, it's already crashing, and it's all about Trump.
His actions, his stupidity, his mistakes. One of my major concerns is how much disinformation that they are perpetuating out in the public, that basic science and basic facts that our democracy depends on is being torn down.
And when that happens, people get hurt. Well, for his part, President Trump took to social media to call on Americans to hang tough in the face of the turmoil caused by his sweeping

import tariffs. And he still has plenty of support from the likes of Brian Panabeka,

a retired auto worker from Michigan. We've endured this pain in the United States for 30 or 40 years

of seeing our factories close. So we can certainly endure two

or three years of economic pain while the supply chains are reorganized and the companies move

their production lines back to the United States. I couldn't give a rat's rear end about the stock

markets. I personally believe they were overvalued and correction was in order.
Our North America correspondent Peter Bowes followed the day's developments from Washington. These protests were widespread, more than a thousand individual demonstrations across the country.
That is significant, the biggest single day of protests since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Perhaps surprising to some that it's taken so long, given this country is still so polarised in terms of the nature of politics here, so long that it's taken for large groups of people to get together and take to the streets to express their anger in this way.
But they were protesting about many different policies, the executive orders, the widespread sacking of federal workers, the breaking up of the Department of Education, and more. And I think today was simply an opportunity to vent about all of that, as well as the president's most recently, and of course, arguably biggest bombshell since he took office.
And that is the sweeping tariffs that have been brought in on the import of goods into the US. Yeah, I mean, might the protests herald a change in terms of the challenge being

posed to Donald Trump? Might some democratic politicians, for example, speak out more now?

Certainly, there's been some criticism of Democrats that up until now, they seem to have

been relatively quiet in terms of criticism of Donald Trump. Now, one argument is that they've

been, to use the phrase, collecting their thoughts after their election defeat and really just

figuring out what kind of political approach to take against Donald Trump. But I think perhaps

We'll see you next time. argument is that they've been, to use the phrase, collecting their thoughts after their election defeat and really just figuring out what kind of political approach to take against Donald Trump.
But I think perhaps watching these protests around the country, getting a sense of what people feel in different states, especially on some of these issues that are clearly central to Donald Trump's agenda, it may well motivate Democrats to be a little bit more outspoken and perhaps a little bit more organised in terms of their criticism and perhaps more importantly how they intend to move forward with their opposition in terms of elections coming up, the midterm elections, then eventually the next presidential election. Yeah, of course it's difficult for them at the moment because the Republicans hold both houses of Congress but certainly among some Republican, there's suggestions that a few of them are unhappy about the tariffs.
No one's actually spoken out. But we saw Donald Trump appealing to people to basically stay calm.
He's appealed to people to stay calm, but also warning people that it is going to be a little bit tough in the coming months. And he's talking about the short term impact of these tariffs.
Remember, this is a medium to long term strategy for him. He expects the country to reap the rewards of the tariffs over the long term when companies, presumably if it goes as he wants to, start building factories here and creating jobs and improving local infrastructure.
And I think the fact that it isn't going to happen overnight may well give the Democrats an opportunity because their next electoral opportunity will be the midterm elections at the end of next year. And time moves quickly.
And if they can capture a certain disillusionment amongst the public because they're not seeing results in the short term, it could bring some electoral success to the Democrats. But at the moment, are the tariffs causing any problems for ordinary Americans? Those problems will start pretty soon, just as soon as those goods that tariffs are charged on, let's say, everyday goods, and there's a fast circulation of those goods that come into stores, people buy them.
That will start in the next days or indeed weeks, and people will begin to notice that their bills are getting higher. And clearly that is going to influence the attitude of many.
It's not every day that you buy a car, but people will be thinking maybe in the next year or two that they have to replace their car and suddenly realise it's going to cost more. Peter Bowes in Washington.
The method used by the White House to work out President Trump's new tariffs led to some poorer nations being hit hardest. Among them was Cambodia, which is facing attacks of nearly 50%.
It has become one of the first countries to reach out to the Trump administration, following the hints from Washington that those who come to negotiate early will secure better deals. Our Asia-Pacific editor is Celia Hatton.
Cambodia's Prime Minister, Khun Munait, has appealed to Donald Trump and the Trump administration saying to them, look, we have decided to lift our own tariffs that we had on US goods. Cambodia was charging 35% import taxes on all US goods entering the country.
They've changed that to just 5%. And they're hoping that the Americans will take notice of that and will then lift their own tariffs that they've put on Cambodian goods entering into the United States.
It's a bit of a gamble because there's definitely a trade imbalance. Last year saw $10 billion in exports from Cambodia heading to the United States, but only $264 million worth of American goods were imported into Cambodia.
Yeah, and Donald Trump is acting to tackle that trade imbalance rather than actual tariffs. So do we know how the US is likely to react to this? It's really unclear.
I mean, it's tricky when it comes to Cambodia, because they don't really have a lot of cards to play besides either appealing to Donald Trump's morals, because Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. It was hit with the second highest tariffs globally, 49 percent, plus the double whammy of losing a lot of US assistance because of the cuts to USAID.
So it's really in a bad position. It can't do what some other richer countries can do, which is impose reciprocal tariffs, because it just doesn't import that much from the United States.
So this is really the only card that it can play by reducing its own tariffs. It's going to hope that it can get some attention and hopefully convince Donald Trump that the tariffs imposed on Cambodia should go down as well.
And what kind of products does Cambodia send to the US? Are there things that are manufactured that originate in China, for example? Exactly. So if you go around a shoe store or a clothing store in the United States, you might notice that a lot of items are made in Cambodia or Cambodia's neighbors, Vietnam, Laos, for example.

That's because a lot of these countries have low wages and a lot of Chinese owned factories and manufacturers have tried to divert some of their manufacturing lines to these low-wage countries because they were being targeted with tariffs. So companies like Nike, Adidas, a lot of their items are made in Cambodia because Cambodian women specifically like to get jobs in these huge factories.
They make about $200 a month. They work very, very long hours.
But it's primarily Cambodian women who are going to pay the price. It's believed that Donald Trump is not just trying to target China with high tariffs.
He's also trying to go after Chinese manufacturing lines that have diverted to these Southeast Asian countries. Our Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton.
Israel has admitted giving an inaccurate account of the killing of 15 emergency workers in Gaza after a video emerged undermining its claims. The convoy of Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances, a UN car and a fire truck from Gaza's civil defence came under fire near Rafa just before dawn on the 23rd of March.
Israel originally claimed troops opened fire because the convoy approached suspiciously in darkness without

headlights or flashing lights. But the video showed ambulances and the fire truck with their

emergency lights clearly flashing before is nonstop gunfire and you hear an exchange in Hebrew and Arabic between the IDF soldiers and the paramedics. So we know that the paramedics were alive.
They engaged or exchanged words with the IDF. And several days later, they were found in a mass grave with multiple bullet shots.
And the forensic doctor who examined the bodies told me that most of them appeared to have been shot at close range. We had multiple verification layers before determining that this was an authentic video and that, as you pointed out, it refutes Israel's claim that the ambulances had their lights off or that they were approaching suspiciously.
suspiciously. It also shows that even if that were the case, which it wasn't according to the video, the paramedics exited their cars.
They talked to the IDF. They were alive.
The UN, many other countries, security council members have called for an independent investigation. The IDF statement today said they're going to investigate what happened.
Volker Twerk, who's the human rights commissioner at the UN, said that this incident raises concerns and questions about war crimes conducted by the Israeli military. So there's been a strong condemnation and calls for investigation.
So we will see where that will take because, you know, the Geneva Conventions protect aid workers and humanitarian workers and ambulances. Even in conflict zones, there are rules.
Fanez Fasihi from the New York Times speaking to the BBC before Israel admitted making mistakes. An Israeli military official attributed the errors in the account to the troops involved.
The official said the soldiers buried the bodies of the 15 dead workers in sand to protect them from wild animals. When an aid team found the bodies, they also discovered the mobile phone footage of the incident.
Israel insists at least six of the medics were linked to Hamas, but has so far provided no evidence. It says they were unarmed when the soldiers opened fire.
The military official denied that any of the medics had been handcuffed before they died and said they were not executed at close range, as some reports had suggested. The Malian musician Amadou Bagayoko has died at the age of 70.
He and his wife Mar Mariam Doumbia, both of them blind,

made up the group Amadou and Mariam.

Mixing traditional Malian music with rock and blues,

they sold millions of albums.

They also composed the official anthem for the 2006 World Cup and played at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

BBC radio presenter and music professor Lucy Duran knew Amadou well. You know, it's a huge loss and I've been speaking to several friends who live in Mali, our Malian and our Malian musicians.
And they are very sad. It was totally unexpected.
He hadn't been well for a few days and then he suddenly left the world. And they said that of all the people that they can think of, the great musicians of Mali, which has had so many famous musicians, he and his wife, Mariam, are the only ones who no one ever criticized.

They were impeccable in their behavior. They were delightful.
They were charming. They set a great

example. They were very loving with each other.
And it's at the time that they were growing up, it was very, very difficult. It was very hard for them actually to get married.
There was a lot of opposition to their marriage because they were both blind. And these are things that both of them talked to me in several long interviews that I did with them.
And I first met them in 1992 in Mali when they were struggling to get any kind of recordings. You know, their first recordings were cassettes.
They had a very hard time in the beginning, and it was really with the singer and composer and activist and music producer, Manu Chau, who is Spanish but lives in France, that they recorded this album Dimanche à Bamako, Sundays in Bamako, which are the great days of wedding celebrations on the street.

And, you know, you could just walk down the streets of Bamako on a Sunday and there are canopies everywhere with giant loudspeakers and this wonderful music blaring out. so they celebrated that in their song Dimanche Abamakor, which I think was recorded in 2004.
And then after that, they were just, they became the iconic couple from Mali at a time when Malian music was really like the main kind of, well, so-called world music that we were able to hear.

Everyone loved their music. It was very simple, very strong, very good lyrics,

lyrics of advice about being good neighbors, about not lying, about not betraying,

and about love. Love, that was such an important topic.
Lucy Duran, remembering Amadou Bagayokooko who's died at the age of 70.

And still to come on the Global News podcast.

The jazz beat is a fluid beat and the pop beat is a static beat.

In jazz much of it is implied, much like good writing.

Why saxophonist Branford Marsalis finds jazz so compelling.

We'll be right back. Brandford Marsalis finds jazz so compelling.
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North Sentinel is one of the islands in the Andaman Nicobar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Outsiders are banned by the Indian government from going within five kilometres to protect the indigenous inhabitants from disease and preserve their way of life.
But this week, a US tourist was arrested after he landed on North Sentinel.

Sophie Grigg of the charity Survival International told Julian Marshall what happened. A US citizen was seen by fishermen landing on the shore, having gone to North Sentinel Island,

the home of the uncontacted Sentinelese people, And his boat and equipment, including the GoPro video, were seized. And on there, there was evidence that he had gone to North Sentinel Island.
He'd spent about an hour on the boat offshore, blowing a whistle, trying to attack the attention of the Sentinelese people. And then actually incredibly dangerously, both for himself and and for the Sentinelese people who have no immunity to disease and could easily be wiped out by any contact with this guy who had gone and landed on their island for five minutes and recorded himself doing it presumably for his YouTube channel then he left a can of coke and a coconut, also recklessly and idiotically,

on the beach and then left and was seen by fishermen when he arrived back

who alerted the authorities who arrested him.

Had there been such incidents before?

Well, there was an incident in 2018 of an American missionary,

John Allen Chow, who went to try and convert the Sentinelese

and they fired a warning arrow at him first to tell him to stay away. And when he ignored that and went back, he was killed.
So the Sentinelese have made it absolutely clear that they don't want outsiders intruding on their territory. And that has to be respected.
And the Indian Coast Guard also know that this is the law, that no one is supposed to go there. They understand the dangers of disease to the Sentinelese and how the whole people could be wiped out by diseases to which we have immunity.
And they're supposed to be policing the waters, but obviously are not doing a good enough job. I mean, you referred to this US national having a YouTube channel.
So the fear, obviously, is that there is more of this to come. Yeah, and we have seen other YouTubers claiming that they're going to try and go to North Sentinel Island and try and contact the Sentinelese.
And obviously, this is a huge worry. There are already so many threats to uncontacted peoples, logging, mining.
In Great Nicobar, there is a risk to the uncontacted Champagne people because the Indian government are trying to build a massive megaport there. So there are already enough risks.
I mean, how do you deter them? They need to be educated to understand the absolute risk to the people involved. And, you know, uncontacted people are making an active choice to be uncontacted.
They're making it very clear and the Sentinelese have made it more clear than most. So what sort of penalties does this trespasser face? The Anderman police are saying it could be up to eight years in prison.
There was a court hearing today and they've not given him bail. He's been remanded in police custody for another 14 days.
So it could be up to eight years. There has to be an important deterrent because, you know, clearly the possibility of being killed by the Sentinelese wasn't enough of a deterrent, but maybe eight years in the Nanderman jail would be.
Sophie Grigg of Survival International. When Masoud Pazeshkian was elected president of Iran, he promised to tackle the economic crisis in the country and make life more affordable.
So it didn't look good when a photo emerged of one of his top officials and longtime friend,

Shahram Dabiri, on a costly trip to Antarctica. Now Mr Dabiri, Vice President for Parliamentary Affairs, has been fired.
Khazran Najib from the BBC Persian service told me what the president said about the case. It's a short statement saying that costly holidays by government officials, even at personal expense, were neither defensible nor justifiable, given the great economic pressure our people are under.
So given the state of the country and the poverty that Iranians are experiencing these days, That kind of a picture was, I suppose, deemed politically incorrect in a big way. And that's why Mr.
Pazeshkian has taken this step. How damaging is this for the government? Of course, it's damaging in a sense that it signals that some in the top tiers of government and the regime are having a very comfortable life while the rest of the country is suffering to a great extent.
It gives the impression that there's a massive gap between the top layers in the country, particularly the bureaucrats, the officials who are enjoying all sorts of perks

and a lot of corruption involved, and the rest of the country.

Is anyone making the argument that you work hard, you get money, you go on a nice holiday?

No, there's a lot of reaction in social media about this, but they're all in support of Mr.

Pazeshkian for taking this step. Don't forget that this is really, as far as I remember, this is the first time that an official has been sacked for even an impression of corruption, let alone the corruption itself.
And a lot of people on social media are supportive of it. So he's getting plaudits for that.
But how is Masoud Buzeshkan doing in terms of reviving the economy? Zero. Hasn't been able to do anything.
When he was campaigning to be elected as president, he was focusing on the fact that he wants to lift US sanctions on Iran so that he can liberate the economy. That hasn't happened.
In fact, there is a lot of to and fro between Trump these days and Iran. And the Iranian supreme leader keeps coming and saying, we don't want to negotiate.
And then the next day, they're saying something different. This has been going on for a while, and nothing has happened.
And Therefore, that central promise of President President Shkian hasn't been realised. And therefore, the economy remains pretty stuck in the mud.
And the situation is getting worse by the day. Kazrin Aji of the BBC Persian Service.
A woman swapped at birth more than 70 years ago has been given compensation by the british health service she found out about the mix-up after doing a dna test through a genealogy website and then being contacted by a man claiming to be her brother our health reporter jim reed takes up the story so this all started actually just under a decade ago this woman we're calling her susan for this report but that that's not her real name she took a home dna test just for a decade ago. This woman, we're calling her Susan for this report, but that's not her real name.

She took a home DNA test just for a bit of fun, really.

And when it came back,

she just said she was puzzled by the whole thing.

There was a lot of Irish heritage in there.

She didn't think that was quite right,

but she literally just put it to one side

and moved on with her life.

Then six years later,

so this is now about four years ago,

she's contacted out the blue by a stranger saying, look, this website, this data is telling me that I must be your genetic sibling. At that point, she understandably sort of freaks out somewhat.
Her immediate reaction is, look, is this a mistake? Is it a scam? Could I have been adopted at birth and just not told about it it her parents have both passed away by that point so she asks her older brother he's adamant adamant that this is just not true thinks the whole thing is a scam one of his first memories he thinks is their mum being pregnant so again she puts it aside but she was always a bit suspicious she told me she was you know taller than her brother she looked different from the rest of the family. So then her own daughter starts doing some digging on this.
She found the records of her mum's birth from the local area. And there, when they looked at it right next to her mum's name, literally on the next line down, there's another baby born on the same day in the same hospital with the same surname of the man who contacted her on this website.

And so at that point, they realised that a mistake must have been made.

And these two children, these two babies must have been swapped way back 70 years ago at birth.

The people she thought were her genetic parents.

Like I say, they both died.

And she says, in a way, she was pleased about that and that she never had to tell the truth

because she said it just would have been so horrible. She describes her parents as this sort of amazing, loving couple.
And when you ask her about her older brother, at least the man that she grew up thinking was her older brother, she actually said it's made their relationship stronger for the other side of the family. So her new blood relations, she says it has been more difficult.
She did meet up with actually with the man who contacted her with her genetic sibling. She does say that one of her kind of regrets is that she'll now not know more about her biological mother.
She's been told she looks exactly like her. She finds that something a bit of some regret about that side of things I think.
Jim Reid reporting. Here in the UK, sticklers for the correct use of English have

long complained about the creeping influence of American slang. Awesome, fries and the use of

like as a filler word have all upset English purists. But new research suggests the British

tongue is fighting back and being adopted across the Atlantic, as Richard Hamilton explains.

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once joked that England and America are two nations

I'm sorry. Atlantic, as Richard Hamilton explains.
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once joked that England and America are two nations separated by a common language. While slang on either side of the pond may have evolved independently, the exchange of words is very much a two-way street.
Many British words have been adopted by Americans, thanks to popular Gen Z or Z shows in the UK, such as Adolescents on Netflix and the reality TV series Love Island. Don't raise your voice.
Did we not saw it out the other day? Clearly not. Clearly not.
You then ask the public whether we can connect. Could you sit there asking me? No, the real thing doesn't do that, do they?

Yeah, they do.

Research by Northern Arizona University and Babbel,

a language learning platform,

has tracked the impact of different words using a database of 5 million transcribed words

and 1,000 hours of spoken American English.

Bonkers topped the list, accounting for 24% of all Britishisms identified. But amongst is also growing in popularity.
Q instead of line is gaining traction, due largely to a Q feature on Netflix. And cheeky, rather than meaning impudent, is being adopted in America to indicate playful indulgence.
Other emerging Britishisms that were recorded include nutter, trousers, bugger, dodgy, kerfuffle, posh, agro, banter, flummox and bollocks. The researchers say the prevalence of these words is a reflection of globalisation, driven by media and technology.
The British TV shows, as well as pop stars such as Charlie XCX, are not just entertaining audiences, but exporting language and fuelling cultural exchange. Richard Hamilton there.
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis was born into a family of jazz musicians in New Orleans

and has worked with legendary jazz figures like Miles Davis,

as well as artists like Sting and the Grateful Dead.

Now he and his quartet are releasing a new album, Belonging,

an interpretation of an album by the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett.

Branford Marsalis told the BBC's Martin Venard why he decided to do his own version.

What attracted me to it is the beauty of the compositions.

The songs, the melodies and the chord structure are exactly as Keith wrote them 50 years ago.

It's just we have different cultural experiences

that we bring to the fore when we play.

Spiral Dance is the first song on the record.

When Keith recorded the song, they only had a bass solo on it,

and we decided to open the song up to solos by myself

and my pianist Joey Calderazzo. And this is your first album on the Blue Note label.
Just tell us about the significance to jazz of Blue Note and what it means to be releasing an album on that label. I mean, Blue Note was a very important label for jazz.
I think it is different when the entire production team and the marketing team and everybody involved are geared towards jazz as a product, instead of jazz just being thrown in with all of the other things on the larger companies. You've, of course, played with some fantastic musicians over the years people like Miles Davis what was that like? It was great I learned more from the conversations with him than I did with the playing part.
What I learned from him is that there's a difference between playing the physical structure that's on the page and playing the sound that's associated with the structure. You have these chords on a piece of paper, and we are taught to play the chords.
And Miles Davis wanted me to play the sound. And when he felt that I wasn't playing the sound, he took the paper and tore it up and threw it on the floor and said, okay, now play it.
I played a specific thing. He said, don't play that.
And I I said, okay, what should I play there? He said, not that. You've of course played with other musicians who aren't jazz musicians.
You've played with Sting and the Grateful Dead. What was that experience like? The same thing, a bunch of intangible things.
I learned a lot about people. I learned a lot about the music business.
I learned a lot about the experience of, you know, sharing ideas with people who don't come from the same place you come from. It was great.
As well as your musical career,

you've also stepped into films as well

and done some music for films.

You had a role in Spike Lee's film School Days.

Was that something that you enjoyed

that you'd like to do more of?

It was an unexpected turn in my life, for sure.

Yeah, and if I get more opportunities

to write scores for films, I would love to do it.

My career is music in the foreground, and there's a certain skill to writing music that functions in the background. What is it that's so compelling about jazz music? The best examples of jazz is the emotional effect it has on me when I'm listening to it.
The jazz beat is a fluid beat and the pop beat is a static beat. In jazz, much of it is implied, much like good writing.
You have to understand a lot of things to get it. I appreciate the people who do, and I bear no ill will towards

the people who don't. What next for Branford Marsalis? I have no idea.
That's the front of it.

Watch this space.

And that was Branford Marsalis talking to Martin Venard.

That is all from us for now,

but the Global News Podcast will be back at the same time tomorrow.

This edition was mixed by Ricardo McCarthy

and produced by Carla Conte,

our editors Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway.

Until next time, goodbye.

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