Three US news outlets sue Trump administration

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1:10Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service, coming to you live from London. I'm Rajini Vaidyanathan. Later on the programme, a huge international drugs bus leads to hundreds of arrests and the seizure of hundreds of weapons and wild animals. We'll tell you more about that in a bit. Also, the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, is putting his art collection on display, and it won't just be Picasso and Van Gogh. It's something that I felt very, very strongly about in terms of honouring illustrators. People who, artists, I think, who illustrate stories that are already written. More with George Lucas later.

1:54But first, the US president is the most closely watched political figure in the world. Journalists report on his every move and for decades, a small section have been given security clearance every day to follow him wherever he goes, be that in Washington or beyond as part of the White House press pool. Different stations, including the BBC, rotate through to cover him close up for TV, radio and print. But today, for the first time ever, the CNN crew assigned to film him as he made his way to New York for the UN General Assembly wasn't there. And when President Trump cut the ribbon on a new White House helipad without the poor coverage, all that you could hear was static.

2:40Now this all follows an intensifying showdown between the media and President Trump. It was on Friday that he banned not just CNN, but the MS Now network and the news site Politico, accusing them of reporting fiction and lies. Very simple ban. I don't want them in my office. I don't want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can. So we are banning them. Yes, we are. And there may be others to follow. CNN, Politico and MSNOW are now suing the Trump administration. In a joint statement, they said that they were pursuing legal action to defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports.

3:18Well, the vice president, J.D. Vance, has been defending the White House's decision. So he's not banning media outlets. What he's doing is saying we're not going to give you special access to the White House if you engage in what is effectively propaganda. We have to remember those three outlets account. About 92 percent of the stories that they have on the president of the United States, on the administration are negative. That's not representative of the American people. It's not representative of public opinion. So if you're going to engage in what is effectively far left propaganda, why would a Republican White House give you special access?

3:48J.D. Vance there. Well, President Trump has long been a critic of the mainstream media. I myself have been at many of his rallies where he's called the press fake news, urged supporters to boo and jeer at those of us in the press pen. And he's had a particular dislike for CNN. At this rally in 2017, the crowds are chanting CNN sucks.

4:17So where does this latest ban leave journalists in America? Well, Jeff Mason is senior White House correspondent and Washington correspondent at Bloomberg News and formerly the president of the White House Correspondents Association, having that role during President Trump's first term. I asked him what he makes of the events in recent days. Well, my reaction is just that this is an escalation by the president of the United States against the media. And it's part of a pattern that began during his first term in 2017 when I was president of the White House Correspondents Association and has continued now.

4:53And it has manifested itself not only at the White House with the cases of CNN and MSNOW and Politico being banned, as you just mentioned, but also throughout Washington. The Pentagon has cracked down on its reporters and basically led to an exodus of the mainstream media from the Pentagon for reporters who would not sign a pledge to restrict their reporting according to guidelines by the Pentagon. It's also been affected by the Treasury, which has restricted news organizations, including Bloomberg News, as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from covering a recent finance minister's meeting.

5:33And then at the White House, it started at the beginning of this term, I would say, the escalation when the Associated Press and then other wires, including Reuters and Bloomberg, ended up losing their permanent places in the press pool because the president was unhappy that AP was not calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. You talk about this press pool. I wonder if you could just explain a little bit more about what it is and how it works and how these certain journalists cover a president. I'd be glad to. The press pool was set up decades and decades ago, in large part because the president will often hold events or go places where you just can't fit the whole press corps.

6:14So the press pool is a small group of 13 journalists who travel with the president wherever he goes and report back and share that material with the rest of the press corps. That includes a rotating cast of television networks who are the big five in the United States, Fox, CBS, ABC, CNN and NBC. And it's that TV pool that today decided to give solidarity to CNN and essentially not jump in when CNN was refused from doing its assigned task today of traveling with the president to New York. How significant is this, though, in terms of what people can see. Is this a big hole in coverage today? It's a big hole in that having video footage from a mainstream news network will not be available and therefore not present on the evening news and on the broadcasts that consumers all across the United States and all across the world are accustomed to seeing.

7:20And where do you think this goes next? Because as we heard earlier with those chants of CNN sucks. And I've seen it before at rallies where there's real contempt amongst large numbers of his supporters for the so-called mainstream media. It doesn't look like President Trump's going to change course on this, does it? It doesn't at this point. And I think you're right to highlight the fact that this is often very popular with his base. But it's not just his base who he needs to vote in the midterm elections. And his popularity right now, according to approval ratings and polls is very low across the United States.

7:55That said, I agree with you that the president is not one to back down when he starts something like this. And I would say the next step will be a legal one. Those three news organizations are going to be in court and have sued to get their access back. And there are debates at the moment about the legality of this ban and whether it flouts the Constitution. What is your analysis of that? Well, the Constitution Constitution has the First Amendment, which enshrines the right to a free press and freedom of speech. So those are certainly the grounds that the attorneys who are representing those organizations are going to use when they argue in court that this is unconstitutional.

8:34You used to be the chair of the White House Correspondents Association, which is that umbrella organization of all the reporters who cover the White House close up and go to the briefing room, which many people see on TV every day. You've been a White House reporter for many, many years as well. How would you assess how things have changed? Oh, it's changed a lot. And I would say it's not ever a role that I am happy to play, or I think anyone in the press corps is happy to play when the story becomes about the press. It's our job to report about the president in the White House press corps and about the White House and about the policies and politics that are emanating from this place.

9:16So it's uncomfortable when the president turns us into the story. But it is a story because it's about democracy and it's about press freedom. And those are very important things, not just for those of us who are members of the press, but for the public writ large. That's Jeff Mason from Bloomberg.

9:45The war in Iran has an older cousin in Yemen. A conflict between the Houthis, backed by Iran, and the internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia. In the last few weeks, the war there has turned dramatically in the favour of the Houthis as they've advanced on the west coast, and it's caused fresh issues when it comes to shipping, and also prompted a flow of refugees from Yemen across the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Djibouti. The UN International Organisation for Migration says people are travelling on overcrowded boats and arriving to Djibouti with very limited food and water. The BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner visited a refugee camp in Obok in Djibouti.

10:27It's a small port town where officials are preparing for the arrival of up to 10 ,000 refugees.

10:38I'm inside a warehouse here at a place called Obok, which is on the Djibouti. That's the African side of the Bab al-Mandad Strait that separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. And this warehouse is full of families, hundreds of people here, actually altogether more than 3 ,000 Yemenis who've come across in boats in the last few days, fleeing the fighting in Yemen. There's sand and tarpaulins on the floor, goats feeding amongst everybody, but people are at least getting food. They fled hungry and literally the clothes they're standing up in. And the thing that they're terrified of most are the airstrikes, the bombs that fall on their houses, on their children, on their families.

11:24One of those I met here is Qasim Ibrahim Abzi, a former fisherman. He's old and frail. In fact, his ID card says he was born 100 years ago. I found him sitting on a tarpaulin, having arrived last Friday, and he was eager to talk. I asked him what's brought him to this place. What led us to come here? It was the plane, the sound of the planes. Whom? Sitting next to him is his wife, Aisha Abdul Qadir. She's apparently the same age, and yet, despite her ordeal, she hasn't given up on going back to Yemen and the life they had before.

12:09We are willing to go back if there's peace and we are praying to God that peace does return. All we need is peace, even for our children's future. They get safety first, then food, water and an education. As you see, we just fled with our clothes and left everything behind because there is no peace.

12:30Not all the refugees here in this camp are new arrivals. Just under 3 ,000 Yemenis were already here, having fled when fighting first flared up between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed coalition in 2015. Mohammed Abdul Karim has been here in this camp ever since.

12:50Most of the people here are in the worst condition, inside the tents here. I'm very touched. I'm crying for these people, for my people, for their suffering. I want our voices to be heard by the NGOs and the Djibouti government, and I'm thankful to them for accepting us.

13:10Muhammad breaks off, turning his face away. I can see he's choking back tears. This country, Yemen, was once called Arabia Felix by the Romans. Happy Arabia. Today, it's anything but. That's the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner reporting from Djibouti and if you want to see some of the pictures from his trip and read more about it you can go to the BBC News website where he's written an article about it A reminder, if you like what you hear you can listen to NewsHour whenever you want to We have two editions a day You can find the latest online at bbcworldservice.com or you can sign up for our free podcast download You can just go to BBC NewsHour in the search wherever you usually get your podcasts.

14:07Coming up on NewsHour, sound, scent and steam. It's very theatrical, so the sauna masters will wear a costume. There'll be sounds and lights. Sometimes there's a screen in these big saunas as well, so there's almost like a movie backdrop to it as well. We'll get sweaty later as we tell you more about those multi-sensory sauna rituals in just over half an hour. Reminder of some of the headlines we're watching and as we've been hearing, American television networks have stopped providing joint coverage of President Trump's official events. It's after he banned some news on our organisations from the White House.

14:44A judge in Spain says the wife of the Prime Minister must stand trial in a case of suspected corruption and Britain has charged a man with complicity in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. You can get more on those stories on the BBC News website.

15:07This is Rajini Vaidyn-Arban with NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC in London. Nearly 500 people have been arrested in a major transatlantic operation against criminal gangs. Police in Belgium led the operation and they say that drugs, firearms and ammunition were seized mainly in Latin America. Law enforcement from more than 30 countries were involved in the operations. The raids come as Europe overtakes the US as the number one destination for cocaine. Shanae Bostash is an Amsterdam-based journalist who gave me more details about this operation called Atlas Nexus. This seems to be an absolutely huge operation led by the Belgian police, who've put out a massive press release with a very long list of things.

15:54It's kind of a UN of crime enforcement across the world. They've arrested a huge number of people, mostly in Costa Rica. They have confiscated 156 tonnes of drugs, 201 weapons. They've got gold. They've got 169 properties. they are claiming that this is the largest crime roundup operation that there has been in Costa Rica. They say there were 375 people arrested, 14 victims who were saved, and they also found perplexingly 800 cattle and 464 bits of jewellery. It seems to be an absolutely huge operation, mainly focused around drugs, but with also human trafficking as part of that. And these drugs, I mean, they've got a very high street value, haven't they?

16:42I was reading it's something like 135 million euros. This is a massive operation. And they've also rounded up what they say is a drugs, cocaine processing lab in Ireland. So that's nearer to home as well, as well as in South America. It seems like a massive operation. And normally I'm based in the Netherlands and you'd expect Europol to be saying a lot about this. but it really seems that Belgian police have led this whole thing. They've brought everything out and they've called the operation Atlas Nexus, kind of linking the world. Since you cover this in Amsterdam quite often, tell us more about the Antwerp-Rotterdam corridor and how critical it is to the cocaine trade in Europe.

17:21When you talk to people who have knowledge of the drug trade, they say that many criminals see the ports of Europe as one port, especially Belgium and the Netherlands. So Rotterdam and Antwerp do work a lot together in terms of drug trafficking. But they do say that when one of them ups the security, for example, in Rotterdam in the last few years, then the overspill, like a waterbed, they say, just spills to the other ports around Amsterdam, down to Antwerp, possibly into Marseille, into Hamburg, that Europe is just seen as one destination. And we discussed just then about how one of the first discoveries related to this massive operation was found in 2019.

18:00I mean, that's some seven years ago. It does beg the question why it's taken this long. These types of operations do. I mean, there's a huge trial going through at the moment in the Netherlands called the Marengo trial, which is one of the Netherlands' biggest drug kingpins who was found guilty and is now appealing. And the trials are terrifying. They're really terrifying. When you go and cover them and there are armed police all around the streets and everyone is terrified and you have to sign that you won't name anybody you see in court. These things are huge. This trial has been going on for years and years.

18:30These things do take a long time. And I suppose if you've got this many police forces working together, it is going to take a long time. You say this was an operation, of course, largely led by Belgium police. Tell me more about the gangs in Antwerp and how powerful they are and how central they are to this particular operation. They haven't named any particular gangs in the reporting that I've seen so far. But I know that there are a lot of linkages between gangs in Belgium and in the Netherlands. and one of the biggest drug lords, alleged drug lords in the Netherlands, a guy called Boller Joss, Boller Leideckers, they call him Boller Joss, which sort of translates as chubby, chubby Joss, has been convicted by a court in Belgium and is being sought by the Dutch authorities.

19:15Boller Joss, who's allegedly hiding out in Sierra Leone at the moment, they think he's there. They've asked them to hand him over. Sierra Leone is not handing him over. So these things all spill. I mean, we're all part of the Low Countries. You just drive from one place to the other in Europe. Chennai Boztash there.

19:38Star Wars creator George Lucas has spent the last two decades planning a museum to house his vast collection of art. And that's finally opening in Los Angeles on Tuesday. And to celebrate, George Lucas hosted a star-studded party over the weekend with everyone from Oprah, Katy Perry and Steven Spielberg on the guest list. While the BBC's Regan Morris couldn't make it to the party, but she did get a sneak peek at the museum. It looks like it's from a galaxy far, far away. But the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is right here on Earth, in South Los Angeles, not too far from Hollywood. The new billion-dollar museum houses a starfighter.

20:19I'm standing right underneath it. It's got original C-3PO and R2-D2 droids, and Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder. Some of the most iconic Star Wars memorabilia imaginable. But this is not a Star Wars museum. The movie art takes up a fraction of the space in this collection from George Lucas, the man who brought us both Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. The museum is dedicated to the history of visual storytelling, from cave paintings to ancient sculptures to Norman Rockwell, to Banksy street art graffiti. George Lucas says it bothered him that illustrators he worked with on movies were not considered serious artists, and that their work was rarely displayed in museums.

21:01It's something that I felt very, very strongly about in terms of honoring illustrators. People who, artists, I think, who illustrate stories that are already written, and most of the stories are missed. They're not real. but the illustrations make them real and as a result in the beginning especially for the few thousand years that was the only way you could tell a story was with pictures. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for doing this. Tracy Bates CEO of the Lucas Museum. I know this is not a Star Wars museum but when I when I walk into this building it does feel like I'm entering a spaceship.

21:43How do you describe the Lucas Museum? Well in terms of the architecture The plan was always, you know, My Young Song is another creative genius force like our brilliant founder, George Lucas. So there's always been a plan that the building itself would be art. It would be a sculpture so that future generations, hopefully especially children, would look at the building and say, that looks really important. The art in it must be really important. We never put a value on any of the artists here. There's no hierarchy around the entire gallery space. You can have a Picasso next to John Philip Falter, next to Pat Hand, which is one of the original dogs playing poker images, which we're very lucky to have here.

22:28It's from 1894, and I love that that's here because growing up in the Midlands in the UK, everybody had a bad version of dogs playing poker. Do you have a Picasso here? We do. We have a Van Gogh, we have a Picasso. So we have many deemed incredible artists, but the thread through all of it is it's a story. So narrative art is a story in one frame. So you'll be able to look at it and understand a story. You don't need wall text at the side to explain that. So we do have Picasso's, et cetera, that fit that mold where you can see a story in real time. And does George also dislike it when we, because I think a lot of people do, at least at the start, the intro to this space call it a Star Wars museum.

23:15He's very wonderful in having no opinion on how people feel about him or Star Wars over 50 years. So what he does want to make sure is that people understand that it isn't just a Star Wars museum. He's only 7 % of our entire gallery hang is Star Wars. George Lucas is known for creating worlds adored by fans around the world. It took him nearly 20 years to build this museum. And it's transformed the skyline of South Los Angeles and transfixed those of us lucky enough to get a sneak peek inside. The BBC's Regan Morris reporting from Los Angeles there.

24:06can politicians improve our economic fortunes dave ramsey says no i'm tristan redmond from the global story and i've been speaking to the massively popular u.s money guru he says if there's a financial crisis it's on us when you borrow on credit cards and take out a $1 ,200 car payment on a freaking Range Rover. You've destroyed your life, not the president. For the full interview, listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you listen.