25/01/2017 Outside Source

Hello, I'm Ros Atkins, this is Outside Source.

Let's look through some of the main stories here in the BBC Newsroom.

Donald Trump has signed into action orders to build his wall and limit

funds to cities that protect illegal immigrants, and says building

I would say in months, I am planning to start immediately.

We'll also be picking apart what Donald Trump's latest

policies means for abortion, the environment and immigration from

A lot to get through - if you want to get in touch,

It is hard to predict which subject areas will generate interest from

your questions and most of the questions are about Executive

orders, what the presidents can use them for, if there are any checks,

can they sign of funding or of Congress needs to get involved. We

have been looking at the questions on Executive orders, Anthony will

join us in about 15 minutes and we can work through a lot of these

issues. We must turn to some other really significant developments. Let

us do that. Bit by bit. There are reports that Mr Trump might intend

to lift a ban on CIA black site prisons, secret prisons or non-US

territory used for interrogations and well President George W Bush was

in power. The New York Times says

there is a draft executive order that would roll back a series

of restrictions that Barack Obama set on the treatment of detainees -

other media has this But let's take note of this -

the White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says this document isn't

from the White House. Can you shed any light on this draft

memo going around about interrogation practices? Yes. What

agency did this originate from? I don't know, it is not a White House

document and for those who have reported on this, this is the second

day that a document that was not from the White House has been

reported on as factual. I have no idea where that came from. It is not

a White House document. Donald Trump has been asked about water boarding.

If he feels it might prompt some useful information. This was his

reply... Absolutely, I feel it works.

But he'll "defer to the Defence Secretary and CIA Director"

But he is quite clear that he believes it is something the United

States can justify and that it works. We can speak to Barbara Plett

Usher. That statement on water boarding, is that a significant

shift? He has saying that -- been saying that throughout the campaign,

that enhanced interrogation techniques can be effective and he

said that terror suspects deserve it but the caveat is significant. That

he would take the advice or defer to the head of the military and the CIA

and the head of the military has been clear that they will stand

against enhanced interrogation techniques, this is something that

do not advise, in keeping with government policy. At the moment we

are looking at Mr Trump's opinion. If we see that enhanced in any

Executive what we will have to question what will come from this.

If he says he would refer to the Cabinet members and intelligence

officials, it seems unlikely he will move forward on this. I wanted to

mention reports on black sites, CIA prisons, we have seen organisations

saying that they oppose this what I wanted to emphasise the caveat, we

cannot confirm this is happening. What have you been hearing? This is

something that is in the Pentagon and intelligence areas and I am at

the State Department so there has not been a lot of talk here. But the

document circulated talks about are a few of those black sites, it is

something that President Obama did away with, something that was very

much criticised at home and especially abroad and at Whitby at

big step to bring them back but what does review mean? It means Mr Trump

is thinking about it, he wants to signal he is ready to go in that

direction and the question is, what do his key officials in the security

team advise him? And if he is going to take the opinion of the top

people on that, particularly the head of the military, he will be

told he needs to temper that kind of approach. The next thing, I want to

bring up some copy on the screen... Each of the stories would be

considered significant on their own. This is from Reuters, the draft of

an Executive order has been seen directing the Pentagon and State

Department to create plans for safe zones for civilians in Syria.

Barbara? What are you hearing? I can tell you that the State Department

is scrambling to keep up with not only these executive orders but the

reports about executive orders that might get issued so we're not

getting any official reaction but I can say that this is consistent with

what Mr Trump said during his campaign. He supported the idea of

safe zones in Syria for civilians, essentially at the time he presented

them as a way to keep Syrian civilians in Syria or east of the

region as a way to stem the refugee crisis and another thing he said he

-- is he would get the Gulf countries to pay for that. Would

they do that? He has never detailed how this would work militarily and

the government has not gone for them so far because to have a real one

you have to have military muscle behind it, planes in the sky ready

to shoot down any threat. This is quite a big deal to set up a safe

sun but that will be studied, apparently. One last story of huge

significance, if it happens. Reports that immigrants from seven

countries, including Libya, Yemen, Iran, Syria and Iraq will be

incredibly restricted in their ability to come into the US. What

have you heard? That is part of Mr Trump 's promise to restrict

immigration from countries that are seen as a real security threat

because they have Islamic State or Al-Qaeda operatives in them and he

says he is not convinced the betting is good enough to make sure there is

no threat so this has not been announced from -- but from what we

hear, the idea is to block immigrants or bases from seven

countries, all of them North African and Middle Eastern, for at least a

period of one month or more. In order to look at what the vetting

practices should be. That would be something that falls to the State

Department briefed and you can hear people here saying we have stringent

practices already and we are not sure how far we can go unless that

it is something he turned to instead of his initial promise, which was to

block Muslims from coming to the United States. As it can see from

the countries mentioned, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, they are all

Muslim countries anyway. But it would be some specific countries

rather than a blanket ban and the way it has been presented is this

would be a temporary block to begin with, based on reviewing vetting

procedures. It has been quite a day. Thank you for helping us for that.

Barbara Plett Usher live from the State Department. We're spending the

entire hour looking at developments with the Trump administration. We

are taking you through these one by one. And also any questions you have

on the stories we are covering. You can find me on social media and we

have an e-mail address on screen. Mr Trump has already fundamentally

shifted US policy on trade, energy, and immigration next

to federal communication. Two departments have been

on the receiving end of a de These are memos released

to the media - they show the President has banned US

Environmental Protection Agency employees from "providing updates

on social media or to reporters". Similar guidance has been

issued to Department That didn't go down well

with someone with access Today, the amount of carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time

in the last 650,000 years. The point was to say, please take

climate change seriously. That and a couple of

others were deleted. Matt McGrath is the BBC's

environment correspondent. I wanted to know from him whether it

would be normal for an environmental agency like this to communicate

directly with journalists Pretty much so and what has happened

in the United States under President Trump is very unusual. If you look

at what he said about what he wants the EPA to be, he wants to be about

clean air clean water. Not to be doing so much stuff on climate

change. At the moment they have put in place a block on the EPA

furthering grants and doing business and they have asked employees not to

communicate about that. Whether that will be reviewed and what will

happen, we don't yet know. Clean air and what is important but regarding

climate change the suggestion is the White House will take a more central

role on how America responds? You must understand the EPA has played a

crucial role under President Obama on climate change, the Supreme Court

Judge -- judged that carbon dioxide gas was a blatant and President

Obama used EPA to regulate that. President Trump and his team believe

the EPA is involved on putting up too much regulation that stop the

oil and gas industry and the coal industry and he wants to remove

those. The battle over climate has practical applications and President

Trump sees this as key to the way he revives industry throughout the US.

Is one of the applications that EPA will get smaller? That is what

people fear, if not shut down, at least curtailed in many ways. Scott

Pruitt, the Oklahoma Attorney General, who was likely to be the

head of the EPA, has taken lawsuits against EPA. The belief is they will

curtail this and its role in carbon dioxide production. We have talked

about Federal Communications and immigration and trade and

international security. We can talk about what he did on Monday.

On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order cancelling funds

for groups that offer abortions or abortion advocacy, even if they

This means that aid agencies working in foreign countries will lose

Today we've heard that the Netherlands is launching

a global fund to try and cover the lost funding.

The country's foreign ministry said "Where decisions are taken that

are bad for women in developing countries we should

"It's not about the politics, it's about those women."

PAI is a global reproductive health organisation and says "This

is a policy denying women life-saving services -

it will cut off funding for groups providing HIV testing kits

to teenagers, it will cut malaria programmes".

But Donald Trump and his supporters argue this move is justified.

The White House Press Secretary took on the issue on Monday.

This is Sean Spicer. I think the President has made it clear he is

pro-life. He wants to stand up for all Americans, including the unborn,

and the reinstatement of this policy is not just something that echoes

that value but respects Nick Sayer funding and ensures we stand up not

just for life and the life of the unborn but for all taxpayer funds

being spent oversized to perform an action that is contrary to the

actions of this President. -- overseas. This continues to grow.

Nancy Kacungira in Nairobi updated me on what this means

for aid organisations in developing countries.

Countries like Kenya. Simply, they are worried they will have to reduce

the number of services they offer to some of the oppressed people on the

continent. The thing about this iteration of the global bank is it

has spread the net wider and it encompasses not just family planning

at all global health funding. This means organisations working with

malaria programmes here and with maternal health programmes, whatever

it is, they have to ensure there is not a single part of any of those

programmes that does so much as offer the suggestion of abortion.

There is quite a lot of concern that this is going to impact them heavily

in terms of the services they can offer. There might be some Americans

who want to ask, why is it us that is required to provide the funding

for this? That is a long-standing commitment that the US has

continually made and abortion is a very contentious issue. Here in

Africa, there are 1.6 million cases related to unsafe abortions that are

tended to across the continent every year and there is not much funding

coming from anywhere else. Aid organisations have traditionally

relied on the United States for help with some of this funding,

especially in countries where the restrictions and the law allowed

abortion is very complex or very ambiguous. So it is for the longest

term partnership but the United States has been involved in with the

continent and many will be sad to see that change. Thank you. Let us

continue on the coverage of all the developments today involving the

Trump administration. I want to talk about Gary Cohn -

he's Mr Trump's pick to lead the US Until that job offer came, he's been

President of Goldman Sachs. His selection has sent the sent

Goldman Sachs shareprice soaring It has gone up. This is January and

it has been going up. He's going to have to divest

himself from the bank - The Wall Street Journal

puts a figure on it. It estimated that his exit will top

$100 million. First of all, what is this job? What will he be doing? You

will remember under the Obama administration he assembled a

council so people who were within the business community and also

economists who got around and talked a lot about what the direction of

the US economy and what should be done about it. This is an extension

of that same kind of idea. What is interesting is when you look at the

wider Trump economic team, including other members of that team, there

are a few Goldman Sachs veterans and that is part of the reason why we

see the stock value going up so much and that is probably one of the

biggest lifts to the Dow since the election, we have seen them entering

the Trump administration. That might lead to a lighter touch regulation

for the banking sector and perhaps we could see after the crash in

2008? Exactly right. But just for banks in general and Mr Trump has

spoken about this and his colleagues, about rolling back some

of those backing regulations but specifically regarding Goldman

Sachs, when you have more than a few people who are veterans of that bank

as part of the demonstration, there could be a lighter touch

specifically regarding that bank. Thank you for joining us twice. We

have been getting lots of questions for you. Specifically about

executive orders. We will get to those in a few moments.

Women are experiencing widespread discrimination when it comes

to dress codes at work, according to a parliamentary report.

MPs heard from hundreds of women who reported that the dress codes

She was told to wear high heels on her first day

Scarlet Harris is the women's equality officer at the TUC.

Melanie Bramwell runs a recruitment agency.

I caught up with them to hear about dress code discrimination

and how Nicola refused to toe the line.

When I realised that they were insisting that all women wore high

heels to portray their desired image, it made me realise that,

actually, my employer didn't want me to just look smart and professional,

And I didn't want to be seen as attractive in the workplace.

So, Scarlet, how widespread is the issue?

The committee found lots and lots of women talking

about their experiences of being made to wear,

not just high heels, but certain types of make up, being asked

to wear sheer blouses, being asked to wear skirts

The government said Nicola's dress code was unlawful,

But MPs said that the law wasn't effective enough, leaving employers

It is open to interpretation, as we say, the word reasonable

is used there and that is open to interpretation.

Is it so bad to ask a woman worker to wear a heel when we ask male

I think they are two entirely different things.

They took lots of evidence from women saying they were going

home with bleeding feet, they were taking painkillers

at night to be able to sleep because they were in so much pain

from the shoes they'd been wearing during the day.

That's just not comparable to wearing a tie or a suit jacket.

Some might say this is all a bit of a storm in a teacup.

They might very well do but you have to look at the bigger picture.

There are plenty of women who like to wear heels to work,

like to wear a face full of make-up to work.

This issue, the high heel thing, is symbolic of a hangover from that

1950s kind of era where women were only seen as secretaries

and receptionists, and now we are running the companies.

Let us wear what we want, as long as we are smart.

This is Outside Source live from the BBC newsroom.

Donald Trump has signed executive orders launching plans to build

a wall on the US-Mexico border and limiting funds to cities that

We can go back to Washington, Anthony Zurcher is here. We have a

lot of questions for you about executive orders. A couple of people

want to say, what about the funds? If you order something with

executive orders, can you worry that the funding is in place? You cannot

create new funding with executive orders but you can move the funding

around so Trump might be trying to move some funds for the wall

building previously allocated for other reasons into wall construction

or something for subsidies and aid to Mexico into wall construction but

Congress has the power and the purse and originally brings new funding

into existence and Congress has to pass an appropriation. Someone asks,

are the examples that fall outside the scope of executive orders? Well,

anything that creates new law, take an example, immigration, Congress

originally was trying to legalise what permanently normalise the

status of children who had come to the country as undocumented and make

them permanent residence or give them some immigration status and

they did not do that so Barack Obama used an Executive order to say, we

will not deport them, given temporary status. That was only a

temporary move, he could not make a lot to say these people are not

legal. In the same way he try to get Congress to pass laws increasing

regulation of firearms. He wasn't able to so he executive orders that

used some of his Presidential authority to increase scrutiny on

gun sales but he could not outright ban assault rifles or have larger

background checks at gun shows and things like that. Some people have

picked up on this point... How long do these executive orders last, I

have a prominent? Be last until they be repealed. Executive orders that

Barack Obama put into place lasted through the expiration of his term

into Donald Trump's term but because one President can do one thing,

another can it so Donald Trump can enter them when he wants as has done

with the abortion counselling and that he stated. We appreciate your

help. What about tomorrow? More on immigration, particularly taking a

look at people coming from other countries. There was talk about a

ban on Muslims, I don't think we will see that but we could see some

immigration visa bans on certain countries and also that could be

further looking at refugees, perhaps a ban on Serbian refugees and a

suspension of the US refugee programme. We will see. You will

help us through that. Thank you. We appreciate that. Thank you for all

of us who stayed with us. Lead story is President Trump has begun the

process of building a wall along the US Mexico border but there have been

many other developments besides. All the updates online. I will see you

tomorrow. Goodbye. This time yesterday John was

explaining how dry it has been in the last couple of months because of