Transcript of UN General Assembly Week, Trump's Triumphal Arch, Air Traffic Control AI New

World leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly this week.

Wars in Ukraine and Iran hang over the meeting. President Trump and Iran's president will attend. So what does that mean for a world body that has not been relevant to their war?

I'm Michelle Martin. That's Steve Inskeep. And this is Up First from NPR News. President Trump has a new rationale for one of his construction projects that faces legal problems. He wants to build a giant arch between Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. First, he said the nation's capital needs one. Now he says it will be a base for drones, snipers and ammunition. Does that make it easier to keep going without asking Congress?

Also, 3 news organizations are suing the Trump administration. President Trump banned CNN, MSNBC and Politico because he didn't like their coverage. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. It's the time of year when world leaders gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. This meeting is the last for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Secretary-General António Guterres: For me, this is not the moment to look back.

It is a time to look ahead.

Which makes sense, since the world body cannot look back on much relevance lately. World powers are fractured over climate change, AI, and wars in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf.

NPR's Michelle Kellerman is in New York all week and joins us. Michelle, good morning.

Good morning, Steve.

What are you going to be watching for?

Well, first will be President Trump's address to the world body. That's tomorrow morning. And While he's been trying to pitch himself as a— to the world as a peacemaker, the war he launched against Iran really overshadows this gathering. President Trump promised it wouldn't take long, but here we are many months in and there's no sign the conflict is ending. And, you know, Steve, it's really disrupted not just energy markets, but also the supply of fertilizers. And that has a big impact around the globe.

Mm-hmm.

So many countries are looking to the U.S., they're looking to Gulf countries, to Iran, to find some ways to restore those shipping routes. Iran's president will be here, so that's another big thing I'm watching. He'll be speaking a day after Trump. It's not clear if there'll be any kind of interaction between lower-level U.S. and Iranian officials, but U.S. officials haven't ruled that out.

Okay, I don't know. They'll be in this giant building that is designed for diplomacy at a meeting that is supposed to be about diplomacy. Is there any chance of any diplomacy?

Well, there could be on the sideline meetings, but, you know, the UN itself has really been sidelined. It offered to set up a system to monitor civilian shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, and that didn't gain much traction. I talked to one UN watcher, Richard Gowen of the International Crisis Group, and he says while Secretary-General António Guterres really is trying to find solutions, the world is just too fractured. Take a listen.

In some ways, He has been defending the idea of international cooperation almost after it's too late. Leaders like Vladimir Putin, perhaps President Trump, don't take this talk of global solidarity all that seriously.

And there'll be some key players missing, including China's Xi Jinping, who's meeting with Trump later in the week in Washington. Gowen says it's going to be kind of a split-screen moment where you have the U.S. and China at the White House while smaller powers are speaking at an increasingly empty U.N. General Assembly hall. And that just shows where power lies these days.

So is the U.N. also irrelevant to Ukraine?

Well, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council with veto powers, so the council hasn't been able to do anything on Ukraine. But Ukraine's president will be back here this year. He says he's meeting with Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to meet with Russia's foreign minister. And European officials are definitely trying to keep attention focused on this to help Ukraine get through another winter.

What are diplomats at the United Nations also trying to focus attention on if they can?

Well, climate change and AI are going to be big topics, though. You know, President Trump last year called climate change a hoax and he tried to downplay all this latest concerns about AI, too. It'll also be interesting to see what Venezuela's interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, has to say. vice president to Nicolás Maduro before the U.S. military swept in to arrest him earlier this year. And while she's here at the United Nations, Maduro remains in custody just a few miles away.

NPR's Michelle Kellerman, we'll be listening to you all week. Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

The president altered the stated purpose of a planned triumphal arch in Washington.

He first proposed it as a monument to America's 250th anniversary, but it's also a monument to his effort to reshape the Capitol. But in the face of legal difficulty, the president came up with a social media post. He says the arch will now be a military base for drones, snipers and ammunition.

NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez is covering this latest development. Franco, good morning.

Good morning, Steve.

Okay, so what is the context for the president's sudden change of plans for this arch?

I mean, the context is court action. I mean, at the beginning of the month, the administration announced that construction would actually begin within 2 weeks. And then a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to give 48 hours notice before engaging in any activity on the site. So that slowed things down. So the new plan, as Trump laid out in a social media post, is to, quote, house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones plus snipers on both the roof and plaza areas.

Okay, so this arch is a national security move now, according to the Truth Social post, which sounds like claims that Trump made about his ballroom complex when it was blocked in court.

Yeah, I mean, it's a very similar argument. The president claimed that the military actually called for this, for the Arch, but he's provided no details. I spoke with Mark Cancian. He's a retired Marine Corps colonel and military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He's really questioning the reasoning for this, pointing out that Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall is just a mile away. The Pentagon is close by. And he says the national security considerations for the Arch and the White House are just not the same.

The ballroom has a bunker, a large facility for the president underneath it. The difference is that the bunker reflects a widely accepted need to protect the president. It's bipartisan. There already was a bunker. This would be more elaborate. It doesn't seem to be any need. There certainly hasn't been any need articulated beforehand about why this facility would need drones and snipers.

Franco, as you know, the construction of the arch is also part of a lawsuit brought by veterans, and one of their arguments is that it disrupts the sightline. You have this symbolic view in Washington from the Lincoln Memorial across the river to the former home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It speaks symbolically to the reunion of this country after the Civil War. But are the veterans the only ones concerned here?

No, actually, a lot of people are concerned, and that's partially because it's so big and it's just one of several projects that could change the Washington landscape. I mean, polls show most voters don't want this. I mean, we've already spoken about the ballroom, which is going to be a massive structure that changes the dynamics of the White House. Trump's also paved over the Rose Garden. He's installing a granite helipad on the South Lawn. and he's threatening to rip down the Kennedy Center.

Well, how does all of that fit into his effort to expand executive power?

Well, I mean, in this case, he's essentially ignoring many of the traditional processes in place, you know, skipping Congress, and taking what is a very liberal interpretation of his own executive authority, and frankly, daring those opposed to him to try to stop him, and like the ballroom, many fear that he will move too quickly, much more quickly than the courts can respond, to the point where it just gets very, very hard to kind of turn the clock back or stop or slow the project to make a difference.

NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, pleasure to hear from you, sir.

Thank you, Steve.

3 news organizations have sued the Trump administration: CNN, MSNOW and Politico. They are answering the president's effort to keep them out of the White House. On Friday, Trump said he was banning these news organizations because he didn't like what they were reporting. There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories. Now, if they want to write them, that's fine, but I don't have to let them into my— into the people's house. The representatives of these news organizations had their access passes revoked, and we're going to talk this through with NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, welcome back.

Good morning, Steve.

Okay, so the lawsuit has just been filed this morning about this thing that happened over the weekend. What is the argument the outlets make?

Well, we heard a clip of President Trump there saying there's something wrong with the country that allows this. Here's what the lawsuit says in its opening stanzas. It says, quote, this ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles. What are the elements at play here? Well, the, the lawsuit says the First Amendment rights to free speech— that is, they are punishing the press for the coverage that he doesn't like. There is no, as he notes, there is no requirement that the president allow a certain news outlet to be there. And at the same time, once allowed, they can't be thrown out because he doesn't like the coverage. Also, they point to the 5th Amendment. That's the due process clause that says you have to have some sort of right to object or talk through or appeal formally a rule that goes against you, that throws you out. There's been no due process. The president just sort of announced it, and there it was.

And there's the matter of viewpoint discrimination. Are you treating people equally regardless of what access you give? Let's talk about what's at stake here. There's the matter of reporters on the White House grounds, inside the press room, getting a back and forth with press secretaries and possibly other staff. But there's also the matter of the pool, as it's called, the small group that follows the president almost everywhere. What's happening with that now?

Right. In particular, we're talking about the TV pool that provides the footage of what the president is doing at appearances that might be particularly in smaller areas where you can't have 1,000 different news organizations covering it. It's expensive and it's logistically complicated. reasons why the White House might want it. So there are 5 networks that do that. CNN, of course, is one of them. This morning, the White House sends out guidance about who's going to be the pool. It was CNN's turn. There's nobody listed. Why is that? Well, the other networks have said essentially, we're not going to step up and fill the gap if you're tossing out CNN. A strike against one of us is a strike against all of us. And notably, Fox News fully embracing that. Its White House reporter is— or chief White House reporter, Jackie Heinrich, is the head of the White House Correspondents Association. And she's made clear also that this— she sees this as a violation of First Amendment rights. But they too, you know, their owner Rupert Murdoch has struck an alliance with the president, but they are covering the president up and down on the news side.

And also they recognize a Democratic president, a liberal White House, could toss them out as well.

Yeah, I'm remembering when the Obama administration had its problems with Fox News, other news organizations that maybe were politically different than Fox stood up for Fox. So I want to understand this then. There is No major network at all following the president around today. I mean, there are reporters, but there are no cameras from a major network following the president around today in New York at all.

They say he doesn't get this. And of course, let's remember, the president's desire for press coverage and particularly television coverage is paramount, even as he bitterly resents some of the accompanying reporting and analysis. But that said, he's— you know, CNN was supposed to cover him at the White House, his departure to go to New York City for the United Nations. The U.N. has its own television feed, so if he makes remarks there, if he's spotted in the crowd, you can see him and hear him that way. But you're not going to have the typical TV coverage that we expect from CNN, and that may wear on the president as well, even as it starts to go through the courts today.

Well, we'll wait and hear what the courts have to say about this. David, thanks.

You bet.

NPR's David Folkenflik. Now, this week, The Sunday Story features one of the biggest missing persons cases of our time. 14 years ago, the American journalist Austin Tice Vanished in Syria. A series from NPR and the BBC searches for evidence of what happened to him. Here are a list with GPS coordinates of every location that Austin is possibly known to have been held at. On The Sunday Story, NPR and the BBC investigate the case of Austin Tice. Listen here on NPR's Up First podcast. And that's Up First for this Monday, September 21st. I'm Steve Inskeep.

And I'm Michelle Martin. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tara Neal, Dana Farrington, Jennifer Portman, Muhammad ElBaradee, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes. Our technical director is Carly Strange. And we hope you'll join us again tomorrow.