Middle East War Week 3, Trump Messaging 'Winning', Voting Act

0:02Ayesha Rascoe:President Trump is telling NATO allies they face a, quote, very bad future if they don't help secure the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian regime is blocking the key oil shipping route and attacking Gulf countries as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran enters its third week. I am Michelle Martin. That's A. Martinez. And this is Up First from NPR News. As the public remains deeply ambivalent about the war with Iran, President Trump is doubling down on his message that the U.S. is winning. is that the reality on the ground or is he just trying to manage a global energy crisis? And Republicans are pushing a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

0:38Millions of Americans don't have easy access to those documents. Does it have the votes to pass? Stay with us. We've got news that you can start your day with.

0:51This message comes from Schwab. Everyone has moments when they could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. There is no sign the Iran war is ending anytime soon, and Iran is exacting a painful price.

1:13Ayesha Rascoe:Iran is attacking Gulf countries and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping route. President Trump is pressuring countries to help reopen it, and a second front in the war is heating up with new Israeli ground operations in Lebanon and also potential diplomacy. NPR's Daniel Estrin is with us from Tel Aviv. Daniel, where do things stand? Well, Iran is continuing to attack Gulf countries. It says it's punishing those Gulf countries for allowing the U.S. to use their territory to mount attacks on Iran. And so we are seeing the global implications. Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest airport, temporarily suspended flights yet again after a drone attack started a fire.

1:51And then there's the effect to the world's oil trade. Iran is largely blocking that key shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz. And President Trump says he's speaking to about a half a dozen countries, asking them to send military help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He has threatened a, quote, very bad future if NATO allies don't help. Daniel mentioned you were in Tel Aviv, in Israel. So what are the effects of Israel's attack on Iran now more than, what, two weeks into the war? An Israeli military spokesman briefed reporters this morning about how the war is going in their eyes. He said the Israeli military has taken out more than 70 percent of Iran's ballistic missile launchers.

2:29But we do see Iran still firing missiles daily toward Gulf countries and toward Israel, including shortly before I got on to speak with you. Israel, according to the Israeli military, is now working to degrade Iran's nuclear program as well. And the military spokesman said that there have been some strikes that he cannot speak about yet. The major question here is whether this war will end with Iran still in possession of highly enriched uranium that it has, which Iran says is buried under rubble from the war last year. So the question is could they simply after the war retrieve it and use it to build a nuclear weapon?

3:07But Iran's military capabilities are deeply weakened in this war. The regime though is still intact, still able to inflict global pain as we see. And Israel's public timetable for this war keeps changing. Today, the military spokesman said that Israel has war plans in Iran for the next three weeks. Next three weeks. Okay. Another front in this war is Lebanon. What are Israel's plans in Lebanon? Two things are happening at the same time. We're seeing a military ramp up in Lebanon, and we're also seeing attempts at potential diplomacy. Hezbollah, which is the Iranian-funded militia in Lebanon, has been trying to expand their rocket attacks against Israel in recent days, according to the Israeli military.

3:51And Israel has been hitting Hezbollah hard in this war. The Israeli military says now it has begun what it calls limited and targeted ground operations beyond the Israel-Lebanon border area into new areas of southern Lebanon where the Israeli military has not previously been during this war. I spoke to a person briefed on the matter, not authorized to speak publicly and speaking on condition of anonymity. And that person told me that Israel intends to gradually increase this ground incursion deeper into Lebanon, while at the same time, there are a lot of efforts behind the scenes for direct Israel-Lebanon ceasefire negotiations.

4:31There are even reports of a French initiative for Lebanon to formally recognize Israel for the very first time in history. The person I spoke to who was briefed on this matter said Israel has tapped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's confidant, Ron Dermer, to help lead this diplomatic effort on Israel's behalf, and that the U.S. and Israel see a unique opportunity, seeing signs that the Lebanese government is interested in taking tougher steps against Hezbollah, operating as an armed militia in the country. All right, that's NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Daniel, thanks. You're welcome. President Trump and his top aides are amplifying a message of winning the war with Iran.

5:12As far as I'm concerned, we've essentially defeated Iran.

5:16Ayesha Rascoe:This latest effort to reinforce an image of strength comes as gas prices soar, global markets are down, and polls show Americans are skeptical of the war. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez traveled with the president this weekend in Florida. So, Franco, President Trump is really kind of zeroing in on this message about winning the war over the weekend. So how does that fit with the shifting narrative that the White House has given for going to war in the first place? Yeah, I mean, the administration has really struggled at first to give it a clear explanation of why the US needed to go to war.

5:46You know, was it about helping protesters? Was it because Iran was going to strike first? I mean, all that kind of confusion put the administration on a back foot politically. But now the talk is about winning and dominating. You know, on the way home, Trump boasted of taking out Iran's air force, the Navy. And he says Iran has a little fight left, but not much. So what's there to gain then by just repeating the idea that the United States is winning this war? Well, A, I mean, as you know, messaging is very important to this White House. And, you know, I was speaking with Jenny Strummer-Galley, who studies political messaging at Syracuse University.

6:21And she sees this repetition of winning as an attempt to refocus the conversation on one of unified power.

6:28Ayesha Rascoe:When you watch Trump and his messaging, he is always aware of how the message is looking. He's a showman still at heart. And as a showman, part of his show is this vision of strength and success. So, Franco, this is something definitely not new for President Trump. Not at all. I mean, Trump is very attuned to the politics of the moment. He can see the polls. He can see how the split among his own supporters who were concerned about this dragging on. Stromer Galley calls it an exercise of power in trying to convince people of something their eyes may not actually see. This strong, repetitive, we're winning, we're winning, we're winning, I think is, again, strategically an effort to try to get everybody on the same page with this story.

7:20Ayesha Rascoe:so that they can shape a reality that this is not going to be a quagmire, that this is not going to be like Iraq, because that's the comparison and that's what they're fighting against. You know, the president is also blaming the media as part of the effort. For example, he posted this weekend that the media wants the U.S. to lose the war. And then a little bit later, the FCC chair threatened to pull broadcast license over a station's coverage of the war. Now, objectively, there have been some military successes for the U.S. with a cost, though. 13 U.S. service members have died, and it's not really clear how long this is all going to last.

7:53Oil prices are up. What could the possible consequences then be for President Trump? Yeah, I mean, it's about public support and goes back to the challenges Trump has faced offering different rationales for the war. I mean, Trump never really made a public case ahead of time. So the messaging kind of took place after the strike started. He eventually settled on this idea that he had a feeling Iran was going to strike first, but he never really provided evidence. And now he says the end of the war will come soon. And he also says it'll take as long as necessary. And really, all of that just seems arbitrary.

8:27The White House continues, though, to count on its message resonating with at least its most loyal supporters, you know, and as they have successfully done many times before. That's White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Thanks a lot. Thank you, A.

8:51Republicans in the Senate are set to take up an issue this week that is near and dear to President Trump's heart, non-citizen voting.

8:59Ayesha Rascoe:It has never been shown to be a widespread problem in American elections, but Trump continues to insist that it is. And he's been pushing Senate Republicans to get around a procedural hurdle by blowing up the legislative filibuster to pass new voting restrictions ahead of this year's midterms. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks is here with us now. So, Miles, this bill is called the Save America Act. What is it? So it's a major elections overhaul. It would require all voters to show photo ID to vote. But the most notable change is actually on the registration side of things. The bill would require people to provide proof of their U.S.

9:35citizenship when they register to vote, which may not sound like a big deal. The vast majority of Americans believe that only Americans should vote in American elections. But having the documents to prove that citizenship is a whole different beast. We're talking about a birth certificate or a passport in most cases. And research has shown that tens of millions of Americans do not have easy access to either of those documents, notably because they're expensive to acquire. We just got a passport for our daughter, A, a couple of weeks ago, and it cost hundreds of dollars to get. Yeah. And, you know, that's a lot of people and primaries are already underway.

10:09When would this new law then take effect? It would be immediate. So then when you think about the millions of people who could potentially be negatively impacted versus these relatively few cases of non-citizen voting that we see every election cycle, that's why election experts basically look at this overhaul and say this could create an administrative nightmare with very little upside. All right. So what are the bill's chances then? President Trump is pushing hard for it, and he's also pushing to expand it, to restrict vote by mail in a lot of instances as well. But it is looking increasingly likely that he's going to be disappointed when he gets to a vote this week.

10:42To pass, the bill needs 60 votes to overcome the Senate filibuster. Senate Democrats are a flat-out no, so Republicans have just 53 votes, and there is currently no appetite on the GOP side of things to change the Senate rules to circumvent that filibuster, that 60-vote threshold. That's all according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who alluded last week when talking to reporters that he's basically between a rock and a hard place between his colleagues in the Senate and the president. It's about the votes. It's about the math. And for better or worse, I'm the one who has to be the clear eyed realist about what we can achieve here.

11:15It's an interesting moment politically, though, because Trump has insisted that this bill be expansive, not a watered down version, he says. But if it were narrower or more targeted specifically at the photo ID provision, for instance, it might have a better chance of getting these Republicans on board and even getting some Senate Democrats. So President Trump, when he talked about this bill in the State of the Union, he repeated a very familiar lie saying that it was needed because Democrats can only win elections if they cheat. Are we likely to see more of that messaging, that language, if the bill fails?

11:46I mean, if the midterms do not go Republicans' way, almost certainly. I think the bigger question is whether these sort of election lives that Trump has been pushing for years are as potent now as they were in the time after 2020, for instance. The president won the 2024 election. He won the popular vote. And his voters universally said that that was a well-run election. So the question now is, do those people believe the same system is now rigged against him just two years later? NPR just released a poll with PBS News and Marist College that sort of pointed in both directions on that. The majority of Republican voters said they do believe voter fraud is going to happen in the midterms.

12:21But a majority of them also said they expect their state or locality to run a good election. I think if Trump keeps pushing these sort of lies, you can expect that latter number to go down. That's NPR's Miles Parks. Thanks a lot, Miles. Thanks, A.

12:38Ayesha Rascoe:Today's episode of Up First was edited by Hannah Block, Dana Farrington, Ben Swayze, Mohamed El-Bardisi, and H.J. Mai. It was produced by Imant Ma 'ani and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hainas and our technical director, Stacey Abbott. Join us again tomorrow.

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14:28Ayesha Rascoe:At joinmidi.com. This is Ira Glass of This American Life. Do you know our show? Okay, well either way I'm going to tell you about it. We make stories. that hopefully pull you in at the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations, and then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right. I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.