Transcript of US Prepares For Possible Strikes, Midterm Early Voting, Trump BBC Deposition

The U.S. is sending a 3rd aircraft carrier to the Middle East.

Oil prices are climbing back up as signs point to a possible military attack on Iran. What could another round of fighting accomplish?

I'm Leila Fawadid. That's A. Martinez. And this is Up First from NPR News. Almost 21 million people have already voted. Turnout is way up in key battleground states compared to the last midterms. What can we learn from the data?

And President Trump will have to testify in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC. A judge said if he wants to sue, he has to play by the court's rules. What could the BBC ask the president under oath? Stay with us. We got the news you need to start your day. There are tangible moves that point to the possibility of more heavy fighting in Iran in the next few weeks.

Military reinforcements are moving in, and some U.S. personnel are moving out of the region.

To break this all down, we're joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre. So, Greg, we heard yesterday about the potential plans between the U.S. and Israel maybe to launch a major strike or major strikes from someone who was briefed on them and talked to NPR on the condition of anonymity. What more do we know today?

Yeah, a few bits and pieces, but perhaps the only person who knows for sure what will happen is President Trump, and he's being intentionally vague. And as we But as we've seen previously in this war, Trump often changes his mind. The U.S. military will prepare for one possible action, only to have it called off by Trump, and he'll go in a different direction. What we do have are clear signs of preparations for a possible attack. The U.S. is sending a 3rd aircraft carrier to the Middle East. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a low-key visit to Israel this week, where he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some U.S. State Department officials and family members are moving out of Saudi Arabia. So collectively, this points to the growing possibility, but not the certainty, of military action.

Okay, so if there was going to be action, would it be before or after the November 3rd midterm elections?

Yeah, it seems much more likely afterward. Trump wants lower oil prices, and military action is going to cause the price to jump. In fact, today Brent crude oil is trading at $114 a barrel. This is the highest since May, just based on the talk of possible action. Israel has elections on Tuesday, and Netanyahu is battling for his political survival. This is another complicating factor. And the U.S. military pieces aren't all in place. That 3rd U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, won't be in the region for another week or so.

All right. How is Iran preparing for the possibility of more fighting?

So Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said yesterday that his country was prepared for both diplomacy and, and war. Iran continues to fire on oil tankers going through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed Thursday that 7 were hit. Now, Trump pushed back, saying this just wasn't true. It was just an attempt to drive up oil prices. Now, Iran says it could also target a range of facilities in Arab Gulf states. And as we know, Iranian missiles and drones have hit key oil and gas hubs, airports, commercial areas, and have caused significant damage. Iran would also try to attack U.S. military bases and ships. And we've seen recently these damage reports by the U.S. government that are much higher than the Pentagon originally let on, that Iran hit 81 planes and more than a dozen U.S. military bases.

I guess the largest overall question is, would more fighting end the war?

It's just impossible to predict if this round would be different than the previous ones. The U.S. and Israel still have the firepower to inflict additional heavy damage, but there's been no sign that Iran is on the verge of making major concessions. Really, to the contrary, Iran is making demands. It wants formal control over Strait of Hormuz. It wants U.S. troops out of the region. For the U.S., there are 2 critical issues that haven't changed since the early days of the war: a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a deal on Iran's nuclear program.

That's NPR's Greg Myre. Greg, thanks a lot.

Sure thing, eh?

The latest data this morning shows almost 21 million people have cast their votes in the midterms.

Yeah, that's according to the University of Florida's Election Lab, which tracks those numbers. The early voting figure is a combination of voting by mail and in person.

NPR politics reporter Sage Miller is here. Sage, 21 million seems like a lot of votes to cast so far. I mean, how does that compare to past years?

It is a lot of votes so far, and it's up about 2 million just since yesterday. And in key battleground states, early voting is up significantly compared to the last midterm election. In the 2022 midterms, nearly 122 million people voted. So 21 million now is a big slice of that. And so I called up Michael McDonald. He's a political science professor at the University of Florida, and he also maintains the university's election lab data on early voting. And he says voter participation is looking pretty solid.

When I look on a state-by-state basis, what I see is turnout is up over the 2022 and 2018 midterm elections. And keep in mind, 2018 was the highest turnout rate for a midterm election since 1914.

All right, so he's saying turnout is up, but what can we glean so far from this election, from the early voting numbers we have?

It's important not to overinterpret early voting data because it's often a poor predictor of final results. But McDonald says there are certain kinds of voters who hitting the polls sooner than others. In states that have detailed data, Democrats are voting at higher rates than Republicans. That could be attributed to Democratic enthusiasm, and we've seen supercharged Democratic turnout in most of the elections since President Trump took office. But Democrats aren't the only voting group voting early. It's up among unaffiliated voters, and in states like North Carolina and Georgia, McDonald says voters of color are showing up in droves.

African American turnout is up. Hispanics have more than doubled their performance at the same day in 2022.

Even though Republicans aren't voting at the same rate as Democrats, it doesn't mean that they're sitting this one out. A, Democrats are generally more likely to vote early, and Republicans are more likely to vote on Election Day. That's what's happened in the last few elections, and there's no reason to think it'll be any different

What about in some of the competitive races? What can we tell about early voting in those races?

Okay, let's look at Texas again, where there's a competitive Senate race in red Texas. McDonald says the numbers show people are activated.

As of yesterday, there was over half a million more people who had voted than in 2022, a 50% increase of early voting.

I do want to stress, even though we know people are motivated to vote, We don't know how they're voting, but Trump knows this is a tough environment for Republicans, so he's doing what he can to encourage they show up, like traveling all over the country to support Republicans on the ballot in an attempt to energize voters. We also don't know and have zero way to tell if turnout will be high on Election Day and if Republicans will make up for that early voting gap. We will all just have to wait until November 3rd to solve that mystery.

All right, that's NPR politics reporter Sage Miller. Sage, thanks.

Thank you.

President Trump will have to sit for a deposition in a $10 billion defamation case he brought against the BBC.

Yeah, a federal magistrate judge ruled Thursday that it was Trump's choice to sue the British broadcaster, and he has to play by the rules of the court or face sanctions.

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik attended the hearing in Miami. David, why was there even a question about whether the president would sit for a deposition?

Well, I mean, he is the president, and it's this president, right? You know, this was, in some ways, a hearing about logistics in front of a magistrate judge. It sounds like it's a pretty pro forma kind of thing, but actually, you know, really fundamentally at its core is a question of whether the sitting president of the United States will submit to the will of a federal court. He had agreed to sit for a deposition, which is to say questions under oath, Trump was scheduled to take the oath for last Friday, October 16th, but it was canceled. The president's legal team said it was due to matters of national importance and said he could do it sometime in January. There's a deadline in mid-December for the completion of what's called discovery. It's where the 2 sides get evidence for one another for this case. Trump's private attorney invoked the idea yesterday the president does a lot more things than you could possibly know. The BBC's lead attorney said, hey, that's fake news. He noted that last Friday Trump campaigned with a Republican Senate candidate in Dalton, Georgia, then went to Mar-a-Lago for an event for the Republican National Committee.

Nope, let's do this. You're going to have to do this by December 11th. Discovery is supposed to wrap up by a week later. There's a possibility that could shift if the judge presiding over the case changes the deadline. And the judge also said, look, you got to hand over evidence. All of the material that the president's legal team— he's suing as a private individual— gave to the BBC was stuff that the BBC had either handed over to the president's team or that the stuff that the president's legal team, according to the BBC's lawyers, had pulled down from the internet. Not any private records at all. The judge said that strained credulity, that there were not more records that were needed to be given over that were responsive for the BBC's case. All

right, so tell us about the case.

So back in October of 2024, just a few weeks before the presidential elections, the BBC show Panorama broadcast documentary in which it spliced together parts of the January 6th speech, 2021, that made it seem as though Trump at that pivotal day when there was a siege of Congress, made it seem like he was bluntly calling for violence to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of that race. Trump said this was false, deceptive, and defamatory under Florida law, is seeking $10 billion. He's tweaked a little bit the grounds on which he's doing it, putting aside the claim that he made initially that this damaged his business and future financial prospects. Now he's talking mostly about his reputational injury. But as the BBC argues, his reputation is bound up in business and politics. I want to point out to listeners, Panorama was not aired in Florida, or on US channels, or on the BBC's streaming partners here in the US. And the other thing the BBC points out is Trump not only won the 2024 race, He won Florida handily, too.

What's the BBC hope to learn from Trump's testimony?

The BBC did apologize for the splicing. It did. In fact, there was a fallout for some of its officials, but it's now trying to determine what his mindset was. Maybe they can show that he did want to encourage violence. They noted that a lot of defendants said Trump's speech had urged them on.

Last thing, David. I mean, President Trump has sued lots of news organizations. What's the significance of this one?

So at the outset of President Trump's term, media outlets were settling. That is, you saw ABC and CBS settle lawsuits that President Trump had filed as a private citizen, trying to just kind of resolve it and get through. And it doesn't seem to have stopped his onslaught of lawsuits against other news outlets or him sometimes having government agencies investigate them or go after them and their parent companies nonetheless. So you've seen here the BBC fighting back legally. It's really going after details of January 6th. The judges have made clear they don't want this to be completely relitigated the question of what happened January 6th, 2021. And yet it's a key core element of this case. They're looking at ways to show that Trump has actually profited since retaking the White House, not been damaged, undermining that $10 billion claim. Also potentially going after another vulnerability of the president. He doesn't really want his financial details public, and they are securing information about both the level of interest in people joining Mar-a-Lago, his resort, as members, and what costs he has charged them over the years. There's In addition, at the core question, if there's evidence that President Trump or people around him wanted to encourage violence on January 6th, the president wouldn't want that public either.

So you're seeing the BBC fight, and you're also seeing others battle back as well, particularly if you look at ABC's case against the Federal Communications Commission over its TV licenses it holds. And CNN, MSNBC, and Politico are suing the White House as well over the questions of access. Trump right now in this lawsuit has to decide how willing he is to play by the rules. Is he willing to submit to the rule of law in federal court in a lawsuit that he voluntarily brought? And if not, it looks very likely that this case will be dismissed.

That's NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, thanks.

You bet.

That's Up First for Friday, October 23rd. I'm Emi Martinez.

And I'm Leila Fadel. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Megan Pratz, Emily Cobb, Mohammad Alberdisi, and Alex Woelfli. It was produced by Iman Maani and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Misha Hines. Our technical director is Zach Coleman. And our executive producer is Jay Shaler. Join us again on Monday.