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Trump Pressures Ukraine, Trump's Midterm Priorities, Saudi Arabia Airport Attacks

Trump Pressures Ukraine, Trump's Midterm Priorities, Saudi Arabia Airport Attacks

Up First from NPR
Oct 12, 2026 13 min
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About this episode

President Trump is increasing pressure on Ukraine over its strikes on Russian oil refineries while again calling on Ukrainians to hold wartime elections and threatening to cut off U.S. intelligence support.<br>President Trump is trying to show voters he is focused on affordability as record fuel prices and a controversial Russian diesel deal collide with his familiar political grievances just weeks before the midterms.<br>Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia have killed at least 20 people in the past week and repeatedly struck Riyadh’s main airport, raising new questions about the kingdom’s security and the role of its allies.<br/><br/><em>Want more analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? </em><a href="https://www.npr.org/newsletter/news"target="_blank" >Subscribe</a><em> to the Up First newsletter.<br></em><br>Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at <a href="http://plus.npr.org/"target="_blank" >plus.npr.org</a>.<br/><br/>Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Tina Kraja, Brett Neely, Miguel Macias, Mohamad ElBardicy and Taylor Haney.<br/><br/>It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia Dumas.<br/><br/>Our director is Christopher Thomas.<br/><br/>We get engineering support from Zo van Ginhoven.<br/><br/>Our technical director is David Greenburg.<br/><br/>(0:00) Introduction<br>(01:52) Trump Pressures Ukraine<br>(05:48) Trump's Midterm Priorities<br>(09:27) Saudi Arabia Airport Attacks<br/><br/>See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.<br/><br/><a href="https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy">NPR Privacy Policy</a>

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