US-Iran Responses, Trump's Trip To China Amid Iran War, Congress To Do List
Up First from NPR
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4.6 • 59K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
President Trump leaves for Beijing tomorrow to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping as the war in Iran continues to complicate the high-stakes meeting.
Congress is back with a major push to lock in three years of funding for immigration enforcement, giving the Trump administration long-term resources while limiting congressional oversight.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Tina Kraja, Rebekah Metzler, Dana Farrington, Mohamad El-Bardicy, Adam Bearne and John Stolnis.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia Dumas
Our director is Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Maggie Luthar. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
(0:00) Introduction
(01:50) US-Iran Responses
(05:29) Trump's Trip To China Amid Iran War
(09:04) Congress To Do List
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | President Trump called Iran's counteroffer to end the war, totally unacceptable. |
| 0:07.1 | Iran's president says the country will, quote, never bow our heads to the U.S. |
| 0:10.9 | Officials there are increasingly calling Iran a global superpower. |
| 0:13.9 | I'm Michelle Martin. That's A. Martinez, and this is up first from NPR News. |
| 0:20.9 | President Trump heads to Beijing tomorrow to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. |
| 0:25.3 | The war in Iran is in its third month with no end inside, so how will that affect the high-stakes |
| 0:29.6 | meeting? |
| 0:30.2 | And Congress is back in session after a week-long break. |
| 0:33.3 | Republicans are starting with a major push to lock in three years of funding for immigration enforcement. |
| 0:38.9 | How much oversight are lawmakers giving up? |
| 0:41.6 | Stay with us. We'll give you news you need to start your day. |
| 0:50.1 | Iran has responded to President Trump's latest terms for ending the war with its own set of demands. |
| 0:55.4 | Trump called Iran's response totally unacceptable. |
| 0:58.4 | There is a flurry of diplomacy now behind the scenes by countries in the region to break the impasse. |
| 1:03.8 | But the gap between what Trump wants and what Iran is willing to agree to is still wide. |
| 1:08.9 | For now, the ceasefire is still holding, but a shadow drone |
| 1:11.1 | war continued over the weekend with Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran, each saying they intercepted hostile drones. Joining us to tell us more about all this from Dubai as NPR International correspondent A. Abra Tawah, Aya, good morning. Good morning, Michelle. So what do we know so far about this stalemate? Well, we don't know what was in that U.S. proposal that was sent to Iran last week, but we do know that Trump has made clear. He wants Iran to halt nuclear enrichment and to open the Strait of Hermuz to commercial shipping again. You know, oil prices are still trading more than 40 percent higher than they were before the war. But we also know that Iran has |
| 1:44.7 | consistently rejected halting its nuclear enrichment and it wants the U.S. to not only lift |
| 1:49.7 | sanctions, but to unfreeze billions of dollars in its own money and overseas banks. And Iran's |
| 1:55.1 | leaders remain defiant. You know, despite a U.S. naval blockade that's now choking off its oil |
| 1:59.6 | exports, they seem to believe that they have leverage now with their control of the Strait of Hamos where they've been blocking ships from passing. |
| 2:06.8 | Iranian officials have also increasingly been referring to Iran as a global superpower now. |
... |
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