A 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon is now an effect.
But Israel is occupying southern Lebanon and says it's not leaving and has volite wasn't part of the deal and says it has the right to resist, so how will the ceasefire work?
I'm Layla Faldin, that same Martinez and this is up first from NPR News.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegsev warned Iran that the U.S. is reloading his weapons in case they don't agree to a deal and he compared reporters covering the war to the enemies of Jesus in the Bible. I sat there. In church and I thought our press are just like these Pharisees. And President Trump nominated Dr. Erika Schwartz to lead the CDCB agency has been struggling under budget cuts, so who's a new director and what is she walking into? Stay with us,
“we've got news you need to start your day.”
There's so much TV out there that we can't get to it all. Good stuff falls through the cracks. That's why we're recommending some great TV we missed. Find out what's good to watch on NPR's pop culture happy hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the first day of a 10-day ceasefire to pause the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. President Trump announced the deal Thursday afternoon on social media after he had separate
phone calls with leaders of both countries. We're joined now by MPR's Cat Londorf in Beirut, Cat still up pretty early in the ceasefire. How's it going so far? Yeah well it so far it seems to be holding. The ceasefire went into effect at midnight here last night so we're really just settling into the first full day. In the hours before there was a barrage of attacks from both sides. Israel carried out a wave of air strikes in Lebanon's south. Hezbollah fired several rockets into northern
Israel but since then things have been relatively quiet in terms of how people are feeling
there is a little hope you know a ceasefire is always welcome and more. But people also
realize this is temporary so it's a cautious optimism. Yeah and we just heard Layla say that President Trump announced the ceasefire yesterday at her phone call with the leaders of both
“Israel and Lebanon but here's the thing. Hezbollah was not involved in the discussions of the ceasefire”
so I mean how does that gonna work? Yeah Hezbollah is the Iran back militia that operates in Lebanon. It kicked off this latest round of fighting by firing rockets into Israel in early March. It's a legitimate part of Lebanon's government with several seats in Parliament but it's military wing often operates independently of the state. Hezbollah has been very against direct talks between Israel and Lebanon and its skeptical of a ceasefire with Israel. Israel has been known to
not respect them in the past. After Israel and Hezbollah reached a deal back in 2024 after the last war, UN peacekeepers recorded more than 10,000 violations of that ceasefire nearly all of them by Israel and now Israel is occupying a huge swath of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah put out a statement saying it will resist that occupation so it's unclear exactly how that will work within the context
of this ceasefire. Okay now I know there's been more than a million people in Lebanon that have
“been displaced since Israel started their heavy bombardment. Will they be going home now?”
Largely no, both Israel and Hezbollah have told people it's still too dangerous about a fifth of Lebanon's population has been displaced in all of this. We checked in with one man, his name's Hussein Farhat. He fled his home in early in the war and has been staying in the center of Beirut. He told us he might venture back to his house and shop to check on them but a temporary ceasefire means he won't be going back permanently yet. It's heartbreaking to just
visit your home and then leave again. He says absolutely heartbreaking. But for many of the people displaced they don't have homes to go back to. Israel has demolished more than 40,000 homes in the South according to Lebanese officials taking over whole villages to create what it calls a security buffer zone to keep Hezbollah from fire and rockets into Israel. It's not clear how long Israel intends to be there but yesterday after the ceasefire was announced is really Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said quote we are not leaving. Okay and zooming out a bit because the ceasefire is really a part of the bigger picture of negotiations in the Middle East happening right now. Right the current two weeks ceasefire between the U.S. Israel and Iran is set to expire in just a few days. Iran has said it wouldn't engage in further talks with the U.S. unless there was a ceasefire with Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon. So now this temporary agreement potentially helps keep talks between
the U.S. and Iran moving. But these ceasefires like so many ceasefires are precarious and the collapsing of one could easily collapse the other. That's MPR's cat lawns door in Beirut, catpacks lot. Thank you. U.S. Defense officials say the naval blockade on Iranian ports is firmly in place and that more than a dozen ships made the quote wise choice of turning around. Iran for its part has effectively closed the state of Hormuz to almost everyone else largely with
Threats of minds and drone attacks.
bluster but no new military action from either side. Quilorans from NPR's national security team
“joins us to talk about all this. Good morning Quilorans. So what more can you tell us about the”
state of the blockade? It's almost like there are two blockades as you know Iran controls the straight until some U.S. or European or Asian mind sweepers can clear it and possibly escort ships safely through and then for its turn the U.S. is blocking ships from exiting or entering Iranian ports and strangling Iran's economy. A blockades are an act of war but in this case they may be just part of pressure in these negotiations with Iran. And yesterday at the Pentagon's news briefing
maybe this was aimed to do the same Secretary of Defense Pete Hexas said that the blockade is the polite way things can go and then he mentioned the other way which would be bombing Iran's civilian infrastructure power grids and which could certainly be a war crime but the president and Hexas have mentioned it repeatedly and in great detail. So regardless does this boat well for negotiations
“in a continued ceasefire? The U.S. is still building up forces in the Gulf that one carrier group”
the Ford has now broken the record for the longest rotation since Vietnam with nearly 10 months at sea and there are more troops underway to the region but President Trump has said several times he thinks these negotiations are working that it won't be necessary even to extend the ceasefire with Iran that ends next week and it may help that Israel and Lebanon those two countries have announced
a 10-day ceasefire for Israel. Lebanon was always the second front in their war with Iran and
it's important to note that their war is really with the Iranian back Shiite militia has balla that was the shooting war with Israel though to millions of Lebanese civilians caught in that shelling they might not really care about that distinction but that was the objection from Iran that that war had continued and when the U.S. agreed to a ceasefire Israel kept on shelling this could help with the U.S. Iran needs ceasefire. Now one thing that really struck me from many of Hexas
“comments on the war was the overtly religious nature of his remarks can you say more about that?”
At these defense briefings throughout the course of this war Hexat has frequently quoted scripture and specifically talked about Jesus Christ yesterday he directly compared the U.S. media's negative coverage of the war with the Pharisees and the New Testament persecuting Jesus and I'm not paraphrasing you that's exactly what he said. I sat there in church and I thought our press are just like these Pharisees not all of you not all of you but the legacy Trump hating press and this is just after
President Trump got significant pushback from his own supporters for appearing to compare himself to Jesus unlike any Secretary of Defense in memory Hexat routinely talks in these religious terms and considering that he oversees the Department of Defense I mean these are terms that might alienate hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops who are Catholic or Jewish or Muslim but he does it in almost every speech and it's just striking to see the difference up there on the
podium between Hexat and the approach in language used for example by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dam Kayn or in yesterday's briefing the Central Command's Admiral Brad Cooper who avoided talking about religion or politics for that matter. And PR's Quil Lawrence thank you Quil. Thank you. President Trump has nominated someone to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which has not had a confirmed leader since August. Yeah Trump picked Dr. Erica Schwartz on Thursday.
She served as a health official in his first administration and as a military doctor
in the Coast Guard. Here's Schwartz in her own words and an Instagram post last week. Now when I was in military position my job was all about readiness. It was all about public health prevention, vaccines, early detection. You're going to tell us more as MPR health correspondent Ping Wong. I'll tell us more about Schwartz's background. Yeah so she is a preventive medicine doctor with a lot of credentials. She has a medical degree from Brown, a lot of grief in the
University of Maryland and a masters in public health from the uniform services university. She's had a long career as a military doctor mostly in the Public Health Service Commission Corps and she spent a lot of that time in the Coast Guard becoming its Chief Medical Officer in 2015, charged with keeping all their service members healthy. She also served as a deputy
surgeon general in the first administration where she took on a big role with the COVID testing
strategy and a few years ago she retired as a rear admiral left public service and now Trump is
Inviting her back.
If she gets the role she's going to be the face of a public health system that's been really
“struggling. So the CDC is much quieter these days. They're informing the public a lot less”
and they've been challenged recently for things like vaccine changes made under health secretary Robert of Kennedy Jr. Internally, Trump has again proposed big cuts to their budget and staffing and the people who remain there say that they've lost trust in the federal leadership.
Schwartz will have her work cut out for her. Now Admiral Paul Zucompt, the former
Conandant of the Coast Guard who was her boss there, says she's got some treats that will serve her well. She was not in the least bit reticent when it came to talking truth to power. She was very forthright in sharing with me where there was room for improvement. Zucompt says that she's well-schooled in the science and also good at communicating
“about issues that might be controversial. Okay so what kind of reception is she getting?”
So in testimony yesterday Health Secretary Robert of Kennedy Jr. said that she, along with others, named to help lead the CDC, have been getting applause from both Republicans and Democrats. Public health leaders that I spoke with are cautiously optimistic so are two high-up CDC officials I've just spoken with although they're not authorized to talk to the press. They are glad that Schwartz has training and experience in public health
and they also think that a new executive team could bring some order back to the agency's leadership. You know, sources there say that it's there's a dozen or so political appointees Jocelyn for instance there and it's been really messy. But Schwartz does don't need to get through sound at confirmation which recent history shows can take a few months. By the way, who's in charge right now? Okay so that would be Dr. J about a charia. He's been
serving as the interim director of the CDC since February and he's expected to continue leading both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health until a new director arrives. Okay I was just
“wondering I hadn't brought that up yet. That's how he always been long. Thanks a lot for filling us in.”
You're welcome.
And that's up first for Friday April 17th of May Martinez. And I'm Leila Faldin.
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Ruth Scherlock Andrew Sussman Chris he who stood Muhammad's at about D.C. and Lindsey Toddy. It was produced by Ziyad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from David Greenberg. Our technical director is Carly Strange and our executive producer is Jay Schaler. Join us again tomorrow. [BLANK_AUDIO]
