Up First from NPR - Congressional Funding Deal, Israel and Lebanon, Lloyd Austin Fallout

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Congress reaches a deal on government funding, with little time to get it passed. Secretary of State Antony Blinken returns to Israel seeking to prevent a wider war in the Middle East. Controversy erupts following Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's undisclosed hospitalization.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Krishnadev Calamur, Jim Kane, Ally Schweitzer, Kelsey Snell, Michael Sullivan, and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ben Abrams and Ziad Buchh. We get engineering support from Phil Edfors, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Congressional leaders agreed on the numbers for overall federal spending. House Speaker Mike Johnson agreed to a deal, but with the same numbers as his predecessor, who was deposed, can lawmakers agree on the details? I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. We have a glimpse today of life in far northern Israel. In a finger of land alongside Lebanon, most civilians have evacuated. Israeli troops trade fire with Hezbollah, and everyone prepares in case of an escalation. And everybody has to call out sick sometimes. So why didn't Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tell the White House in a timely manner that he'd been hospitalized?

He's now facing tough questions from lawmakers. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Congressional leaders have agreed to a deal on how much money their federal government should spend this fiscal year, clearing the way for lawmakers to pass funding legislation before the January 19th deadline, hopefully in time to avoid a shutdown. Yeah, one of my kids asked just yesterday what a government shutdown would mean, and I explained

that some people in the federal government would stop working while others might have to work without pay, and that these people do everything from regulate workplace safety to food safety to defending the country. If Congress should approve all the details in time, they will keep working. And Paris Eric McDaniel covers Congress, and he's here with us now to tell us more about all this. Good morning, Eric. Good morning. All right. Tell us what's in the funding agreement. Well, a lot of money, mostly.

$886 billion for the military and $773 billion for, well, everything else. But so far, this is basically a handshake deal, right? Now all they have to do is actually pass the spending bills, which is not going to be an easy feat. But yesterday, Michelle, when I started thinking about what to say during this conversation, there wasn't a plan. There was no plan. So this is a major step forward. And just for some context here, since these are obviously massive numbers, this is essentially a consistent level of annual spending to what President Biden and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy agreed to in a deal last year, a deal that ultimately helped to doom McCarthy, who went on to become the first Speaker of the House ousted in a vote by his colleagues. And now his replacement, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, just agreed to essentially the same thing, but now with some little concessions, including a faster timeline on already-agreed-to cuts to the IRS and some unspent COVID money returned back to the government.

And what are you hearing about reaction? Well, as you might imagine, some Republicans in the House are really mad. This is the anti-compromise set of folks in the party, folks like the House Freedom Caucus and their allies. They wanted to leverage the looming government funding deadline on January 19th to extract big spending cuts and policy concessions on everything from abortion access to building a wall on the US southern border. This was always a pretty big long shot that they'd be able to achieve that it wouldn't get through the Democratic controlled Senate or be signed by President Biden. But it could have ended up in a government shutdown, like we talked about that would have been really hard on millions of people. That's still a possibility, but it's less likely

now. It would still going to be hard to get a deal on 12 federal spending bills. But let's put it this way. They've agreed on the size of the house. Now they just have to, you know, come up with the blueprints and build the thing. Yeah, a shutdown in the middle of an election year. I'm not sure who would really enjoy that. But look, the last time we talked, Eric, they were talking about working on aid to Israel, aid to Ukraine. Where does that stand? So this is a separate process for the most part. There was some talk in Republican circles about trying to tie immigration reform to government funding. But for the most part, this is separate. They're calling it a big national security bill. thinks that the immigration status quo is good. A record 10,000 some people are presenting themselves to border protection agencies many days, often making legal requests for asylum. Democrats want to

handle that by putting more resources toward it, while Republicans want to curb who's allowed to request asylum in the first place and find other ways to limit the number of people arriving. And there's a very, very different appetite for a deal in the Senate than in the House. Republicans in the House just got back from a trip to the U.S. southern border and could end up trying to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, a man who's personally involved with negotiating just down the hall with their counterparts in the Senate. So right now, at least, I think it's fair to say that government funding is more on track than foreign aid or immigration reform. That is NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. Eric, thank you so much.

Thank you. We have a glimpse now of the low-level war along Israel's northern border. This is a part of Israel far from the fighting in Gaza, but very close to an ally of Hamas. Israel's army has been exchanging fire for months with Hezbollah, which is across the border in Lebanon. Recent violence in Lebanon, the killing of a Hamas leader, has added to concerns that the fighting could grow more intense. NPR's Lauren Freyer is in Israel near that northern border and joins us now. Hey there, Lauren. Hi, Steve. Where are you exactly? I'm on the side of a road that's swarming with Israeli soldiers at the base of a hill where the other side of the hill is Lebanon, about two

miles as the crow flies. The Israeli military has closed roads beyond where I'm standing. It says it struck a bunch of targets on the other side of this border overnight, including what it calls a Hezbollah military compound. Over the past day, I've been hearing lots of warplanes, booms of outgoing weaponry, air raid sirens on this side of the border. In the town of Kiryat Shmona near here, residential neighborhoods have been hit by rockets, presumably fired by Hezbollah. I don't know if you heard that boom just behind me. There are gaping holes in the side of houses here.

But compared to the south of Israel and in Gaza, there have been very few casualties here because the area has been largely evacuated of civilians. Tens of thousands of people relocated to hotels farther south that have been paid for by the Israeli government. Now, there's no mandatory evacuation on the Lebanese side of the border, and there have been a lot of casualties from Israeli strikes there. What are you hearing from people who are on the ground still? I mean, really, one of the only civilians I could find here was a man named David Itkin. He stayed behind while the rest of his family evacuated.

He's staying to work overtime as an essential worker in a factory. And I asked him about the atmosphere in his hometown here. It's like a ghost town now. Not a lot of people, not a lot of traffic. Politicians and society, everybody's saying that Nasrallah is making speeches. He's referring there to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. You mentioned last week there was an airstrike in Lebanon's capital, Beirut. It killed a top Hamas leader. Israel has not claimed responsibility for that attack, but Nasrallah nevertheless says

he will respond to it, quote, on the battlefield. And that battlefield may be right here. Let's just note that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel today. Is he likely to have discussions that would touch on the conflict you're watching? He is expected certainly to do that. He's got a lot on his plate. He's been meeting with regional leaders in Gulf countries and elsewhere, drumming up support for the rebuilding of Gaza after the war there ends. When he lands here in Israel, he's expected to push Israeli leaders to curtail their widespread bombing of Gaza. And there are actually signs that that may already be happening. The Israeli defense minister has said with the withdrawal of thousands of Israeli troops from

northern Gaza, the military is refocusing on more targeted special ops missions there. But Blinken has said he's worried that this conflict could, quote, metastasize. And that's a reference to this new front that could be kicking off here on the Israel-Lebanon border. And Paris Lauren Frayer, thanks for your reporting. Thanks so much, Steve. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin remains at Walter Reed Hospital today. That's a week after he was admitted for complications from what we were told was a recent elective medical procedure.

What's unusual here is not that Austin is in the hospital, that happens, but that Austin kept his hospitalization quiet from the White House and members of Congress for days. NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman is with us now to tell us more about this strange situation. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Michelle. You know, it is strange. I'm sorry. I know that most people, you know, don't feel the need to tell all their personal business when they go into the hospital, but he is a member of the cabinet, and we know he's still in the hospital. Do we know how he's doing? Well, we really don't know his condition, the initial medical procedure, or the resulting

complications. He was in the intensive care unit, Michelle, so clearly it was serious, but I'm told by a source, not life-threatening. The Pentagon put out a statement yesterday afternoon saying the secretary is, quote, recovering well and in good spirits, and he resumed his duties Friday night, but no word on a release date. Can you walk us through this whole story about who knew what when? I'm talking about officials in Washington here. Well, the Pentagon put out a brief release Friday afternoon, the 5th, saying on New Year's night, January 1st, Austin was admitted to the hospital. We were later told his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was informed the next day that she was the acting

secretary. Now, Hicks was on vacation in Puerto Rico and was told a couple of days later on Thursday that Austin was in fact in the hospital. She offered to head home, but was told, listen, Austin would resume duties on Friday. Also on Thursday, the White House was finally informed Austin was in the hospital and some members of Congress were only told, get this, a half hour before the press release was issued on Friday afternoon. Now, Austin himself has released a statement saying, quote, I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. OK, the public. But what about his boss, the president? Well, right. You would think that Biden's principal military advisor in this time of war in the Middle East and possible continued military action by U.S. forces against militant groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen would have picked up the phone and told officials, at least the president,

because there have been ongoing meetings about all these issues. Did anyone notice he was not around? Now, Biden spoke with Austin over the weekend, and we're told he has confidence in the secretary, but members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, still want answers. The top leaders of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Adam Smith, put out a statement yesterday. They said several questions remain unanswered. What was a medical procedure and resulting complications? What is the Secretary's current health status? How and when the delegation of the Secretary's responsibilities were made?

And the reason for the delay in notification to the President and Congress. So Tom, I'm going to mention there, you've covered the Pentagon for a long time. Have you ever seen anything like this? Absolutely. No, never anything like this. But Austin, who's 70 years old, he's always been very quiet, not very talkative, rarely seen in public or the press room.

And he was in the same way when he was a four-star general, when he was in charge of operations in the Middle East. He's not a force or clearly a power broker like his predecessors, Donald Rumsfeld or Robert Gates or Leon Panetta. He's frankly just kind of a silent partner. That is NPR's Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman. Tom, thank you.

You're welcome. And that's Up First for Monday, January 8th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Today's Up First was edited by Krishnadev Kalamar, Jim Kane, Ali Schweitzer, Kelsey Snell, Michael Sullivan, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ben Abrams and Ziad Butch, and we get engineering support from Phil Edfors. Our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow. And one final note. It can be hard to keep up with all of former President Donald Trump's legal problems. He is facing 91 charges across four criminal cases. That is why NPR has launched a podcast to help you make sense of them all. Trump's Trials is

our regular take on the legal challenges the former president is facing, all while running for president again. Listen to Trump's Trials wherever you get your podcasts.