Up First from NPR - Lebanon-Israel Ceasefire, Hegseth On Blockade, Trump Nominates New CDC Director

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

A 10-day ceasefire is now in effect between Israel and Lebanon, but Israel says it is not leaving southern Lebanon and Hezbollah says that gives it the right to resist. The U.S. naval blockade on Iran is firmly in place as Defense Secretary Hegseth compared reporters covering the war to the enemies of Jesus in the Bible, part of a pattern of religious language from the Pentagon that is raising eyebrows. And President Trump has nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz to lead the CDC after nearly a year without a confirmed director, as the agency has been struggling under budget cuts and a loss of public trust.Want more 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 Ruth Sherlock, Andrew Sussman, Kris Husted, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Lindsay Totty.It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Nia Dumas.Our director is Christopher Thomas.We get engineering support from David Greenburg. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.And our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor.(0:00) Introduction(01:54) Lebanon-Israel Ceasefire(05:34) Hegseth On Blockade(09:46) Trump Nominates New CDC DirectorSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon is now in effect. But Israel is occupying southern Lebanon and says it's not leaving. And Hezbollah wasn't part of the deal and says it has the right to resist. So how will the ceasefire work? I'm Leila Falded. That's A. Martinez. And this is up first from NPR News. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsteth warned Iran that the U.S. is reloading its weapons in case they don't agree to a deal.

And he compared reporters covering the war to the enemies of the war. Jesus in the Bible. I sat there. You church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees. And President Trump nominated a Dr. Erica Schwartz to lead the CDC. The agency has been struggling under budget cuts. So who's the new director? And what is she walking into? Stay with us. We've got news you need to start your day. 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 NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Beirut. Katz still up pretty early in this ceasefire. How's it going so far? Yeah, well, 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 airstrikes in Lebanon south.

Hezbollah fired several rockets into north. 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 in war. But people also realize this is temporary. So it's a cautious optimism. Yeah. And we just heard Layla say that President Trump announced a 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 going to work? Yeah, Hezbollah is the Iran-backed 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 its military wing often operates independently of the state. Hezbollah has been very against direct talks between Israel and Lebanon, and it's skeptical of a ceasefire with Israel. Israel has been known to not respect them in the past. You know, 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 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. You know, 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 firing rockets into Israel. It's not clear how long Israel intends to be there, but yesterday, after the ceasefire was announced, Israeli 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 biggest. picture of negotiations in the Middle East happening right now. Right. The current two-week 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, you know, like so many ceasefires, are precarious and the collapsing of one could easily collapse the other. That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. in Beirut. Kat, thanks a 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 straight-of-hormuz to almost

everyone else, largely with threats of mines and drone attacks. A ceasefire appears to be holding between the U.S. and Iran with bluster, but no new military action from either side. Quill Lawrence from NPR's national security team joins us to talk about all this. Good morning, Quill. Morning, Leila. So what more can you tell us about the state of the blockade? It's almost like there are two blockades. As Iran controls the strait until some U.S. or European or Asian mine 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. 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 Higgsath, 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, which could certainly be a war crime, but the president and Hegseth have mentioned it repeatedly, and in great detail. So regardless, does this bode well for negotiations in a continued ceasefire?

The U.S. is still building up forces in the Gulf. 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-backed Shiite militia, Hezbollah. 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. Iranian ceasefire. Now, one thing that really struck me from many of Hegset's 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, Hegsef has frequently quoted scripture and specifically talked about Jesus Christ. Yesterday, he directly compared the U.S. media's negative coverage the war with the Pharisees in the New Testament persecuting Jesus.

And I'm not paraphrasing. 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, Hegseff 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 Hexeth and the approach in language used, for example, by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Dan Cain or in yesterday's briefing, Central Command's Admiral Brad Cooper, who avoid talking about religion or politics for that matter. NPR's Quill Lawrence. Thank you, Quill. 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 a military physician, my job was all about readiness. It was all about public health prevention, vaccines, early detection. Here to tell us more is MPR health correspondent Ping Wong. So 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 degree from the University of Maryland, and a master's in public health from the Uniformed 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 Deputy Surgeon General in the First Trump 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. All right, so what is she walking into if she becomes the CDC director? 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 Zucomte, the former commandant of the Coast Guard, who was her boss there, says she's got some traits 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. Zucom 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 F. Kennedy Jr. said that she, along with others' name, 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 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 there's a dozen or so political appointees jostling for influence there, and it's been really messy. But Schwartz does still need to get through. Senate 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. Batacharya.

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. Now, I hadn't brought that up yet. That's NPR's Ping Wong. Thanks a lot for filling us in.

You're welcome. And that's up first for Friday, April 17th. And I'm Leila Faldi. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Ruth Sherlock, Andrew Sussman, Chris Houston, Mohamed al-Bardisi, and Lindsay Toddy. It was produced by Ziad 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 Shaler. Join us again tomorrow.