Transcript of Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire, Trump's Spending Cuts, A Conservative Activist's Plan

Officials say they're close to getting a temporary truce between Israel and Hezbollah.

They've been trading fire for over a year. In the last two months, Israeli attacks escalated, decimating Hezbollah's leadership in parts of Lebanon.

I'm Leila Faldil. That's Rob Schmitz, and this is Up First from NPR News. Congress holds the power of the purse, but could the future President take that power?

To further crack down on rampant waste in the federal government, we're going to bring back presidential impoundment authority, which nobody knows what it is.

Or look at one way President-elect Trump could slash government spending.

And what a man central to the conservative legal movement plans to focus on during the next administration.

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A possible ceasefire is in the works between Israel and Lebanon.

Yeah, both Israeli and Lebanese officials are set to hold meetings and vote on the proposal this week. Israel and Hezbollah had been fighting a low-level conflict conflict for more than a year now. Then, in late September, Israel widened its airstrikes on Lebanon and sent in ground troops, killing most of Hezbollah's leadership and devastating the country. The UN estimates a quarter of Lebanon's population has been displaced.

For more on the details of the ceasefire, we're joined now by NPR's Lauren Freyar in the Lebanon capital, Beirut. Lauren, what are the terms of this proposal?

It's not a done deal yet, but here's what we understand. It would be an initial two-month ceasefire ceasefire, 60 days takes us to Donald Trump's inauguration. Israeli troops would withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah would pull its fighters and weapons north of the Littani River. That's about 20 miles from the Israeli border. The Lebanese army would move in alongside UN peacekeepers who are already there. An international committee would be set up to monitor implementation of this ceasefire. Incidentally, these are basically the terms of the last ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, which was never fully implemented.

The US and Israel, of course, consider Hezbollah a terrorist group. So how do these talks work?

So Hezbollah is really the power broker in this country, but it is the Lebanese government that is negotiating and signing this agreement. The speaker of the Lebanese Parliament is close to Hezbollah and is deputized to negotiate on Hezbollah's behalf. So he's been shuttling back and forth between Hezbollah and the US envoy, Amas Hoekstein, who has been shuttling back and forth between Beirut and Jerusalem, which explains in part, aside from all these sensitivities, why this process is just so time consuming.

In Washington, of course, US officials have been characterizing this as close to a deal, but not quite there yet. So what are some of these tumbling blocks that we're seeing.

So one of them is Israel wants the freedom to attack Hezbollah if it thinks the group is violating the ceasefire by keeping weapons near the Israeli border, for example. By the way, Israeli surveillance here is intense. I don't know if you can hear me, but there's Israeli drone buzzing over the building where I am right now. If the US guarantees Israel the right to strike preemptively, that could be seen here in Lebanon as a violation of this country's sovereignty, and really a red line on this side. Npr spoke this morning to a Lebanese member of Parliament. His name is Simon Abiramea.

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And he basically says no matter what the US may be telling Israel on the sidelines, any such right for Israel to attack preemptively is not part of this official agreement.

And Lauren, you're there in Beirut. You mentioned the drones buzzing over your head. I'm wondering, how are people there that you're talking to? How are they feeling?

Devastated and exhausted. Lebanon and Hezbollah have paid a very dear price in this war. Nearly all of Hezbollah's leaders have been killed in Israeli attacks. More than 3,700 people killed on this side of the border since September. Even today, airstrikes seem to be intensifying, even during these negotiations. In central Beirut, we get shaken from our beds. There are huge booms constantly. There's widespread destruction. Parts of Beirut look like Gaza. But Hezbollah is still managing to fire rockets at Israel. This weekend, upwards of 250 rockets in a single day. So in that sense, Israel has failed to eliminate the threat.

That's NPR's Lauren Frayer in Beirut. Thanks, Lauren.

You're welcome.

President-elect Trump is promising big cuts in government spending.

And he wants to use a little known tool to make those cuts.

To further crack down on rampant waste in the federal government, we're going to bring back presidential impoundment authority, which nobody knows what it is, but it allows the President to go out and cut things and save a fortune for our country, things that make no sense.

And on Friday, he announced his pick for someone to wield that tool. It's Russ Vot, a key architect of Project 2025, who will lead the White House Budget Office. Npr White House Correspondent, Franco Ordonias, joins me now in the studio to break this all down. Good morning, Franco. Hey, Rob. Let's get into this. We heard Trump there say, Nobody knows what impoundment authority is. I mean, this sounds like something you might do to a dog. What does the incoming administration say about this?

Yeah, so Congress has the power of the purse, right? It decides how money should be spent. It's impoundment, it is an odd word, is when the President holds back money that Congress has approved for a specific purpose. Trump and his allies, like Russ Vot, argue a President has the right or should have the right to not spend those funds. That's raising alarm bells across Washington that Trump may be trying to overstep his power.

What does the law say about that?

Well, there is a law on the books. It's called the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. It requires that the President spend money as Congress directs. I talked to Eloise Passakoff. She's a Georgetown law professor. She says it's all part of the system's checks and balances.

I'm cautiously optimistic because I think that this is the way the system is supposed to work. I believe in the rule of law.

I believe in government institutions doing what they're set up to do.

I'm also worried because these are complicated times.

But Vote has argued, and I'd say forcefully, that it's unconstitutional. Trump is nominating him for his old job, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vote told me last year when talking about Project 2025, that empowerment could be useful. Here he is talking about it on Fox Business.

I believe that the loss of impoundment authority, which 200 years of presence enjoyed, was the original sin in eliminating the ability from a branch on branch to control spending. We're going to need to bring that back. Of course, how would Trump bring that back?

Well, I mean, he tested it out once before in his first term. He impounded foreign aid for Ukraine, but Congress objected. It was part of his first impeachment. We'll see what Congress does this time with Republicans in control. Several of Trump's top aides want to use it. That includes Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, and former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswami. They say bypassing the law could help them in their work on the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short. Trump says he'll direct agencies to identify part of their budgets to impound. He also say it's a way to, quote, choke off the money to parts of the government he doesn't like.

Franco, if there's a law in the books, though, I mean, wouldn't any moves to cut costs by using this impoundment authority be challenged in the courts?

Yeah. I talk to experts about this, and they say it is almost certainly going to be headed to the Supreme Court, and that Trump would have to argue that his constitutional powers will override the law. But they also say that the Supreme Court has acted favorably toward Trump in terms of executive power, and they think it will be sympathetic again this time.

That is NPR's Franco Ordonias. Franco, thank you.

Thank you.

A second term for President-elect Donald Trump means another opportunity for Conservatives to entrench their power.

Trump appoints He appointed three Supreme Court justices in his last term, explicitly promising that they would overturn the federal right to abortion, and they did so at the first opportunity. So what do Conservatives plan this time?

Steve Inskeep has been talking with a man who's been central to the conservative legal movement. Steve, who are we talking about here?

He's Leonard Leo, and he played a big role in assembling the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority. He has links with a lot of conservative donors and with several conservative legal groups, the most famous of which is the Federalist Society. He's been central to setting up a network to identify and promote young lawyers, law clerks, with what Leo would consider the right political views or judicial views, and persuaded Republican presidents to appoint them to the bench.

What does he plan this time around?

Well, his network has potential judicial nominees ready, although there are fewer vacancies this time. So Leo is turning his fundraising and organizing skills on other targets. He wants people promoting Western culture and traditional values as he sees them in other industries, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, even Hollywood.

There are a lot of young professionals in entertainment and in journalism and in business and finance who are looking for opportunities to inject their traditional values and the Western cultural tradition into other aspects of American social and cultural life.

Propublica obtained a video of you promoting this project and saying you wanted to, quote, crush liberal dominance. Is that what you want to do?

Yes. The reason, Steve, and I would really call your attention to the words I use, I want to crush liberal dominance. In other words, I want to make sure that there's a level playing field for the American people to make choices about the lives that they want to have in our country.

This approach, obviously, was successful for the judiciary. But Steve, I'm hearing him talk about Hollywood, the Wall Street. Is he able to do that for these sectors of American social life?

Well, he can try, and he has access to funding for sure, although these industries are a lot bigger and less centralized. You can't just win a presidential election and have your guy start appointing people. It'd be a much more complicated process, although he feels like those industries are moving in his direction now.

Yeah. I want to ask you about another aspect of the coming administration. Trump wants to greatly increase presidential power. He wants to take steps that may get him sued, and he'd end up in front of judges promoted by Leonard Leo. Can they rule independently in those cases?

Well, I asked because Leo himself contends that he's for the rule of law, so does he want a lawless president? And he expressed confidence in the separation of powers to contain Trump.

I think the conservative justices of the court have consistently shown that they rule independently. In 2020, during the earlier election, the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts ruled in the election cases the way they saw it.

Of course, the court has also ruled in the President-elects favor, most recently saying that the President has immunity for his official acts and even for some private actions which impeded the prosecution of Trump and will now apply to his actions in 2025.

That is our very own Morning Edition host, Steve Inskeep. Steve, thank you. You're welcome. And that's up first for Tuesday, November 26th. I'm Rob Smith.

I'm Leila Fadel. For your next listen, why not try Consider This from NPR. President-elect Trump has suggested that in his second term, he'll take on the news media with more than just words. How might he do it and how will the press respond? Listen to Consider This from NPR.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Diederik Skanky, Riberta Rampton, Jan Johnson, Lisa Thompson, and Mohamed Elbardisi. It was produced by Zia Batch, Nia Dumas, and Lily Quiros. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, and our technical director is Carly Strange. Join us again tomorrow.

I just love Carly's name so much. I just feel like she's an investigator, a private eye. Exactly. Some type of superhero, Carly Strange.

It is a good name. It's like a name bound for Fame.

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