Transcript of Lebanon-Israel Ceasefire, Hegseth On Blockade, Trump Nominates New CDC Director New

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 Faldon. That's Aimee Martinez. And this is Up First from NPR News. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 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 Jesus in the Bible.

I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees. And President Trump nominated 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 he had separate phone calls with leaders of both countries.

We're joined now by NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Beirut. Kat, still 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'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 in war, but people also realize this is temporary. So it's a cautious optimism.

Yeah.

And we just heard Leila say that President Trump announced a ceasefire yesterday after a 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 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 came 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 what he 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 bigger picture of negotiations in the Middle East happening right now.

Right. The current 2-week ceasefire between the US, Israel, and Iran is set to expire in just a few days. Iran has said it wouldn't engage in further talks with the US unless there was a ceasefire with Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran. 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.

Iran's foreign minister announced this morning on social media that the Strait of Hormuz is fully open, but that vessels must pass through a, quote, "coordinated route," announced by Iran's maritime authorities. Now, President Trump says the U.S. Navy The Navy will maintain its blockade of Iranian ports until a peace deal is reached. On Thursday, defense officials said that more than a dozen ships made the, quote, "wise choice of turning around." For more on what all this means, we're joined by Quil Lawrence from NPR's national security team. Good morning, Quil.

Morning.

OK, so we see this tweet that there— or this social media post that the strait is potentially reopening. Is it really open, and do we know why Iran has made the decision?

Well, what we had going on here was almost like two blockades, and Iran controls that strait. The breaking news this morning is that Iran has announced that it's reopened it to commercial shipping, so long as that shipping is on this narrow route that previously was delineated by Iranian authorities. Iran's foreign minister said on social media that this was in response to the ceasefire with Israel, and oil prices dropped right after. But shipping companies are bound to be a little bit cautious as they assess the risks of going through a strait that everyone feared the Iranians had mined. And the US has been and is still blocking ships from exiting or entering Iranian ports, which is to strangle Iran's economy. And that blockades are an act of war, but in this case, it's a negotiating pressure tactic as well. And at yesterday's Pentagon news briefing, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the blockade is the polite way to go with this. But he mentioned the other way, which would be bombing Iran's civilian infrastructure, which could would be a war crime.

Okay. So a lot of threats there before Iran made this announcement, which they say is about the ceasefire. What about U.S. forces in the region?

Still building up. The carrier group, the Ford, has now broken the record for the longest rotation since Vietnam with nearly 10 months at sea. More troops underway. But President Trump has said several times he thinks the negotiations are working and that it won't be necessary to even extend the ceasefire with Iran. It seems to be helping that Israel and Lebanon have announced this 10-day ceasefire. That was kind of a second front in the war from the Iranian perspective and the Israeli perspective. Of course, it's important to note that this really was a war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Shiite militia, Hezbollah, which though I know you know better than anyone that millions of Lebanese civilians who are caught up in this shelling don't really care much about that distinction.

Quill, you know, I think what has really struck me as this war has been going on is the many of Hegseth's comments that are really overtly religious. Can you say more about that?

Yeah. In defense briefings throughout the course of this war, Hegseth has regularly read scripture and specifically talked about Jesus Christ. Yesterday, he directly compared the US media's negative coverage of 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.

This is just after, as you know, President Trump got a real pushback for appearing to compare himself with Jesus. But Hegseth attends a particular Protestant church and he routinely talks in these religious terms. That really might alienate hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops who are Jewish or Muslim or even Catholic.

That's NPR's Quil Lawrence. Thank you, Quil.

Thanks.

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. Erika 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 in 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 NPR health correspondent Ping Huang. 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 law 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 military doctor, mostly in the Public Health Service Commissioned 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 F. 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 Zukunft, 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.

Zukav 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 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 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 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. Jay Bhattacharya. 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 NPR's Bing Huang. Bing, thanks a lot for filling us in.

You're welcome.

And that's Up First for Friday, April 17th. I'm Emi Martinez.

And I'm Leila Faldon. Today's episode This episode of Up First was edited by Ruth Sherlock, Andrew Sussman, Chris Husted, Mohamed El Bardisi, and Lindsay Totty. 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.