--:-- [Up First theme music plays]
--:-- Leila Fadel: Officials say they're close to getting a temporary truce between Israel and Hezbollah. They've been trading fire for over a year.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: In the last two months, Israeli attacks escalated, decimating Hezbollah's leadership in parts of Lebanon.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Leila Fadel, that's Rob Schmitz, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: 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.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Or look at one way President-elect Trump could slash government spending.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And what a man central to the conservative legal movement plans to focus on during the next administration.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I want to crush liberal donors.
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--:-- Rob Schmitz: Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
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--:-- Rob Schmitz: A possible ceasefire is in the works between Israel and Lebanon.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, both Israeli and Lebanese officials are set to hold meetings and vote on the proposal this week.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Israel and Hezbollah had been fighting a low-level conflict for more than a year now.
--:-- Leila Fadel: 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.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: The UN estimates a quarter of Lebanon's population has been displaced.
--:-- Leila Fadel: For more on the details of the ceasefire, we're joined now by NPR's Lauren Freyer in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: So it's not a done deal yet, but here's what we understand. It would be an initial two-month ceasefire. 60 days takes us to Donald Trump's inauguration.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Israeli troops would withdraw from Lebanon.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: Hezbollah would pull its fighters and weapons north of the Litani River. That's about 20 miles from the Israeli border.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The Lebanese army would move in alongside UN peacekeepers who are already there.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: An international committee would be set up to monitor implementation of this ceasefire.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Incidentally, these are basically the terms of the last ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, which was never fully implemented.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: The U.S. and Israel, of course, consider Hezbollah a terrorist group.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So how do these talks work?
--:-- Lauren Freyer: So Hezbollah is really the power broker in this country, but it is the Lebanese government that is negotiating and signing this agreement.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: The speaker of the Lebanese parliament is close to Hezbollah and is sort of deputized to negotiate on Hezbollah's behalf.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: So he's been shuttling back and forth between Hezbollah and the U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein who has been shuttling back and forth between Beirut and Jerusalem.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Which explains in part, aside from all these sensitivities, why this process is just so time-consuming.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Right. So in Washington, of course, U.S. officials have been characterizing this as close to a deal, but not quite there yet.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: So what are some of these stumbling blocks that we're seeing?
--:-- Rob Schmitz: 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.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: 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.
--:-- Leila Fadel: If the U.S. 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.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: NPR spoke this morning to a Lebanese member of parliament. His name is Simon Abiramia. And he basically says no matter what the U.S. may be telling Israel on the sidelines, any such right for Israel to attack preemptively is not part of this official agreement.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: And Lauren, you're there in Beirut. You mentioned the drones buzzing over your head. You know, I'm wondering, how are people there that you're talking to? How are they feeling?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Devastated and exhausted. Lebanon and Hezbollah have paid a very dear price in this war.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Nearly all of Hezbollah's leaders have been killed in Israeli attacks.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: More than 3,700 people killed on this side of the border since September.
--:-- Leila Fadel: You know, even today, airstrikes seem to be intensifying, even during these negotiations.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: In central Beirut, we get shaken from our beds. There are huge booms constantly. There's widespread destruction. Parts of Beirut look like Gaza.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: But Hezbollah is still managing to fire rockets at Israel. This weekend, upwards of 250 rockets in a single day.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So in that sense, Israel has failed to eliminate the threat.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: That's NPR's Lauren Freyer in Beirut. Thanks, Lauren.
--:-- Lauren Freyer: You're welcome.
--:-- Leila Fadel: President-elect Trump is promising big cuts in government spending.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And he wants to use a little-known tool to make those cuts.
--:-- Leila Fadel: 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.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: But it allows the president to go out and cut things and save a fortune for our country, things that make no sense.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And on Friday, he announced his pick for someone to wield that tool.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It's Russ Vogt, a key architect of Project 2025 who will lead the White House Budget Office.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez joins me now in the studio to break this all down.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Good morning, Rob.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So let's get into this. You know, we heard Trump there say nobody knows what impoundment authority is. I mean, this sounds like something you might do to a dog.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Yeah, so Congress has the power of the purse, right? It decides how money should be spent.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Impoundment, it is an odd word, is when the president kind of holds back money that Congress has approved for a specific purpose.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Trump and his allies, like Russ Vogt, argue a president has the right or should have the right to not spend those funds.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: And that's raising alarm bells across Washington that Trump may be trying to overstep his power.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what does the law say about that?
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Well, there is a law in the books. It's called the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It requires that the president spend money as Congress directs.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: I talked to Eloise Pasikoff. She's a Georgetown law professor.
--:-- Leila Fadel: She says it all part of the system checks and balances.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: I cautiously optimistic because I think that this is the way the system is supposed to work
--:-- Franco Ordonez: You know I believe in the rule of law I believe in government institutions doing what they set up to do
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm also worried because these are complicated times.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Vogt has argued, and I'd say forcefully, that it's unconstitutional.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Trump is nominating him for his old job, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Vogt told me last year when talking about Project 2025 that impoundment could be useful.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And here he is talking about it on Fox Business.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: 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.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And we're going to need to bring that back.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So, of course, how would Trump bring that back?
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Well, I mean, he tested it out once before in his first term.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He impounded foreign aid for Ukraine, but Congress objected.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It was part of his first impeachment.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: So we'll see what Congress does this time with Republicans in control.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Several of Trump's top aides want to use it.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: That includes Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, and former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: They say bypassing the law could help them in their work on the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for short.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And Trump says he'll direct agencies to identify part of their budgets to impound.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: He also said it's a way to, quote, choke off the money to parts of the government he doesn't like.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: So, 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?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah. And I talked to experts about this, you know, 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 1974 law.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: 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.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: That is NPR's Franco Ordonez.
--:-- Franco Ordonez: Thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: A second term for President-elect Donald Trump means another opportunity for conservatives to entrench their power.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices in his last term, explicitly promising that they would overturn the federal right to abortion.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And they did so at the first opportunity.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So what do conservatives plan this time?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Steve Inskeep has been talking with a man who's been central to the conservative legal movement.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: He's Leonard Leo, and he played a big role in assembling the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: He has links with a lot of conservative donors and with several conservative legal groups, the most famous of which is the Federalist Society.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And 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.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So what does he plan this time around?
--:-- Rob Schmitz: His network has potential judicial nominees ready, although there are fewer vacancies this time.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So Leo is turning his fundraising and organizing skills on other targets.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: He wants people promoting Western culture and traditional values as he sees them in other industries, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, even Hollywood.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And 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.
--:-- Leila Fadel: ProPublica obtained a video of you promoting this project and saying you wanted to quote crush liberal dominance.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Is that what you want to do?
--:-- Leila Fadel: And the reason Steve, and I would really call your attention to the words I use, I want to crush liberal dominance.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: 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.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So this approach obviously was successful for the judiciary, but Steve, I'm hearing him talk about Hollywood, Wall Street. Is he able to do that for these sectors of American social life?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, he can try and he has access to funding for sure, although these industries are a lot bigger and less centralized.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: You can't just win a presidential election and have your guys start appointing people.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It'd be a much more complicated process, although he feels like those industries are moving in his direction now.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And I want to ask you about another aspect of the coming administration.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Trump wants to greatly increase presidential power.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He wants to take steps that may get him sued and he'd end up in front of judges promoted by Leonard Leo.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Can they rule independently in those cases?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, I ask because Leo himself contends that he's for the rule of law.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So does he want a lawless president?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And he expressed confidence in the separation of powers to contain Trump.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I think the conservative justices of the court have consistently shown that they rule independently.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: In 2020, during the earlier election, the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts ruled in the election cases the way they saw it.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Of course, the court has also ruled in the president-elect's 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.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That is our very own Morning Edition host, Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Steve, thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: You're welcome.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And that's up first for Tuesday, November 26th.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Rob Schmitz.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And I'm Leila Fadel.
--:-- Leila Fadel: For your next listen, why not try Consider This from NPR?
--:-- Rob Schmitz: President-elect Trump has suggested that in his second term, he'll take on the news media with more than just words.
--:-- Leila Fadel: How might he do it and how will the press respond?
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Listen to Consider This from NPR.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Didrik Schanche, Roberta Rampton, Jan Johnson, Lisa Thomson, and Mohamad ElBardicy.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas, and Lilly Quiroz.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: This message comes from Capital One.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.
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