Let us now praise Donald Trump. It’s hard for me not to choke on that phrase. But it was his bluster—his demand that Hamas release its remaining hostages before his inauguration, or else “all hell will break out”—that effectively ushered in a cease-fire, the beginning of the end of the Gaza war.  

Although honesty requires crediting Trump, his success was not the product of magical powers or an indictment of Biden-administration diplomacy. Trump’s splenetic threats injected urgency into floundering talks. And by allowing his envoy Steven Witkoff to coordinate with the Biden administration, the incoming president left Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an acute sense of isolation.

Over the course of Netanyahu’s long reign, he has transformed his nation’s foreign policy. For much of its history, the Jewish state cultivated bipartisan support in the United States. Netanyahu trashed that tradition; for his own domestic purposes, he has provoked spats with Democratic presidents, bolstering his reputation among his right-wing base. At the same time, he tethered himself to the Republican Party.

As the Gaza war began to meander—and as it became clear that Israel would never achieve the “total victory” that he promised—Netanyahu dipped into this old playbook. In a video he released last June, he accused Biden of denying Israel the munitions that it needed to win the war. That charge was arguably slanderous, given the large sums of money that the United States had spent on arming Israel.

Although that strategy advanced his career, it had an obvious flaw. Because of Netanyahu’s lockstep partnership with the Republicans, he is beholden to the whims of the leader of that party. Once Trump emphatically expressed his desire to end the war, Netanyahu was stuck. To cross the incoming president would risk losing the most important pillar of Israel’s foreign support.

[Read: Trump made the Gaza cease-fire happen]

Some American observers assumed that Netanyahu wanted to extend the war into Trump’s term, during which he would have the Republican president’s permission to behave however he liked. These were, after all, like-minded politicians. But that assessment misread the Netanyahu-Trump dynamic.

Over the past four years, Netanyahu clearly has had reason to feel insecure about his relationship with Trump. Trump reportedly abhorred the fact that Netanyahu called Joe Biden to congratulate him on winning the 2020 presidential election. By acknowledging Biden’s victory, Netanyahu flunked the fundamental Trumpist loyalty test. (As Trump fumed about the episode to Axios’s Barak Ravid, he declared, “Fuck him.”) After October 7, Trump cast blame on the Israeli prime minister for failing to foresee the attack. Given this history, and all the anxieties it must surely provoke, Netanyahu was desperate to deliver for Trump, days before his inauguration, at the height of his prestige.

After months of diplomatic futility, Biden was shrewd to allow Trump and Witkoff to serve as the front men for the talks. Rather than clinging territorially to the office during his last days in power, or invoking clichés about how there’s one president at a time, he invited his successor into an ad hoc coalition in which they operated in sync, sharing the same strategy and applying combined pressure. This moment will be remembered as an atavistic flourish of bipartisan foreign policy, but it also makes me think about Antony Blinken’s eyes.

When I traveled with the secretary of state to the Middle East, and the lights of television cameras pointed at his face, I saw the toils of shuttle diplomacy in the bulging bags beneath his eyes. For months, protesters camped outside his suburban-Virginia house. They hurled red paint at his wife’s car while he kept returning to the region in the hopes of brokering a deal. Indeed, it was those months of excruciating, energetic negotiation that yielded the substance of an agreement, the gritty details of peace. That hard work should be at the center of the narrative, and maybe someday it will be, but right now it feels like a footnote.

On the left, plenty of Biden’s critics are now crowing. Many of those who hate “Genocide Joe” have always claimed that Trump would be better for the Palestinian cause, or perhaps just as bad, which justified a desire to punish Biden’s Zionism electorally. Now that strange faith in Trump will be tested, because the coming diplomacy will be even harder than ending the war. Hamas remains a fact of life in Gaza. For the time being, it’s the government there, and it has every incentive to remain an armed force. Reconstructing the Strip, rescuing it from dangerous anarchy, will require somehow navigating around that fact. I doubt that Trump cares deeply about the future of Gaza, or that he has the patience to maneuver through the tangle of complexities. But if he does, I will be the first to praise him.

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Over the past several months, bird-flu numbers have been steadily ticking up, especially among farmworkers who interact closely with cows. I spoke with my colleague Katherine J. Wu, who reports on science, about her level of concern right now, and the government’s response to the spread of the virus so far.

Lora Kelley: We last spoke in April, after a dairy worker became infected with bird flu. At the time, you described your level of concern about bird flu as “medium.” How would you describe your level of worry now?

Katherine J. Wu: At this point, I would upgrade it to “medium-plus.” I don’t think I will upgrade to “high” unless we start to see strong evidence of human-to-human transmission. I am not ruling out that possibility, but we aren’t there yet.

The situation has gotten quite a bit worse since last spring. We are seeing consistent infection of dairy workers, meaning an especially vulnerable population is exposed in their work environment. Each time the virus infects a new person, it’s an opportunity for it to evolve into something that could eventually become a pathogen that moves easily from person to person.

Lora: What could public-health officials have done differently in recent months to contain the outbreak?

Katherine: Part of the reason I feel concerned is the government’s lackluster response. The movement of the virus into cows was a huge red flag. Cows have never been a known source of this flu, so that was a complete surprise. That should have been a moment when officials said: We really need to contain this before it gets out of control. If some of the first afflicted herds had been kept from moving around, or even culled, it’s possible that the virus might have been contained before dairy workers got sick.

The USDA has ramped up its testing of milk, and the CDC is still working hard to do outreach to farmworkers, who are the population most at risk here. But there could still be more testing at the individual level—individual animals, individual people. There could be more frequent, aggressive sampling of where the virus is in the environment, as well as on farms.

Representatives at USDA and CDC have denied that their response has been inadequate—though independent experts I have spoken with dispute that. To be clear, officials can’t fully predict the future and stop an outbreak the second it starts to get bad, and critics aren’t demanding that. But right now, it’s still a very reactive approach: We see that the virus has been here; I guess we can keep checking if it’s there. But a more proactive approach with testing and better communication with the public would really help.

Lora: How has the government’s response to bird flu compared with its response to COVID?

Katherine: There’s no doubt that having COVID in the rearview affected the government’s response. I think they didn’t want to overreact and cause widespread panic when there wasn’t a need. That’s fair, but there’s a middle ground that I think they missed.

The response to COVID was by definition going to be haphazard, because we didn’t have a preexisting arsenal of tests, vaccines, and antivirals. We hadn’t dealt with a coronavirus like that in recent memory. Here, though, there is a slate of tools available. We’ve dealt with big flu outbreaks. We know what flu can do. We know that flu, in general, can move from animals into humans. We’ve seen this particular virus actually move into people in different contexts across the world.

Lora: Have we missed the opportunity to mitigate the spread of bird flu?

Katherine: Because there has not yet been evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission, there is still time to intervene. Did officials miss some opportunities to intervene more and earlier? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that from here the attitude should be I guess we should just let this roll.

Lora: We may have RFK Jr., a vaccine skeptic, leading the Department of Health and Human Services soon. How might his leadership affect the bird-flu response?

Katherine: I don’t think there is a need to roll out bird-flu vaccines to the general public yet. But I think there are likely to be major changes to public-health policy in this country. RFK Jr. has specifically said that the National Institutes of Health will be taking a break from focusing on infectious disease for the next few years, and that doesn’t bode terribly well. Infectious diseases are not going to take a break from us.

Lora: Are there lessons from the COVID era that the public should better absorb in order to deal with illness more broadly?

Katherine: To be fair, it’s hard to avoid getting sick in general, especially at this time of year. During the worst of the pandemic, when people were still masking more consistently and not going into public places, we did get sick a lot less often because we were avoiding each other.

That said, I think people did forget very, very quickly that the things that worked against COVID work well against a lot of other diseases, especially other respiratory viruses. I am not saying that we all need to go back to masking 24/7 and never going to school or work in person. But maybe don’t go to work when you’re sick—a practice that all employers should enable. Maybe don't send your child to day care sick. Maybe don’t sneeze into your hand and then rub your hand all over the subway railing. Wash your hands a lot.

Unfortunately, there is this tendency for a really binary response of doing everything or nothing. Right now, people seem to be leaning toward doing nothing, because they are fatigued from what they felt like was an era of doing everything. But there’s a middle ground here too.

Related:

Bird flu is a national embarrassment. America’s infectious-disease barometer is off. (From April)

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

MAGA’s demon-haunted world How Trump made Biden’s Gaza peace plan happen David Frum: Justin Trudeau’s performative self-regard The one Trump pick Democrats actually like

Today’s News

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a 42-day cease-fire deal that will include an exchange of hostages and prisoners, President Joe Biden announced. Senate confirmation hearings were held for multiple Trump-administration nominees, including Pam Bondi for attorney general and Marco Rubio for secretary of state. During Bondi’s testimony, she refused to say that President-Elect Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. South Korea’s impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was detained and questioned last night over his attempt to impose martial law last month.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

The Hipster Grifter Peaked Too Soon

By Sophie Gilbert

In the spring of 2009, Vice published a blog post, notorious even by its own standards, titled “Department of Oopsies!—We Hired a Grifter.” An employee had started chatting with the magazine’s new executive assistant, Kari Ferrell; after she reportedly began coming on to him over instant messages, he Googled her, only to find out that she was on the Salt Lake City Police Department’s most-wanted list. Instead of simply firing Ferrell, Vice outed her online.

Read the full article.

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Today, after 15 months of brutal war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal to secure the release of Israeli hostages and the cessation of hostilities in Gaza. The agreement’s first six weeks will see Israel withdraw from much of the enclave and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including convicted mass murderers, in exchange for Hamas releasing 33 captive Israelis—some living, some dead. Should everything proceed according to plan, subsequent negotiations would assure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and the reconstruction of Gaza in the deal’s second and third stages.

Given the precarious nature of the deal’s phased structure, the matter is far from settled, despite the headlines and handshakes. The accord must also still be ratified by the Israeli cabinet. If that happens, the ensuing weeks will be traumatic, as returning Gazan refugees discover whether their homes are still standing, and the families of Israel’s hostages discover whether their loved ones are still alive.

The tentative agreement is nonetheless a victory for the foreign-policy teams of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who worked in tandem with regional partners Qatar and Egypt to bring it about. The terms largely echo a proposal laid out by Biden himself in May 2024, but the incoming president dragged the parties over the finish line. What changed was not Washington’s general orientation toward the conflict. Far from turning up the heat on Israel, Trump telegraphed a further embrace of its positions during his 2024 campaign, repeatedly attacking Biden for restricting arms sales to Israel. But this posture may have helped deliver both sides: Hamas could reasonably surmise that it would not get a better deal during Trump’s presidency, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government likely acceded to the arrangement in order to stay in the new leader’s good graces as he assumed office.

[Eliot A. Cohen: Cancel the foreign-policy apocalypse]

The Israeli far right, whose lawmakers hold the margin of power in Netanyahu’s coalition, had previously threatened to collapse the government should a deal be reached without Hamas fully vanquished from Gaza. But amid Trump’s return, the radicals have their eyes on bigger prizes, such as the annexation of the West Bank—which the Palestinians claim for their future state—and are loath to forgo such opportunities. For this reason, they will likely vote against the cease-fire but leave Netanyahu in power, allowing him to enact it.

Put another way, it’s not that Trump had a stick with which to beat Israel that Biden didn’t have; it’s that his presidency holds out the prospect of carrots that Biden would never offer. It was less the president-elect’s pressure than his potential promise that brought the Israeli far right onside. With Trump, everything is a transaction, and for his would-be suitors—not just Israel, but also Hamas’s sponsors in Qatar—the Gaza cease-fire is a down payment.

[Samer Sinijlawi: My hope for Palestine]

On the Palestinian side, the deal marks a momentary if Pyrrhic triumph for an eviscerated Hamas, which will get to claim that it outlasted the Israeli army and parade some of the released prisoners through the streets of Gaza. But with its leaders killed and its territory devastated, the group will have little to celebrate or to show for its atrocities on October 7. The terrorist organization may continue to impose its will by force, but it is deeply unpopular in its own backyard, according to recent polls.

Meanwhile, with Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar dead, Lebanon’s Hezbollah decimated, Syria’s pro-Iran regime overthrown, and Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance shattered, Netanyahu has a plausible claim to victory, should the deal hold. And if it doesn’t, or should Hamas prove insufficiently forthcoming in negotiations over the remaining hostages, he has a new American president in office who may happily underwrite a return to hostilities.

The guns might mercifully fall silent for now, but if history is any indication, the long war between Israel and Hamas will continue, in one form or another.

US President Joe Biden says the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal is the agreement the US introduced in spring 2024.

The outgoing Biden administration is introducing even more measures focused on keeping advanced chips out of China.

Read more...

Outgoing US president urges unity before farewell address from the White House, just days before Trump takes office.

Joe Biden's campaign focused on COVID-19, racial justice, climate change and tax reforms. We tracked 99 promises.

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Not long after Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth read his opening statement and began fielding questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, I began thinking: I hope neither America’s allies nor its enemies are watching this. The hope was, of course, completely unreasonable. Such hearings are watched closely by friends and foes alike, in order to take the measure of a nominee who might lead the most powerful military in the world and would be a close adviser to the president of the United States.

What America and the world saw today was not a serious examination of a serious man. Instead, Republicans on the committee showed that they would rather elevate an unqualified and unfit nominee to a position of immense responsibility than cross Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or the most ardent Republican voters in their home states. America’s allies should be deeply concerned; America’s enemies, meanwhile, are almost certainly laughing in amazement at their unexpected good fortune.

Most of the GOP senators asked questions that had little to do with the defense of the United States and everything to do with the peculiar obsessions that dominate the alternative reality of right-wing television and talk radio, especially the bane of “wokeness.” Perhaps that was just as well for Hegseth, because the few moments where anything of substance came up did not go well for him. When Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska, for example, tried early on to draw Hegseth out with some basic questions about nuclear weapons, he was lost. He tried to fumble his way around to an answer that included harnessing the creativity of Silicon Valley to innovate a future nuclear force … or something.

On many other questions, including adherence to the Geneva Conventions, the role of the military in domestic policing, and the obligation to disobey illegal orders, Hegseth fudged and improvised. He seemed aware that he had to avoid sounding extreme while still playing for the only audience that really matters: 50 Republican senators and one former and future president of the United States. His evasions were not particularly clever, but they didn’t need to be. He was clear that his two priorities as secretary will be to lead a culture war within the Pentagon, and to do whatever Trump tells him to do.

If America’s friends and adversaries saw an insubstantial man in front of the committee, they also saw Republicans—members of what once advertised itself as the party of national security—acting with a complete lack of gravity and purpose. Few Republicans, aside from Fischer and a rather businesslike Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, asked Hegseth anything meaningful about policy. Ernst extracted a promise from Hegseth to appoint a senior official to be in charge of sexual-assault prevention, but most of her colleagues resorted to the usual buzzwords about DEI and cultural Marxism while throwing Hegseth softballs. (Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri also managed to mention drag queens, but the trophy for most cringe-inducing moment goes to Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana, who asked Hegseth how many genders there are. When Hegseth said “two,” Sheehy said: “I know that well. I’m a she-he.” Get it? Sheehy? She-he? He’s here all week, folks; tip your waiters.)

And speaking of buzzwords, most of Hegseth’s answers relied on his vow to support “the warfighters” and their “lethality,” two words that have been floating around the Pentagon—as things full of helium will do—for years. Hegseth, to his credit, has learned how to speak fluent Pentagon-ese, the content-free language in which the stakeholders help the warfighters leverage their assets to increase their lethality. (I taught military officers for years at the Naval War College. I can write this kind of Newspeak at will.) As Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut noted, Hegseth might not be qualified to be secretary of defense, but he could squeak by as a Pentagon spokesperson.

Some Democrats highlighted that Hegseth has never run anything of any significant size, and that his record even in smaller organizations hasn’t been particularly impressive. Senator Gary Peters of Michigan pointed out that no board of directors would hire Hegseth as the CEO even of a medium-size company. Other Democrats drilled Hegseth on his personal behavior, including accusations (which he has denied) that he has engaged in sexual assault and alcohol abuse. At one point, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona listed specific incidents, asking Hegseth to confirm or deny them. Each time, Hegseth responded only by saying “anonymous smears,” which he seems to think is like invoking the Fifth Amendment. Hegseth also said he wasn’t perfect, and that he’s been redeemed by his faith in Jesus Christ, whose name came up more often than one might expect during a hearing related to national security.

Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Army veteran who was wounded during her service in Iraq, brought out a large poster of the Soldier’s Creed, emphasizing the insistence on standards and integrity embodied in it. She asked Hegseth how the Defense Department could still demand that service members train and serve at such high standards if the Senate lowered the bar for leading the Pentagon just for him. After she quizzed him on various matters and Hegseth again floundered, she put it simply and directly: “You’re not qualified, Mr. Hegseth.”

Not that any of it mattered to the Republicans on the committee, some of whom took great offense at questions about Hegseth’s character. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma tried to turn the tables on his colleagues by asking how many of them had ever voted while drunk or cheated on their spouses, as if that somehow obviated any further fussing about whether a possible secretary of defense was an adulterer or struggles with substance abuse.

Unfortunately for Mullin, he doesn’t know his Senate history, so Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member, helpfully spelled it out for him: If any member of the Senate were nominated to such a position, Reed said, they too would have to answer such questions. And then he added that the late Senator John Tower was in 1989 rejected for the same job Hegseth wants—over accusations of a drinking problem.

Throughout this all, I tried to imagine the reaction in Moscow or Beijing, where senior defense-ministry officials were almost certainly watching Hegseth stumble his way through this hearing. They learned today that their incoming opponent apparently has few thoughts about foreign enemies, but plenty of concerns about the people Trump calls “the enemy from within.” The MAGA Republicans, for their part, seem eager only for Hegseth to get in there and tear up the Pentagon.

After today, I suspect America’s enemies are happily awaiting the same thing.

Related:

Pete Hegseth declines to answer. The perverse logic of Trump’s nomination circus

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Jack Smith gives up, David Frum writes. How Los Angeles must rebuild A secret way to fight off stomach bugs

Today’s News

Israel and Hamas are “on the brink” of accepting an agreement for a cease-fire in Gaza and the exchange of some hostages and prisoners, according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election was released last night. The Biden administration announced that Cuba will be removed from the state-sponsor-of-terrorism list, which would help clear the way for the release of some political prisoners.

Evening Read

Illustration by Federico Tramonte

They Stole Yogi Berra’s World Series Rings. Then They Did Something Really Crazy.

By Ariel Sabar

On a Wednesday morning in October 2014, in a garage in the woods of Pennsylvania, Tommy Trotta tried on some new jewelry: a set of rings belonging to the baseball great Yogi Berra. Each hunk of gold bore a half-carat diamond and the words “New York Yankees World Champions.”

Read the full article.

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