Monday Briefing: A new dawn for Syria

Plus, revelations from a sit-down Donald Trump interview.

View in browser|nytimes.com December 9, 2024 By Natasha Frost Good morning. We're covering a historic transition of power in Syria and Donald Trump's plans for his next administration. Plus: What Alice Munro knew. A toppled statue of Syria's late president, Hafez al-Assad, in Damascus yesterday. Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Rebels claimed power in Syria In a stunning fall, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has fled to Russia, state media there and two Iranian officials said yesterday, after he lost his hold on power to a lightning fast offensive by rebels. Here's the latest. Earlier in the day, the main group in the rebel coalition, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, announced that its fighters had taken the capital. "The city of Damascus has been liberated; the tyrant Bashar al-Assad has been toppled," a rebel said in a state television broadcast, adding, "Long live a free and independent Syria for all Syrians of all sects." The al-Assad family had ruled Syria with an iron fist since the early 1970s, and many citizens greeted the president's fall with hope after long living in fear of their oppressive government. But deep uncertainty over who will rule Syria next raised worries of a possible power vacuum, even as celebratory gunfire crackled around Damascus and prisoners were freed. Here's our analysis of what may lie ahead. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the Islamist rebel leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham who spearheaded the rebel offensive, declared the group's achievement "a victory for the whole Islamic nation." Once linked to Al Qaeda, his group has tried to gain legitimacy by eschewing jihadist ambitions and by focusing on organized governance. Read more about the rebels. First person: "Our hearts are dancing with joy," one Damascus resident said. "We can't predict the future and anything is possible, but the most important thing is we got rid of this oppressive regime." In other news: President Biden announced that the U.S. had conducted extensive airstrikes in Syria to stop the Islamic State from reasserting itself after the fall of Assad. Iran's "axis of resistance" has largely unraveled in a breathtakingly short period, our correspondent writes. Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, Syria's prime minister, said that he would stay in the country and was ready to work with whomever Syrians choose as their leader. Israel's military said it had entered a demilitarized buffer zone in territory it controls in the Golan Heights, abutting Syria. The Israeli military, which is concerned about the sudden surge in instability near its borders, said it was acting to protect Israeli civilians. Israeli soldiers standing next to an access point made by the Israeli military into a tunnel said to have been built by Hamas that ran beneath an UNRWA school, as photographed during an escorted tour in February. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times Israel warned of a Hamas presence in U.N. schools At least 24 employees of schools in the Gaza Strip run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees were members of the militant groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad, according to interviews and internal Hamas documents shared with The New York Times by the Israeli government. A majority were top administrators, and the rest were school counselors and teachers, the documents say. The refugee agency, known as UNRWA, operated nearly 290 schools across the territory before they were shuttered by the war. It employs roughly 13,000 people, including thousands in the schools, and it has a duty to maintain the neutrality of its facilities in the conflict zones in which it operates. Response: UNRWA officials say Israel is pursuing a campaign to discredit the agency, which provides services to millions of Palestinians in the region. It is difficult, U.N. officials say, to guarantee that there are no militants among the agency's workers in Gaza, where UNRWA is one of the largest employers, and where Hamas has exercised control for nearly two decades. Verification: The records bear similarities with other Hamas records that The Times has examined, and the names and identification numbers listed match those in a separate UNRWA database. The information was shared at The Times's request, and the Israeli government did not choose to share the materials with the agency itself, a U.N. official said. Dave Sanders for The New York Times Trump signaled an aggressive opening In Donald Trump's first sit-down broadcast interview since being elected again, he outlined an aggressive plan for opening his second term, vowing to move immediately to crack down on immigration and pardon hundreds of his backers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Read our fact-check of the interview, which aired on NBC. Trump also indicated that he would try to bar automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents and that he planned to fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray. He has threatened to lock up political foes like Liz Cheney who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack, but said in the interview that he would not directly order his new attorney general or F.B.I. director to pursue the matter. (Cheney, in turn, said his threats were an "assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.") Quotable: "I'm really looking to make our country successful," Trump said when asked about investigating President Biden and his family. "I'm not looking to go back into the past. I'm looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success." MORE TOP NEWS Chang W. Lee/The New York Times South Korea: Lawmakers' attempt to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol ended in failure on Saturday night, prolonging uncertainty in the country. Ukraine: President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of Russia's invasion. Haiti: More than 100 people were killed in a massacre in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the capital, a leading human rights group said. Ghana: John Dramani Mahama, who served as president from 2012 to 2017, will return to office after winning Saturday's election. Tech: Victims of child sexual abuse sued Apple for $1.2 billion, arguing that the company abandoned a 2021 system it developed to find abusive material. Democratic Republic of Congo: A medical mystery in a remote town led to the discovery of alarming changes in the mpox virus, and to a global health emergency. Greece: Hadrian's Aqueduct supplied water to Athens for centuries. It's being revived to ease water scarcity amid global warming. Britain: A thousand workers organized by an advocacy group are testing a four-day workweek. Here's how it's going. Media: Jay-Z vehemently denied allegations that he had raped a 13-year-old girl with Sean Combs, and he accused the lawyer who brought the suit of trying to blackmail him with false claims. SPORTS NEWS Premier League: Kath Phipps, a beloved receptionist who was the longest tenured employee of Manchester United, died at 85. Formula 1: For the first time since 1998, McLaren secured the constructors' championship. Figure skating: Ilia Malinin, the U.S. team's new star, won the men's singles competition in the Grand Prix Final and landed a quad axel. U.F.C.: What's next for Conor McGregor's earnings and career after his loss in a civil rape case. MORNING READ Photo illustration by Vanessa Saba Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author who died this year, was known at home as "St. Alice," a paragon of virtue and compassion. But the revelations that she knew that her youngest daughter, Andrea Skinner, had been sexually abused by Munro's partner, Gerald Fremlin, and that Munro stayed with Fremlin regardless have rocked literary circles. In the months since the revelations emerged, The Times Magazine revisited Munro's stories, spoke with members of her family and tracked down a number of her unpublished letters. Here's what we know. Lives lived: Miho Nakayama, a reigning J-pop star of the 1980s who become a critically acclaimed dramatic actress and who starred in the sentimental Japanese drama "Love Letter," has died at 54. CONVERSATION STARTERS End of the 'Eras': Taylor Swift's two-year tour permeated the culture. She was onstage for one last night in Vancouver, British Columbia. Holiday guilty pleasures: One December morning, a millennial critic realized that she had been begrudgingly charmed by an onslaught of Hallmark and Netflix holiday films. On the loose: Days after a gunman assassinated a health insurance executive in Manhattan, the unidentified suspect is being venerated by some as a folk hero. (See new photos of the suspect.) ARTS AND IDEAS Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times Notre-Dame has reopened More than five years after a devastating fire, the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris reopened to the general public over the weekend. Last night, 2,500 worshipers gathered there as its first regular Mass was celebrated below the soaring stone arches — the old ones indistinguishable from the new. "Fire has not conquered stone, despair has not conquered life," Msgr. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of the cathedral, declared in his opening remarks. For more: Take a look at photos of the interior and a 3-D model, read about how 250 companies and 2,000 people did the work and see photos of the opening weekend. We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. RECOMMENDATIONS Romulo Yanes for The New York Times Cook: Our food writer describes this easy vegetarian dinner as "pizza in rice form." Plant: Houseplants can make you healthier. Here's how to help them thrive. Captivate: Peruse our picks for holiday party shoes at all price points. Read: Choose one of our eight thrillers about marriages gone horribly, horribly wrong. Listen: Our critic pulled together the week's most notable new tracks. Play the Spelling Bee. And here are today's Mini Crossword and Wordle. You can find all our puzzles here. That's it for today's briefing. See you tomorrow. — Natasha Reach Natasha and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. Need help? 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