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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. As many of you cringe at the thought of the political conversations you might be having at Thanksgiving tomorrow, at least we have today's news that almost everybody will be thankful for this four-day pause in military action by both Israel and Hamas, and the release of 50 out of the 240 or so hostages that Hamas is holding. 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel will also be released. One of the interesting and maybe hopeful things about the Israel and Hamas pause and hostage and prisoner release is that it comes with the possibility of an extension past the initial four days and initial number of hostages to be released.

Israel's statement on the deal included this line, have you heard this yet? The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite. The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite. Doing that math, they would take less than three weeks for all the hostages to be released if both sides were to actually agree to that arrangement and follow it all the way through. That raises the question, can this short four-day pause lead to longer-term diplomacy that can protect both Israeli and Palestinian security and result in a Palestinian state?

Maybe just maybe with 1,200 Israelis and 12,000 Palestinians killed since October 7th, those numbers from independent estimates, not just the warring sides. Maybe just maybe everyone is exhausted enough to get real about a longer-term solution that somehow deals with Hamas' permanent war against the idea of a Jewish state, and somehow deals with the Jewish settler movement that's been trying to overwhelm Palestinian communities on the West Bank. Maybe none of that will happen, but maybe just maybe this can be the beginning of that.

We'll talk about the immediate deal now and the prospects for something longer-term with Allison McManus, senior director for National Security and International Policy with the Center for American Progress, the progressive think tank founded 20 years ago by former Clinton chief of staff and current Biden clean energy advisor, John Podesta. Previously, Allison McManus was the managing director at the Freedom Initiative.

A lot of us don't know that group in this country. They advocate for political prisoners in the Middle East and North Africa. She was research director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, which works to foster transparent, accountable, and just societies in the region. Ms. McManus, thanks so much for your time at a consequential moment. Welcome to WNYC.

Allison McManus: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Is it clear to you when this pause will actually begin and how the hostages will be released?

Allison McManus: I understand the pause is set to begin tomorrow morning. That would be tomorrow morning, I believe around 10:00 or 11:00 AM. I am not 100%--

Brian Lehrer: Sorry, is that New York time or is that Israel time?

Allison McManus: I believe that's Israel time. It's not immediately clear to me exactly how the hostages are going to be released. I think there's a lot that remains in question about how this deal is going to be executed and implemented not just in the next 24 hours, but also over the course of the four days. Obviously, very welcome, relieving news that the deal was reached, but I think we are still in a very delicate period and we will be until we see all of the hostages come home, until we have a chance to see that both sides do intend to stick to the cease-fire.

Brian Lehrer: Might there be an issue of who goes first or any complication like that between these two sides who are so thoroughly enemies with each other?

Allison McManus: I would be less concerned about the commitment to actually release the hostages or the prisoners and more concerned about the willingness to stick to the cease-fire. Of course, again, we're talking about a very delicate situation. I think until we see that these Palestinians are released from the Israeli prisons and returned home to their families, and similarly until we see that all of the 50 hostages that have been committed to by Hamas have been returned to Israel, really anything could be up in the air. All it would take is one rocket from Hamas to make Israel less inclined to do these releases and that could tank the whole deal.

A lot that's really delicate and really hanging in the balance right now. Again, I don't have all the details of the sequencing that's being planned or that's been discussed, but again, we feel really optimistic that this agreement was reached, and that this agreement was reached with a lot of support, frankly, in the Israeli war cabinet and on the Israeli side. Very, very hesitantly optimistic.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we welcome your questions or comments about the pause, and hostage and prisoner release deal, and also the longer-term as well, which we will get to substantially in this conversation with Allison McManus, senior director for National Security and International Policy with the Center for American Progress progressive think tank. 212-433-WNYC as always is our phone number. You can call or text 212-433-9692 with questions, comments, personal connections to, or anything else, the immediate apparent cease-fire for prisoner and hostage release deal or anything longer-term that might come out of it.

Allison, I think the least understood part of this deal in this country might be the release of the 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. I gather on both sides, it will be women and children. We know there are kids as young as three being held by Hamas, maybe even younger I don't know. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says today, 123 of the 150 Palestinians to be released are in fact minors under the age of 18. Five of them are 14 years old. I guess those are the youngest, according to Haaretz, imprisoned for offenses ranging from hurling fire bombs to arson, Haaretz says. Tell us more, who are these Palestinian prisoners as a group?

Allison McManus: We're still waiting for more specific information about the individuals who have been tained. The Israeli government is starting to release some of that information. I'll be honest, I haven't had a chance to see a comprehensive list of who all of these individuals are. We do understand that in the negotiations, the deal includes the release of, as you said, minors and women in exchange for the release of the minors and women among the hostages held by Hamas. In the lists that I have seen, some of the partial lists as you said, we've seen young individuals who have been arrested for charges related to violating national security.

In some cases, these look like very vague charges. It could just be undermining peace, damaging security areas, and in other cases it's a bit more explicit. A lot of the charges include throwing stones, throwing Molotov cocktails, that kind of thing. What's often difficult is when we see this type of arrests that have to do with national security offenses, often there's an exceptional legal standard that we would see applied.

That might be that is part of the reason why we would see so many minors that are being held because often, again, national security charges allow for a loosening of rights protections and civil protections that may be afforded under other types of criminal charges. It often leads to this sort of environment where we can see these broad applications of language around vague national security offense. Those do look to be the type of prisoners who are being released.

Brian Lehrer: Your previous work as head of the Freedom Initiative, I see the group described as advocating for political prisoners in the Middle East and North Africa. Do you or does the Freedom Initiative consider these 150 to be political prisoners? Israel says they are all people convicted of actual crimes with due process and courts of law. You were just enumerating some of those crimes so different from just randomly seizing civilian hostages as Hamas did on October 7th. Do you see them or does Freedom Initiative see them as political prisoners on some level, or in a gray area, or not at all?

Allison McManus: First, I want to make clear I'm no longer affiliated with the Freedom Initiative, so I'm not able to speak on behalf of how that organization might view these prisoners. Again, I have not been able to look individually at each prisoner and review case files and that sort of thing, which I think is really critical to understand the nature of the charges.

What I can say is that there is often not a difference between prisoners who have been prosecuted and charged and often convicted with, again, national security offenses and political prisoners because we so often see the suspension. This is absolutely true when it comes to prisoners being charged with national security charges in Israel, and this has been documented. We often see, again, the suspension of civil liberties in a way that makes it very difficult to assess whether an individual has been able to access a free and fair trial.

Both of these things can be true at the same time. An individual could have certainly been tried, but may have been tried in a way that's unfair, where they're not able to access the same right to defense, to present evidence that could exonerate them of these crimes or where we might see otherwise lesser crimes that are being prosecuted at a higher level because they carry this sense of, again, undermining national security. Sometimes what we see happen also is if there are protests that turn violent, it could be that anybody who's in the vicinity of that protest ends up getting arrested and tried on charges related to other acts that were taking place.

All of these types of concerns, I would say, around the freeness and fairness of the trial are what would lead us to call them political prisoners. Until we are able to actually verify that each and everyone is able to access a free and fair trial and that the charges that they've been convicted of were well-evidenced, we should be raising questions about the validity of their detention.

Brian Lehrer: Which is to say you think some of these 150 would fall into that category?

Allison McManus: Again, I haven't been able to review all of them, but to see minors who are being held under very vague charges, that raises real concerns for me. Again, this is to say a lot of those who are released appear to be kids, who were maybe at protests and the protests turned violent, but not necessarily like hardened terrorists that we would be concerned about like the individuals who would have orchestrated and carried out the attacks that we saw on October 7th.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from someone who has a question about the hostage for prisoner release part of this deal. Carol in Spring Lake, New Jersey, you're on WNYC with Allison McManus from the Center for American Progress. Hi, Carol.

Carol: Good morning, thank you for taking my call. I have a lot of interest in this whole issue. I have a lot of friends in Israel. My question is, I am just curious why the deal for release of hostages, which is fabulous, is 50 to 150?

Brian Lehrer: Fair question. Why is it 50 hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners?

Allison McManus: Thanks so much, Carol, for that question. I certainly understand why this looks imbalanced, let's say. Again, I think when it comes to the types of individuals who are being released from the Israeli prisons, these are not necessarily, as we've been discussing, the hardened criminals who are facing very lengthy sentences. We are looking at those who may have been detained and facing prison terms or who are held in administrative detention, who may be eligible for release at some point in the near future anyway. Again, not having looked at the list, this is often what happens in some of the prisoner exchanges.

I think for the Israelis in the really desperate need to bring home these hostages who could be held for an indefinite time, many of whom are maybe wounded or have medical needs that aren't being tended to, there's a feeling that releasing this number of, again, minors that are being held for lesser crimes is worth bringing home these hostages who could very well perish if they're not brought home to deliver them to their families who so desperately want them back.

Brian Lehrer: Carol, thank you for your call. I hope that somewhat answers your question. Couple of listeners texting things having to do with why this won't actually begin until tomorrow. One listener says, "I wanted to highlight that according to what I heard on WNYC earlier, the reason it won't start until tomorrow is because Israeli law dictates that there'll be a 24-hour period for the public to voice their opinion."

I think it's actually for the courts to weigh in on the acceptability of the agreement. You can clarify that for us, if you can. Then someone else's writing, "I heard the station mention this morning that the cease-fire needs to happen to allow Hamas to find where their hostages are being held, including by other terrorist organizations. Can you confirm if that is true?" On either of those things?

Allison McManus: I can't confirm whether the release pertains only to those hostages that are held by Hamas, or as we know, there are other entities, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad who have held hostages as well. I don't personally know what the degree of communication is between these groups. I do know that Israel had determined that it would be setting the time after the war cabinet had agreed to the cease-fire, that they would be determining the time of the beginning of the cease-fire. I'll say, I don't know whether or not that has to do with getting, I guess, information from the Israeli public was the question, but certainly it would need to be deemed that this was a legal cease-fire.

Brian Lehrer: Right, for the courts. On political prisoners, the world seems to have forgotten already, and I've mentioned this a few times since October 7th, that on the day before the October 7th attack, on Friday, October 6th, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, currently in prison in Iran for what the Nobel Committee called her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all. Of course, Hamas has a relationship with Iran to whatever degree backed by Iran. Would you consider Narges Mohammadi a political prisoner in Iran?

Allison McManus: Yes, absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Just noting that that seems to have immediately fallen out of the headlines when at least or out of the conversation when at least indirectly, there seemed to be some relationship between the issues raised by the Nobel Committee with their Peace Prize award on October 6th and what happened on October 7th.

Allison McManus: I think in the context of recognizing, and I think again here we need to be clear that the reasons that Narges Mohammadi, for instance, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the reasons that she is detained in Iran have to do with her free expression and the ways in which she's advocated for women's rights in a way that's threatening, frankly, to the Iranian government and so she has been targeted for that.

Again, I will say that in looking through the list of the Palestinian prisoners who have been released, this is a bit of a different context in which it may not necessarily be that they're being targeted simply because of free speech or rights activism. I don't want to necessarily make an equivalence, for instance, between those who may have participated in a violent protest and somebody who is peacefully expressing their activism. I do think we need to look at, in both cases, the fact that, again, somebody may have been tried, and convicted, and be detained, and imprisoned, and tried on national security charges, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they are a terrorist per se. We do have to really examine the context in which some of these prosecutions take place. I think that that's important to underscore.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned in the intro the prospect of extending the deal one day for each 10 additional hostages released after the 50, with about 200 more hostages, that would be around 20 days or less than three weeks of a pause. Do you see any likelihood that these extra days for extra releases will happen to any degree?

Allison McManus: I think it's very encouraging that we are hearing this kind of forward-looking language. It's again, I think, Brian, this goes back to what we were discussing at the beginning of the show. This is a really delicate period, and I think again, all it might take is one rocket from Hamas to really scuttle this whole deal. On the other hand, I think if we see a genuine commitment right now, I think you called it the fatigue that so many are feeling around this conflict. The world has seen thousands of innocent Israelis and Palestinians killed since October 7th. I think Israelis and Palestinians more than anybody are feeling this fatigue.

I do think that we've seen a greater urgency in some of the pressure that's being put on the Israeli government to engage in this cease-fire, and we've seen results from that. That I think is a very positive story. It's a very positive story that we've seen Qatar be able to negotiate with Hamas to get a commitment from Hamas to stop the rocket attacks, to release the hostages. It feels like we are in a very different and more optimistic situation right now than we were a week, two weeks ago. I'm very hopeful that this is if, again, both sides are able to stick to this cease-fire, release the prisoners in hostages that they've agreed to, that that gives something to build on.

That we could then see more hostages released, building of good faith that both sides want to dial down the temperature, let's say, on this conflict, end some of the killing and brutality, and begin to move to a phase where we can talk about what a lasting peace looks like, not just in terms of a few more days of cease-fire, but really looking years into the future, decades into the future about how to move beyond these cycles of violence.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a break and come back and do exactly that. Can the exhaustion that's being felt on both sides and the world's attention now more focused on the bigger picture as well as the immediate horrors, can this lead to meaningful progress for a longer-term solution in everybody's interest? We'll talk about that with Allison McManus from the Center for American Progress and continue to take your calls and texts, 212-433-WNYC right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Allison McManus, senior director for National Security and International Policy with the Center for American Progress, the progressive think tank founded 20 years ago by former Clinton chief of staff and current Biden clean energy advisor, John Podesta. Previously, again, for those of you who have joined us since the top of the hour, Allison was the managing director at the Freedom Initiative, which advocates for political prisoners in the Middle East and North Africa. She was research director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East policy, which works to foster transparent, accountable, and just societies in the region.

She's got a lot of experience, a lot of longer-term perspective, as well as on the immediate news of this pause and presumed hostage release and prisoner exchange that will go with it. All right. Allison, just before this pause, you were co-author on a Center for American Progress paper called Israel-Hamas: 5 Actions Washington Should Prioritize Now. Number one was urge an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, check. I'm curious as a think tank that focuses primarily on US policy, how much do you think President Biden did that and influenced the fact that this is happening at all or the way in which it's being laid out?

Allison McManus: We know that the Biden administration has been urging the Israelis to consider their military offensive against Hamas in a way that would be in accordance with international law. We know that there had been an urging to delay ground invasion that happened a few weeks ago into the north of Gaza. We know that the Biden administration, of course, the US is Israel's strongest ally, has been working very, very closely with the Israelis throughout all aspects of this conflict. We also know that the Biden administration has made a $14.3 billion request for security assistance for Israel.

We see that there's, we can say maximum influence right now that the Biden admin should be and I think is using with its Israeli counterparts. That being said, the Israelis have also clearly been acting of their own accord. They did end up engaging in this ground invasion. They are clearly sovereign actors who are making their own decisions. It's not to say that it's the Biden administration who is setting Israel's policy on this conflict. I do think that when it comes to these negotiations, we have seen this is something that the admin had been urging as a way to ensure that the hostages could come home.

Frankly, we've seen a lot of diplomacy and a lot of engagement around the delivery of humanitarian assistance. I recognize that that's also something that's been very much top of mind for the administration, how to ensure that more aid gets in more regularly, more of the kinds of aid that Gazans need. That's to say we've thankfully started to see fuel enter into Gaza, but so, so much more is needed. I do think that this is something where, again, this was the decision that was made by the Israeli war cabinet, but I do think that there has been quite a lot of urging from the administration on this position.

Brian Lehrer: Now, the final and longer-term point in your 5 Actions Washington Should Prioritize Now paper is Center US diplomacy to advance a political solution. How comprehensively do you mean the term political solution?

Allison McManus: Political solution would need to include a vision for Palestinian governance in a more robust way than I think we've really seen, particularly in the last decade. The United States has been a primary driver of diplomatic efforts to create a two-state solution, which would see an independent Palestinian state. There's been times in the past where those diplomatic efforts have nearly paid off, but more recently, there's been a turn to efforts more to normalize with Israel and to urge greater respect for rights, let's say, but less investment in the two-state solution.

Since October 7th, we've seen some doubling down from the administration on its recommitment to a two-state solution, which I think is really important to see and hear in this context. The big questions are how, what does that look like? Is this just going to look like, again, the start of a never ending peace process as we have seen throughout the past decades, or will we see a willingness? I think what we would argue is that we do need to see this willingness to tackle some of the hard questions around immediately the provision of security in Gaza.

Immediately the question of who is going to govern, whether that's the Palestinian authority, and we can talk a little bit more about that because there are some real obstacles to seeing a leadership under a credible Palestinian authority. Would this be some kind of a transitional government? Then longer-term for the creation of a state of Palestine, what kinds of commitments would we need to see from Israel? Is the US willing to really push for the retraction from some of the settlements areas that have been established illegally in the past years, and really what has stymied progress towards a two-state solution? I think those are a lot of questions. Ultimately, what I think we'd really hope to see is, and I think what we have seen, have been over at the State Department and talking to different congressional offices, and this is what everybody's starting to think about.

How do we start now so that there is some infrastructure in place once the conflict ends or quickly begin a process of creating an independent governance structure in Gaza that could then facilitate an expression of the people's will? Because ultimately it should be up to Palestinians to determine what an independent Palestinian state looks like.

Brian Lehrer: The US has tried to have this kind of influence before successfully in the '70s under President Carter with Israel and Egypt, unsuccessfully in the '90s under Clinton with the Oslo peace process. More recently under Trump and Biden with the Abraham Accords, with Arab countries recognizing Israel, but without a solution for Palestinian rights and statehood. Does President Biden need to go bigger now, in your opinion?

This is what your report is focused on telling the administration what it should be doing now with respect to this conflict. New York Times foreign affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, maybe you saw it, but recently, it's time for an actual Biden peace plan, which I take to mean a somewhat detailed two-state solution. Are you calling on Biden to issue an actual Biden peace plan?

Allison McManus: I think that the moment calls for an investment in an actual peace plan. It's tragic that it's taken this amount of loss of life, again, Israeli loss of life, Palestinian loss of life to underscore the point that the status quo is not going to deliver security nor rights to Israelis and Palestinians. This is the moment where there is, again, an opportunity that was generated on the blood of Israelis and Palestinians, but this is an opportunity for the US to show leadership and commit to a political solution. Yes, I would say, looking at a peace process is something that feels particularly urgent right now.

Brian Lehrer: We'll take another phone call. Oh, go ahead. Did you want to finish your thought? Go ahead.

Allison McManus: Oh, I was going to say, I think there's a big question right now about a peace plan would also, of course, require buy-in from regional partners. This is not something that the US is going to be able to do on its own. This can't be something that's a unilateral, the United States on its own trying to execute this peace plan. We do need to see engagement with regional partners to have buy-in beyond just the United States.

I think that feels particularly challenging in this moment, and we can talk a little bit about that more later if we want. Again, I think it's looking at confident US leadership here in partnership as a partner with Israel, with other Arab states, and then ultimately with the Israeli and Palestinian people.

Brian Lehrer: Julie, in New Lebanon, New York. We don't have a call from Lebanon, but we do have a call from New Lebanon. Julie, you're on WNYC, hello.

Julie: Hi. My thought is that all the peace plans in the past failed because of Israeli settlement. Is it possible for the Americans to have a role militarily in helping to dismantle the settlements?

Brian Lehrer: Tough question, Allison.

Allison McManus: I think I would say that there's an imperative for the US to play a role in seeing these settlements versus the immediate halt of the expansion of settlements because we've seen egregious escalation in settlement expansion even since October 7th, but certainly over the past years, so we need to see a halt. Then there is the question of we need to see a retraction from certain areas of illegal settlement in order for any-- This has to be part of a peace plan. I would not recommend that the US even suggest to do this militarily. I think that there are many other levers of influence that the United States has that it's not currently using that need to be used.

Brian Lehrer: If the caller is suggesting the US military invading the West Bank and physically ejecting settlers, obviously that's not going to happen. Can you imagine a diplomatic plan that includes doing something about the settler movement? A lot of Israelis would have to be moved off the West Bank one way or another, wouldn't they?

Allison McManus: Yes. I do think that, again, this has been one of the key obstacles, but I would say chief among the obstacles to achieving peace. I do think that a land for peace framework is going to have to be part of any peace deal. Ultimately, it's going to be up to Israel to commit to a deal that would see a adherence to the international law and boundaries on where these settlements cannot be, let's say, pulling those back.

It's going to be also incumbent on the United States to make clear that these settlements are an obstacle to peace and that as long as these settlements continue to exist illegally, it's going to be very difficult to talk about any peace deal, which means that it's going to be very difficult to talk about any lasting peace for Israelis or Palestinians. I really do see this as a crux of a political solution.

Brian Lehrer: On the other side, here's a text from a listener who writes, "World leaders should be pressing Hamas and its [unintelligible 00:36:55] such as Qatar for Hamas' immediate surrender. That is the only way the region and the world can live in peace. The Hamas ideology will eventually be defeated as mainstream ideology just like Nazism was defeated in Germany."

It makes me think, again, of how I was saying earlier that Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on October 6th to a political prisoner fighting for human rights for all in Iran and the very next day, Hamas backed by Iran staged that horrific attack and took all these hostages. When someone says, "World leaders should be pressing Hamas, and its [unintelligible 00:37:40] for Hamas' immediate surrender, that's the only way the region and the world can live in peace," maybe just as the settler question has to be dealt with, Hamas and its ideology need to be dealt with.

Allison McManus: I absolutely agree. I really couldn't agree more. The tricky thing is that an ideology is not something you can kill in a strike. To combat ideology requires the presentation of an alternative ideology that is more powerful and more compelling. I think that this is really, again, something when we're talking about a political solution and talking about how to reinvigorate, let's say, particularly Palestinian investment, and belief, and conviction in a better future, a future that does not include Hamas, this is really essential again, to what a long-term vision to combat Hamas looks like.

If we're talking about ideology, ideas need to be combated with better ideas. That is the only way to defeat ideology. If we're talking about combating Hamas financially because this I think is something a little bit different, Hamas [unintelligible 00:39:01] Iran has been the primary financier of Hamas. This is something I would say on a bit of a more immediate term that needs to be dealt with. What's also tricky, of course, about the Iranian backing of Hamas is that we've also seen Iran, they also back Hezbollah.

I think there was a lot of fears on October 10th, 11th. I was certainly very, very scared that we were seeing the beginning of a united front of Hamas and Hezbollah that we're going to drive a much larger scale war against Israel that we could see spillover regionally, et cetera. I think this is, first of all, something that Hamas was betting on and that really Hamas wanted to see, that it would provoke Israel into this wider regional war. I have been encouraged to see that that hasn't happened. I do think that this may speak to Iran's interest or disinterest, to say, in fomenting a full-scale regional conflict. At the same time, we've seen Hezbollah has launched rockets, we've seen that Iranian-backed groups have targeted American installations. This does not feel like-- Again, I would say, I've said tenuous a few times, but I would say Iran's position right now does feel tenuous. I think policymakers have a really difficult job ahead of them. It's something that we are certainly thinking about quite a bit as to how to hold Iran accountable, one, for the crimes that it has financed.

Two, how to prevent Iran from being able to continue to finance this criminal activity, terrorist activity that we're seeing. Three, also, how to ensure that Iran is not backed into a position where then engages in wider spread conflict and more escalatory destabilizing activity. That's a fine line to walk. I'll also say that that fine line to walk will require, again, regional partners. I think Qatar has played a very constructive role as a country that has ties with Hamas as a political organization, and has been key really to being able to get this current cease-fire deal, but that will also be key to any kind of thinking through us to how to isolate Hamas financially.

It's quite a complicated picture, but absolutely it's a great question, and I think raises an important point about what it will take in the long-term to combat Hamas beyond just the the military strikes that we're seeing now.

Brian Lehrer: There we will leave it without solving the Middle East conflict, but with maybe a little bit of good discussion anyway. I think part of what we heard from Allison McManus, senior director for National Security and International Policy with the Center for American Progress, that progressive think tank, which is independent, but does have some ties to people in the Biden administration is a call for a Biden peace plan take advantage of this pause and hostage release that's apparently about to start and try to propose something bigger. We'll see if he does. Allison McManus, thank you very much for joining us.

Allison McManus: Thanks so much, Brian. Thanks so much to the listeners who have tuned in.

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