after days of drama, 15 rounds of voting. the house finally elects a speaker. how the chaos ended and what it means for the future of kevin mccarthy and the gop. and there are new details in the horrific murder of four idaho college students. what we re learning from a recently released affidavit and a former fbi agent will be joining us with her perspective on that investigation. also remarkable progress for buffalo bills player damar hamlin. an update on his condition and the moment he face timed his teammates from a hospital bed. and a major policy for military parents. the change that will allow them to spend more time with their newborn coming up on cnn. good morning, everyone. welcome to cnn this morning. it s january 7th. alex is gracing us with his presence. thank you for being with us, alex. hopefully you got some sleep last night. i got some sleep, that means i missed the historic, you know, end of the speakership race. yeah. and woke up to that news
david scott. effries. so here s the thing you can see the tally chart on the right-hand side. we are making sure everybody has voted. we believe the magic number is 217. as you see right there kevin mccarthy has 216. when they start another roll call we will go back to that immediately but in the meantime let s bring in our chief congressional correspondent chad pergram chad do we appear to be one vote short. that s right. this is why it always takes a while at the end because you have the tellers, the tally clerks in front of the chamber they are going through manually and comparing notes and making sure that everybody has the same numbers. let me do a deep dive right now. so this is where we stand. okay. so remember that the speaker must win an outright majority of all members casting ballots for somebody by their last name. okay? so the present votes do not count. the present votes do not count. so if you laura: chad can we pause? because i think we have matt g
angle. laura: now how often have we seen the press try to kind of pretend that religious americans are part of a fringe movement? liberals warn of christian nationalism and even link the faithful to domestic terrorism. now these same elites relishing headlines like christianity in the u.s. is quickly shrinking and gleeful to support that millennials are turning against organized religion. and if you re someone who offers thoughts and prayers after tragedies, well, they assume you re just a fraud. we are not going to give thoughts and prayers, which to me is just [bleep]. the rhetoric that we ve used, the thoughts and prayers you ve just referred to has done nothing to stop the epidemic of gun violence. laura: liberal high school administrators let s not forget them they felt threatened by public displays of religion for decades now. remember joe kennedy beloved football coach in washington state? he lost his job for the high crime of praying after games. it was ne
closer to deciding whether to prosecute him on tax and gun charges. i will be joined by a growing number of new york lawmakers calling for congressman george santos to resign. what the embattled congressman is saying today. good day, everyone. i m andrea mitchell in washington. republican lawmakers are calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate additional documents found by aides to president biden. they were discovered in the garage of his home in wilmington, delaware, after the first batch of ten classified materials were found at the penn biden center in washington. classified material next to your corvette? what were you thinking? let me i m going to get a chance to speak on all of this, god willing, soon. as i said earlier this week by the way, my corvette is in a locked garage. it s not like it s out on the street. it s in a locked garage? yes, as well as my corvette. merrick garland will make a statement in the next hour. we don t
[ no audio ] the idf carrying out st strikes, targeting the hamas commanders. The humanitarian crisis in gaza is getting worse. Some of the images coming in are disturbing. This new video that we will show you is a fresh view of the crisis. You can see very clearly what it is. Its a massive burial of gazans killed. Body bags in rows, as you can see. Row after row after row. This morning, we are hearing a new urgent plea from the mother of one of the hostages that hamas is holding. This mother. This is mia shem. We will bring you what the weathe mother is saying after hamas put out a video. New Rocket Attacks on israel. Those were targeting ashkelon, five, ten miles from the gaza border. This morning, we are getting new information about u. S. Military deployments. There will be two u. S. Carrier groups in the mediterranean. We are also learning this morning that some 2,000 marines are headed to the region, possibly the red sea. They are part of the marine expedition unit. 2,000 marines