welcome to the lead. how about this for question of the day? fani willis, what are you thinking? exactly parks trisha murphy. murphy is a top opinion writer for the atlanta journal constitution asking that of district attorney fani willis who has yesterday to deny that she has a special relationship with a special prosecutor she hired, the stunning scandal revealed in legal briefs in georgia. donald trump was at the first hearing today since the allegations were revealed. plus inside the iowa caucuses, exactly how does this very american, very bizarre process work and why does iowa opt for this versus the more popular and easy primary process where voters just line up and vote in the polls? leading this hour, what could be a worsening global crisis for president biden, iranian-backed houthi militants warning of retaliation against the u.s. and its allies for strikes against houthis in yemen last night. the white house insists these were self-defense strikes intended to
so they have their options and the capabilities and the u.s. went into this knowing all those were possible and now waiting to see how the houthis respond, which is something they have very much promised to do. the white house says they re confident they have the legal authority to carry out these strikes. there s some members of congress who disagree. what s their argument? reporter: this is an important point. by the u.s. constitution only congress can authorize an act of war. they weren t given authorization. they were notified it was going to happen. because of that, the president had the authority to act, but this clearly wasn t a quick response. given the number of countries involved, the level of coordination this required, this clearly involved a tremendous amount of planning and because of what went into this operation, the scope of it, the size, those members of congress are arguing look, congress needed to authorize these strikes on yemen, not simply a presidential act.