ready hello, i'm, i am demising on a quick look at the main stories. now. russia says that it's captured the eastern ukrainian town of soda. it would be moscow's 1st gate and the don't bass region since july capturing sold are also allows russian forces to concentrate on taking the by backward which ukraine has been defending for months. effort to take solid are been spearheaded by a canny precaution. these are the mercenary, not going to group that ukraine is saying that severe fighting is still ongoing. visual and you're not really on the evening of january, the 12th, the liberation of solid always completed the towns important. continuing the russian advance on don't yet sk, taking full control of solid on enables russia to cut off the ukrainian forces and supplies in bar, which is located to the south west from solid all and after that to block and, and circle the ukranian army divisions that remain that a gas pipeline connecting lithuania and latvia has exploded gas operator. amber grid says the last happened in northern lithuania. there's no immediate evidence of an attack. police were preparing to evacuated nearby village, but no injuries or fatalities have been reported. supply of gas was cast off, while cruise was to extinguish the fire. climax of his grasp, wittenberg has joined others in the german village of litzy ross to protest against the expansion of an open pos, cost coal mine. now, thousands of people are expected to join them on saturday, several of the activists remained chained to a house in the abandoned village, resisting police efforts to evict them. some have been occupying houses there for the last 2 years. protest to say the cold project undermines germany's climate goals. i think it's absolutely absurd that this is happening. the 2023. and it is that most effective people are clear. the science is clear. we need to keep the carbon in the ground, and germany is really embarrassing itself. right now. a court increase has dropped espionage charges against a group of activists involved and rescuing people from migrant boats. ruling that they were vague. court also admitted the long running case have procedural folds. a still face charges, though, including for human trafficking. the prosecutor was told to refile the case, but it might not be possible as his charges would fall under statutes of limitations. friday's decision does not represent an acquittal that we don't get to go to trial. it means that we don't get to have a spouse and not guilty. it is simply a procedural mistake, but means of this kind of proceed. and if this same time to get deployed again for the felony trial, we're still waiting to happen. it's 15 more years of waiting of errors. all we want is just, we want this to go to trial. and it doesn't seem like that will happen any time soon. given what happened today, at least 9 people have been reported dead off to tornadoes and thunderstorms hit the united states of georgia and alabama. the death toll is expected to rise as rocky rescue crews are still searching for missing people. drone footage filmed in the alabama town of selma. she has dozens of damaged homes. more than 35 tornadoes reported by the national weather service across the se, united states on thursday. i mean, you do it, we, it pick up the crate. and you are buying those. don't you think this will all last go anywhere in the room. literally all over here. yes. a lot of my whole house with these go that you had a shot the all to work out right there. wow. so that is not your home if your business all my home or business. i had a house that move up there, how it is, how i just removed from their house and sell their house. and a study suggests around 900000000 people in china have been infected with co that report by peking university says that gang shoo provinces the west hit when 91 percent of people are reported to be infected. experts of warning that cases will such in rural china over the lunar new year holiday. the bottom line is next ah hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question now that republicans have sorted out their leadership of congress. what should we expect over the next 2 years? let's get to the bottom line. ah, it wasn't pretty, but it was democracy in action. the most conservative wing of the republican party was able to believe the election of the speaker of the house of representatives. 15 times as far as parliamentary fights around the world go. that's not too bad. but for america, it rarely happens. it was pretty historic. after about a week, congressman kevin mccarthy had made enough backdoor deals with members of the freedom caucus to win them over and picked up the speakers gavel. now the new congress elected last november can start its work. mccarthy promised to bring back the america 1st agenda and to make immigration and woken this top priorities. he's also set up a committee to look into the weapon position of government agencies like the internal revenue service which collects taxes. so what does that mean for americans and the rest of the world? and what will us politics look like as we had to the presidential elections of 2024? today we're talking with republican strategist, rena shaw, a former aide to to members of congress and a delegate to the 2016 republican national convention. and tim constantine, former republican, politician, and now a columnist for the washington times newspaper and the host of the capitol hill show based here in washington. thanks to both of you for joining me today. we've all been riveted this last week. now people hardly remember it, but they've all been riveted to 15 ballots for the speaker of the house. him and i would just love it to know what does the difficulty that kevin mccarthy had in achieving the speakership mean for america and mean for politics as we look forward . i think it challenges whatever the agenda is because there's such a slim majority that you can have a small number that can say, ah, we'd like something different and it, it really puts them in a bind it make a huge difference though because you've got a democrat senate, so if you had a republican house that was in its current situation and a republican senate and you had them holding up the process, i think it could have a huge impact. but the truth is, even when the house passes, something like that they've just passed to day immediately or the arrest bill. we're going to limit funding for new i r. s. agents. we're going to limit the investigated powers. we're going to stop all these audit. so the little guy out there, it doesn't matter that's not going to pass the satellite is certainly not going to be signed by biden. it's a symbolic gesture. so whether that passed or got held up won't really make any difference in what becomes law. so i think if anything, it sets a pattern for the years to come 2 years from now. if the house can say, if the republicans in the house can say, well we did x, y, and z, we stopped for you. we voted to stop the i r s, or we voted to lower taxes or we voted even if they didn't become law. they're setting an agenda for the election of 2024. that's the biggest impact they have. and i think you're conservative wing wants to make sure they have a voice in that process. let me ask you about the chutzpah for google. it where it's the chutzpah of mac gates representative matt gates who was trolling. kevin mccarthy saying, why are you housed in the speakers office right now? you don't deserve you're not the speaker. nobody is you do. i can really it was in yeah. credibly brilliant. move on mac. i mean this was a republican caucus members are challenging. kevin accredited move your stuff out of that. he wanted to differentiate himself, right? here's the establish him. here's me and my friends. we want to break the establishment once in for all. in fact, i got a fundraising email from andy, big thing as much. let's break the establishment ones and probably had this act. it was not just about embarrassment. they really thought they could break it and went, a people been think our founders would have loved best oh, democracy playing out. and it's messy and you know, battles and stuff. no, i don't think they would have i love counting count fathers by the way, but i don't think they wanted this tiny little group to have so much power. but our founding fathers didn't have c span. they didn't have visual. yes, i did. and i don't think they are going to perform a performative side of the. yeah, i mean, because i often read about early american history, these were basically backroom deals, negotiating out right in front of all men. frankly, all men, all men that were if you go back to the origins of the united states when, when they were going to be 13 states to start, there was a lot of this type horse readiness. there were one or 2 small states that were just folding their arms, saying, we're not going to go along in last. we are taken care of as well. so this is nothing new in the world world, a penalty street and you live to write his confession. he made these were confessions because he needed the speakership. it would've been, i mean it was already a once in a century, embarrassment at the thing called ment. i mean, i just wanna remind our audience and then we'll go to chuck schumer of our audience . 1856 count. how many years ago that was nathaniel banks. busy what was he elected? speaker of the house after a 133 ballots. it was the same year that a south carolina sen caned and took a beautiful k, a brutal keening of a senator from massachusetts who spoke out against slave holders and nearly killed that senator on the floor of the senate. so in, in historic retrospective, this was nothing, i want to be very careful cuz terms matter words matter when you say it was an embarrassment style repairs. but i think of couple of years ago, the 1st time that donald trump was impeached, that was in january of that year in november of that year. it was mentioned literally 0 times during election season. that was 10 months later that was the impeachment of a president and it had essentially been forgotten. it was cast aside, there were other issues they had but to her. and so the idea that this was an embarrassment, it was like an awkward moment, but it has really no historical impact either the literally let's go to chuck schubert military, chuck humors, comment. you know, he has an i suite up, we're still you still using twitter, but chuck schumer, right speaker mccarthy's dream job, could turn into a nightmare for the american people to get the votes. he surrendered, surrendered to demands of a fringe element of the g. o. p. americans, what congress to build on the historic bipartisan achievement from last 2 years, not more gridlock, if not, not true, that is actually sharma massage. live your glasses. i'll say it again. if you're going to quote, schumer, you go to slide as, but to the, to that, to, to the point here. you know, i think the, the question is, you know, if you look at the last 2 years in the power of jo mansion as a swing vote in the senate, i've done shows with various commentators who began calling. joe mentioned president mansion. oh yeah. do. did that example, basically give ideas in part to the renegade g o p members to say, we need to go from being looked at as the fringe of the republican party to being central and mainstream to the choice of the republican party. is that what we saw happen? well, i definitely think a page on jo mansions playback is what we thought, right in a way, i'm from west virginia. i knew joe mentioned now more than half my life. and i've seen him come up and people say he's being a contrarian, just to be contrary. and i'm like, no, at the end of the day when you've been in the seat, that jo mansions been as long as he's been and it's about legacy. it's about what you're standing up for, and i did see a bit of that come out on the floor this past week from republicans like my gates, who i don't traditionally agree with. but there were things he mentioned on the floor such a special interest term limits, those things are actually palatable to us younger, more. and so what is the full range embrace that you feel like is actually something that's a legitimate issue that resonates with citizen. i think the term limits absolutely . right. so explain to our author term limits, you know, the fact that, that these members sit there in the incumbent enjoy so much advantage. right? but we don't talk about getting them term limited out after a certain amount of years in congress. and maybe that's something we ought to be talking about getting certain people such a speaker mccarthy's leadership, political committee not to play in certain open safe primaries. that's another concession he made. i think that's fair because then maybe that will quell some of the in fighting that's happening. i go back to the speaker. mccarthy will now. speaker mccarthy, when he was paul ryan, the former republican speakers right hand and i was a young congressional aid and i really felt that here's a guy speaker ryan who wanted to be a policy guy. he wanted to do all the policy stuff. he didn't have an appetite for any the dirty political games because kevin mccarthy was playing them for him. so i say embarrassment because kevin mccarthy now is so weakened he wanted to start out this new year. let's talk investigations. of course he told us that for many months that we're going to do investigations. but he also did want to legislate. i do think at this point in his life he did want to come out and do some legislating on issues like the economy, tackling inflation, immigration energy because of what's happening from russia, ukraine, you know, these kinds of things are important conversation. i do think mccarthy was ready to step into the speakership, talking about some solutions, but after this past week, obnoxious awkwardness, i must admit, i don't agree. but i think this is really weak in his power and also back the question. can he even last 2 years? i don't think he can go to him. let me ask you. one of the things that, that kevin mccarthy agreed to, which i find i find hard to believe he did, was called the motion to vacate. and, and what i will explain already is the motion to vacate means that a member of the house of representatives at any moment can stop the business of the house of representatives and call essentially for a confidence vote in the speaker and, and potentially if they, it in call for a vote to see with the speaker as conference, trying to get more into a parliament in a way and, and basically, and that, and to some degree, you can imagine situations which, you know, a o. c has been having fun explaining on twitter that, that to keep kevin mccarthy in the democrats may have to come to save him now. and then. so i tell us about that for agility and where you, whether you think that's healthy for the country, and healthy for the legislative branch. sure. and i'm going to combine your last 2 questions when you asked about joe mansion. and then your question there is, i think. ringback if you look at the short but story history of the freedom caucus is, this is where they've been from, from in their, in their entire existence. when jim jordan and mark meadows started the freedom caucus, they had some very specific goals in mind. and if you remember the john banner era, it was mark meadows who spearheaded that at risk to his own career at the right time. it's in retrospect, to say, look what. but if that didn't work marco's was essentially done in washington. and so mark meadows spearheaded that along with the members of the freedom caucus and pushed banner out the door and speaker and, and brought in paul. right. and so i think when you say, you know, is this new, is this dangerous the, the methodology is new. but where the freedom caucus has been historically and the fact that they'd like to keep things on a fairly conservative but legislative agenda. and none of that is new. none of that the so their tactics may be a little different and does it open some potential worms as far as someone being able to bring it up? let's say you've got 10 members of the republican party who are ready to vote. no confidence in kevin, i guarantee there's going to be 212 soon to be 213 democrats. it'll say sure. we don't have confidence in him either. and so he's gone at that. yeah. and then we have this all over again. yeah, i know there is there now, but i also think on behind the scenes because everything will not play out on the television cameras in that scenario. so behind the scenes with that threat there, then perhaps you have a, ironically, a more cohesive publicly, a more cohesive republican party. that is trying to publicly show they are on the same line. and if someone veers off the speaker beers or otherwise behind the scenes that threat just constantly wait a minute, we could make life very difficult and you can bring it back. so much of the agenda now and to both of you is now going to be one of investigating joe biden investigating hunter by we just had the revelations that in jo biden's private office, the university of pennsylvania office on here in washington, dc that they found classified documents that is, you know, opened up this pandora's box if, well, if he had classified documents, donald trump had classified documents. what's the big deal, or why don't you treat them both simultaneously? i'm just interested in whether in a world where you've got divided government, whether or not that kind of investigate, investigating the investigators from the last 2 years becomes essentially what we see every day in the congress. i had this conversation with jim jordan back and maybe jim jordan is the republican right website. now judiciary care and who would be in charge of most of those investigations. right. i had this very conversation because it seems as though over the last couple of years between january 6 or between any number of other issues to impeachment, and so on. that legislative agenda got set aside in favor of what the public perceives anyway as a political agent. and i said to congressman jordan, you cannot ignore. i realize you can ignore if there's evidence that is clear and 100 others laptop. ok. but that really shouldn't be front and center in my opinion, that should not be front and center if you need to do that investigation. great, but please don't make that the headline everyday because the public then just believes you or did he agree with you through the same thing? you know, i mean 7030. yeah. i think they're going to do a heck of a lot of investigating 70 percent of 30 percent of maybe passing some good legislation that the american people want them. you know, i think a lot about people born after 981 because i'm one of those people and how we feel about today's republican party were upset with bite. and because we feel like this administration hasn't been able to walk in shoe gum and particularly inflation, i'm young families like mine. i've got a baby under the age of one year old and i went through the baby formula shortage stuff. it happened twice. it happened last spring again, it was still happening last fall for me, and then just the price of daily commodities on shop, right? it feels like the bite administration doesn't want to address that for us. okay, so that's one thing. so we're like okay, republicans do what you always do, help us fix the economy, come up with them solution, but then it's always like hunter biden's laptop. it's like eyes let's get serious about doing. let's focus on 3 issue areas. so really you had founded when donald trump invited, we're going out in the past. yeah. republicans for by republican women and women biden have tectonic changed enough now that you're now a critical biden and ready to be supportive of the republic. they changed almost right away. stevie that was kind of wild for me and it was the in that way, you know, look i, i felt the bite and was the better choice at that time. i wanted to, i just didn't want to see trump in the white house. again, i felt he's a threat to the democracy. the i've come to know it also as a is a child of immigrants. this just isn't the stuff. my parents came to this country for i felt there was a lot of other ring the city, it was very hypocritical in nature, and that's why i said, ok, you know what biden is the better choice of the to, to me. but right away i could see this administration's policies weren't going to serve the rena, that came up to republican politics and served to republican members of congress at a time the tea party was coming to power. and i remember 1st meeting those very 1st activists from the tea party era and the 200-8009 actually 2008. they were very simple people that were just really feeling misrepresented by washington. they felt like our representatives weren't doing enough for us. they weren't speaking to our kitchen table issues. and they were, there was a bit of a frustration with both parties, but obviously more so with democrats. what i see now is that both sides want to just hate the other side. the demonization of the democrats by republicans is not a good playbook. it's not a long term playbook. but what i also don't see is the seriousness about doing the kitchen table issue right times i had hoped to freedom caucus could speak to that a little bit better. but also they're, they're a bit stop. they're not. i mean, they all didn't vote against mccarthy. a lot of them were with mccarthy and then those 4 hold out to the end who gave a present vote. and then 6 present votes essentially made mccarthy speaker. those people are not giving me any confidence so they can help the republican party do the issues that will serve speak on the issues legislature in a way that speaks to americans concerns, particularly those of us with really young families. as your great comment in there about how and i think this is completely accurate, people perceive you and i both perceived that there's an active effort to just a teacher. well, all these guys are the bad guys. know these guys are the bad guys. and i, i grew up in a different area than you and i grew up in the state of maine, but we had, when i was a kid, we had bill cohen was the republican senator, george mitchell who worked for a democratic administrate was that was that, that's where i was gone was the democrat, and but both of them could work. i mean, bill cohen used to work with gary hard all the time. they work on legislation together. george mitchell later became head of the senate but could work across the aisle very easily. it was an area where it can happen, it doesn't, it's not going to happen on every issue. and they had distinct, but they didn't have each other. there wasn't, they weren't bad guys because they were on the other team. and i, i'm not sure how we get beyond that. people talk about, you know, what was drunk, the guy drunk clearly wasn't the guy to bring people together. but who is, you know, when i was tensional candidates. yeah. for 2020, for your question. earlier to her about, you know, are you ready to come back and support someone other than it depends on who the person i guess some of them have better leadership and better uniting qualities than others. and when i, when i was sort of reading kevin mccarthy, stevens recently, he was sort of talking about, you know, going after woke nis in schools and looking at some of the big questions are out there. whether it's, you know, budget responsibility and fiscal conservatism and dealing with a debt limit. we have big issues out there on ukraine and ukraine funding, which has been controversial within the g o. p circle there. i could make a long list of topics that there is no seeming consensus inside the republican party. what do you project for kevin mccarthy? dealing with real substantive issues, say like ukraine? i think there's more unity than you might give credit for. i think there's some fair questions. none of them are black and white. of course, when you say we've given x number of dollars, you know, boy, that's a lot. then it is a lot of money. but when you say, do we want to support someone who's been invaded by russia? and that's the question that was the polling question, 90 percent of americans as our course, we want to support them. so you've got to kind of find that balance, right? whereas that money going, who's getting it, how's it being used? and is it responsible? and i think there was in my perception, there was some of the expenditure. some of the votes to spend money on ukraine was done as a knee jerk reaction. well, we got to do something and i didn't know specifically what they were doing with that, but it was a gesture. ok, we're helping our friends were helping out of fight against russia. and so some of those, i think, sorting it out amongst the party as to yeah, we wanna help you grand, but do we need to help this much? where's that money going? is it actually getting where it's intended to go? you know, those are all right. questions, let me ask you both is we're getting close have program and i, i have to ask if i have to you know, when, when, when kevin mccarthy basically wins by a vote, which is what he ended up winning by then every vote matters. but one of the votes for him was this gentleman. tell us about this guy. there are no words. i just want speed are already as representing george santos won his election in new york's 3rd rational district and basically came in and said he was jewish from a family of holocaust survivors. basically, brazilian eastern european and, and, you know, it just basically came out of nowhere with a lot of fabricated element, right? was gay, etc. that turns out to be real. well, what one of my colleagues before you interviewed him and said how's it all going for you? this is well, i've lost 6 pounds up here with all this run around going on. but but george santos was fabricate. but when you look at that photo and it which we just took down, but there's now a controversy over whether or not he showing a white power signal, you know, with his left hand down there. i'm just trying to understand the meaning and purpose of george santos. and why can't kevin mccarthy basically come out and discipline or frame the conversation about someone who obviously had a fraudulent track to his position or republicans hold such a narrow majority in the house. and this is the guy who flipped the seat from democrat to republican. well, that is the issue here and they don't want to lose the seat. i think it's going to get to a point where this guy has to be let out in handcuffs. i really think it's gonna take a legal law enforcement move for this guy to leave congress because he lied about his college education. he said when he went to n y u and by route college and he didn't do that. and he never graduated from college. i mean, it was the fact that he all which is nothing wrong with not graduate from college. nothing wrong with that. the resign lawyer. exactly. and, and then thank you. worked at city group in goldman sachs. you also didn't work at those places. we've never seen a political scandal like this. there's no parallels in modern history. this guy is just a con, but he can't afford to lose them. state you both know all these people and, and him i, you know, you know, ah, now speaker mccarthy. well, and you know, so many of the players, but one of the latest revelations is that george santos, his fundraising director, actually impersonated the chief of staff to kevin mccarthy. as an in his fundraising effort. this is not make any heads explode in senior t o p circles. yeah, i think if you want to maintain any semblance of integrity, you have to discipline him to the greatest legal extent. you know, i don't know that kevin has the ability to, to say, i'm sorry i, you know, you're not a member of congress, but he does have the ability to not place him on any committees to that, to really limit what he can do. and i think in order to, to save face, you need to do that and also allow for a vote for censure. perhaps they could go that far in the house. they can vote just simply can't have someone that lives their way in a crate. if there were otherwise, somebody is always going to be impersonating the chief of staff to kevin mccarthy. right? because you've given me a green flag or, you know, there's all, you know, there's the occasional person that has something on their resume that wasn't accurate or was inflated. and we give them a hard time. there's members of the senate that have done that. but to have virtually everything on your biography fabricated, you are a fictional care or not just embellishment. these are flat out lied. you misled them, shouldn't be served in the united states. god, i well i want to thank you. what a fun discussion of how insider g o. p politics, republican strategist, rena shaw, and tim constantine. thank you so much for being with us today. thank you. so what's the bottom line? we're in for a while. 2 years full of fireworks between democrats and republicans and nasty battles inside both parties. it comes down to simple math. the republicans whole 222 seats in a house of representatives that need 218 votes to get anything done. but when you're trying to pass laws on super divisive issues, like abortion, or gay rights or assault weapons, a, do ukraine, borders, immigration, and all sorts of other matters where there is no agreement inside any party. how is it going to add up? the answer is, it doesn't. congress is full of opinionated, strong personalities and it will be nearly impossible to get a majority to agree on anything. to make things worse, the rules have just changed so that just one member can call for an immediate vote on whether the speaker the house could keep his job or not. kevin mccarthy will have a proverbial gun to his head every time congress is in session. but he desperately wanted the job. so congratulations, kevin, and that's the bottom line. ah, on kelsey nicole's to china's straits cobra policy is a but will about help jumpstart the economy. europe's energy crisis east for the continents might not be out of the woods yet, plus weeks for why young educators involved with attending to farming talent you the cost on al jazeera. oh, there is no channel that covers world news like we do. we revisit places the state i'll just really invest in that. and that's a privilege as a journalist, lou hello and i am to lazy and.