just a short time ago cnn s manu raju reported that there would be a republican conference meeting tomorrow morning. that, however, we understand has now changed. i want to go to cnn s melanie zanona at the capitol with the new reporting on that and mccarthy s frame of mind as well. melanie, what have you learned? reporter: well, things have not moved in kevin mckarth chriss direction since that third ballot where he failed to get the votes. it s been back to the drawing board for kevin mccarthy and his allies. we ve seen supporters going into his office. we re told he has been working the phones. he is still hoping to negotiate and not planning to drop out. but meanwhile, i just spoke to a gop lawmaker, this is some breaking news here, this is a lawmaker who texted me, this is someone who supported mccarthy. they said they had just gotten a phone call from one of the never kevin republicans who is trying to grow their opposition and is trying to get that member to flip. so
where we wake up, there s another conference meeting and they have more votes and mccarthy still can t get there. it s interesting because there was a conference meeting this morning where kevin mccarthy spoke to members. that didn t seem to actually help him. if anything, it seemed to hurt. reporter: yeah, actually, anderson, i talked to some republicans who are supporting mccarthy who said they thought that strategy backfired. and some of the critics walking out of that meeting said exactly that, that they re even more entrenched in their opposition because mccarthy really took his critics to task in that meeting. while there were people cheering mccarthy on and they wanted to see him going after these critics because mccarthy has given them every concession and yet they still haven t given anything in return. so there was a lot of frustration that built up at that point. but republicans said it did not do kevin mccarthy in favors. so it s unclear what a conference meeting would