a pivotal vote for house speaker coming up. mccarthy s focused on two holdouts right now. can he change their minds? one congressman who did change his mind is outfront. plus, who are the final holdouts? one of them just arrived in washington for the first time, has never held elected office and was a contestant on shark tank, a successful one. and another top story we re following, chilling new details emerge tonight that tie the suspect in the idaho murders in a really sick way. outfront tonight, the breaking news. we are counting down right now until a crucial 14th vote for speaker. and this vote is extremely important. it is a vote that congressman kevin mccarthy and many of his supporters believes will finally give him the gavel after this excruciating week. as of right now the house will reconvene at 10:00 p.m. eastern time, which is when the next vote for speaker of the house is likely to begin. they ll nominate, and we will be off to the races on that. you
the ever-exploding federal budget and deficit. we have, to me, as someone who s on the judiciary committee and concerned about such things, we have a select committee, select subcommittee and judiciary to look into the weaponization of federal government against american citizens and their fundamental rights. there are a number of orient rules changes. we call it germaneness and single purpose among them, which will help us to avoid having these massive omnibus bills like we just saw ran through right before christmas with little opportunity to read, decided by a handful of people in a back room. and then we re going to have conservatives distributed on important committees throughout congress. so, it s a really remarkable accomplishment. and i m appreciative to leader mccarthy, soon to be speaker mccarthy, for working with us in this process. and can i ask you, did you talk to him directly? were these sort of direct negotiations that you had, you
was more representation for this house freedom caucus group on key committees. and i think that was core to this argument. and what else was discussed with individuals? i think we ll find out in the coming weeks. you heard both the congressmen that have come on in the past hour and others during the day. they are trying to present that this is a great example of leadership and how one learns how to govern, and this has been great. we were talking before we came out here. i think that it is good to a certain extent to get the fighting over with and get it done. because as soon as they begin, i think they re going to forget about kevin mccarthy, today the biden administration better just take a deep breath because today s the last easy day for the next two years. it s going to be a lots of aggressive oversight. and so i think once that begins, the infighting amongst the family, amongst the republican family is going to be long forgotten. even though it only takes one
want to be on the committee. i know that they have issues in their districts that they want on work on. and i think it s time to get the speaker organized, and get to work on policy. in my sort of reading between the lines of what you re saying that giving specific committee assignments is part of what this might entail. you re talking about the natural resources committee? i m saying two of these members are already on the natural resources committee. and we have a steering committee that assigns committee positions. everybody has to go through the steering committee. but we want to see a diversity among our committees with representatives from all walks of congress with their viewpoints represented on those committees. so, i think we ve got to get organized, go through the steering committee process, get our diocese filled and start working on policies. that s what s been in the back of our mind all week. we ve been focused on how do we
legislation, holding hearings. reporter: also with no committees in place, the republican majority couldn t start the investigations they ve been agitating for. the less amount of time we have to hold this administration accountable with hunter biden and his laptop, fauci with covid, mayorkas with the poor southern border. reporter: and without a house speaker, there has been no one to be second in line behind the vice president if something disastrous happened to president biden and vice president harris during this stalemate, the presidency would have gone democratic senator patty murray. and today the white house did try to downplay the effect the stalemate has had on national security. wolf? to our viewers, thanks very much for watching. i m wolf blitzer in the situation room. erin burnett outfront starts right now. outfront next, the breaking news.