starts right now. michelle obama s as she is terrified about what 2024 election results will bring. the lead starts now. a crucial week before the caucuses in iowa and trump is not there. he is in court. he is falsely calling january 6 criminals hostages. plus, a cnn correspondent embedded with migrants trying to get across the u.s. border from mexico, a desperate journey but they are not from latin america. these migrants are from china. and it could be the smoking gun in the investigation as to what went wrong in a the alaska airlines flight. a missing door found in an alaska backyard. welcome to the lead. i am jake tapper. only seven days until the first of voters get their say in the 2024 election. next monday republicans will gather across iowa and they will caucus for their favorite candidates. the latest contenders, once again, they are off the campaign trail because of his legal issues. trump is expected to be in court as his lawyers face off against special couns
tonight. a foreign policy stumble. the biden administration sending two senior officials to china yesterday the exact day the tin men square anniversary. we don t know to this day how many people were killed. recognizing that atrocity still forbidden in china. tom cotton says this official visit sends exactly the wrong message. biden administration officials should stop chasing after the chinese communist counterparts like love struck teenagers. it is embarrassing and pathetic. it projects weakness to china and encourages them to do things like buzz our aircraft or come within a few hundred yards of our ships and encourages them to send spy balloons all over america. john: there has been 0 direct communication between biden and xi since the u.s. shot down the china aircraft in our airspace earlier this year. jake sullivan down playing tensions. the desire on both parts to put a floor under the relationship, to manage the competition responsibly and insure competition do
that enough would vote yes, but are they sure? house democrats are going to make sure that the country does not default. period. full stop. this caucus will remain unified with the president and most importantly with the american people in this fight. house democrats stand poised to help, stand poised to be the adults in the room, and we will ensure that we put this crisis behind us. we have two house lawmakers starting us off today. a republican in mccarthy s inner circle and a democrat who voted no on the deal in the rules committee last night, and that right there is where we begin. joining me now is pennsylvania democratic congresswoman and members of the rules committee, mary guy scanlan, thank you for being with us. you voted no in the rules committee, will you vote yes later tonight? certainly that s the function of the rules committee is to bring the bills to the floor, and it s the republicans job to bring the bill to the floor. this is mccarthy s deal, mc
from that wall street journal reports claiming president biden is slipping. the white house and democrats pushing back hard and boeing s starliner successfully lifting off. now headed to the the international space station. we re following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here the cnn news central some dramatic testimony in court today as former romantic partners of hunter biden take the stand in his federal gun trial. hunters former girlfriend so casten just finished testifying about hunters heavy drug use, including, she says, just weeks before he bought the gun that s at the center of this case? she also described hunters efforts to get sober, including how we moved to california to work on his recovery, but then ultimately relapsed. and this morning, hunter biden s ex-wife, kathleen buhle, told jurors about finding drugs and paraphernalia in his car on multiple occasions. including in 2018, when he bought the gun, cnn s paula reid is outs
several dozen people over the course of several months. and they included democrats republicans, administration officials who had either met with the president behind closed doors or were breached based on some of these meetings and what some of those people told the wall street journal is that the president seemed slower and less sharp and was essentially showing his age reminder of course that the president is 81. he is the oldest person to serve as president. and importantly, the story did say that most of the people who were critical of the president s age which for the story did happen to be republicans but yeah, you re absolutely right, but the white house and biden allies are pushing back really hard on this story and one person in part particular that was quoted throughout the story that clearly aggravated the white house is kevin mccarthy, the former house speaker, who of course spend a ton of time when he was in that job negotiating with and talking with a meeting with the