republicans expel a democrat from the house legislature for protesting gun violence on the house floor right now to more democratic lawmakers are also staring down. expulsion votes, also breaking escalating violence in the middle east. israel striking gaza tonight after facing a barrage of rocket attacks, the israeli ambassador to the united states is standing by to join me this hour. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and all around the world. wolf blitzer is off today. i m alex marquardt, and you re in the situation room. this is cnn breaking news. we begin our coverage tonight in nashville, tennessee, where a democratic lower democratic lawmaker, a democratic lawmaker was just expelled from the state legislature after protesting gun violence on the house floor. cnn s ryan young has been on the scene all day. for us, ryan. there are two more democrats who are also in jeopardy of being ousted tonight. what is the latest in nashville? alex. people are exasperate
Rebels and government. And assad will control the four major cities. Alep aleppo and others. But he doesnt control the whole country. He says he wants it back. Certainly in the days ahead, we can expect many more. Hours of fighting. And an increasing death toll, sadly. Im joined now by bob corker of tennessee. Senator corker, if you had to give advice on an intimate basis with the colonel president , or the incoming president , what would you tell him to do to try to stop this horror . Well, look. Weve been giving advice for four or five years, chris. This was said to be on the front end of the conflict. It is a blight on human kind. At this point, the story as it relates to Western Syria is mostly written. And what will happen will be determined by russia who stepped in, and iran. And certainly assad. So this is a disaster weve known he is torturing his own people. Youve seen the Holocaust Museum of caesar who was documenting this. Cutting peoples genitals off. It has been going on fo
that s what you all are doing. and don t doubt for a second that the reason they re talking about gun legislation right now is because you are here today you are here yesterday. you are here monday and you ll be back here again. keeps showing up, standing up and speaking out, and we will be with you. gloria johnson there of knoxville, speaking with supporters and activists at the tennessee state house after just narrowly surviving her expulsion vote by we understand one vote, calling on those activists to keep coming. keep protesting, keep showing up and asking them to try to help. let s go back to ryan on who s speaking with representative johnson, but at least they tried to allow debate that is more debate than we have. ever had in the last four years, so just know keep
david, what do you think the current thinking in republican circles is about how the president has handled this campaign? just today he s at odds with speaker ryan on birthright citizenship. it all depends if you re a republican working on senate races or a republican working on house races. as gloria is describing, it s two totally different universes. why are those so different universes? because the terrain where the battle for senate control is taking place, anderson, is in trump country. you have five democratic incumbent senators in states running for re-election that donald trump won by double digits. john pointed some of them out. missouri, indiana, montana, north dakota, west virginia. this is trump country. and so that s where you see the president going to try to have the best possible effect, drive up that base turnout. so in those races the republicans are fine with his messaging here around birthright
yesterday. the president did speak to the speaker not too long ago, and made sure that the speaker knew very clearly in a no uncertain terms that if that news was true he was very unhappy with it. the speaker assured the president those were not accurate reports and they look forward to working together for a long time to come. okay. but, is this a situation where there s smoke, there s fire? look at republicans. they re bound to lose seats in midterm elections. absolutely. you re hearing increasing chatter about the future of speaker ryan on capitol hill. this is someone who he ll be the first to tell you. he never sought this job, never wanted it. this is someone who has a young family who talks a lot about wanting to spend more time with them. certainly denying these reports but at the same time you take a look at the possible time line here. there is a potential he could go out after delivering on tax reform. and of course all of this coming