Swearing in photoon with members of Congress Expected to come any moment now. This as Congress Already making major headlis. Last night House Republicans defied their leadership and voted in private to change the office of congressional ethics from an independent office to a yup that would have reported to a Congressional Committee and followed different rules. But after a huge outcry this afternoon republicans reversed course, scrapped those plans. All the details there in just a moment. Big news out of ford today. Cancelling construction of a 1. 6 billion plant in mexico. Instead investing 700 million in a plan in michigan. It is a deal the automaker said will add 700 jobs. Plus we are going to dig into a top priority for republicans, repealing obama care. Well tell you what the time line looks like and what it could mean for your health care down the road. Lets start down on capitol hill. The first big day in this new year. Kinds of like back to school day. Halle jackson is there. Breaket down. Why did House Republicans change their minds on making these changes to the House Ethics Office . How is that playing out now at this hour . Reporter frankly, kates, it was a very sort of quick reversal. In the span of 24 hours you saw what a lot of folks saw as a surprise move from House Republicans and 18 hours later the reversal of that move. You asked what triggered it, what led to it. Lets lay out what happened. House republicans went into a secret ballot meeting to in effect call it what it issings gut the office of congressional etdics. This is an independent ethical house committee. And instead put it under the oversight of the house itself. To a lot of folks looking at it it was the independent committee being changed to be overseen by those people who it is assigned to watchdog. Members of the public you saw outrage. Donald trump also weighed in. He tweeted about this this morning and he did not actually say he didnt like the move. He did not like the timing. That is what he was clooerg clear about. Was wondering why House Republicans were priorityizing this over for example, the repeal of the Affordable Care act which is something that has almost unanimous support from republicans in congress. You heard the sort of push back not just from people like donald trump. Lindsey graham too got on the radio and said it is the dumbest friggin thing if i can paraphrase senator graham there actually thats a direct quote. You saw pushback and you saw how lawmakers reversed their pigs. By 12 00 or 1 00 they had flipped on it, full. How the headlines the republicans are hoping to get are ones about the repeal of the Affordable Care act. Thats going to be front and center here on the hill tomorrow when president obama and mike pence ll be holding competing meetings here. The president trying to save the aca, mike pence trying to delineate how the Incoming Administration wants to tear it down. A big day tomorrow. Let me ask you about the senate. They are back in session, too. I know we had comments from the minority leader, the new democratic leader, Chuck Schumer. It was a shot across the bow. Mr. President elect, if there is one part of my speech that i hope you listen to and take to heart, its this one. And i mean it with the best of intentions. If you abandon change and simply embrace the shopworn hardright procorporate proelite policies die metrically opposed to the Many Campaign themes that helped you win working class votes and get you elected, your presidency will not succeed. We democrats will hold you accountable. Reporter so listen kate, that is essentially from Chuck Schumer a shot across the bow to donald trump this idea okay sure you won a lot of votes from people in the working class, people across the rust belt people who might traditionally in other years vote democrat. Schumer is basically saying hey live up to your end of the bargain, if you will. Halle jackson covering all of it. Busy day today, busy day tomorrow on capitol hill. Haley thanks so much. Appreciate it. For more on the house backing down from making changes to the house of ethics i want to bring in a man who was the investigative counsel in that office. Bryson morgan joins me now from d. Nice to see you. Thanks for being wit news great to be here. When we booked you this morning we werent sure what we would be talking about this afternoonle we thought they might go ahead with the changes to the House Ethics Office. They did not. Help us understand forks the layman what actually happened here. Where did this idea come from last night about making the changes . And why do you think they backed off of it . I think there is a group a small faction of the Republican Party in the house that as soon as people are not paying attention and as soon as they can get away with it, they would prefer to do away with independent ethics oversight of members of congress. I think what today shows us is that the public is definitely paying attention. Indeed, the president elect is paying attention. Now, some people are giving president elect trump credit for saving independent ethics oversight in the house. But i think his objection was more about the prioritization of changing the ethics rule. Putting it first. Than the policy it sechl i dont know where he stands on the policy of having an independent ethics watchdog in the house. Let me give a chance though to the folks who wanted this change. I want to play sound. This is from an iowa congressman, republican steve king who was part of the discussions and part of the vote last night among House Republicans. And they made that initial decision to weaken or change the House Ethics Office. Heres what he said. He said he doesnt think the people in that office are effective. Take a listen. I havent seen any good things come from them. And i have seen many many bad things coming from them. Fur an entity and your purpose is to accept complaints which will be anonymous and then you do the investigation and you come up with these charges they dont have any subpoena power, they dont have any enforcement power, they have to refer to the Ethics Committee, thats fine if thats all they zchl but they are leaking information and misinformation to the press. And they have found power in doing that. That has cost members of congress in total millions of dollars. It has damaged political careers unjustly and probably ended some political careers early. Thats the House Ethics Office that you used to work for. He says its not just republicans but democrats that feel that way. Your response . Well, i think there is a Bipartisan Group of members who have come under investigation for ethics violation. And they would prefer to not be investigated. The claimhat this independent Ethics Office has inappropriately released information to the public is simply not true. What this office does is finally provide the public with some transparency into the ethics investigations process. And without this office, it would go back to being a black box where the membercontrolled Ethics Committee would decide who gets investigated and where those investigations end up. We have been there, done that before. That was the Jack Abramoff area where the house turned a blind eye to disgusting behavior. We dont want to go back there and im pleased to see that the House Republicans changed their find and will keep this office for at least the near term. Do you think this is it or do you think there are members, democrats and republicans who want to make these changes . Do you think it comes back . Do you think later when its maybe not in the beginning of this congress they will bring it back up again . I think as soon as the this storm passes i think they will bring it back up as soon as they possibly can. Now, i am i was pleased to see representative susan brooks who will take over as chair of the Ethics Committee pledge today to maintain the independence of this office. So i think thats a good sign. But i think those people out there who care about ethics enforcement and the ethical conduct of their government members should keep a close eye on it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Donald trump weighed in on that change to the Ethics Office before republicans scrapped their plans as halle was mentioning. Peter alexander is covering all things trump transition for us today. Peter, has team trump said anything since the change in plans, since the house reversed itself. Reporter lets put up his initial tweet today. He ofili invests a little bit of political capital. He wrote in these tweets, with all that congress has to work on do they have to make the weakening of the ethics watchdog as unfair as it may be their number one priority when they could focus on tax reform, obama care and other things of far greater importance. He is sticking with the drain the swamp theme. What is notable on this day, with halle you were playing one of these clips from Chuck Schumer on the floor today. He said among other things, with all due respect america cant afford a twitter presidency. What is striking for this, it releases for donald trump the effectiveness of 140 characters or less or 208 280 as he did it over the course of two tweets. While he has been clashing with trump all campaign season, here paul ryan, the speaker of the house, and the next president of the United States, donald trump, were on the same sides. And trump was in a way able to help paul ryan keep those rank and filerepublicans, the renegades, as some might say they were, in line with what they are trying to get accomplished in these first 100 days. Peter alexander down in washington for us. Thank for tracking all of that appreciate it. By the way the corner of your screen down there, we are watching House Speaker paul ryan swearing in new members of the house. 17 days now until donald trump takes office. And this afternoon we have some news about who will be there. After a couple of weeks of uncertainty about this nbc has confirmed that Hillary Clinton and former president bill clinton will attend the inauguration for donald trump. Earlier today we learned that george w. Bush and laura bush will be there as well. Andrea mitchell joins us from washington. Normally we wouldnt be talking about this, we would assume that former president s would attend an inauguration. Not this time around. Not at all. In both the bush and clinton families there is a lot of emotional stress here, especially of course for the clintons. They have been under a great deal of pressure. This has been really hard according to people close to them. But they decided they should attend because of the process, to respect the transfer of power. So as emotionally draining as you can imagine this is for both clintons, feeling all the things that could have been done differently and of course you know how angry they are about jim comey the fbi director and how much they blame him and of course everything they have learned about russia and the hacking which they feel led to the wikileaks of course and the exposure of all of those Podesta Emails which only reinforced amphetamines original feelings about the emails and Hillary Clintons emails even though they were completely unrelated. All that said and all the mistakes made in planning and not going to wisconsin this has been a bitter pill. A hard adjustment. They are still adjusting as well as all of their very loyal staff and friends. But they feel this is important. For the bushes, it is a different calculation. They feel very strongly about jeb bush. Were obviously not in favor of donald trump. They were part of the Republican Party, the bush family, the 41 bushes and the 43 bushes and all the others and the extended bush family not supporting donald trump for offers reasons. But they also clearly feel that this is an important signal about the peaceful transfer of power. Andrea, you are the hardest working woman in television. I know that over the last couple of weeks you didnt take a huge vacation. You have been working your source. You have been talking to people. You have been rubbing elbows with folks in washington, democrats, republicans. Whats the feeling . Whats the atmosphere . 17 days now from inauguration day. A lot of anticipation and expectation because we see things every day that weve never seen before. A president elect tweeting with nuclear weapons. The russian hacking. The president elect saying he doesnt trust the intelligence community. There is a lot of anxiety among career members of the administration, not just democrats. People in the state department, Foreign Service officers. Expectation about what kind of cabinet this will be, which of the cabinet members might stumble in confirmation hearings. This is transitions are always, as you know, kate, a really fraught time for washington, a lot of who is moving in and who is moving out. Right. And who didnt get reelected, and sadness and staffs moving and people unemployed. But this one is so different because you have the expectation among so many people that Hillary Clinton was going to win. People including Republican NationalCommittee Members who were telling people the day before and the day of that they didnt think they had a shot at it. A lot of surprise. With that comes a cabinet of people who are disrupters. This is change. Bigger change than anyone has seen in washington in generations because you have people coming into certain agencies who dont believe those agencies should exist. People coming into the e. P. A. Who dont believe in Climate Change. These are a couple of examples of people who are going to get handcuff hearings. But you have democrats who had high hopes of taking back the senate now not only did they not take back the senate but they lost more seats. And you have the biggest confirmation of all, the expectation of a Supreme Court nomination. And that will be a battle royale. Its going to be an interesting time. I hope to see you down there at some point. Absolutely. Lets get another point of view on the transition. I want to bring in former Democratic Congress nanoand chairman of the Long Island University globe institute, steve israel. Im still going to call you congressman israel. Great to see you. The new republican controlled congress, we have been talking to it since the top of the show. They threatened to tlut the Ethics Committee. They flipped, decided not to do that just a couple of hours ago, a 180deee turn. What is your read . There are some phrases you dont want associated with your first new congress. Behind closed doors, gutting ethics. These are words you dont want to hear on your first day. And this is the narrative. So it reflects certain things. Number one, that paul ryan, for all the unity he has in the caucus right now is presiding over a unruly caucus and he has problems ahead. Secondly it reflects a Republican Caucus that fundamentally wants to play by rules that are different than the rules that the American People play by. Those two things tonight bode well for the congress. As we watch the small box in the corner of your screen of paul ryan swearing in all the new members of congress lets talk about one of their big priorities, repealing obama care. Debate is going to start tomorrow in the senate on this. What can democrats do . Is there anything democrats, your colleagues, can do to stop a repeal of obama care . I talked to republicans and democrats today to get a feel for what was happening. Republicans really said we wanted the news story to be about repealing the Affordable Care act. I said thats fine. I know that was your desire, it got eclipsed by the dismantling with ethics which you then took back but what are you going to repeal it with . There are no answers. They have no replacement. This is going to tell the American People the difference between cheap sound bytes in a campaign, we are going to repeal obama care and the substan o governing. They have the votes to repeal it, to be fair. No, its going to beea. Easy to repeal it. Virtually impossible to replace it, which is why they are so divided they are having a debate in the Republican Caucus as to what do we replace it with. Some want to repeal and it replace it instantly but dont have anything to replace it with. Others arities lets treat it as an off ramp, lets repeal it and at some point ereplace it with something. What it boils down to is obama care is unpopular in some corners the substance is very popular with the American People. When republicans try to tinker and take away those Consumer Protections from the American People they are going to have a major problem in the midterm election. What you saw in the floor of the house today, final point was republicans and democrats raising their hand and swearing their oath to protect and defend the constitution. In the back of their minds t