Good morning. It's Saturday, January the 4th. I'm Ali Valshi. We've just watched as the

motorcade carrying the late president, Jimmy Carter, traveled from America's Georgia,

through his hometown of planes to his nearby boyhood home in archery. The motorcade is now making its journey to Atlanta,

where Carter will lie and repose at the Carter Presidential Center

until Tuesday morning before his body makes its way to Washington, D.C. next week.

And we will follow these movements throughout the day.

But we begin this hour with the latest from Capitol Hill,

where Republicans have now officially

taken control of both the House and the Senate as the 119th Congress gabbled into session

yesterday. Republicans got off to a much smoother start this time around than they did two years

ago when the House was brought to a standstill for days because of a bitter and protracted

battle for the speakership. Kevin McCarthy ultimately

won that election after 15 rounds of voting, but he would be booted from the chair just 269 days

later, the third shortest tenure in speakership history. His successor, Mike Johnson, managed to avoid

a long, drawn-out contest in order to win re-election

his Speaker yesterday, but by the narrowest of margins. There are already some signs of trouble

for Republicans signaling that this is still the same dysfunctional and divided House GOP

conference that has caused chaos on Capitol Hill for the past two years. Although Johnson did

technically win the speakership on the first ballot,

three Republicans initially voted for someone else and six others withheld their votes when

their names were called. All but one of them ultimately voted or changed their vote for

Johnson before the first round of balloting closed. The lone Republican defector who did not vote

...