Bomb making materials found in Houston, explosives packed inside a cooler found in the French quarter.

These are just some of the new details officials uncovered in their investigation into the New Orleans terror suspect. We'll go live

on the ground with the very latest. Plus, we now know the identity of the cyber truck driver

whose car exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. We'll dig into what was found

at the scene as authorities race to find a motive

there. And also ahead, just hours from now, Mike Johnson will face a tough fight to remain

Speaker of the House. We'll break down how this could all play out and the Republicans to watch

ahead of today's critical vote. Also, President Joe Biden honors Liz Cheney and Benny Thompson, the leaders of the January 6th

Select Committee, with one of the nation's top civilian awards.

But not everybody was happy about it, and that's an understatement.

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe.

It is Friday, January 3rd. Thank you for being

with us. I'm Jonathan Lemire. We've got a great group to get us started and a lot of news to cover.

With us, we have Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of the Washington Post,

Eugene Robinson. NBC News, Capitol Hill correspondent, Allie Vitale, who I'm happy to say officially

takes over hosting duties of way too early on Monday. We'll be watching. And President

Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas. He is the author of the weekly

newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack. Joe and Mika also will return on Monday.

We'll begin this morning with the latest developments in the investigation of the deadly New

Year's Day terrorist attack in the great city of New Orleans. Authorities say the attacker

most likely acted alone when he drove a pickup truck through a crowd on Bourbon Street early Wednesday morning.

At least 14 people died in the attack and dozens of others were injured. The attacker was then

...