eastern. and the death toll is rising in china, at least 126 people have been killed, hundreds more injured after the 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck late monday night. rescue crews are working to reach the survivors. officials say the quake was followed by nine after shocks at magnitude 3 and above. new video overnight shows the earthquake rocking a gas station, it cut off water and electricity supplies in some areas. >> thank you so much for being with us today. obviously we have the live coverage of sandra day ow y owe they're funeral coming up. news. donald trump and his rivals

hit the campaign trail in iowa today. getting brand new reporting on the former president's strategy there and how it might play nationwide. and we have wild pictures out of iceland, just look at this, when a volcano began erupting overnight. it would be beautiful if it wasn't so destructive and dangerous. an update on what is happening there now. and new law in texas making it a state crime to enter illegally from mexico. the details after the increase in crossing at the attorney border. i'm sara sidner with kate bolduan. john is off. this is news central. and today, it is all about iowa. nearly all of the 2024 republican presidential candidates will be in the state. and ready to rumble. they have no time to lose. less than a month until the caucuses. and that is translating into more face time with caucusgoers.

more money going to ads, more money going to bolster every campaign's ground game to get iowans to turn out and caucus on january 15th. and this morning cnn has new insight into what that means and translates to for donald trump's campaign. call it an iowa test case for potentially a bigger broader strategy to come. let's get straight to it, elalaa treene has new reporting. what are you learning? >> reporter: well, the trump campaign has really set up an extensive ground game in iowa. and they are hoping that they can use this new model they have been working on in a potential general election if this strategy is successful in the state. and the strategy is essentially this, that they are trying to expand the quleek tore rat in iowa in donald trump's favor. trump advisers tell me and his allies as well that they have been focused on turning out and finding and creating first time caucusgoers. while the polls and other

candidates are betting on existing iowa caucus voters to come out for them on january 15, trump's team is trying to create a whole new slate of voters to come out for him in iowa. and they are really looking to continue to build momentum in this final week. he will be in iowa today and then he has a short break for the holidays and then he will be aggressively campaigning in the state in the leadup to the caucus in january. and look, when i talk to donald trump's team, they say that they have a threshold in mind for what they are hoping to hit in these caucuses in january. they want to reach about 12 points. they think if they can win by 12 points in iowa, that will essentially set a record for donald trump and help give him the momentum that the campaign wants him to have as he heads into the rest of the primary season. i also want to point your attention to some of the other candidates who are there today and how donald trump is trying to attack them. we know ron desantis, nikki haley, vivek ramaswamy, all

crisscrossing the state in an attempt to court the voters. but one thing that was really interesting is how donald trump is going after ron desantis. we know that desantis had received an endorsement, huge endorsement, from iowa governor kim reynolds. and kind of to go after desantis on that, the trump campaign had released an ad showing reynolds' past support for donald trump, and she criticized that ad last night on fox news saying donald trump was misleading iowa voters. take a listen. >> now he is using me to mislead iowans as if i'm endorsinging h. i supported him in 2016, in 2020, i agreed with his policies. but this is a different day, a different time. and we need a leader that is not distracted and that person is ron desantis. >> now, we're also hearing ron

desantis take some more direct shots at donald trump as well. and look, desantis has been betting his campaign on iowa. he's been running essentially an all eggs in the iowa basket campaign. but really the two are going head to head in these final days as the caucuses draw nearer. and clearly iowa one of the big tests for these candidates to see who will go into the rest of the primary season about that boost. >> and how long anyone can survive into the primary season, that is what this obviously is about. looks like they are all surging there today. good to see you, great reporting. thanks. democrats are on the campaign trail too and their plan, make one thing clear, bolstering reproductive rights is top of their campaign strategy. vice president kamala harris has announced that she will kick off the 2024 campaigning season next

month with a reproductive freedoms tour as they call it. the polls seem to show this is a winning issue. arlette saenz is joining us from the white house. pretty clear now that reproductive rights will be a central part of their re-election campaign. what is vice president harris' tour look like? >> reporter: vice president kamala harris' announcement that she will make this reproductive freedoms tour signals how much of a focus the biden team will be placing on the issue of abortion heading into 2024. this will deck ofkick off in wi, january 22, a date of historical significance, the date that the supreme court made the landmark decision on roe v. wade. and harris the past year and a half after dobbs was overturned, she's been hitting the road really to talk about abortion rights, hoping that this is an issue that can galvanize voters not just in the midterms but also the 2024 election. the biden campaign team believes

very firmly every time you talk to them that the issue of abortion rights is a winning issue for them. they point to the fact that this helped candidates back in 2022 during the midterms and that there has been enthusiasm and high turnout with voters, specifically on the issue of abortion rights. and if you take a look at polling, recent polling cnn conducted last month found that americans are more closely aligned with democrats on the issue of abortion than with republicans. the biden campaign has also signalled had they want to use this as a wedge between their campaign and former president trump. we have seen them on the attack against the former president specifically on the issue of abortion over the last week. of course 2024 also has other moments in abortion that will be key on the calendar, that includes when the supreme court hears and potentially decides on a case relating to medication abortion. so this is an issue that will certainly be carried throughout the year heading into november as the biden campaign is hoping

to galvanize voters and hoping that this tour by vice president kamala harris will be a part of those efforts to turn out those types of voters. >> arlette saenz, thank you so much. joining us now for more is s.e. cupp. jumping off of that report, that abortion will be a central pillar of the campaign moving forward, just kind of looking as we enter this -- as we head into the iowa caucuses, doesn't it feel like abortion rights will play a role in this presidential cycle like it really hasn't in literally decades? how tough is this then for republicans? >> yeah, i think it is about time that democrats start using this issue. because there are so many now real world examples that they can point to. republican extremism.

not just what republicans would do or want to do, but what they have done. so i think this is a very smart move especially considering how important the issue was in the 2022 midterms. but i offer advice and a word of caution. advice, a lot of voters are not seeing abortion as a standalone issue, especially younger voters. they are seeing it as a part of health care. and health care is already a number one top issue for a lot of voters. so wrapping it up in health care and not just reproductive rights or the typical standalone abortion issue i think would be really smart. and then just a caution, most voters are not on the extremes on abortion. most voters are in favor of legal abortion with restrictions. so i would not overplay this. because democrats don't have to.

it is a real fringe position to believe in abortion bans or that abortions should be legal in all cases. so if you were democrats, i would stick with the republican extremism and speak to the moderates and the middle, which is the majority, and not play to its far left base. >> jumping off of kind of how everybody is descending on iowa just before the holidays for this kind of big final push, look no further than to know it is the final sprint to iowa than how much money is going to attack ads now from super pac to super pac. i was putting a list together. you've got the super pacs supporting donald trump has launched an ad targeting nikki haley, the first time that the trump team has gone after haley on the airwaves accusing her of flip-flopping on the gas tax from the time when she was governor. on the issue, it is more complicated than that, but what i find interesting here is that

ron desantis has done the same thing -- super pac for ron desantis has done the same thing trying to attack her on this very issue. why do you think the super pacs supporting trump, that is where they are going after haley is on the gas tax? what do you think of that focus? >> is he trying to -- i think they are both trying to paint her out as establishment. and someone who might talk the talk but doesn't walk the walk. i'm somewhat impressed to see a trump super pac go after a policy issue. you know, trump prefers to hand out ugly nicknames. and this is an issue of policy. the problem is that it is substantively false. nikki haley did not support a gas tax hike. she didn't pass one, in fact south carolina legislators had to wait for her to leave office before they actually got what they wanted, which was not what she wanted. in fact she said that she was against that. but would only consider it if it

was attached to a much bigger income tax reduction. so the ads are not true. but i think that that is the effort to sort of paint her as establishment, someone who will speak to conservative voters, but ultimately in the end do what is best for bureaucrats and special interests. which is not true. >> and if you want a sign that you might be doing something right in terms of on the campaign trail, when people start attacking you, more than one campaign, that means politically that you probably are doing better in the polls. alayna treene's new reporting on how the trump campaign is using iowa as kind of a test case for a broader strategy and what they are focusing on is trying to create and turn out first time caucusgoers. rather than focusing on existing caucus goers. i think it is interesting especially when you look at where the polling is. first tirmsmers are really lean

in to trump. >> and that is very interesting. and i think that you could see it a couple of ways. you could make the argument that trump really wants a big turnout. he doesn't want to just eek it out in iowa, he wants a big win. you could also see it as something of a weakness that trump maybe doesn't believe he has enough of the typical voters. and he needs new voters. that is typically a democrat strategy. right? to go after first time voters and younger voters. so it is very interesting. and look, we're not inside the trump campaign's head, but it will be very interesting to see how iowa goes and then how they sort of message it and spin it afterwards. >> absolutely. great to see you, thanks for coming in. >> you too. sure. >> incredible beautiful but destructive pictures this morning, these are live pictures of the lava bursting out of the

earth's crust from erupting volcano in iceland. the nearby town is evacuated but availables warn there is still a threat. and also texas' governor signs a controversial new law to make illegal border crossings a state crime. civil rights groups are already threatening a lawsuit. we're live on the southern border. and the judge in donald trump's civil fraud case -- [ inaudible ].

take a look, we'll show you new images coming in, a volcano on iceland's peninsula, you can see the lava shooting into the sky. these are live pictures coming

in this morning showing not only the large fracture in the earth, but what is coming from it. this is like a river of fire now. the eruption is not entirely unexpected, but there is talk that it has become larger than scientists had been predicting. we'll couldkeep an eye on this we'll bring in melissa bell and derek van dam. melissa, evacuations have been ordered because of the volcano and seismic activity that kind of led up to it i'm hearing. but what is the biggest concern now? >> reporter: that's right. 4,000 people evacuated from the clothes town, grindavik, which is a small fishing town about 3 kilometers south of the very southern bit of the fissure. everyone safely out of the way. and there had been fears for the town itself. because as you say, this was not entirely unexpected, but these events remain unpredictable. the question was which way the

lava that you see was going to flow and whether it would head straight for that town. in fact what we're hearing is that it instead has been hitting north and east. so nower f the fear is the toxi fumes. this is an eruption that appears to be lessening in violence, but it was extremely strong overnight. started just after 10:00 p.m., force of the lava opening the crack to 4 kilometers wide. and at some points overnight, 200 cubic meters of lava emerging from it every single second. so a powerful eruption and bigger one that authorities had been expecting. so the toxic fumes emerge from the fissure and authorities are warning people don't get any closer to get a look.

and reykjavik is very close, and so it could cause some distu disturbances. >> yeah, very clearly the danger not past. d derek, iceland has many active volcanos. what do you see with this one? >> of the most recent eruption that is taking place, geologists and scientists have identified for several weeks now the underground tunnel, a corridor of magma underground roughly 15 kilometers long. they evacuated the town last month and they also identified some of the most at risk areas, the area highlighted in orange is actually the area of most concern. there is the town of grindavik. and that is where the fissure opened you up and magna started to spew up. that is the latest information

we're getting. this is a top graphical map. this will help push the lava away from the town of grindavik and also the goodabout toxic fu winds out of the northeast and that will also push that away from the populated areas of grindavik. look at this video, this is showing the large fissure 4 kilometers long. but scientists and geologists have noted the down turn in the magna activity recently. this is not indicating so much that the volcano isn't done erupting, it is actually indicating to the scientists that the magma is reaching some sort of an equilibrium. so we can kind of see the slow magma transfer here for the next several days. in fact only about a quarter of the amount of magma compared to last night is spewing out of this fissure. so only about a third of the entire 4 could kilometer crack

active. thank you both for watching that for us. >> magma. sorry. couldn't help myself. this morning lloyd austin is in qatar meeting with officials about the next phase of israel's war with hamas and efforts to release hostages that are still all this time being held in gaza. before heading there, he condemned the houthi attacks on the commercial trips in the red sea calling them reckless and serious international problem. listen. >> all countries have the right to move freely and lawfully in international orders. but that is foundational global right is under new threat today from the totally un acceptable attacks on merchant vessels by the houthis in yemen.

>> and secretary austin announced a new multinational security called operation prosperity guardian. will ripley is joining us live from tel aviv. what else should we expect from the secretary's meeting there and qatar with serious issues including so many hostages hanging in the balance? >> yeah, 129 or so still being held in gaza. and the gaza militants have said -- hamas militants have said essentially they won't be releasing any of these people until the war is over. of course israel says the war won't be over until hamas is completely imnatueliminated. and so you have the stalemate and the united states very much wanting to broker some sort of a ceasefire deal. and that is why the defense secretary is in qatar. but any hope of a quick hostage deal announcement is likely very

unrealistic, slim chances to none that the defense secretary austin will walk away with a deal this quickly. the last one took as you know well over a month to put together. there is just so many different factors at play here. of course huge lack of trust between the israelis and hamas, israel of course fighting a terrorist organization but getting a growing amount of international pressure because of the large amount of civilian casualties in gaza. hamas controlled health ministry claiming that there are just a few hundred deaths away now from a staggering 20,000 people killed in less than three months since october 7 when of course the hamas militants crossed over into israel and attacked and killed hundreds of unarmed civilians. the pain very raw here. the war continues with no immediate end in sight, but the u.s. doing what it can in the region to try to put out that hot spot not to mention the attacks on the red sea disrupting global supply chains. >> will ripley, thank you for your reporting 3. coming up for us, a lie is

still a lie. the judge from the -- the statement from the new york judge overseeing donald trump's civil fraud case turning down the former president's latest appeal.

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you have made an impact. so have you. for you guys to be out here doing something like this, it restores a lot of faith in humanity. new fallout from the january 6 insurrection. a group formed to support touchdown called women for america first, they are accused in a new watchdog report of lying about their intentions on january 6. the report says that the group, quote, intentionally failed to disclose information about a march to the capitol that day. marshall cohen has more on this. and this has to do with their

permit application. what is going on here? >> reporter: good morning. there were a lot of lies on january 6, and you can just add these to the list. this is according to the inspector general at the interior department about the permitting process for that rally. and this pro trump group women for america first intentionally and repeatedly lied to federal officials during the process of obtaining that permit when they said that there were no plans to march from the elipse down the national mall and to the capitol. the lie of course was that that was the plan all along. and this report points out that there were real consequences to these lies. it affected the security posture and the positioning of law enforcement on the mall and at the capitol that day and how they were prepared for the attack. so brazen lies, but you don't have to take my word for it, or you don't have to take the watchdog report for it either. let me read for you a few text

messages from the organizers themselves, the proof is really in the pudding here. this is a text message january 3 from a white house lee and i is an is an, potus expectations are intimate and then send everyone over to the capitol. right there in black and white. and another text message, january 4, two days before the rally, from a january 6 rally organizer to a potential speaker, quote, we are having a second stage at the supreme court after the elipse. potus will have us march there/the capitol. it also cannot get out about the march because i will be in trouble with the national park service. kate, they knew that this would be a problem that they had revealed the full extent of their plans to the national park service. of course they withheld that information and we know how it ended had day with a deadly violent insurrection at the capitol.

>> and not a lot of gray area in those text messages. marshall, thanks for the reporting. star witness in donald trump's new york civil fraud trial which was donald trump himself has, quote, lost all credibility the judge overseeing the case has determined. judge engoron slammed trump's accounting experts while denying the latest motion from trump's team to have the case decided in trump's favor. caitlin poe plant is following this story for us. the judge really giving us a bit of a hint as to the way that this case will be decided. what did he say? >> this is a judge that repeatedly has refused donald trump's attempts to dispose of that case quickly. there were several times through the course of this weeks' long fraud trial before judge arthur engoron in new york where trump's team was trying to get a judgment in their favor and the judge came back yesterday writing out this order and did not mince words at all.

said, you know, you guys put experts up as your witnesses. that does not mean that i have to believe those experts. and he was quite harsh about one of the experts saying that that person had lost credibility being on the stand. and he also spelled out that there are things that trump is still appealing wanting to appeal, challenging the new york attorney general from even bringing this case. but at the end of the day, judge engoron said that the court of appeals will look at this and i believe that they will believe that what trump is doing is frivolous here. so a lot of these things are not changing what is happening in this case. every time this judge is weighing in, he still is looking at the damages, how to assess them, he still already made determinations in the case. and so at this point in time, he is just signaling how he viewed what trump was doing during the trial. we don't have a final order yet on exactly what the outcome of that trial is as far as the damages that judge engoron will

assess. but not looking particularly positive for donald trump especially because of those expert witnesses that he had put on to help try and support trump's side of the case. >> absolutely. and that is a $250 million that he could end up having to pay depending on what the judge decides. skate lynn caikatelyn polantz, thank you. and the texas governor taking matters in to his own hands again, or at least trying to, cracking down further on the border. what is behind this new state law? we'll take you there.

senate talks have hit a wall and now hard against a holiday deadline. negotiations over more aid to ukraine tied to new border security measures continue, but one top republican put it bluntly saying there is no way a vote will happen this week. and there is only about two weeks left then before the white house warns current u.s. aid bolstering ukraine's defenses against russia will run out. at the border the texas governor took another step to take matters in to his own hands signing off into a new law making it a state crime to enter texas illegally from mexico. rosa flores is at a border crossing in brownsville, texas with more on this angle of this much bigger story, much bigger crisis. what is the governor trying to do with this new law? >> reporter: you know, he's trying to do exactly what you mentioned. he is taking the border situation into his own hands. and what this really equates to the u.s. southern border is this

collision of a broken federal immigration system that has thousands of migrants entering the u.s. illegally every single day and facilities overwell with himmed. and a state that is trying to fix it with state powers. there is a lot of questions about whether governor greg abbott will be able to do that, but here is what we no he about what is going on right now on the u.s. southern border. we just got information from u.s. congressman henry quarar. and he tells us that in eagle pass, texas right now, there are about 8,000 migrants who are in that area. either in custody. or waiting to be transported to a border patrol facility. just to give you a sense in el paso, there is about 4500 my grants in custody. in tucson, about 4,000. and in the rio grand valley where i am, about 4,000 migrants. but overall he says there is about 25 23,000 my grants in

custody. and i talked to the u.s. border patrol chief jason owens a week ago and he told me that border patrol has capacity to hold about 10,000 migrants. so do the math, that is more than double. so what is happening here in the state of texas as the governor trying to fix the situation with this bill that he signed yesterday. and what this bill does, it creates a new state crime for the illegal entry into the state of texas, it gives police officers the power to arrest and judges the power to deport individuals, violators, to mexico. and there are a lot of concerns about this law because it is written in a very vague way. it also does not have guard rails for -- against, excuse me, has no guardrails against racial profiling which is making a lot of hispanics in this state which make up about 40% of the population of the state very nervous about being racially profiled? some individuals are saying that

they will start carrying their passports. take a listen. >> it will be more difficult for people they look like hispanic because they can thinking that offices don't have legal documents. >> reporter: and here is the other problem with this bill. it doesn't appropriate money to train police officers. local police officers. because after this bill goes in to effect, any peace officer in the state of texas will have the power to enforce this law. i asked governor abbott that specific question, this bill doesn't have appropriation to train officers. how are you going to make sure that they have the tools. he said all officers in the state of texas have the tools. i followed up with will they be specifically train order this law and he did not answer the question. >> many more questions to be asked. thank you. >

. >> let's bring in elie honig. this is a state law. usually the federal government oversees border issues. will this end up going to the supreme court or at least being appealed? >> this is not constitutional. easy answer there. this is day one of constitutional law. issues like immigration, foreign policy, foreign affairs are specifically and only reserved to the federal government. makes sense. imagine if every state could have a different immigration policy, enforce it differently, it would be wild. important to understand the legal question here is nthis a good or bad policy, it is who gets to make it. it is not the states. it will get struck down in the federal courts at this some point. >> but there has to be a case brought. in the meantime, everything that is done under this law in texas is legal technically? >> here is what i expect to see happen. doj in all likelihood will go into court and challenge this.

you also have to have someone who has standing here. doj will i believe go into federal courts at some point soon and ask for an injunction and stay the law, put it on pause while it is being litigated through the federal courts. that has happened in the past and we've seen very similar laws in other border states including arizona struck down within the last decade and change by the supreme court. we saw a case involving arizona in 2012, went all the way to the supreme court. supreme court struck it down and i think that we'll see the same result here. >> so noticing that, i think it was 2012 you are talking about the supreme court saying no, this is the federal government's purview, so this appears to be not necessarily legal but political. if i know the supreme court has reaffirmed this is the federal government's job. >> there are legitimate questions about whether this is law passed in good or bad faith. you are entitled to test the courts. i'm sure there are arguments and

we've heard weak versions of this coming from certain legislators arguing that it is different from the arizona law. it is not word for word identical. but the constitutional flaw is very much identical. and that is why i'm confident i don't even think this will be your 6-3 type division. i think that you would see most of the court including some of the conservatives join with the liberals and strike it down if and when it reaches the supreme court. it may not by the way. the court of appeals may strike it down, federal district court may strike it down. it won't survive. >> elie honig with -- this is the most definite you have been. you sometimes do the thing if and when. but this is a no. >> we know how to hedge. i'm not hedging here. >> thank you. coming up for us, convicted and then fired. actor jonathan majors gets dropped by marvel right after being found guilty of assault and harassment. an update there. and hundreds of bomb threats being made against jewish facilities across the united states and just in a matter of days officials say that they are

all hoaxes but they are creating real fear.

>> and john miller is joining us now, and hoax or not a hoax, and it is terrifying to get a call especially in the climate we are n and why does the adl believe these threats are just hoaxes? >> and they come into multiple institution. >> and why isn't this considered can a threat? >> well, you need to regularly

check your emails to make sure it is not sitting in a box that nobody is watching and then please, report it to the law enforcement, and the adl is saying the same thing and talking to lauren seigel, and he said they fit the same pattern and come from the same places, and there was a recent one before this recent one that were actual phone calls coming from the voiceover ip accounts or hard to trace or get a handle on them where the person would claim that i am in the actual named institution where it was and i am going kill myself or kill others which is of course was going to be an entirely different fear generating thing that was targeted at the livestream services to sit back to watch the handywork where it had to be evacuated or interrupted for a search. of course, all of the calls bring up a police response which causes a hazard and what do you do when unexpectedly a swat team

arrives. the adl is trying to get in front of the these, to get into the right channels, they can warn the institution that the threat is coming and warn the police and slow it down. >> because we have seen it where people have been injured or even killed. >> yes, and even teenagers in and these people who call them in even in other countries, and then how did it get to target jewish institutions? welling, you become the flavor of the months and the adl says no, we are flavor of all time now. >> this is such a damn mess, it is ridiculous. >> there are arrests being made.

>> there are. >> and last week, a teenager was arrested in california and they expect more arrests in this country or that, and then perhaps in these latest things they can get to somebody, too. it is important to show there is going to be consequences. >> as my grandmother would say, "knock it off." this is awful. on the new strategy of the ground game that donald trump is employing in iowa and why his team feels they have found the winning model for the general election. >> and just as sandra day o'connor has been the first justice on the supreme court will be laid to rest, we will have her service for you.

i'm a little anxious, i'm a little excited. i'm gonna be emotional, she's gonna be emotional, but it's gonna be so worth it. i love that i can give back to one of our customers. i hope you enjoy these amazing gifts. oh my goodness. oh, you guys. i know you like wrestling, so we got you some vip tickets. you have made an impact. so have you. for you guys to be out here doing something like this, it restores a lot of faith in humanity.