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Two Killed, 68 Injured in Germany Christmas Market Attack; U.S. Averts a Shutdown; Funding Bill Passes without Key Trump Demand; One Killed, Several Injured in Croatia School Stabbing; Putin Dares Ukraine with New Hypersonic Missile; Lawmakers React to Stopgap Funding Bill; USMC Helicopter Catches Fire. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired December 21, 2024 - 03:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Well, welcome to all of you watching us around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

Investigators search for a motive after a driver plows his car into a crowded German Christmas market, killing at least two people.

The U.S. narrowly avoids a government shutdown. Lawmakers on both sides are calling it a victory.

But who really won?

And Houthi militants strike Israel from Yemen for the second time in two days.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from Atlanta, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Kim Brunhuber.

BRUNHUBER: Government officials are working to learn more about the deadly attack on a crowded Christmas market. It happened in the city of Magdeburg. Germany's chancellor is scheduled to visit the city in the coming hours. Two people were killed and 68 injured when a car drove through the crowd.

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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): Now this video appears to show police arresting the suspected driver on the scene. Officials say he's a 50 year old man from Saudi Arabia, who is a permanent resident of Germany.

TAMARA ZIESCHANG, INTERIOR MINISTER, SAXONY-ANHALT STATE (through translator): As far as we know now, there have been two fatalities and a large number of injuries. The perpetrator has been arrested. He is a 50 year old man from Saudi Arabia who entered the Federal Republic of Germany for the first time in 2006. He had a settlement permit and thus a permanent residence and has been

working as a doctor in Bernburg. According to our current knowledge, he acted as a lone offender. There is no information about other perpetrators.

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BRUNHUBER: All right. I want to bring in CNN's Barbie Latza Nadeau in Rome.

So Barbie, we heard a little bit there about the perpetrator.

What more are we learning about the attack, how it was carried out and the details about who possibly did it?

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. You know, I mean, this is really a complicated situation because there are so many things to look at. You know, this is a man who has been in Germany since 2006. He's from Saudi Arabia.

You know, they're looking at exactly how he accessed that market, that busy market with the car. There were barriers that were put in place. We understand that it was a rental car.

So investigators are going to be looking at, you know, whether or not he rented it in advance, how much planning went into this. All of those sorts of things are going to be really the focus of this.

And what triggered this?

You know, this is a man who's been in Germany for a long time.

Is it something going on?

Was he radicalized?

Was he -- did he have connections to groups?

Things like that will be the focus today. And hoping, of course, that there are no more fatalities among those 68 injured people that are in hospital now. Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Yes. Talking to a security expert last hour, he was saying it didn't bear many of the traditional hallmarks that we'd see in these types of ideologically motivated attacks. So it's certainly different from what we've seen before.

Take us through the reaction that we've been seeing in Germany and elsewhere.

NADEAU: You know, there's been widespread reaction. Let me just read a few of these to you. There's just been just really heartfelt emotion.

The Pentagon press secretary shared condolences, writing, "Our hearts go out to Germany in the wake of this tragedy." French president Emmanuel Macron took to social media to post this,

"Deeply shocked by the horror that struck the Magdeburg Christmas market in Germany. My thoughts are with the victims, the injured and their loved ones and families.

"France shares the pain of the German people and expresses its full solidarity."

And this from the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte.

"Horrific scenes from a Christmas market in Germany. I have reached out to the German chancellor to offer my condolences. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. NATO stands with Germany."

And from here in Italy, prime minister Giorgia Meloni posted this, "I'm deeply shocked by the brutal attack that struck the helpless crowd at the Christmas market. I stand with the entire government, by the families of the victims, the injured and all the German people. Violence must have no place in our democracies."

Of course, you know, these sorts of Christmas markets are so popular here in Europe, all across Europe, especially in Germany. This would have been the last Friday before Christmas. Lots of people there enjoying their time together. Families, young people, old people.

So it's really a shocking -- it's sent shock waves across Europe. Kim.

BRUNHUBER: My worries turn to other similar Christmas events and New Year's events that are planned for the next week and so on. Barbie Latza Nadeau in Rome, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

All right. To our other top story. Now just after a midnight deadline and days of chaos, U.S. lawmakers have averted a crisis. The government is avoiding a shutdown of many operations after the Senate passed a stopgap funding bill by a vote of 85-11.

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The bill is awaiting President Biden's signature, considered a formality. Now so-called Plan C extends government funding into March and includes disaster relief and farming provisions.

But it doesn't include a debt limit suspension, which was a key Donald Trump demand. That piece was stripped after a bipartisan revolt on Thursday.

So apparently, frustrated yet resigned, Trump lamented to one lawmaker he was disappointed the deal couldn't include a debt ceiling hike. But the House Speaker did say he kept in touch with the president-elect on Friday and he spoke with Trump confidant Elon Musk as well.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Constant contact with president Trump throughout this process. Spoke with him most recently. He knew exactly what we were doing and why. And this is a good outcome for the country. I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well.

Elon Musk and I talked. We're going to get through this. We are going to unify this country and we are going to bring the America First agenda to the people beginning in January. We cannot wait to get started.

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BRUNHUBER: Here's CNN's Lauren Fox with more.

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LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At the last minute, members of the United States Senate able to avert a government shutdown.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On this vote, the yeas are 85, the nays are 11. The 60 vote threshold having been achieved, the bill is passed.

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FOX: This happened just a few minutes after midnight. But lawmakers coming together after what has been a whirlwind 36 hours, in which Elon Musk and Donald Trump injected an 11th hour request to include the debt ceiling as part of these negotiations.

Ultimately, after 1.5 days of Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, trying to find a way to satisfy Trump's request, Republicans decided to move forward without an increase in the debt ceiling and instead use just a pared-back spending bill.

That includes $100 billion in disaster aid, $10 million in assistance for farmers and a spending bill that will go until just March 14th, meaning that lawmakers are going to have to do this all over again in Donald Trump's first 100 days -- on Capitol Hill for CNN, I'm Lauren Fox.

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BRUNHUBER: I want to bring in Natasha Lindstaedt, who is a professor of government at the University of Essex and she joins us now from Colchester, England.

Thank you so much for being here with us again. So listen, you and I, over the years, have done this a couple of times; talked about a last minute deal to avert a shutdown. Congress always seems to get it done in the end.

But this time there were a couple of unique factors here that seem to increase the jeopardy, these two wild cards in Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

So are you surprised that that they got there in the end?

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: I am a little bit surprised that they did get there in the end, because the end result is actually not what Donald Trump wanted. Trump was hoping that they would raise the debt ceiling or deal with the debt ceiling issue while Biden was in power.

And Trump was also hoping, if that didn't happen, that there would be a government shutdown, because then that would look -- that would make the Biden administration look bad.

But what we've seen is the original bill that was backed by Trump was not able to get through, did not get through in the House. In fact, there were 38 Republicans in the House that voted against it.

And so what we're seeing here is that Trump's hold on the Republican Party, while it is incredibly strong, it is not ironclad. But he, definitely, along with Elon Musk, were trying to maneuver things behind the scenes, mostly through social media.

And Musk has become an incredibly powerful figure in American politics. And putting out information in this case, some of it was not truthful information about what was going on with the bipartisan deal.

He was claiming that, falsely, that there was going to be aid to Ukraine in that deal. And, you know, he has over 207 million followers on Twitter. So he can have a very big influence. And he definitely was an agent of chaos, making it difficult for the deal to get through. But in the end, Congress came up with a solution.

BRUNHUBER: All right. So the solution, the winners and losers here, in practical terms, it's those in, you know, hurricane-hit areas who will get emergency relief; people in the military will get their paychecks; farmers.

But politically Democrats are celebrating this as a victory.

Is it really?

LINDSTAEDT: It's a small win for the Democrats. Definitely. I think what they can see along the line is that, because the margin that the Republicans hold over the Democrats in the House is so razor thin that it's going to be difficult for the Republicans to get things done without Democratic support, without Democratic cooperation.

And the Democrats were able to remain fairly united in what their demands were.

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Which was they didn't want to support the Trump-backed deal, which, in their mind, would allow Trump to go ahead with massive tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the middle class.

So they were able to prevent that, prevent the government from shutting down, prevent the raise of the debt ceiling and also ensure that some of these programs that are important to the Democrats were -- remained in that bill.

BRUNHUBER: This has raised more questions about House Speaker Mike Johnson.

So what do you think all of this says about his future?

LINDSTAEDT: I think it's going to be incredibly hard for Mike Johnson to remain as Speaker of the House. He has to balance too many different -- too many different views, too many different components, too many different actors that want him to either adhere to a complete MAGA line, whatever Trump wants.

But he's got to deal with Democrats. He has to engage in some kind of bipartisan cooperation. And when he does that, every time he reaches across the aisle, the MAGA Republicans punish him.

In fact, you've already hearing about Elon Musk as a possible Speaker of the House, because you don't have to be a sitting member of Congress. Senator Mike Lee and Rand Paul floated this idea, along with house member Marjorie Taylor Greene.

So he's already facing the type of scrutiny, attention and conflict that Kevin McCarthy faced when he was Speaker of the House.

So it's going to be incredibly difficult in this environment with such a thin margin of Republicans leading in the House for Mike Johnson to be able to maintain the party discipline that he's going to need to do to get things done without having to cooperate with Democrats.

BRUNHUBER: Yes. So his future kind of hangs in the balance. And looking down the road to the future here, this kind of kicks the can down the road. So basically we're headed to a showdown in a couple of months. We know Donald Trump wants to raise the debt ceiling. Many conservative Republicans don't.

So this does give Democrats some leverage, right?

LINDSTAEDT: It does. But that's one of the things that Donald Trump likes to do when he's been, at least president, is he uses the threat of a government shutdown. I mean, there were three government shutdowns that took place during his administration, one of which, at the end of 2018 and 2019, was the longest in history.

It lasted 35 days and it was about the battle to build the wall. Eventually he did cave to the Democrats. But he's won some battles as well by using this threat of a government shutdown, which he doesn't seem to think is a huge problem all the time to get done what he wants to.

So I think in our future, we're going to see more of these battles take place and possibly another government shutdown that actually happens.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, we shall see. Certainly plenty to be decided down the road. Natasha, thank you so much. Really appreciate talking to you.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

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BRUNHUBER: Israeli authorities say a projectile launched from Yemen struck Tel Aviv overnight, in a rare instance of the city's air defenses failing to intercept a target.

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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): Sirens rang out over central Israel. At least 30 people suffered minor injuries in the attack, with the projectile landing in Tel Aviv's southern Jaffa area. The Houthis say they launched a hypersonic ballistic missile at an Israeli military target.

Residents in Tel Aviv say the attack came in the middle of the night while they were asleep.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We had a siren and then actually a siren on top of a siren. And we -- obviously we're all sleeping in the building and then before there was even time to get out the door, it exploded.

The ballistic missile landed right behind our building and all the windows blew in. And the first, second floor and the whole area. It was very frightening.

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BRUNHUBER: Tensions between Israel and the Houthis have escalated since the Hamas attack on October 7th and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza.

The man suspected of that deadly attack on a Christmas market in Germany has worked in the country as a doctor for years. A closer look ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM.

Plus, the U.S. looks to forge new ties with Syria and it pledges to lift a $10 million bounty on the former rebel fighter, who is now Syria's de facto leader. That and more coming up. Please stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: More now on the breaking news in Germany. Officials are working to learn more about the deadly attack on a crowded Christmas market. Two people were killed and 68 injured when a car drove through the crowd in the city of Magdeburg.

Officials say the driver was a 50 year old man from Saudi Arabia, who is a permanent resident of Germany. CNN's Matthew Chance has more on the attack and the man suspected of driving the car.

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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the moment a vehicle plowed into a packed Christmas market in Germany, causing horrific casualties.

Video from the immediate aftermath in the city of Magdeburg shows the market in disarray, with items scattered all around and people tending to the wounded.

It is now known, an adult and a toddler were killed in the attack about a hundred miles west of Berlin, leaving the city on edge.

DORIN STEFFEN, LIVES IN MAGDEBURG, GERMANY (through translator): We are shaking.

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We are full of sympathy for the relatives. Also, we hope nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances.

CHANCE (voice-over): Police say they've arrested the driver of the car, identified by a senior German government official as a doctor originally from Saudi Arabia.

The suspect is reported to have lived in Germany since 2006 and had worked in the region. A government official says its believed the suspected attacker acted alone.

REINER HASELOFF, REGIONAL PRIME MINISTER OF SAXONY-ANHALT (through translator): We are currently in the process of compiling all further data and also carrying out the interrogation.

According to the current information, it is an individual perpetrator, so there is no longer any danger to the city because we were able to arrest him.

CHANCE: It is not the first time a German Christmas market has been targeted. Back in 2016, a dozen people were killed and many more injured when a crowded Christmas market in Berlin was struck by a truck driven by a 24-year-old Tunisian man. That attack was later claimed by the Islamic State.

Now the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is set to travel to the scene of the latest attack, as Germany reckons with a horrific act of violence just days before Christmas -- Matthew Chance, CNN, London.

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BRUNHUBER: As we heard German officials say, the suspect rented the car that was used in the attack. As CNN's senior national security analyst Juliette Kayyem explains, that could provide valuable clues to investigators.

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JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the fact that they have the car is going to tell them a lot, not just the rental, but who rented it.

When was it rented?

How much thought went into this?

That then will give you a sense of how much planning and whether others were involved.

The assailant's -- the killer's ties to Germany were deep. He had been there almost 20 years.

You are not talking of the sort of, you know, is it a Syrian refugee or is it a young person, you know, recently from another part of the country who got radicalized?

It is that deepness of ties to Germany -- a profession; we don't know about family, presumably an income -- that is different about this. And so that is what they are going to be looking to.

So it might be the ties to Saudi Arabia. It might be something related to Gaza and Israel, which has amplified a lot of protests in Europe and elsewhere. Or it could be something uniquely German.

And we will determine whether it was politically motivated, given what is happening in Germany, or someone with just, you know, a particular reason for doing this.

So all of those are still open. But it is the deepness of ties to Germany over a couple of decades. Either it was a radicalization from afar or it was something different. That is what I think investigators will be looking for, including his ties to people, contacts in other countries.

If there had been sort of secondary weaponry to get the first responders -- they come to the car and then it blows up -- That's just a level of sophistication, a sort of level of knowledge.

And also just creating even a rudimentary device would have been planning.

Why wasn't that -- you know, why wasn't that caught?

So when it was determined that there wasn't one, then people like me and the rest of the panel begin to think, OK, well, was this more spontaneous?

What was this triggered by?

Because it takes absolutely nothing to get into your car. If he lives in the area, he knows where there's going to be vulnerabilities in the Christmas area, in the Christmas Village area, and to just press the accelerator. That's the scary thing about these car attacks.

And as we enter not just Christmas but, of course, we're all thinking about it, New Year's and our capacity to stop these cars, everyone in big cities will experience the protections that are in place. They don't know that it's them but that's why there's big trash trucks in New York and Boston and elsewhere.

Those are just ways to try to limit speed and an ability of a vehicle to get to large masses of people. That will be ratcheted up in the days to come because of this attack.

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BRUNHUBER: A 7-year old girl was killed and several other people, including children, were injured in a stabbing attack on Friday at an elementary school in Croatia's capital, Zagreb.

The alleged attacker, a 19 year old and believed to be a former student, is in police custody. CNN affiliate N1 reported he entered a first grade classroom and attacked the teacher and several children with a knife.

A community official was among those gathered outside, questioning how this could have happened.

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MARKO PALADA, PRECKO COMMUNITY OFFICIAL (through translator): A school should be a safe place. Even the children who are not directly attacked found themselves in a situation where they had to worry about their lives, which is an inappropriate situation for children of that age.

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BRUNHUBER: Mourners held a vigil outside the school, lighting lanterns and leaving toys to honor the child who was killed and those who were hurt.

[03:25:07]

The U.N. estimates 100,000 Syrian refugees have returned to the country since the fall of the Assad regime roughly two weeks ago. An additional 150,000 people who were internally displaced have returned to their town or region.

But officials say it's too soon to tell how many people will be able to stay long-term as Syria enters a new era. Meanwhile, the U.S. is taking steps to work with Syria's interim government, sending a delegation to meet with the country's de facto leader and lifting a long standing bounty.

CNN's Alex Marquardt has the details from Washington.

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ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The U.S. announced on Friday that it is removing the $10 million bounty for the leader of HTS, which is the group that just led the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The announcement was made by Barbara Leaf, who is the top State Department official for the Middle East. She visited Damascus on Friday.

Part of the first high-level U.S. visit to the Syrian capital in years. Leaf and others sat down with the head of HTS, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose group is still designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. Leaf said the meeting was good and productive.

She called Sharaa pragmatic and noted his moderate statements. But she said the U.S. will, quote, "judge by deeds, not just by words."

Sharaa and others are calling for the U.S. to lift its sanctions on Syria to help jumpstart the economy.

Meanwhile, these U.S. officials also raised the case of Austin Tice, the journalist who has been missing in Syria since 2012.

The head of hostage affairs, Roger Carstens, says that he has been amazed by the number of secret prisons in Syria being uncovered and he said that in their search for clues, they're focusing on around six facilities where Tice may have been held.

Carstens acknowledged limited resources and suggested that American investigators, including from the FBI, could join the search on the ground soon. But for now, sadly, there is no news about Tice's whereabouts -- Alex Marquardt, CNN, Washington.

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BRUNHUBER: Ukraine says Russia has, quote, "unleashed a real hell" on the southern city of Kherson. More than 1,000 artillery shells hit the city over a period of 40 minutes on Friday, leaving two people dead and 10 others injured.

Kherson is just across the river from Russian positions. And officials say Russian troops regularly try to cross over with hopes of reoccupying the city at some point.

Now similar scenes played out in Kyiv, where at least one person was killed and 12 others injured. Ukraine called it "a barbaric attack" that also damaged several foreign embassies. Officials say all Russian drones and missiles were shot down or failed to reach their targets but their falling debris still caused damage and casualties.

Now those strikes came a day after Russia's president bragged about his new Oreshnik hypersonic missile. It was fired at the city of Dnipro last month, in what could be the first time it's ever been used in combat.

The missile has multiple warheads, which can be either conventional or nuclear. And as Nathan Hodge reports, Russia's leader dared Ukraine to pit its air defenses against it.

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NATHAN HODGE, CNN SENIOR ROW EDITOR: Russia's attack Friday on the Ukrainian capital comes one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted about the capabilities of the Oreshnik, his new nuclear capable intermediate range ballistic missile system.

Putin, in the press conference, also proposed that the Oreshnik be tried out in a technological test as a proposed duel between Russia and the West.

Seeing how this Russian weapons system would fare against U.S. supplied and Western supplied air defense systems that the Ukrainians rely upon to defend Kyiv and other cities against Russian attack from the air.

And, of course, Putin's brazen boasts and his pledges to test the Oreshnik have been described in terms, well, quite bluntly by the Ukrainian president as something, basically, nothing less than ghoulish, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quite undiplomatically calling Putin a dumbass for his remarks.

And it's also worth pointing out that Putin, in that press conference, also made some fairly glib remarks, kicking off his press conference by talking about the fact that war makes life interesting.

And, in addition to going on to boast about his foreign policy successes and his successes on the battlefield in the grinding war of attrition in Ukraine's east.

But the context for all of this, of course, is the incoming administration in Washington of president elect Donald Trump.

The Kremlin expects, of course, that Trump, who has quite publicly pledged that he intends to bring an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Kremlin now expects that it needs to enter into any kind of negotiation over Ukraine from a position of strength.

And, of course, the Kremlin is reeling in recent days and weeks.

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Particularly from the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was forced to flee and took refuge in Russia, giving Russian foreign policy a black eye, despite attempts by Russian president Vladimir Putin to spin Russia's military involvement in Syria as a success.

It's clearly been a setback and Russia in the coming days is clearly -- and Russian President Putin as well -- is trying to show the world that he remains on the front foot when it comes to the war in Ukraine, as well as when it comes to coming to the table with an incoming President Trump -- Nathan Hodge, CNN, London.

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BRUNHUBER: All right. After the break, lawmakers avoided crisis on Capitol Hill. We'll bring you more coverage next.

Plus, Democrats are raising concerns about billionaire Elon Musk after he helped push for a shutdown of the U.S. government. That story and much more coming up. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Back to one of our top stories. After days of chaos, the U.S. federal government remains open for business as Congress adopts a deal to avoid a shutdown. The plan extends government funding into March and includes disaster relief.

But it doesn't include a debt limit suspension, which is something Donald Trump wanted. A source says Trump is disappointed that the deal couldn't include that debt ceiling hike.

When lawmakers return to Washington in January, the incoming class will be the most closely divided House since the Great Depression nearly 100 years ago. Republicans will hold a historically narrow margin, leaving them little room to maneuver. CNN's Phil Mattingly reports.

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF U.S. DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: All 435 House races have been called. And we can say definitively that House Republicans, once again, have the majority, barely.

And what do I mean by barely?

I mean, to a historic degree, barely because when you pull up what the actual numbers are, 220 Republicans, 215 Democrats.

That is a five-seat majority in the balance of power. And that means House Republican leaders can only afford to lose two of their members in a party line vote and still win that vote. And yet, that's actually a lot easier than how it's going to be.

What do I mean by that?

Well, House Republicans can thank the guy that many of them credit for helping them win the House majority, for making it even harder because Donald Trump is taking House Republicans to be in his administration.

He started with Matt Gaetz, picked him to be his attorney general. That nomination or effort failed catastrophically, as was expected. But Gaetz, Gaetz resigned. That's minus one Republican.

What about Elise Stefanik, close ally, New York Republican, Donald Trump's pick to be U.N. ambassador?

She's expected to be confirmed by the Senate. That's minus two Republicans.

And Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor for Trump, he doesn't have to be confirmed at all. He will start on day one with the administration. That means three House Republicans won't be there for a period of months likely, which means, if you do the math, take 220 minus 3 and this is where you end up, 217-215.

If you thought losing two votes was the maximum and that would be complicated, try losing barely one. That would be borderline suffocation for any Republican leader at a historically difficult moment for House Republican leaders.

What do I mean by that?

Put this away for a minute because I want to pull up some context here. If you take a look at majorities at every scale over the course of the last five decades, like right here, you'll see after decades of Democratic dominance.

Post Watergate, you got 149 seat majority at one point, back in 1977. You can track that down -- 100s, 100s, 80s, 70s, back to 182. That flipped when the chamber flipped, of course, when House Republicans took over in 1994. They didn't have a huge majority but 26 seats, not bad; 19-12. Narrow at nine, but then starting to pop back up.

And we saw that toggle back and forth as both sides took majorities over a period of years until the most recent period, where a new trend started, right about there: 10 Democratic seat majority, then nine Republican seat majority, then five Republican seat majority.

So let's take this away and go back to where we are right now because, again, was 220-215; at some point during this process, it's going to be 217-215. And that makes it really, really hard on one person in particular, this guy, Speaker Mike Johnson.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Reaction to the averted government shutdown is pouring in from lawmakers. And that includes some Republicans, who pushed back on Donald Trump's request to include a suspension of the debt limit. So here's what some members of the House had to say after the bill passed overnight.

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REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): I think it's an institutional victory to some degree. I mean, I support President Trump's agenda and I'll vote that way up here. But I think you still have to have a legislative body that's independent and deliberative.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, it's actually that he tried to bully members of Congress and it seemed to not work.

MASSIE: It didn't work for 38 or 39 people last night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): At the beginning of this Congress, you know, we were having a large disagreement amongst our colleagues about how this place was going to work.

And for the end of this Congress, to kind of get back into that same old way of Washington. I'm definitely not a fan of. But you know, we're going to move forward.

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REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): For years, we have been the ones bailing out these MAGA Republicans and their sympathizers every year when it comes to putting the funding bill together,

[03:40:06]

They seem not to be able to do it. And as you know, this today, we were able to do it simply because we stayed focused on the things that are best for the American people.

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DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: This, what we're seeing here, is a miraculous kind of win for the Democrats this week, win because the Democrats, since the election -- Harris losing -- have been divided. They can't unify.

They're not even sure if the Democratic Party will go to Trump's inaugural or not. I mean, they don't know what to do.

And out of nowhere now, due to Elon Musk and Trump overplaying their hands, the Republicans on, heading in here, are getting a black eye for, I think, what they've tried to pull off this week.

They -- they're showing chaos, confusion. And it's -- the big thing is Hakeem Jeffries has come out as a -- with an upward arrow. And it reminds Democrats that, don't throw in the towel. Trump's not invincible, That he's going to need Democratic votes to get anything done.

Congress is the purse strings of the nation. All of these senators went out of Washington right now. They want to go home for the holidays. The winners right now are the people of this very hard year that had to deal with hurricanes and flooding and wildfires and they need billions of dollars.

And, you know, people that are our veterans, our armed forces, people that need cancer funding or, you know, sickle cell anemia funding, whatever the case may be, if somebody was going to get blamed for this -- and Biden, President Biden, I think, very shrewdly stepped back and let the Republicans have their own war this week.

And now the story is, as you rightly point out, can Speaker Johnson weather this?

Can he hang on there?

And now suddenly you're seeing Republicans for, I really think for the first time since the election, stumbling very badly. And Elon Musk is the one who did the tripwire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Well, Trump's confidant and informal adviser, Elon Musk, helped torpedo the bipartisan deal earlier this week. Many in Congress see the billionaire as the only one really running the show. And now furious Democrats are questioning whether Musk is a, quote, "shadow president."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): President Musk.

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, FORMER CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: President Musk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Musk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Musk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Musk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Musk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: So how exactly did Musk help scuttle the original spending bill?

Well, it had a bipartisan support until the billionaire unleashed a torrent of social media posts, criticizing the bill on Wednesday. Then millions of his supporters amplified the criticism.

But as CNN's Dana Bash and Brian Stelter point out, many of Musk's social media posts were far from accurate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I want to then move to a couple of examples, Brian, of what you just said, some examples of what Musk was posting this week, as he tanked that --

(CROSSTALK)

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes.

BASH: -- bipartisan spending bill.

First, he questioned how the bill can be called a continuing resolution if it includes a, he said, a 40, four-zero, percent increase in pay for Congress.

That is not what the bill did. The pay raise, it did have a pay raise. But it would have been less than 4 percent, not 40 percent, under 4 percent.

He also posted that an NFL stadium here in Washington should not be funded by your taxpayers. It wasn't funded by the taxpayers in that bill. It was specifically something about the way the land was dedicated.

And so those are just two examples of things that probably are not going to be in what eventually passes. And it's probably not going to be in what eventually passes. And it's likely because of those two posts, which don't have correct information -- Brian.

STELTER: He's oftentimes relying on random anonymous accounts, these websites, you know, these users on X, who are trying to present themselves as the new CNN, the new "The New York Times" but have no research behind them, no backing, no institutional knowledge.

And I understand that, for Musk, that's really appealing. It's exciting on his platform. But he ends up misleading a lot of people. You know, it is striking how he does seem to be learning about lawmaking in real time. And just a moment ago, he tweeted about all the coverage of him in the last 24 hours.

You know, there's been all these questions, Dana.

Is he the real president-elect?

Is he the shadow president?

Well, Musk responded on X.

He says, "The political and legacy media puppets are all echoing the same idea, parroting the same message, trying to drive a wedge between Trump and me."

And Musk adds, "They will fail."

I don't think anybody is trying to drive a wedge, except those Democrats who are saying it. Journalists are just trying to understand the relationship between Trump and Musk, because it's one of the most important relationships of the next four years.

[03:45:00]

BRUNHUBER: The accused killer of an insurance company CEO is now in New York's Metropolitan Detention Center. The conditions Luigi Mangione faces in the notorious federal facility after the break. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: All right. We're looking at pictures from San Diego County, California, where a U.S. military helicopter came down near Camp Pendleton. The Marines say the engine of the helicopter caught fire mid-flight. It forced the crew of four to make what the Corps called a safe emergency landing near the military base.

But still, as you can see, flames broke out and responders rushed to put them out.

[03:50:00]

Luckily, no one was injured.

New York prosecutors said Friday that state proceedings against Luigi Mangione will begin before his federal trial in the shooting death of an insurance company CEO. Mangione was hit with four more federal charges on Thursday following multiple state level indictments.

He was also transferred from Pennsylvania to a notorious federal detention center in New York. CNN's Brynn Gingras reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From Ivy League rich kid to inmate number 52503-511.

That is Luigi Mangione's new identification inside the walls of Brooklyn's notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, commonly known as MDC. The 26-year old is the latest high profile inmate at the federal detention center.

Former inmates include sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell; pharma bro Martin Shkreli and R. Kelly.

Currently, Sean "Diddy" Combs is also being held there on federal charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Mangione and Combs, also sharing a lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, who was working on Mangione's case with his wife and lead counsel, Karen.

MARC AGNIFILO, ATTORNEY: I'm going to try and minimize the amount of time he spends in very, very difficult and, I believe, inhumane housing conditions in the -- in the special housing unit of the metropolitan detention facility.

GINGRAS (voice-over): Agnifilo recently argued to move the music mogul before trial because of the conditions at MDC. While the department wouldn't confirm details of any specific inmate, policy shows, upon arrival, they undergo a 21-day evaluation to determine in what unit they will be held.

Because Mangione's case is high profile, it's likely he will be housed in what's called the SHU, a unit where inmates are separated from the general population, largely for safety reasons.

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: His interactions will be limited. I think the oversight will be far more significant. I think he'll be subject to a lot less dangers.

GINGRAS: Donald Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, spent a short time there and explained what it's like to CNN.

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP FIXER: He's waking up on a steel bed with a 1.5 inch mattress, no pillow, in an 8x10 foot cell, that, I can assure you, is disgusting.

REP. DAN GOLDMAN (D-NY): We are pushing for basic humanity.

GINGRAS: In recent years, inmates, attorneys and activists have sounded the alarm on issues like violence, overcrowding, staffing shortages, even power outages.

In September, a federal judge condemned the facility's conditions, prompting the bureau of prisons to appoint an urgent action team to, quote, take a holistic look at the challenges at MDC Brooklyn.

JACKSON: So it was a big deal and I think that tells you all you need to know with respect to what's happening there.

GINGRAS: As for Mangione, a Bureau of Prisons handbook outlines daily life behind bars, including a 6:00 am wakeup call for breakfast, sweeping and mopping his cell, a new change of clothes three days a week and a chance to shop in the commissary once every two weeks, where he can buy candy bars, crossword books and deodorant.

In Pennsylvania, more than 150 donations were made to Mangione's commissary account. The Bureau of Prisons won't comment on inmates' accounts.

CNN has learned that commissary money that was in Mangione account in Pennsylvania will be transferred to the Bureau of Prisons for Mangione. Also important to note, his attorneys in court said that they reserved their right to request bail in this case, possibly at a later date -- Brynn Gingras, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Amazon drivers continue their holiday season strike for a second day Friday after walking off the job on Thursday. Members of the Teamsters union are striking at eight facilities across four U.S. states.

They say they represent about 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide. Drivers want better wages and benefits and also for Amazon to recognize them as official company employees.

Amazon says it's not required to negotiate with them since they're contracted workers. The company is promising the strike won't affect holiday deliveries.

And the union representing some Starbucks workers has launched its first strike in 13 months. It's targeting what it calls the key markets of Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. Just 12,000 Starbucks employees are unionized, a fraction of the chain's 200,000 employees. A source told CNN that only 10 stores in the city didn't open as usual

on Friday. The union says it will spread the walkout to hundreds of stores across the U.S. by Christmas. That's unless the company honors a framework agreement to reach its first-ever union contract.

Well, no big winter storms are expected to the U.S. But minor storms will bring a major chill this weekend. Parts of the Northeast are expected to see a few inches of snow Saturday. But snowfall for major metropolitan areas like Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia and Boston should not exceed an inch.

Still, the cold accompanying the storm will bring some of the lowest temperatures of the season. And sadly, here, even in the South, we're not immune. Cities like Atlanta, Dallas and Memphis could experience overnight temperatures at or below freezing this weekend.

[03:55:00]

All right. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Kim Brunhuber. CNN NEWSROOM with Ben Hunte is next.