Rep Scott Mounts Last Minute Challenge For Speaker

Rep Austin Scott (R-GA) has entered the race to become the Republican nominee for speaker at the last-minute, setting up a contest with Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) who appeared likely to run unopposed. See 16:39 BST bullet.

• Scott told CNN yesterday, the GOP’s inability to elect a new speaker driven by small group of holdouts “makes us look like a bunch of idiots.”
• Scott: “We’ve got a very small group of people that they have to have everything their way. We had a group that sabotaged Speaker McCarthy and now we’ve had a group that sabotaged Steve Scalise, both of them great people."
• In approximately 45 mins the House GOP conference will head into an internal conference meeting to hear arguments from both candidates. Scott's comments suggest the meeting will be another acrimonious episode will little chance of the consensus forming around one candidate.
• It is unclear if the conference will hold a vote on the nominee today as there are around 12 members absent from the Capitol today.
• For more analysis see today's edition of our MNI US Daily Brief.