Lisa Desjardins:
As you and I are talking right now, Geoff, the House conference is again meeting behind closed doors. They have decided to just reopen their candidate list, and they again have now a slate of six candidates.
I want to talk about two of them at the top, two who were in the running this morning that we're watching especially. Kevin Hern, he's in charge of the Republican Study Committee, an important group of Republicans. And then also Mike Johnson of Louisiana, also known as a conservative.
Behind the scenes, their two camps have already been talking about who's more conservative than the other, but they now have to fend with sort of a quasi new field with four other candidates tonight. We don't know exactly how this is going to go. We expect the conference will take some votes tonight.
And if they are able to get someone with a very large amount of votes, we could even have a vote on the floor of the House tonight for speaker. There are some who are saying they want to go all night until they figure that out. But, you know, Geoff, we have heard that before.
Meanwhile, as you and I talk, it is three weeks until our government runs out of funding. And that is the exact same amount of time as we have been without a speaker. So that time can move very quickly.
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