From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro, this is The Daily.

The House of Representatives still has no speaker, crippling a vital branch of the government.

And it now appears that the Republican in the strongest position to win the job, perhaps

as soon as today, is best known for trying to obstruct the government.

I spoke with my colleague, Katie Edminson, about the latest turn in the saga of The Leaderless

House.

It's Tuesday, October 17th.

So Katie, the last time that The Daily checked in on the soap opera that is the Republican

led United States House of Representatives, Speaker Kevin McCarthy had just been ousted

from the job.

This was on October 4th.

And so this entire Chamber of Congress was without a leader for the first time in American

history.

And a few days after that, I spoke with one of the Republicans who helped oust McCarthy,

Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee.

And he confidently predicted in our conversation that a new speaker would be chosen in just

a few days and it turned out that he was wrong, because we're now in our third straight

week without a house speaker.

That's right.

I mean, the operative word that we've been using all the time, the word that members themselves

have been using to describe this period as chaos.

And it's never a good time for chaos to reign in the House of Representatives, but this

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