Republican members of the US House of Representatives have unanimously chosen Paul Ryan to keep his job as speaker, following their victory at the polls last week which also saw Republican candidate Donald Trump win the US Presidential election.
Republicans retained their majority in both the House and Senate, defying predictions that Democrats would take control of the Senate along with a Hillary Clinton presidential victory.
Mr Ryan, a 46-year-old politician from Wisconsin, had been intensely criticised by several rank-and-file Republicans for refusing to align more closely with Mr Trump during his extraordinary and controversial presidential campaign.
It is a tremendous honor to be nominated by my colleagues to serve as Speaker of the House. Now it’s time to go big. pic.twitter.com/ot7fqYEGun
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) November 15, 2016
Mr Ryan did not rescind an endorsement of the 70-year-old property mogul, but after a 2005 tape emerged early last month in which Mr Trump was heard making lewd remarks about women, the speaker said he would not defend or campaign with Mr Trump for the duration of the race.
"I think our relationship's fine," Mr Ryan said.
"There is no doubt our democracy could be very messy and we do remain a sharply divided country, but now as we do every four years, we have to work to heal the divisions of a long campaign."
Elsewhere, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who is currently an adviser Mr Trump, has opted against accepting a cabinet position in the Trump administration, his spokesman has said.
Retired neurosurgeon Mr Carson, a popular writer and speaker in conservative circles, has been a close adviser to Mr Trump and is a vice chairman of his transition team.
He has been mentioned as a possible secretary of health and human services or education.
Mr Carson's business manager, Armstrong Williams, said Mr Carson has made clear he has no experience in running a federal bureaucracy.
"Dr Carson doesn't feel like that's the best way for him to serve the president-elect," said Mr Williams.
He said Mr Carson would remain a close adviser of Mr Trump and a friend. "His life has not prepared him to be a Cabinet secretary," Williams said.
It was revealed during the Republican presidential candidate campaign that Mr Carson had said Egypt's pyramids were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain and were not, as archaeologists believe, tombs for pharaohs.
He made the remarks in a 1998 address at Andrews University, a school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to which he belongs.
"My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain," Mr Carson said.
"Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it.
"And I don't think it'd just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain."
During the campaign, Mr Carson told CBS News that he stood by the remarks, saying: "It’s still my belief, yes. The pyramids were made in such a way that they had hermetically sealed compartments.
"You wouldn’t need hermetically sealed compartments for a sepulchre. You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain over a long period of time."
Meanwhile, Mr Trump's short-list of contenders to head the US Environmental Protection Agency includes two current energy industry lobbyists who held leading roles there under Republican President George W Bush, according to two sources with knowledge of the list.
The potential choices dovetail with Mr Trump's vow to slash US environmental regulation and resist regulatory efforts to combat global climate change, positions Mr Trump shares with his Republican predecessor in the Oval Office.
Top contenders for the job include Jeff Holmstead, an energy industry attorney at Bracewell law firm who was assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation from 2001 to 2005, and Mike Catanzaro, a lobbyist for CGCN who was an associate deputy administrator at the EPA from 2005 to 2007, according to the sources.
A third potential pick is Robert Grady, a venture capitalist at Gryphon Investors who served as associate director for Natural Resources at the Office of Management and Budget informer President George Bush's 1989-93 administration, the sources said.
