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Republican congressman Mike Johnson has been elected as the next Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

The conservative politician swept the vote on the first ballot following weeks of turmoil since the ousting of Kevin McCarthy.

He emerged as the fourth nominee after a cycle of Republican internecine warfare since his predecessor was booted out by his own side.

While not the party's top choice, the deeply religious Mr Johnson has few foes and an important backer in former president Donald Trump.

"I think he's gonna be a fantastic speaker," Mr Trump said on Wednesday at the New York courthouse where the former president, who is now the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024, is on trial over a lawsuit alleging business fraud.

Mr Trump said he had not heard "one negative comment about him. Everybody likes him".

Three weeks on without a House speaker, the Republicans have been wasting their majority status - a maddening embarrassment to some, democracy in action to others, but not at all how the House is expected to function.

More right-wing members have refused to accept a more traditional speaker, and moderate conservatives do not want a hard-liner.

While Mr Johnson had no opponents during the private roll call late on Tuesday, some two dozen Republicans did not vote, more than enough to have prevented him taking the gavel.

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But when Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik rose to introduce Mr Johnson's name on Wednesday as their nominee, Republicans jumped to their feet for an extended standing ovation.

"House Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson will never give up," she said.

Democrats again nominated their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, criticising Mr Johnson as an architect of Mr Trump's legal effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election he lost.

Mr Johnson is affable, well-liked and colleagues swiftly started giving their support.

"Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system," Mr Johnson said after winning the nomination. "We're going to restore your trust in what we do here."

What can we expect from Mike Johnson?

Mark Stone

US correspondent

While the world has been focused on the Middle East, the world's most powerful country has been rudderless.

For the last 22 days, the speaker's chair on Capitol Hill has been empty. The position of second in line to the presidency has been vacant.

Government in America has been paralysed.

Now, a messy democratic process which had ousted the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has whittled down through 14 candidates, four nominees and three house floor votes and chosen Congressman Mike Johnson, 51, of Louisiana as the house speaker.

It is a pivotal role in American politics. The speaker is the visible and authoritative leader of the majority in the House. They drive the agenda, they set the debates.

There is a contradiction between Johnson's character and his politics. He's softly spoken, warm and calm in his demeanour.

Yet his political views are in line with the angry, shouty and divisive Trumpian politics which has dominated America in recent years.

A lawyer by trade, he was first elected to the House in 2016. He is an evangelical Christian from Louisiana, a member of the Christian right block of conservatives.

He ticks all the boxes for the Republican right in America. He supports a nationwide abortion ban, he opposes same-sex marriages, he does not believe in man-made climate change.

Environmental groups say he has received more campaign money from the oil and gas industry since being elected to congress than any other industry.

We can expect he will be at the heart of many battles with liberals and the president over America's climate change agenda.

"The climate is changing," he said in 2017, "but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth's history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don't believe in the latter. I don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 the primary driver".

He was among those who called for the overturning of the 2020 election, believing that Donald Trump had won. He lobbied to invalidate the results in multiple states.

In 2021, he wrote on X/Twitter: "I have just called President Trump to say this: 'Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans' trust in the fairness of our election system.'"

On the most immediately pressing issues, funding for Ukraine and Israel, both of which President Biden has called for, he is thought to be supportive. It's likely he will call for more military aid for both conflicts.

Mr Johnson was elected to Congress in 2016 and has kept a relatively low profile since then though he is very socially conservative and a staunch Trump supporter.

He represents Louisiana's fourth congressional district, which includes nearly 760,000 residents, and won the seat with the largest margin of victory in his region in more than 50 years.

After graduating from Louisiana State University, he spent nearly 20 years practicing constitutional law.

Mr Johnson then served in the Louisiana Legislature from February 2015 to January 2017.

He and his wife, Kelly, have been married since 1999 and have four children.