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The Republican chairman of a high-profile House committee on Sunday shook up the race to succeed outgoing Speaker John A. Boehner, launching a challenge to the heavy favorite, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The bid by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, comes amid unrest from conservatives driven by doubts that McCarthy (Calif.) will be any more inclined than Boehner to embrace the right flank of the House Republican Conference. ... [Chaffetz] is well versed in the hand-to-hand political combat of cable news and talk radio and has become the party’s face on a variety of issues, including Secret Service failures and government funding for Planned Parenthood. (DeBonis and Viebeck, 10/4)

President Barack Obama has nominated Michael J. Missal, a lawyer with extensive experience in the federal government and private sector, to serve as the next inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The nomination of a permanent inspector general for the VA has been long sought by members of Congress who say it will bring more accountability to an agency that has struggled to meet some veterans' health care needs and provide timely decisions on benefits. (Freking, 10/2)

Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.) and 17 other Senate Democrats, including the chamber’s No. 3 Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), wrote to Republican leaders in both chambers on Friday asking that the committee not be created and linking it to the coming election of a new Speaker. (Sullivan, 10/2)

A day after a mass shooting in Oregon, 23 mental health groups are calling on Congress to pass legislation aimed at repairing the USA's broken mental health system. The groups delivered a letter to congressional leaders Thursday, just hours before the attack at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. left 10 people dead. The shooting was the latest in a series of mass killings perpetrated by unstable young men, many of whom were mentally ill. (Szabo, 10/2)