Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader who helped Republicans remake the U.S. Supreme Court and also influenced how political campaigns are financed, announced Thursday that he would not seek an eighth term in office.
“Seven times my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said, as aides lined the back chamber and several senators listened from seats. “Every day in between, I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honour of a lifetime. I will not seek this honour an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”
The move — which came on McConnell’s 83rd birthday — was widely expected.
McConnell has endured several health challenges in the past two years. On two occasions, he was unable to complete prepared remarks as aides scrambled to help him, and he has suffered more than one fall — including in December, when he suffered a sprained wrist.
He announced last year he wouldn’t seek his party’s leadership role in the Senate after 17 years at the helm. He was Senate majority leader from 2015 to 2021, a period of time that encompassed the end of Barack Obama’s two-term presidency, as well as the entirety of Donald Trump’s tumultuous first term in office.
Helped lock in conservative-led Supreme Court
McConnell helped ensure that Trump would nominate three Supreme Court justices.
Late in Obama’s term, after the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia, McConnell refused to schedule a committee hearing for the president’s nominee, Merrick Garland. McConnell cited Obama’s status as a final-year president, as well as a 19th-century scenario he saw as a precedent.
The court carried on with eight justices until Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch early in his first term.
After Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh succeeded the retiring Anthony Kennedy, the sudden death of liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020 saw McConnell flip the script from the Garland scenario. During a significant COVID-19 wave and with bills languishing in the Senate, McConnell reconvened the chamber instead to ensure conservative Amy Coney Barrett would be confirmed before the 2020 election.
Democrats howled at what they saw as McConnell’s hypocrisy, but were powerless to stop Coney Barrett’s elevation to the bench.
The 6-3 conservative court has made a number of landmark rulings, including on abortion in 2022 and the subject of presidential immunity last year.
Voted to acquit Trump, twice
McConnell and Trump often clashed on policy, with the president taking to social media on occasion to mock the Republican leader as “Old Crow” and “the worst negotiator.”
But McConnell twice voted to acquit Trump as he faced impeachment, even after he condemned him as “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, excoriated Donald Trump on Saturday for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but defended his vote to acquit him at the impeachment trial.
“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said in the chamber days later. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”
McConnell argued that Trump couldn’t be impeached as he was already out of the presidency by the time of the Senate’s impeachment trial, but seven other Republicans saw fit to convict. Trump staved off impeachment, paving the way for his improbable political comeback.
While McConnell interned for a U.S. congressman and worked as a legislative aide for a senator in his 20s, he returned to Kentucky and was little known in D.C. when he was first elected in 1984, upsetting two-term Democratic Sen. Walter (Dee) Huddleston.
Before Trump, McConnell spearheaded efforts to loosen the taps of campaign spending, ultimately culminating in the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling, which lifted limits on independent spending by corporations and labour unions.
Critics have argued that the Citizens United ruling helped unleash a torrent of dark money into U.S. election campaigns.
The Republican was also a defender of George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.
In recent years, McConnell has been one of the most vocal in his party to promote arming Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, putting him at odds with Trump and many MAGA Republicans.
“Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s determination, the work of strengthening American hard power was well underway when I arrived in the Senate,” McConnell said in his prepared remarks on Thursday. “But since then, we’ve allowed that power to atrophy. And today, a dangerous world threatens to outpace the work of rebuilding it.”
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Voted against 2 Trump appointees
Late last year, after the Republicans regained control of the Senate as part of the Trump-led sweep of the U.S. election, the party’s senators chose John Thune, of South Dakota, to serve as majority leader.
So far in 2025, McConnell has been one of the few Republicans to vote against confirming Trump nominees, rejecting Pete Hegseth as defence secretary and Robert F. Kennedy as health secretary. Kennedy’s history of anti-vaccine statements troubled McConnell, who endured a severe bout of polio as a child, before a vaccine was available.
Both Hegseth and Kennedy were ultimately confirmed to serve in those roles.
McConnell currently has the tenth-longest tenure of any U.S. senator, a list headed by Robert Byrd’s more than 51 years in office, representing West Virginia. Should McConnell serve out the remainder of this term, he’d move up to seventh on the list, at 42 years.
McConnell gave praise Thursday to his second wife, Elaine Chao, as the “ultimate teammate and confidante.” Chao served as labour secretary under George W. Bush and transportation secretary under Trump.
She resigned from the Trump cabinet after the Capitol riot, but was recently among his appointments to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as he took over as chair.
Kentucky will be among 33 Senate races in 2026. While McConnell’s party has to defend 20 of those seats, most have been reliably Republican in recent years.
Kentucky hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate this century.
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2025-02-20 13:20:49
