Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will not be re-elected in 2026
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who helped Republicans reshape the U.S. Supreme Court and influence how political campaigns are funded, announced Thursday that he would not seek an eighth term during his tenure.
“My fellow Kentucky sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said. “Every day, I feel humbled by their trust in doing business here. It is a lifelong honor to represent our Commonwealth. I won't The eighth time seeking this honor. My current tenure in the Senate will be my last one.”
This move happened on McConnell's 83rd birthday – widely expected.
McConnell has faced some health challenges over the past two years. There were two times when his assistants scrambled to help him, he was unable to complete the prepared remarks, and he suffered more than one fall, including in December, when he suffered a sprained wrist.
Last year, he announced that he would not seek party leadership positions in the Senate after 17 years in office. He served as Senate Majority Leader from 2015 to 2021, which covers the end of two terms of Barack Obama's term and the entire term of Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court that helps lock in conservative leadership
McConnell helped ensure Trump nominated three Supreme Court judges.
McConnell refused to arrange a committee hearing for presidential nominee Merrick Garland after the death of Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in the late Obama term. McConnell cited Obama's status as president for the last year and the 19th-century scenario he considered a precedent.
The court continued with eight judges until Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch at the beginning of his first term.
Freedom Attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg died suddenly after Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh inherited retired Anthony Kennedy, 9 in 2020 In the month, McConnell flipped the script from the Garland scene. In a massive 19 wave in the Senate, McConnell re-invested the meeting room as Bill declined to ensure that conservative Amy Coney Barrett will It will be confirmed before the 2020 election.
Democrats were screaming at McConnell's hypocrisy, but they could do nothing to stop Coney Barrett from rising to the bench.
6-3 Conservative courts have made numerous landmark rulings, including abortion in 2022 and presidential immunity last year.
Voting to release Trump, twice
McConnell and Trump often clash on policy, and the president sometimes laughs at Republican leaders as “old crows” and “worst negotiators.”
But McConnell voted twice when he was impeached, even on January 6, 2021, he condemned his “actual and moral responsibility” to Riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Senate top Republican Mitch McConnell mocked Donald Trump in a January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Saturday but acquitted him in an improper trial He voted.
“The mob was lied,” McConnell said in the conference hall a few days later. “They were stirred up by the president and other powerful people who tried to use fear and violence to stop the federal government they didn't like,” McConnell said. A specific program for the first branch.”
McConnell argued that Trump had withdrawn from the president at the Senate imprisonment trial, but Trump could not be subject to imprisonment, but seven other Republicans believed it was appropriate to convict. Trump avoided impeachment, paving the way for his impossible political comeback.
McConnell, who interned in the U.S. Congressman and served as a legislative aide to the Senator in his 20s, returned to Kentucky and was little known in DC when he was first elected in 1984, making two-term democracy Party Senator Dee Huddleston was upset.
Before Trump, McConnell pioneered the faucet of campaign spending, eventually achieving a final effort in the Supreme Court's 2010 Landmark Citizens Joint Ruling, which boosted independent spending of companies and unions limit.
Critics believe that the Citizen Union's ruling helped release large amounts of black money into the U.S. election campaign.
Republicans are also defenders of George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq.
McConnell has been one of the most vocalists in his party in recent years, announcing armed Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, which left him in conflict with Trump and many Magma Republicans.
“Thanks to Ronald Reagan's determination, when I arrived in the Senate, the work of strengthening America's power went well,” McConnell said in a prepared speech on Thursday. “But since then, We have given this power to shrink. Today, a dangerous world threatens more than the work of rebuilding it.”
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Vote against 2 Trump appointments
Late last year, Senators of the party chose John Thune of South Dakota as majority leader as part of the Trump-led U.S. election after Republicans regained control of the Senate.
McConnell is one of the few Republicans who oppose confirming Trump nominees and reject Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Robert F. Kennedy) is the Minister of Health. Kennedy's history of anti-vaccine statements has left McConnell in a vaccine, who endured a severe polio as a child.
Hegseth and Kennedy were eventually confirmed to be in these roles.
McConnell currently has a tenth term in any U.S. Senator, the list is served by Robert Byrd for more than 51 years, representing West Virginia. If McConnell serves for the rest of the semester, he will rise to seventh place over 42 years.
McConnell praised his second wife, Elaine Chao, on Thursday as “the ultimate teammate and confidante.” Chao was once at George W. Bush (George W.
She resigned from Trump’s cabinet after the Capitol riots, but was recently appointed as the John Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he took over as president.
Kentucky will compete in 33 Senate games in 2026. And McConnell's party must defend 20 of these seats, and in recent years, most have been reliable Republicans.
Kentucky did not send Democrats to the Senate in Basic Century.
