McConnell to Step Down as Senate Republican Leader in November

Sen. Mitch McConnell plans to step down as Senate Republican leader in November.

McConnell said he plans to serve out the rest of his term, which ends in January 2027, as a rank-and-file senator.

Despite opposition, including from Donald Trump, McConnell has insisted that Congress must pass a $60 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine.

He struggled to secure 22 Republican votes for the package, which House Speaker Mike Johnson has so far refused to bring up for a vote.

McConnell has criticized the twice-impeached Trump for falsely claiming that widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election.

The Senate Republican leader voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial for sedition, but condemned him in his Senate floor speech, saying that Trump was both practically and morally responsible for the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots.

In early 2016, McConnell organized Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

He argued that there was too little time before the November presidential election and that voters should be allowed to decide the direction of the Supreme Court when they vote for president.

In 2020, however, just weeks before the next presidential election, McConnell took the opposite step, confirming then-President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, to a 6-3 conservative majority.

Senators John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate Republican hierarchy, and John Cornyn are expected to vie for the Republican leadership in the upper chamber of Congress. It is not yet clear which other senators may enter the race.

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