Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has overseen several significant developments as the longest-serving Senate leader in history. On Wednesday, McConnell announced he would step down as minority leader in November.
“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter, so I stand before you today, Mr. President and my colleagues, to say this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate,” McConnell said.
McConnell has led the Senate GOP since 2007, and he became the longest-serving leader in Senate history last year when he took the mantle from former Democratic Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield, who was the Democrats‘ leader from 1961 to 1977.
Since he came to Washington in 1984, McConnell has had a profound effect on the party, the Supreme Court, and, most recently, the presidency of Donald Trump.
Holding up Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland
McConnell reshaped how Supreme Court justices are appointed in 2016 when then-President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate refused to hold a hearing or vote on Obama’s nominee, arguing the election was too close to allow a lame-duck president to alter the ideological tilt of the court.
At the time, it wasn’t clear whether Trump was destined to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However, the possibility of a Republican president entering the White House with a short list to stock the court should vacancies arise pushed McConnell to pump the brakes on Garland.
Pushing the button on the nuclear option
Blocking Garland from getting a hearing by the Senate wasn’t the last time McConnell flexed his leadership muscles to influence the Supreme Court.
A year later, the majority leader made good on his promise to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid that Democrats would regret lowering the threshold to approve federal judges below the Supreme Court with a simple majority of senators.
McConnell deployed the “nuclear option” change to Senate rules to clear the path for Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017. The new rule allowed the Senate to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees, ending the judicial filibuster. Gorsuch was confirmed as Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee.
Cementing a Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court
In stark contrast to his decision in 2016 to hold back Garland, McConnell made it a point for the Senate to move quickly in providing advice and consent on Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.
The apparent reversal from three years earlier had McConnell speed through the nomination of a president who was up for reelection in a matter of months.
Barrett was confirmed by a 52-48 majority, cementing Trump’s, and McConnell’s, legacy as the architect of what appears to be a durable 6-3 Republican-appointed majority Supreme Court.
Saving Trump from impeachment
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the House impeached Trump a second time, handing McConnell and Senate Republicans a choice between putting their harsh condemnations of the president on the record and allowing him a lane to return to elected office.
The Senate voted to acquit Trump in 2020 and 2021 despite McConnell acknowledging the gravity of the charges against the former president for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 riot. McConnell declined to support an impeachment conviction, arguing the proper venue to deal with Trump’s actions, as a former president and private citizen, was the criminal justice system.
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“We have a criminal justice system in this country,” McConnell said at the time. “We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”
Despite the series of wins McConnell helped Trump achieve in office, the former president was furious when the senator acknowledged President Joe Biden won the election. McConnell has been critical of Trump since he left office and has fought off Trump-aligned challenges to his leadership, as well as butting heads with the former president on matters such as continuing to provide aid for Ukraine.
