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    How Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz unravelled in just eight days

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    Donald Trump decided to nominate Matt Gaetz as attorney general last Wednesday, during a flight home from Washington, where the president-elect had visited Joe Biden at the White House. The pick proved as surprising as it was controversial. Just eight days later, after a week of relentless hullabaloo, Gaetz withdrew from contention.It was a Washington farce for the ages. But how did it happen?Gaetz, now 42, made his name as a far-right Florida congressman, a pro-Trump publicity hound and gadfly who in October 2023 made history by bringing down a House speaker: Kevin McCarthy, the first ever ejected by his own party.The seeds of Gaetz’s own downfall were to be found in that extraordinary episode.Ostensibly, Gaetz moved against McCarthy in order to install a speaker more amenable to rightwing threats to shut down the federal government over arguments about funding, and less likely to seek Democrats’ help in avoiding such outcomes.But McCarthy never believed that. He insisted Gaetz moved against him in order to block release of a House ethics committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other offenses.Gaetz vehemently denied – and still denies – wrongdoing but, nonetheless, when Trump nominated him for attorney general, he promptly resigned his seat in the House. According to precedent, that blocked release of the ethics report.The report duly became the hottest property in Washington, reporters chasing it, Democrats and some skeptical Republicans eager to find out what it contained. It promised sensational reading.Gaetz was initially investigated by the US justice department, in relation to the actions of Joel Greenberg, a Florida tax collector who in 2021 pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and agreed to cooperate in the investigation of Gaetz.Eventually, the justice department dropped that investigation. But the House ethics committee had been investigating Gaetz too, and in June it outlined the scope of its work: it was investigating claims the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.Trump’s nomination of Gaetz was controversial for other reasons. There was Gaetz’s loud support for Trump supporters convicted in relation to the January 6 attack on Congress, and his promises to seek revenge against Trump’s political opponents. There was his almost complete lack of legal experience and expertise, having graduated from law school but practiced only briefly before entering politics.But in Washington, the ethics committee report remained the holy grail.Details began to leak, ABC News first to report that the committee had obtained records showing Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the panel, with some of the payments being for sex.A lawyer for two women spoke to the media, saying one had been 17 – under the age of consent – when she was paid for sex with Gaetz.The Trump camp repeatedly pointed to the justice department’s decision to drop its investigation of allegations against Gaetz, without official reason but amid reports of concerns about witness credibility.On Wednesday, the House committee considered whether to release the report. The session ended in deadlock, five Democrats for release, five Republicans against it. In the House at large, Democrats introduced motions calling for a full vote to force the issue.Controversy switched to the Senate. As Democrats said they had asked the FBI for its files on Gaetz, the congressman himself climbed Capitol Hill, in the company of JD Vance, to meet the vice-president-elect’s erstwhile Senate colleagues and seek to convince them that Gaetz should be confirmed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt did not go well. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, relative Republican moderates already used to saying no to Trump, at least some of the time, were not supportive.Gaetz found sympathy from others. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, said he would “urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob and give the process a chance to move forward”. But plenty of other Republicans cast doubt on Gaetz’s chances of being confirmed.John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the judiciary committee, said any hearings for Gaetz would be like “Kavanaugh on steroids” – a reference to the tempestuous hearings in 2018 in which Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second pick for the supreme court, angrily rejected accusations of sexual assault. In Kavanaugh’s case, the Capitol Hill circus proved controversial but survivable.But Gaetz would not be given a chance to pull off a similar escape. On Thursday, on social media, he said: “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as attorney general.”CNN subsequently reported that the woman who says she had sex with him when she was a minor told the ethics committee she had another sexual encounter with Gaetz, which also involved another adult woman.“After being asked for comment for this story,” the CNN report said, “Gaetz announced he was backing out as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee.”However, a source familiar with Gaetz’s nomination process told the Guardian that privately confirmed opposition from four senators – enough to sink the nomination if no Democrats defected – was what pushed Gaetz to decide to withdraw, before the call from CNN.Murkowski and Collins were opposed. So was John Curtis, the senator-elect from Utah who will succeed Mitt Romney, another Trump critic, in the new year. The fourth voice set against Gaetz was an influential one: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader now beginning life back in the rank and file.In his announcement, Gaetz proclaimed his support for “the most successful president in history” and said he would “forever be honored” that Trump nominated him for attorney general.Elsewhere in Washington, it seemed safe to bet, politicians and reporters alike were reflecting on an extraordinary episode of near-unsurpassable Washington dishonor. More

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      Senate leader Schumer moves to avert shutdown after House speaker’s ‘flop’

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      The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, on Thursday took a procedural step toward setting up a vote next week on a government funding extension as the House scrambles to avert a shutdown starting on 1 October.Schumer’s move comes a day after the Republican-led House rejected a proposal by the speaker, Mike Johnson, that would have linked a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with a controversial measure backed by conservatives mandating that states require proof of citizenship to register to vote.The final vote was 202 to 220, with 14 House Republicans and all but three House Democrats opposing the bill. Two Republican members voted “present”.At a press conference on Thursday, Schumer lamented Johnson’s approach, saying that the speaker “flopped right on his face” by pushing a GOP plan. As Congress awaits Johnson’s next move, Schumer said he was setting up a vote for early next week on a legislative vehicle for a bipartisan funding bill.“If the House can’t get its act together, we’re prepared to move forward,” he said.It remains unclear which chamber will act first on government funding, which expires at midnight on 30 September. If the Democratic-led Senate moves ahead with its proposal, it could force the Republican-led House to either agree to the continuing resolution, which conservatives oppose, or risk a shutdown just weeks from election day.Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee who has championed baseless claims of widespread non-citizen voting, has called on Johnson to reject any funding measure unless it includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act.“If Republicans don’t get the Save Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a continuing resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday.Speaking on the Senate floor on Thursday, Schumer accused Trump of agitating for a shutdown and urged Republicans not to “blindly follow” the former president.“How does anyone expect Donald Trump to be a president when he has such little understanding of the legislative process? He’s daring the Congress to shut down,” Schumer said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”Earlier this week, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, warned House Republicans that a shutdown so close to the 5 November election was politically risky and could have electoral consequences.“The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” McConnell said on Tuesday. “It would be, politically, beyond stupid for us to do that.” More

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      Pelosi criticises McConnell for failing to hold Trump accountable over January 6

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      Nancy Pelosi has criticised Mitch McConnell, the outgoing Senate minority leader, for failing to hold Donald Trump accountable for inspiring the violent January 6 mob to attack the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives whose office was vandalised in the attack, also told Semafor she felt sorry for McConnell, who has endorsed Trump’s current campaign for the White House despite being repeatedly insulted by the former president.McConnell “knew what had happened on January 6”, Pelosi said.“He said the president was responsible and then did not hold him accountable.”She added that she and other congressional leaders unsuccessfully begged Trump to send in the national guard while the mob besieged the building.In the days after the riot – which resulted in five deaths at the time, with four police officers killing themselves in the following seven months – McConnell gave a speech on the Senate floor in which he said Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events”.However, he voted to acquit Trump in a Senate trial after the House had impeached Trump for a second time. A Senate conviction, which needs a two-thirds majority to pass, could have barred Trump from holding elective office again. In the event, 57 senators – including just seven Republicans – voted to convict, 10 short of the numbers needed.McConnell’s vote contradicted his belief that Trump was guilty, according to the book This Will Not Pass, by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is,” the book quotes McConnell as saying, adding that he also said holding Trump to account should be left to the Democrats. “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” the book says he told two associates.Explaining the contradiction, McConnell apparently told a friend: “I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference.”In 2022, McConnell criticised the Republican National Committee for censuring Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, GOP House members at the time, over their role in a Democrat-led congressional investigation into January 6. Kinzinger and Cheney have since left Congress and are among several prominent Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy.“It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next,” McConnell said in response to the censure.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if she had any advice for McConnell – who will step down as the GOP leader in November but will remain in the Senate – Pelosi said: “I feel sorry for Mitch McConnell.”Pelosi has not always been so scathing. She issued a generous tribute when McConnell announced his decision to step down from the Senate leadership, saying: “Mitch McConnell is to be recognized for his patriotism and decades of service to Kentucky, to the Congress and to our country. He and I have worked together since we were appropriators … While we often disagreed, we shared our responsibility to the American people to find common ground whenever possible.”Trump has frequently targeted McConnell for abuse and has aimed racial slurs at his wife, Elaine Chao, who served as transportation secretary in his administration.The former president has variously described McConnell as a “broken-down crow”, a “stone-cold loser” and a “dumb son of a bitch”. More

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      Schumer says McConnell will ‘go down poorly in history’ for rightwing policies

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      The Democratic leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, has warned his opposite number, the Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell, that history will judge him “poorly” because he paved the way to rightwing policies out of touch with the American people.In an interview with Punchbowl News conducted at the Democratic national convention in August but published on Monday, Schumer accused McConnell of enabling Donald Trump’s remaking of US politics and the judiciary. By helping to shift the supreme court sharply to the right through the former president’s three appointments to the top judicial bench, McConnell had played a part in abolishing the federal right to an abortion in the ruling ending Roe v Wade, and much more, Schumer contended.“Not just on Roe, but on issue after issue where they’re so far out of touch with the American people … Even when McConnell thought Trump was wrong, he went along with [Trump] too many times,” Schumer told the political news site.He concluded that McConnell’s “role in history, in my opinion, will go down poorly”.That the leaders of the two main parties in the US Senate should trade barbs is not at all surprising, given the track record of acrimony between them. Schumer and McConnell have frequently been at loggerheads over judicial appointments, campaign finance laws and other policy areas.But Schumer’s comments may wield an extra sting as they come just four months before McConnell is set to step down as minority Senate leader. The Republican has led his party’s group in the Senate since 2007, making him the longest serving party leader in the chamber in US history.In recent months, McConnell, who has indicated he will complete the remaining two years of his term, has struck a more independent posture from Trump. That is especially the case on foreign policy, on which he has criticized the former president’s isolationist stance on Ukraine.In his Punchbowl News interview, Schumer encouraged his counterpart to go further in that direction. He said McConnell could improve his legacy by resurrecting what he called the “old Republican party”.“He can salvage some of that reputation – and I’m not trying to tell him what to do – by trying to get the old Republican party back. He will ally with us in not being isolationist. He feels that passionately.”Schumer mused that if Trump were to lose badly in November’s presidential election against Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, there would be greater hope of a return to a more collaborative form of the Republican party. “If he loses by quite a bit, we may find the old Republican party and we’ll be able to work with them,” Schumer said.He added: “I know from my Senate experience and my friendship with Senate colleagues that many of them, even if they go along with Trump, don’t like him and don’t think he’s good for their party or what they believe in.“Exhibit A is Mitch McConnell.” More

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      Mitch McConnell refuses to say whether he supports a US national abortion ban

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      Asked whether he supports a federal abortion ban, US Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that he is “not advocating anything at this level”.The Republican, during remarks in a new interview published by NBC’s Meet the Press, stopped short of saying whether or not he supported a 15-week federal ban on abortion with exceptions, but he instead portrayed the issue as “a practical matter” that was too divisive among federal lawmakers to result in a consensus among them.Alluding to comments from 2022 in which he said a national ban was “possible”, McConnell said, “I said it was possible. I didn’t say that was my view. I just said it was possible.”Meet the Press host Kristen Welker pressed McConnell to explain if he supported a federal ban, prompting the Kentucky senator to reply: “The reason I said it was possible is because the supreme court has put this back into the legislative arena. And we’re seeing it play out all across the country. And I think in the end, it’ll reflect the views of these individual states. But I said: ‘Possible’. I didn’t say that was my view.“I don’t think we’ll get 60 votes in the Senate for any kind of national legislation,” he continued, referring to the number of votes needed to end the debate on bills in the Senate and get a vote on them. “I think it’s a practical matter. It’s gonna be sorted out at the state level.”McConnell went on to reaffirm that he believes the issue of abortion access is one that should be decided by individual states after the US supreme court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the federal abortion rights once established by the Roe v Wade case.“I’m not advocating anything at this level,” he said. “It seems to me views about this issue at the state level vary depending where you are. And we get elected by states. And my members are smart enough to figure out how they want to deal with this very divisive issue based upon the people who actually send them here.”McConnell said he also does not think legislation seeking to federalize abortion rights would get the 60 votes it would need to be voted on in the Senate either.In 2022, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham proposed a federal ban that would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks. Following Graham’s proposal at the time, McConnell told reporters: “With regard to his bill, you’ll have to ask him about it. In terms of scheduling, I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMcConnell’s latest interview comes after the supreme court recently heard an abortion rights case centering on how states can decide when to permit emergency abortions. The case involves Idaho, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans and only permits doctors to perform an abortion to save the patient’s life. However, under federal law, doctors are required to stabilize patients’ health if either their life or limb is threatened.The conservative-majority US supreme court, which appeared divided as of Wednesday, is expected to rule on the case in June. More

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      Mitch McConnell: I will fight isolationist Republicans for rest of Senate term

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      Mitch McConnell will spend the rest of his time in the US Senate “fighting” isolationists in his own Republican party, the longtime GOP leader said on Monday.“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party,” McConnell told WHAS, a radio station in his state, Kentucky.“And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: are we going to help Ukraine or not? I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”McConnell, 82, has led Republicans in the Senate for 17 years. In March, he said he would step down at the end of this year, after an election in which Republicans have a good chance of retaking the chamber.McConnell assured his decision to step down was not related to recent health scares and said he would stay to the end of his term in 2027.Isolationism has surged in the Republican party under Donald Trump, president between 2017 and 2021 and the presumptive nominee again for November’s election.The Senate did pass a foreign aid package containing new support for Ukraine in its war with Russia but it remains stalled in the House, where a Trump supporter, Mike Johnson, is speaker.McConnell entered the Senate when Ronald Reagan was president and is an old-fashioned Republican foreign policy hawk. Under his leadership, however, 26 of 49 Republicans voted against the Senate foreign aid bill, which also contained support for Israel and Taiwan.McConnell said his fellow Kentucky Republican, Rand Paul, “would be the first one to say that he’s an isolationist”. Other loud voices for Trump’s “America first” approach include JD Vance, the first-term senator from Ohio reportedly under consideration to be named Trump’s running mate.Identifying “the most dangerous time for the free world since right [before] the Berlin Wall fell down”, McConnell told WHAS: “What’s made [Republican isolationism] more troublesome is, it seems to me, others are heading in that direction, making arguments that are easily refuted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We’re not losing any of our troops – the Ukrainians are the ones doing the fighting. If the Russians take Ukraine, some Nato country would be next and then we will be right in the middle of it.”Asked if he had spoken to Trump – who he endorsed in March – McConnell said: “I’ve got my hands full dealing with the Senate.”Of the presidential election, McConnell said the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden, had “got problems, too”.“Both these candidates don’t score very well with the public,” McConnell said. “One of them’s going to win. What am I going to do? I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn my job over to the next majority leader.” More

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      Mitch McConnell steps down, Donald Trump wins again – podcast

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      Sometimes there are weeks when the news just keeps on coming. This week, the longest-serving US senator, Mitch McConnell, announced he would step down, the US supreme court agreed to take up the claim that Donald Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Congress avoided another government shutdown and Donald Trump continued his winning streak in the Michigan primary.
      In some ways, the Republican party is the exact same one we saw get behind Trump in 2016 and then again in 2020, but there are many out there who see major events such as these as proof that it has changed – irreversibly.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the former Republican strategist and legendary political operative Mike Murphy about the state of the party he once served

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      The three Johns: Thune, Cornyn and Barrasso jostle to succeed McConnell

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      There are as many men named John or Jon in the US Senate as there are African Americans and Latinos combined. Three of them are now vying to become Republican leader in the chamber.Mitch McConnell’s announcement on Wednesday that he will step down in November opens the way for a likely contest between senators John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. It is unclear which other senators might jump into the race.The winner may well become majority leader next year, given the favourable map for Republicans in this election cycle. But they will also have to deal with either the return of Donald Trump to the White House or the ruins of another Republican presidential defeat.“I turned 82 last week,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, his voice breaking with emotion. “The end of my contributions are closer than I prefer. Father Time remains undefeated. I’m no longer the young man sitting in the back hoping colleagues remember my name. It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”At nearly 17 years, McConnell was the longest-serving Senate leader in US history, giving potential successors plenty of time to quietly manoeuvre into position for when this day finally came.Thune, 63, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said of McConnell: “He leaves really big shoes to fill … I kind of just want, today, to honour him.” Thune is respected as a powerful fundraiser and experienced political chess player. His bio on Twitter/X says: “Father. Grandfather. Husband. Sports Fan. Avid Outdoorsman. Hates Shoveling Snow.”He has a complicated relationship with Trump. He condemned the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol as “horrific”, pledged to “hold those responsible to account” and described the former president as “inexcusable”. Trump fired back by declaring the senator’s “political career over” and suggested that South Dakota governor Kristi Noem make a primary challenge in 2022. She decided to pass.But on Monday, with timing that now seems less than accidental, Thune endorsed Trump for president in 2024. He still has his work cut out to win the “Make America great again” base, however.Barrasso, 71, is the third-ranking Senate Republican as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and relatively popular with the Republican right. He is known by many as “Wyoming’s Doctor”, according to his official website, which notes that he spent 24 years as an orthopedic surgeon and was named Wyoming Physician of the Year.Barrasso endorsed Trump in January, appearing on the conservative Fox News network to tell Sean Hannity: “We need Donald Trump back in the White House.” He has also supported several “Make America great again” candidates for the Senate, including election denier Kari Lake in Arizona.Cornyn, 72, who was Republican whip from 2013 to 2019, joined with Democrats in 2022 to pass the bipartisan gun safety act, a move that brought a critical backlash in his home state. He not formally announced a leadership bid but gives every appearance of running. He told the Texas Tribune newspaper: “I think today is about Mitch McConnell but I’ve made no secret of my intentions.”Cornyn previously served as a district judge and member of the Texas supreme court, where he ruled with the majority to overturn a lower court ruling that had found Texas’s anti-sodomy laws to be unconstitutional. The former Texas attorney general has also argued that state governments ought to have the power to ban same-sex marriage.Trump endorsed Cornyn in 2019 when the senator was running for reelection but last year Cornyn expressed scepticism about Trump’s chances. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”However, as Trump dominated the primaries, Cornyn endorsed him last month, a week after his Texas colleague Ted Cruz. “To beat Biden, Republicans need to unite around a single candidate, and it’s clear that President Trump is Republican voters’ choice,” he said.There could be other contenders. Bob Good, chairman of the the hardline House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X: “Mitch McConnell stepping down provides a great opportunity for true conservative leadership in the Senate. Sen Rick Scott would make a great Republican leader.”Scott, who challenged McConnell for the leadership and failed after the 2022 midterm elections, told reporters: “I think there’s a better way to run the Senate. So we’ll see what happens in the future.”Perhaps the most honest comment of a day to remember on Capitol Hill came from Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. Asked who he was backing for the leadership, he told CNN: “I wouldn’t announce it early anyway because I am hoping to get a lot of free dinners out of the Johns.” More

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      Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader in US Senate

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      Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will step down as Republican leader in the US Senate at the end of this year, a move that will shake up US politics yet more in a tumultuous election cycle.McConnell is 82 and the longest-serving Senate leader in history. He is also a highly divisive figure in a bitterly divided America and the subject of fierce speculation about his health after recent scares in public.Aides said the decision to step aside, which McConnell announced on the Senate floor on Wednesday, was not related to his health.“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”From the White House, Joe Biden, who was a senator alongside McConnell for more than 20 years, said: “I’ve trusted him and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down.”McConnell was concurrently the subject of reporting about when he will endorse Donald Trump for president in his expected rematch with Biden this year.McConnell and Trump have been at odds since 6 January 2021, when Trump incited supporters to attack Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Biden’s win. McConnell voted to acquit the former president in his resulting impeachment trial, reasoning he had already left office, but excoriated him nonetheless. Trump responded with attacks on McConnell and racist invective about his wife, the former transportation secretary Elaine Chao.Nor did Trump leave the scene, as McConnell apparently thought he would. Withstanding 91 criminal charges, assorted civil defeats and attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, Trump stands on the verge of a third successive nomination.On Wednesday, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and House impeachment manager, told reporters: “I have a lot of feelings about Mitch McConnell from the second impeachment trial because I felt that he was appalled by what Donald Trump had done, he knew the truth about what Donald Trump had done, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to vote to convict along with seven other Republican colleagues who joined the Democrats.”“I understand [McConnell has] been in a tough situation with Donald Trump taking over his party and I think he’s tried to do what he can but he didn’t show the ultimate courage, which would have been to vote to convict him, to find enough other senators so that we wouldn’t be back in this nightmare again with Donald Trump.”Amid gathering warnings of the threat Trump poses to American democracy, all bar one of McConnell’s leadership team have endorsed Trump regardless. The holdout, Joni Ernst of Iowa, has indicated that she could still do so.“Believe me,” McConnell said in the Senate chamber, “I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time. I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them. That said, I believe more strongly than ever that America’s global leadership is essential to preserving the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan discussed. As long as I am drawing breath on this earth, I will defend American exceptionalism.”McConnell entered the Senate in 1985, when Reagan was in the White House.“When I got here,” McConnell said, “I was just happy if anybody remembered my name. President Reagan called me Mitch O’Donnell. Close enough, I thought.”McConnell was elected to lead Senate Republicans in 2006. He was majority leader from 2015 to 2021, a momentous term in which he not only coped with Trump but secured three supreme court justices, tilting the court decisively right.He did so by upending Senate rules. First, McConnell refused even a hearing for Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the conservative Antonin Scalia, saying the switch would come too close to an election and voters should indicate the sort of justice they wanted. After Trump won the White House, McConnell filled the seat with the Catholic, corporately aligned Neil Gorsuch.McConnell next oversaw the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, an anti-Clinton operative and aide to George W Bush, to replace Anthony Kennedy. A staunch conservative replaced a frequent swing vote, even after a tempestuous confirmation.McConnell was memorably reported to have said he stood “stronger than mule piss” behind Kavanaugh, despite the claim by Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor, that the nominee sexually assaulted her at a high-school party, an allegation Kavanaugh denied.Finally, at the very end of Trump’s term, McConnell abandoned the argument he used to block Garland and rammed the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett on to the court in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a hero to progressives.On Wednesday, Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist, told followers they should “never forget” what McConnell “did to the supreme court and this country”.Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said McConnell would “enjoy a tremendous legacy”, not only through his supreme court work, which led to epochal decisions including Dobbs v Jackson, which removed the federal right to abortion, and rulings on gun control and affirmative action every bit as divisive.“McConnell also contributed substantially to Trump’s nomination and confirmation of 54 ideologically conservative appeals court judges and the filling of all 179 appeals court judgeships at one point in Trump’s tenure,” Tobias said. “The last time that the courts had all of the active judges was in the mid-1980s.”McConnell said he still had “enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics. And I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed.”His desire to win back the majority – in a chamber skewed in Republicans’ favour – will fuel his final months as leader. A new leader will be elected in November to take over in January, he said.Leading contenders to succeed McConnell – and to attempt to match his ruthless politicking and powerful fundraising – include his No 2, John Thune of South Dakota, and two more leadership figures, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. Last November, McConnell defeated a challenge from Rick Scott of Florida.Among Republican tributes, Thune said simply: “He leaves really big shoes to fill.”Among Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, said he and McConnell “rarely saw eye to eye … but I am very proud that we both came together in the last few years to lead the Senate forward at critical moments when our country needed us, like passing the Cares Act in the early days of the Covid pandemic, finishing our work to certify the election on January 6, and more recently working together to fund the fight for Ukraine”.Americans, it seems sure, will remember Addison Mitchell McConnell III in very different ways.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group founded by former Republican operatives, said McConnell would “go down in history as a spineless follower who cowered to a wannabe dictator clown. He chose the power of a tyrant over protecting democracy.” More