McConnell will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November

US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talks, after a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill, on February 27, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Mariam Zuhaib)
US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talks, after a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill, on February 27, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Mariam Zuhaib)

Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history who maintained his power for almost two decades, in the face of dramatic convulsions in the Republican Party, will step down from that position in November.

McConnell, who turned 82 last week, is set to announce his decision today in the well of the Senate, a place where he looked in awe from its back benches in 1985 when he arrived and where he grew increasingly comfortable in the front row seat afforded the party leaders.

“One of life’s most under-appreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he says in his prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “So I stand before you today… to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

His decision punctuates a powerful ideological transition underway in the Republican Party, from Ronald Reagan’s brand of traditional conservatism and strong international alliances, to the fiery, often isolationist populism of former president Donald Trump.

According to the remarks, McConnell plans to serve out his Senate term, which ends in January 2027, “albeit from a different seat in the chamber.” Aides say McConnell’s announcement about the leadership post is unrelated to his health. The Kentucky senator had a concussion from a fall last year and two public episodes where his face briefly froze while he was speaking.

“As I have been thinking about when I would deliver some news to the Senate, I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work,” McConnell says in his prepared remarks. “A moment when I am certain I have helped preserve the ideals I so strongly believe. It arrived today.”

The senator has been under increasing pressure from the restive, and at times hostile, wing of his party that aligned firmly with Trump. The two have been estranged since December 2020, when McConnell refused to abide Trump’s lie that the election of Democrat Joe Biden as president was the product of fraud.

But while McConnell’s critics within the GOP conference grew louder, their numbers did not grow appreciably larger, a marker of McConnell’s strategic and tactical skill and his ability to understand the needs of his fellow Republican senators.

McConnell gives no specific reason for the timing of his decision, which he has been contemplating for months, but he cites the recent death of his wife’s youngest sister as a moment that prompted introspection. “The end of my contributions are closer than I’d prefer,” McConnell says.

But his remarks are also light at times, speaking of the arc of his Senate career.

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