VETERAN US LAWMAKER Mitch McConnell, who was instrumental in steering the current US shift to the political right before a tempestuous relationship with President Donald Trump, is retiring.

The 83-year-old Republican senator said today that he will not be seeking re-election at the next Senate ballot, making the announcement inside the chamber. In increasingly unsteady health, the announcement has not come as a surprise to American voters.

McConnell spent seven terms in the US’ upper house, where he earned a reputation as a ruthless political tactician. The Kentucky politician called his four-decade career a “honour of a lifetime”, before announcing that he would not be seeking an eighth term. 

He reached the party leadership in 2007, after being first elected in 1984, and remained as party leader until earlier this year, briefly before Trump’s return to the White House.

McConnell and the President fell out following his condemnation of the 6 January riots in Washington in 2021, where a large number of Trump voters stormed the Capitol seeking to stop the ratification of the 2020 Presidential election results.

McConnell’s political tactics during Trump’s first term at the White House allowed the President to confirm three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, leading to the overturning of federal abortion rights in 2022.

Upon Trump’s second term, McConnell has been increasingly sidelined.

McConnell was also one of the few Republicans to oppose a handful of Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominees – most recently, Robert F Kennedy Jr as health czar.

At a Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington today, news of McConnell’s resignation was met with cheers.

The lasting monument of McConnell’s influence is growing fain, however, as his condemnation of the 6 January capitol riots in 2021 has led to him being targeted by the US President.

In his floor speech Thursday, McConnell warned that the United States was allowing the “hard power” it built up under Reagan to “atrophy.”

“Today, a dangerous world threatens to outpace the work of rebuilding it,” McConnell said. “So, lest any of our colleagues still doubt my intentions for the remainder of my term: I have some unfinished business to attend to.”

South Dakota Senator John Thune, an ally, was chosen to replace him as leader of the party’s new Senate majority.

- © AFP 2025