Mitch McConnell to step down as Senate Republican leader – live | US elections 2024

Three Republicans are thought to be potential successors to Mitch McConnell as the party’s leader in the Senate.

They are:

• John Cornyn of Texas, the former whip during periods when Republicans held the majority in the Senate. In 2022, he worked with the Democrats to pass modest gun safety reforms following the Uvalde school shooting.

• John Barasso of Wyoming, who currently chairs the Senate Republican Conference, making him the third-highest ranking GOP lawmaker.

• John Thune of South Dakota, who, as minority whip, is McConnell’s chief deputy in the chamber.

Whoever takes over from McConnell may also end up with a different title: majority leader. In order for Democrats to maintain their current control of the chamber, incumbents representing red states of Ohio and Montana will have to win re-election, or the party will have to oust established Republicans in hostile territory like Florida and Texas – both tall orders.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Mitch McConnell just formally announced his plan to depart as the chamber’s top Republican in November.

“This will be my last term as Republican leader. I’m not going anywhere, anytime soon. I’ll complete my job. My colleagues have given me until we select a new leader in November and they take the helm next January. I’ll finish the job that people Kentucky hired me to do as well. I’ll be it from a different seat,” McConnell said.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader who has made a lasting imprint on conservative politics in the United States, will step down from his leadership post in November, the Associated Press reports.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell will say in remarks from the Senate floor today, according to the AP. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

McConnell plans to serve out his term representing Kentucky, which ends in January 2027.

Lauren Gambino

Democrats on Wednesday are moving to push through the Senate a bill that would protect Americans’ access to in vitro fertilization after an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos are children, which led to the closure of a number of fertility clinics in the state.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said the bill was unlikely to receive unanimous consent from the chamber to rush the bill through. While many Republican lawmakers registered disappointment over the Alabama ruling, at least one conservative senator was expected to object.

Blumenthal said Democrats would not be deterred. He would not say what the next legislative steps would be but he said Democrats, who control the Senate, would look for other ways to protect IVF and reproductive healthcare.

“The IVF dilemma for Republicans is they are down a path that is not only unpopular, it’s untenable as a matter of constitutional law and basic moral imperative and we’re going to pursue it vigorously,” Blumenthal said.

“Today’s vote, the effort to seek a unanimous consent, we know is unlikely to be successful. Failing today is only the prelude to a fight ahead on women’s reproductive care centered on IVF and other steps that have to be taken to protect basic rights.”

The leaders of 23 parliaments across the world have signed a letter to Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, urging him to allow a vote on more military aid to Ukraine.

“We believe that thanks to your personal leadership, the Congress will demonstrate historic bipartisan unity in support of the collective effort to assist Ukraine; therefore we ask you to take the next step toward adopting a historic decision on HR815 that will secure US assistance to foreign countries and provide Ukraine with the necessary funds to continue its fight,” reads the letter, which was organized by Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chair of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

It has been signed by the leaders of several European parliaments and legislatures, including in France, Spain, Austria and Italy.

Johnson has been noncommittal about holding a vote to approve Ukraine aid after earlier this month killing a bipartisan Senate deal that would have authorized assistance to Kyiv as well as Israel and Taiwan in exchange for stricter immigration policies.

In response to the letter from the parliaments, Johnson’s office said:

While Speaker Johnson believes we must confront Putin, and is exploring steps to effectively do so, as he said at the White House, his immediate priority is funding America’s government and avoiding a shut down.

In his opening statement to the House oversight and judiciary committees, Hunter Biden said his father has “never” been involved in any of his business ventures, and decried the GOP’s campaign to impeach Joe Biden over unproven claims of corruption.

“I am here today to provide the Committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business. Not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist. Never,” Hunter Biden said in the statement obtained by Punchbowl News.

He then went on to attack the GOP for its pursuit of his father:

For more than a year, your Committees have hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad. You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion, and sensationalism – all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face. You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.

A group supporting the campaign to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic primary in protest of Joe Biden’s policy towards Israel have claimed victory and said the president must back a ceasefire in Gaza to win their voters.

Here’s more from Listen to Michigan, one of the groups that organized the write-in campaign, which received about 13% of the vote statewide:

Good morning, US politics blog readers. On the surface, things went about as expected in Michigan’s primary last night. Donald Trump was the overwhelming pick of the state’s Republicans, who gave him more than 68% support compared to his sole challenger Nikki Haley’s nearly 27%. Among Democrats, Joe Biden won 81% of the vote – no surprise for a sitting president. But more than 13% of the party’s voters opted not to vote for Biden and rather write in “uncommitted” as part of a campaign to protest his administration’s support for Israel and refusal to press for a ceasefire in its invasion of Gaza. In Dearborn, home to large communities of Arabs and Muslims, the write-ins beat the president by more than 50 percentage points.

The general election is eight months away, but the protest was nonetheless another worrying sign for Biden, whose re-election campaign has been rattled by polls showing him down against Trump in several swing states, including Michigan. The president now seems tasked with not just winning over a state that was crucial both to his victory in 2020 and Trump’s in 2016, but winning back a community whose support could prove pivotal to deciding the election.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Hunter Biden will finally give behind-closed-doors testimony before the House committees trying to impeach his father, after much drama.

• A government shutdown still looms, despite a meeting at the White House yesterday between Biden and the leaders of Congress, where all sides pledged to ensure it does not happen. They have until Friday to make good on that.

• Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, duels with reporters at 2.30pm ET.