Texas Republican denounces racist posts from GOP candidate

2026-09-14 19:19 EDT / CNN

By Jake Tapper, CNN

Updated 7:19 PM EDT, Mon September 14, 2026

Texas Republican denounces racist posts from GOP candidate

The Lead

Republican congressman Pete Sessions of Texas joins The Lead

1:26 • Source: CNN

Trump nominates Republican lawmaker as ambassador to Saudi Arabia

September 14, 2026 9:57 PM UTC / Updated 1 hour ago / By Reuters

Rep. Wesley Hunt (TX) speaks during Day 1 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 15, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday ​nominated Texas Republican Representative ‌Wesley Hunt to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, which ​would fill a position ​vacant since Trump began his ⁠second term in ​January 2025.

Hunt, a U.S. Army ​veteran once deployed to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, is not ​running for re-election to ​the House, after making an unsuccessful ‌bid ⁠for the U.S. Senate.

The Misinformation Monitor newsletter rounds up international misinformation narratives, with a “Real or Fake?” quiz in every edition. Sign up here.

If his nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate, ​Hunt ​would go ⁠to Riyadh at a time when ​months of war ​on ⁠Iran have raised fears of wider conflict and Yemen’s ⁠Iran-aligned ​Houthis have launched ​attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Reporting by Patricia ​Zengerle; Editing by Daniel Wallis

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Yet another Dem ripped online for ‘inventing racism’ as lawmakers peddle debunked ‘lynching’ claims

2026-09-14T16:40:00-04:00 / Fox News

Critics compared the Ohio congresswoman’s post to the Jussie Smollett hoax as most cited hanging deaths were ruled suicides

By Peter D’Abrosca Fox News

Published September 14, 2026 4:40pm EDT

‘The Squad’ faces backlash over claims ‘modern-day lynchings’ are now common in America

Controversial claims of ‘modern-day lynchings’ by progressive lawmakers spark intense debate on ‘The Big Weekend Show.’ After Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and 50 Democrats demanded a federal probe into hanging deaths, the panel analyzes the rhetoric. While activists stoke fear, officials have ruled most of the 10 cited cases as suicides, with only one Mississippi death currently investigated as a homicide.

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An Ohio congresswoman is facing major blowback online after suggesting that lynchings are on the rise in the United States, despite that claim being widely debunked last week.

“In the last year, there’s been an alarming increase in Black Americans found dead hanging from trees. We know what that has meant throughout our history,” said Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, on X. “That’s why I’ve joined Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. to demand a federal investigation into possible lynchings.”

Fox News Digital reviewed some high-profile cases after Pressley’s letter to the DOJ demanding “thorough, transparent, and comprehensive federal investigation into every hanging death of a Black individual across the United States.” Last week, Pressley and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., posted about the letter on their X accounts, drawing blowback and widespread debunking of the suggestion that there has been an uptick in lynchings.

Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, takes her seat for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing with “Sanctuary State Governors” in the Capitol Visitor Center on Thursday, June 12, 2025.(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

GOVERNOR BLAMES ACTIVISTS IN NOLAN WELLS CASE FOR ‘STOKING DIVISION,’ OFFICIAL SAYS FBI PROBING THREATS

Ocasio-Cortez called the incidents “racial terror” and likened them to “widespread modern-day lynchings.”

An investigation into the March death of a 21-year-old man found hanging from a tree in Cobb County, Georgia, concluded that the man was alone at the time, and no foul play is suspected.

Police in Charlotte, North Carolina determined that a 16-year-old found hanging from a tree in May died by suicide. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department in Florida came to the same conclusion in the similar death of a 27-year-old in June. At least three more similar cases were ruled suicides.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

One is still under investigation. The high-profile case of Tasia Fortune, also found hanging from a tree, is being treated as a homicide. A Black male suspect, Jarques Ratliff, has been arrested.

The facts didn’t stop Brown from perpetuating the claim of prolific hangings.

SOCIALIST POLITICIANS ARE ‘MORE RACIST THAN THE KKK,’ SAYS BLACK DEM OFFICIAL URGING VOTERS TO DITCH EL-SAYED

Tasia Fortune is seen in a portrait displayed Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, in Marion, Kentucky. Inset: Jarques Ratliff, who was arrested in connection to Fortune’s death.(AP Photo/George Walker IV | Jackson Police Department)

“For generations, trees were used as instruments of terror against Black Americans,” Brown said in a video attached to the post. “Lynching was used to intimidate entire communities, and those deaths almost always went without justice and without accountability. So, when Black Americans are found hanging from trees today, in unfamiliar places and under circumstances that raise serious questions, we cannot look the other way.”

For the post, Brown was widely condemned online.

“Inventing racism. Purposely misleading and pernicious,” said actor Dean Cain of “Superman” fame.

KARMELO ANTHONY VERDICT DRAWS ANTI-WHITE RAGE AND LIES FROM RADICAL DEM CONGRESSWOMAN, ANGRY ACTIVISTS

“No no and no,” said a popular X user with more than 250,000 followers. “I get it, Democrats have spent decades creating racism where none exists, especially right before an election. But nobody is buying this, especially when we know the majority were suicides and oh yeah, the man arrested for the homicide is a black guy. Stop.”

“This is how Democrats stir up racial divide when there isn’t one,” said podcaster Don Keith, adding that Brown was trying to “blame black suicides and homicides on white people now.”

“Apparently it’s 2019 again and Jussie Smollett is walking to a Subway…,” said podcaster Margo Chatting, referencing the actor’s infamous hate crime hoax wherein he claimed he was attacked by White Trump supporters, only for an investigation to find that he faked the attack.

Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, speaks as Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., listens during a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 14, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Bowman held the news conference to discuss the “African American History Act.”(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Author Dan Friedman laid into the congresswoman.

“You know these were all suicides, except one domestic violence murder in which the perpetrator was a black man. Some of these people were literally seen hanging themselves on security cameras,” he said.

“You cannot possibly be stupid enough to believe that mobs of white racists are abducting black men at random for no reason, hanging them from trees, disappearing without a trace and that law enforcement officials who are often black are covering it up. So, if you are not stupid, you are lying and being disingenuous. The question is, why?”

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Brown’s office did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Peter D’Abrosca is a politics reporter at Fox News Digital.

Mitch McConnell returns to the Senate after three-month absence due to health issues

2026-09-14T21:44:44.182Z / CNN

Sen. Mitch McConnell returned to Capitol Hill on Monday for the first time after a three-month absence due to health issues.

McConnell arrived at the Capitol for the evening vote series in a wheelchair, his appearance noticeably thinner and his speech slower than before his prolonged absence. The 84-year-old was hospitalized on June 14, but did not initially disclose the reason for the hospitalization, leading to weeks of speculation over his health status.

The Kentucky Republican briefly spoke to reporters upon his return Monday, saying it’s “time to get back to work,” but he did not answer questions, including whether he should have been more transparent about his health during his absence.

“I must admit, after two years — two decades, actually — dodging your questions, I wasn’t sure how many of you would be here today, but I’m glad to see you,” he said.

“Time to get back to work, finish the job for this Congress,” he said, pointing to passing the annual farm bill and aiding Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“My recovery has been a long and often frustrating process, and the lingering effects of childhood polio haven’t made it any easier,” McConnell said in a statement released as he was en route to the Capitol.

He said he’s “still not quite back to 100%,” but he assured Senate Majority Leader John Thune that “as I continue with physical therapy on the advice of my doctors, I will do my best to be present for tough votes when our Conference needs me.”

Thune said he is “hopeful” he can rely on McConnell’s presence at votes, but “as much as he can do, we welcome having him here.” The South Dakota Republican noted they spoke last week.

“He was asking a lot of questions about the campaigns, and, you know, he’s still dialed into all that stuff,” Thune said.

Several weeks after his hospitalization, McConnell released a statement revealing he had suffered a fall and later contracted pneumonia. The former Senate GOP leader said he had been “briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital.”

On August 6, McConnell announced he would continue his recovery at home after a stint in a rehabilitation facility following his hospitalization.

The Senate returned to session in Washington, DC, on Monday after a five-week summer recess.

The Kentucky Republican’s lengthy absence from Capitol Hill and the delay in disclosing why he had been hospitalized led to widespread speculation about his health and calls for greater transparency.

In July, Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sent a letter to McConnell, saying that residents of the state “have grown increasingly concerned about the current state of your health and wellbeing, and ability to hold office in the United States Senate.”

“As Governor, I request that you fully update Kentuckians regarding the current status of your health,” he wrote.

McConnell announced last year he would not run for reelection in 2026. Republican Rep. Andy Barr, endorsed by Trump, will take on Democratic former state lawmaker Charles Booker in the November election to replace the longtime senator.

CNN previously reported that emergency responders took McConnell to an ambulance on a stretcher after being called to his home in June for a report of an unconscious person, according to video of the incident and an eyewitness account.

In McConnell’s July statement, he said he was “briefly unconscious” after he fell, but said his doctors “confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages.”

Along with his own statement, McConnell included a note from the attending physician of Congress, who described the injuries after the fall at his Washington home as “minor.” The physician added that “McConnell has experienced several falls throughout the year that have been attributed to his post-polio condition.”

The former Senate GOP leader is a childhood polio survivor, and has faced a series of health issues in recent years, including multiple falls. In 2023, he froze midsentence during a press conference in the Capitol.

In July, McConnell indirectly addressed why it took so long to share what sent him to the hospital.

“You all know how folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older. Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct — I can’t help it,” he said.

He added, “You’re right to expect your representatives to work hard for you. And part of my decision to retire at the end of my term this coming January was being honest about the demands of Senate work. But I still have unfinished business to complete on your behalf, and I have every intention of finishing the job you elected me to do.”

王毅：中国将尽最大努力继续搜救泥石流外方失联人员

2026年9月15日 07:20 / 联合早报

王毅说，中国将尽最大努力继续搜救包括拉脱维亚公民在内的西藏泥石流外方失联人员。图为9月6日拍摄的吉隆泥石流灾害核心区搜寻现场。 （新华社）

中共中央政治局委员、外交部长王毅说，中国将尽最大努力继续搜救包括拉脱维亚公民在内的西藏泥石流外方失联人员。

据中新社报道，王毅星期一（9月14日）应约同拉脱维亚外长布拉泽通电话。

布拉泽说，33名拉脱维亚公民在尼泊尔和中国西藏自治区泥石流灾害中失联。灾害发生后，感谢中方所做通报和搜救工作以及对失联人员家属的诚挚慰问。拉方愿同中方加强沟通协作，共同做好后续工作。

王毅表示，尼泊尔一侧突发冰岩崩引发泥石流灾害，给中国西藏吉隆县造成重大人员伤亡和失联。拉脱维亚是失联人数最多的欧洲国家。面对这一突如其来的悲剧，谨再次向拉方特别是失联人员家属表示诚挚慰问。中方对中外人员一视同仁，全力以赴开展救助，将尽最大努力继续搜救拉方等外方失联人员，妥善做好后续处置。

据新华社英文版此前报道，截至9月5日傍晚6时，灾害在中方一侧造成43人死亡，另有519人失踪，包括23国的261名外国公民。部分遇难者的身份已确认，但迄今没有外国公民。为保护失联外国公民的隐私，相关人员的姓名和具体信息尚未公开，但已通过外交渠道告知有关国家驻华使领馆。

Supreme Court rejects Trump’s plan to limit mail-in voting in midterms

2026-09-14T23:34:22.474Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/14/politics/supreme-court-rejects-trump-plan-to-limit-mail-in-voting-in-midterms

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to change how mail ballots are sent to voters across the country, rebuffing a proposal that election officials warned would have had catastrophic consequences if allowed to take effect for this year’s midterms.

In one of the most significant cases to appear on the court’s quick-turn docket in years, a majority of the justices blocked the procedure that would have given the US Postal Service the unprecedented power to withhold potentially millions of mail ballots.Even some GOP election officials cautioned that the proposal could lead to chaos and mass disenfranchisement.

The court said that the administration “is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” in its brief order. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision is a significant loss for the president, who for years has railed against mail voting with false allegations of extensive fraud, while continuing to vote by mail himself.

The administration had framed its proposal as a “modest” change to postal regulations intended to protect against that alleged fraud. Trump’s critics, however, described the maneuver as an unconstitutional power grab that the US Postal Service wasn’t even fully prepared to carry out.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the court’s conservative wing, wrote a concurrence explaining that he thought the proposal may be within the authority of the USPS, but that “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

In his dissent, Alito said he didn’t believe the practical concerns of implementing the rule raised by many election officials was enough for the states and voting rights groups that challenged the rule to win.

“The government has a strong interest in enforcing the rule, and implementing it will also ‘en­hance the visibility of Federal Ballot Mail’ in order to better detect election fraud,” Alito wrote. “On the other side of the balance, the plaintiff States invoke the practical ef­fects of implementing the rule close to the midterm elec­tions. I take that problem very seriously, but it is not enough to convince me to deny the application.”

In addition to the Democratic-led states and voting rights groups that challenged the proposal, a bipartisan coalition of election administrators, former governors and others warned the justices in a flood of briefs that the new system was simply not possible to implement. The Postal Service rule required states to upload mass amounts of data on voters to an online portal that wasn’t yet online. And it required changes to ballot envelopes that had already been purchased, and that an increasing number of states had already begun to drop in the mail.

The administration argued that the changes were needed to secure the ballots and ensure that only eligible voters receive them. But a coalition of two dozen Democratic-led states and voting groups have described the effort as a power grab by a president who has long falsely alleged widespread voter fraud in mail ballot systems.

Filed last week, the high-profile emergency appeal was the third time the Trump administration raced up to the Supreme Court on the policy. In late August, the court allowed the president to proceed, though it did so for technical reasons that had to do with the timing of the lawsuit challenging the policy. A lower federal court blocked the changes from going into effect days later.

Under the Constitution, it is states and Congress that determine voting procedures, not the White House nor the post office.

The president’s order required states to submit lists of eligible voters to the US Postal Service. The agency would be barred from delivering ballots mailed by states to people not on those lists. It also required states to use tracking barcodes on ballot envelopes. And it “prioritized” federal prosecution of state election officials who send or receive ballots to non-citizens or others ineligible to vote.

While the Supreme Court was weighing the legal issues, a Postal Service whistleblower came forward with a stark series of warnings. The whistleblower’s report made clear that not only would one ballot be withheld if there was a problem with the barcode on its envelope, but rather officials would decline to deliver the entire batch of mailings that envelope was a part of. The whistleblower also described a rushed process to stand up an online data sharing system that the person said could make the complicated plan even more vulnerable to potential mass disenfranchisement.

Trump has for years touted conspiracy theories about mail voting as a way to discredit the 2020 presidential election that he lost. But improper voting remains exceedingly rare, and the administration has never provided evidence of widespread fraud on a scale that could influence the outcome of the 2020 election, or any other contest.

Multiple federal courts rejected the proposal. Over the weekend, a US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump nominee in Washington, DC, became the latest to put the USPS rule on hold for the midterms.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

US Senator Sanders and podcaster Bannon, longtime foes, to urge AI restrictions

2026-09-14 21:31:40 UTC / Reuters

WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and conservative podcaster Steve Bannon will together on Tuesday call for restrictions on AI systems, uniting two political adversaries around concerns that the technology will harm humans.

They will speak at the same Washington gathering on Tuesday, a sign of how concerns about AI are upending political norms.

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Public alarm about the potential danger posed by AI is growing, after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said last week he had resigned, in part because the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” AI-related stocks fell worldwide on Monday after leaders of some of the industry’s largest companies called for slowing the pace of the technology’s development.

Bannon, a longtime ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, has criticized Trump’s approach to overseeing AI, placing the blame for the president’s unwillingness to regulate the technology squarely on tech companies. On his Monday podcast, Bannon said Congress should not pass laws that prohibit states from enforcing their own rules for the technology.

“The American people are not going to be supplicants to these tech oligarchs,” Bannon said.

Reuters previously reported that U.S. senators are debating a bill that would block states from enforcing their own laws governing certain risks posed by AI models. Previously, efforts to restrict state AI laws failed in the U.S. Senate.

Trump on Monday downplayed concerns expressed by industry leaders over the weekend about the misuse of artificial intelligence harming people, saying the U.S. already has guardrails in place for the powerful technology.

Sanders and Bannon will be joined by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who are also slated to give speeches, according to event organizers. The AFL-CIO is the largest federation of labor unions in the U.S.

Sanders, along with House progressive Rep. Greg Casar, has called for the U.S. to pass legislation halting development of AI tools that are capable of “overthrowing or undermining the U.S. government,” until the government creates a new agency to police the technology. Casar and Sanders have not released specifics.

Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by David Gregorio

中国增加采购美国液化天然气

2026年9月15日 07:45 / 联合早报

中国燃气控股有限公司签署了一项少见的采购协议，每年将从Venture Global处购买50万吨美国液化天然气（LNG）。

据彭博社报道，公司在声明中表示，这项协议将从2030年开始执行，为期20年。

包括此次协议在内，中国燃气目前与Venture Global签订的长期LNG采购安排合计达到每年250万吨。

中国国家主席习近平与美国总统特朗普预计将于本月晚些时候会晤。中国是全球最大的石油和天然气进口国，美国则是主要能源出口国。

自2025年2月中国对美国LNG加征报复性关税以来，中国基本停止进口美国LNG，不过中国企业仍可通过长期合同获得大量美国天然气。伊朗战争导致卡塔尔的供应减少，从而推动LNG价格上涨，使这种超低温燃料对部分买家而言价格过高，今年以来，中国已减少整体LNG采购。

DHS is using legally questionable tactics to investigate voter fraud, whistleblower says

2026-09-14T21:42:17.341Z / CNN

The Department of Homeland Security is using legally questionable tactics and relying on unreliable data to investigate non-citizen voting, a whistleblower alleged in a report released by top Senate Democrats Monday.

The disclosures prompted accusations by Democrats and voter advocates of a sweeping dragnet that could ensnare eligible voters, as President Donald Trump has made finding proof of mass non-citizen voting — shown in studies to be exceedingly rare — a top priority of his administration.

Much of the whistleblower’s disclosures focused on training materials for DHS agents tasked with carrying out an investigatory effort known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.”

The effort is looking at voter records of “50 states and is targeted at up to hundreds of thousands of individuals,” lawyers for the whistleblower said in the report. Officers were ordered to investigate noncitizens as well as naturalized US citizens who may have registered or voted before they were naturalized.

After the late August launch of program, DHS agents working in a fraud detection unit of US Citizenship and Immigration Services were given just a few weeks to sift through the voter records of thousands of individuals and create law enforcement files known as TECS records for individuals determined to have voted unlawfully.

The whistleblower report alleges that the agents are being kept in the dark about the sources of some of the data being used in the review, and the process leads to individuals being tagged as unlawful voters even if the agent “reasonably believes that the DHS source data is not reliable enough to justify creating a TECS record.”

The flag could have implications for those individuals in their dealings with the government going forward, setting them up for increased screenings when crossing the border and more investigation by DHS. But Democrats alleged Monday that the initiative demonstrates Trump’s broader goal to sow doubt about elections, particularly as Democrats are expecting to win back control of at least one chamber of Congress this fall.

“The truth is, this has nothing to do with protecting the integrity of our elections,” California Sen. Alex Padilla said at a press conference Monday. “That’s just a pretext. It’s about the potential of using manufactured evidence to intimidate voters, to disenfranchise eligible Americans and even undermine or challenge this November’s election results, a classic Trump play.”

CNN has reached out to DHS for comment on the whistleblower report.

The Trump administration has broadly defended its efforts by saying its goal is to ensure that only people legally entitled to cast ballots do so.

The training materials instructed agents to use state voter registration portals to obtain information about their targets, instructing the agents — potentially in violation of state law — to pose as the voters to view their voter records. When agents raised concerns that using the state portals in that way could be illegal, they were told by superiors that they were “not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented,” according to the report.

“If this effort is truly legal, then why does DHS leadership have to promise its officers that they’re not going to be held liable? That says a lot,” Padilla said.

Officers have been given a quota to review at least 40 people per day, forcing them to confirm their identity, citizenship, and voting and registration record in a matter of minutes — a pace that compounds the risk that lawful voters will be investigated by mistake, the whistleblower complaint argued.

On Sunday, Senate Democrats sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, demanding he cease the operation. The use of the state portals was first reported by the New York Times in early September.

The allegations come amid a new surge of voter fraud investigations at DHS, which CNN first reported two weeks ago, as the department signals its role as a key driver of Trump’s election agenda.

The accuracy flaws in the federal citizenship records that agents are using for identifying potential non-citizen voters are well known and acknowledged even in the training materials, the whistleblower report alleges. But agents are nonetheless instructed to press on, even when key gaps in the data remain. At one point in a training video, the instructor says that key information in the record might be added later on, “through supplemental magic,” according to transcription excerpts of the training released with the report.

The whistleblower is being represented by Democracy Defenders, an organization that has opposed many Trump policies in court.

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

Mitch McConnell returns to Capitol Hill after monthslong absence

September 14, 2026 / 6:14 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky returned to Capitol Hill on Monday for the first time in three months, ending a prolonged absence that sparked widespread speculation about his health.

McConnell entered the Senate chamber in a wheelchair and cast a vote on a judicial nomination.

“Today, I’ll cast my first Senate vote since I took a bad fall back in June. I’m really looking forward to being back on the Senate floor and seeing my colleagues,” McConnell said in a statement ahead of his return.

In brief comments to reporters before he voted, McConnell said: “Time to get back to work, finish the job for this Congress.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky arrives for a vote at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 14, 2026. Finn Gomez / Getty Images

McConnell, 84, last voted on June 11. Three days later, his office announced he had been hospitalized, on the same day that emergency medical personnel went to his home to respond to an unconscious person, according to a public EMS dispatch call that did not mention the former Senate majority leader by name.

In the following days, McConnell’s office said the Kentucky Republican was “fully engaged” with his staff, and a handful of top Republicans said they had spoken to him by phone. But with few details shared about his condition, speculation ran rampant.

After Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear formally sought an update on McConnell’s health in July, McConnell put out his first statement since the hospitalization, which he said resulted from a fall, while noting that he had moved to a rehabilitation center. On Aug. 6, McConnell said he was discharged from the rehab center to continue his recovery at home, nearly two months after being hospitalized.

The prolonged absence comes after McConnell, a childhood polio survivor, has faced a number of health scares in recent years. In 2023, he was hospitalized with a concussion after a fall. Later that year, he appeared to freeze up while speaking to reporters on two separate occasions. He suffered minor injuries after another fall in 2024. And in February, his office said he spent more than a week in the hospital after experiencing flu-like symptoms.

“My recovery has been a long and often frustrating process, and the lingering effects of childhood polio haven’t made it any easier,” McConnell said. “I’m still not quite back to 100%, but I’ve assured Leader Thune that, as I continue with physical therapy on the advice of my doctors, I will do my best to be present for tough votes when our Conference needs me.”

McConnell is the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, helming the Senate GOP conference from 2007 until he stepped down from the post after the 2024 elections. He’s set to retire early next year, opting not to seek reelection to another six-year term.