Top Republican right-winger Mitch McConnell announces leaving U.S. Senate

Mitch McConnell, the powerful Republican lawmaker who was instrumental in steering the current U.S. shift to the political right but had a tempestuous relationship with Donald Trump, announced Thursday he will step down from the Senate.

At 83 and in increasingly unsteady health, McConnell's announcement on the Senate floor that he will not seek reelection next year was not a big surprise.

But after serving seven terms and earning a reputation as Congress's ruthless, master tactician, the Kentucky senator's retirement will draw the curtain on a US political era -- and underline the Republican Party's growing radicalization.

McConnell called his four decades in the chamber "the honor of a lifetime" and said "I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last."

The Kentuckian was first elected in 1984, reached the Senate Republican leadership in 2007. The ultimate Washington powerbroker, he remained as party leader for a record long tenure until 2025, just as Trump came back for a second term.

Concerns have been growing about McConnell's health after repeated episodes in which he appeared to freeze during public events, as well as suffering several falls.

In addition to his physical frailty, he has seen himself increasingly sidelined by a resurgent Trump, who swept back to power in the November presidential election, demanding total loyalty from a Republican Party where dissenters have largely quit or been cowed.

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

- Reagan Republican -

Back in 2016, it was McConnell who helped Trump win his shock first election.

Throughout Trump's often chaotic and scandal-prone first term, the Senate mastermind was instrumental in advancing a right-wing agenda including the confirmation of three conservative justices to the powerful Supreme Court.

The court's ruling in 2022 to end the federal guarantee of abortion rights -- leaving decisions on the procedure to individual state governments -- was a lasting monument to McConnell's influence.

The senator was equally effective in using his hardball tactics to wreck Democratic-led legislation, earning his nickname the "Grim Reaper."

But McConnell fell out with Trump after he led attempts to overturn the 2020 election in which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating with the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.

Like nearly all other Republican leaders, McConnell soon swallowed his pride and made up with Trump.

But as the second Trump presidency dawned, it became clear the veteran political general was out of step with the radical populism and isolationism gripping the party's troops.

With a world view rooted in the Ronald Reagan era of U.S. global leadership, McConnell was a fierce backer for Washington supporting Ukraine's desperate fight against Russia, even as Trump led a shift in the other direction.

Trump is currently pushing to restore relations with Russia while harshly criticizing Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he even blames for the three-year invasion of his country.

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."

© Agence France-Presse