Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is announcing on Thursday that he won’t seek reelection next year, ending a decadeslong tenure as a power broker who championed conservative causes but ultimately ceded ground to the fierce GOP populism of President Donald Trump.

McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, chose his 83rd birthday to share his decision not to run for another term in Kentucky and to retire when his current term ends. He informed The Associated Press of his decision before he was set to address colleagues in a speech on the Senate floor.

His announcement begins the epilogue of a storied career as a master strategist, one in which he helped forge a conservative Supreme Court and steered the Senate through tax cuts, presidential impeachment trials and fierce political fights.

“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell said in prepared remarks provided in advance to the AP. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”

McConnell, first elected in 1984, intends to serve the remainder of his term ending in January 2027. The Kentuckian has dealt with a series of medical episodes in recent years, including injuries sustained from falls and times when his face briefly froze while he was speaking.

The senator plans to deliver his speech in a chamber the famously taciturn McConnell revered as a young intern long before joining its back benches as a freshman lawmaker in the mid-1980s. His dramatic announcement comes almost a year after his decision to relinquish his leadership post after the November 2024 election. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a top McConnell deputy, replaced him as majority leader.

McConnell’s looming departure reflects the changing dynamics of the Trump-led GOP. He’s seen his power diminish on a parallel track with both his health and his relationship with Trump, who once praised him as an ally but has taken to criticizing him in caustic terms.

Here’s the latest:

Vance Says American Culture Has Sought to Turn Everyone Into ‘Androgynous Idiots’

Vance told conservatives that American culture is sending a message that is diminishing masculinity.

“I think that it wants to turn everybody into, whether male or female, into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same, and act the same. We actually think God made male and female for a purpose,” Vance said.

He told the CPAC audience that when it comes to the Trump administration, “We want you guys to thrive as young men and as young women and we’re going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that.”

He said Trump appeals in particular to young men because “He doesn’t allow the media to tell him he can’t make a joke or he can’t have an original thought.”

McConnell Announces Retirement From Senate in 2026

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is announcing on Thursday that he won’t seek reelection next year, ending a decades-long tenure as a power broker who championed conservative causes but ultimately ceded ground to the fierce GOP populism of President Donald Trump.

McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, chose his 83rd birthday to share his decision not to run for another term in Kentucky and to retire when his current term ends. He informed The Associated Press of his decision before he was set to address colleagues in a speech on the Senate floor.

His announcement begins the epilogue of a storied career as a master strategist, one in which he helped forge a conservative Supreme Court and steered the Senate through tax cuts, presidential impeachment trials and fierce political fights.

Related Story: Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell Appears to Freeze up Again, Unable to Speak

White House Officials to Address Reporters

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett will address reporters at the White House on Thursday as part of the press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced.

Leavitt said in a post on X that the officials will be there “to discuss the President’s accomplishments so far.”

People are gathering in a Washington suburb for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, where Vice President JD Vance will open as the first speaker.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear on Saturday, the organization announced.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and House Speaker Mike Johnson will be speaking later Thursday as well as Steve Bannon, a popular Trump ally. Other international figures such as former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss and Argentine President Javier Milei are also appearing at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland. Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni is scheduled to address attendees at the conference, but her office said it will be a video appearance.

A Kyiv official says a news conference after talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy was cancelled Thursday at the request of the U.S.

The scheduled comments to the media by Zelenskyy and retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, were called off after their meeting, the Ukrainian president’s spokesman Serhii Nikiforov said.

Kellogg’s trip to Kyiv coincided with recent feuding between Trump and Zelenskyy that has bruised their personal relations and cast further doubt on the future of U.S. support for Ukraine’s war effort.

He’s expected to host a reception for Black History Month in the afternoon, and then go to the National Building Museum to give a speech to a meeting of the Republican Governors Association.

Also on tap is a press briefing with the White House press secretary and other administration officials.

The Resolute Desk, an Oval Office mainstay, “is being lightly refinished,” Trump posted on social media. The desk was built from oak used in the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute, and Queen Victoria gave it as a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880.

In the meantime, Trump said he would sit at the “C&O” desk previously used by President George H.W. Bush. It was originally built around 1920 for the owners of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, hence the name.

“This is a beautiful, but temporary replacement!” Trump said.

He listed four targets in his executive order on Wednesday, including the United States Institute of Peace, which promotes conflict resolution around the world, and the Presidio Trust, which manages a park in San Francisco.

Both organizations were created by Congress. The executive order said they “shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”

Trump also directed the elimination of various advisory panels, including the Health Equity Advisory Committee, the Advisory Committee on Long COVID and the Community Bank Advisory Council.

Trump on Wednesday threw his support behind congressional efforts for a federal takeover of the nation’s capital, saying he approves putting the District of Columbia back under direct federal control.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump complained about crime and homelessness in the district, saying, “I think we should take over Washington, D.C. — make it safe.” He added, “I think that we should govern District of Columbia.”

Under terms of the city’s Home Rule authority, Congress already vets all D.C. laws and can outright overturn them. Some congressional Republicans have sought to go further, eroding decades of the city’s limited autonomy and putting it back under direct federal control, as it was at its founding.

The Senate was set to vote Thursday on whether to confirm Kash Patel as FBI director, a decision that could place him atop the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency despite concerns from Democrats over his qualifications and the prospect that he would do President Donald Trump’s bidding.

Patel cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee last week by a 12-10, party-line vote.

He is expected to be confirmed unless more than three Republican senators defy Trump’s will and vote against him, which is seen as unlikely.

Patel, a Trump loyalist who has fiercely criticized the agency that he is poised to lead, would inherit an FBI gripped by turmoil. The Justice Department in the last month has forced out a group of senior FBI officials and made a highly unusual demand for the names of thousands of agents who participated in investigations related to Jan. 6.

Trump has said that he expects some of those agents will be fired.

It’s been a burning political question for weeks: How long will Trump — who doesn’t like sharing the spotlight — be able to do just that with Musk, a billionaire also overly fond of attention?

In a joint Fox News Channel interview that aired Tuesday, both insisted they like each other a lot and would stick with their arrangement despite what Trump said were attempts by the media to “drive us apart.”

At times, Trump sat back as Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity heaped praise on Musk in an attempt to counteract a Democratic narrative that he’s a callous and unelected force out to destroy the government and upend civil society.

There were also moments when Trump and Musk were all but finishing each other’s sentences, as if they were part of a buddy comedy and not the president and his most powerful aide.

Trump said at an investment conference in Miami on Wednesday that he likes the idea of giving some of the savings from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency back to U.S. citizens as a kind of dividend, and that the administration is considering a concept in which 20% of the savings produced by DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts goes to American citizens and another 20% goes to paying down the national debt.

Trump also said the potential for dividend payments would incentivize people to report wasteful spending.