BURSTFormer Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) has emerged as one of the biggest wild cards in the Senate, keeping his Republican colleagues guessing about how he’ll vote on elements of President Trump’s agenda.
McConnell has been largely sidelined from important leadership-level discussions since he stepped down as Senate Republican leader at the end of 2024 after a record-setting 18 years in the post, say Senate colleagues.
But the crafty veteran senator has used high-profile dissenting votes and carefully timed statements to make his influence felt throughout the Senate GOP conference and to signal when he thinks Trump — and by extension, Trump’s allies in Congress — are moving in the wrong direction.
In doing so, he’s using his leverage to preserve the values of the traditional GOP establishment in Washington.
McConnell this week voted against two critical procedural motions to advance a proposal to claw back $9 billion in funding Congress had already appropriated, legislation that was a top priority of Trump and Russell Vought, Trump’s controversial leader of the White House budget office.
McConnell joined moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), in voting to block the bill from coming to the floor. And he did so with no public warning, playing his cards close to the vest and leaving his colleagues guessing about what he would do.
He also voted with Collins and Murkowski for an amendment sponsored by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) to shrink the size of the rescissions package by exempting $496 million for international disaster relief from the cuts. It failed 49 to 50 on an otherwise party-line vote.
McConnell threw colleagues another curveball when he voted “aye” on final passage of the rescissions package.
He explained his “no” vote on the motion to proceed to the bill and his vote to pass the package once it was on the floor as reflecting his reservations about letting the White House dictate spending decisions to Capitol Hill.
“My belief in the importance of American soft power is not in conflict with my commitment to holding government accountable for inefficiency, and I take Congress’ responsibility to rein in federal spending seriously,” he said in a statement. “The Administration’s rescissions request is not the way I would prefer to act on this responsibility, but faced with a choice between spending reduction and no reduction, I voted in favor of the rescission.”
One GOP senator who requested anonymity applauded McConnell for pushing back against increasing pressure from the White House to carry out its demands for spending cuts, demands that have chaffed Republican members of the Appropriations Committee especially.
“I think it’s him being Mitch McConnell as the senior senator from Kentucky, as a leader in the Senate for decades who no longer has the burden of leadership and is just free to be a lawmaker. I think that’s what you see in Mitch; I love it,” one senator said.
The senator described the Office of Management and Budget’s response to senators’ concerns about the rescissions package as “dismissive.”
McConnell declared in October he would feel more free to vote his conscience once he stepped down from the Republican leadership role and would have less of an obligation to toe the party’s line.
“Here’s one way to look at it: Free at last,” McConnell quipped during a talk to the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. “What I mean by that, is when you’re the leader — if you’re smart — you’re looking out for everybody else. You also — if you’re smart — understand you’re going to take all the arrows that are coming in in order to protect your members.
“I’m actually looking forward to the next couple of years to focusing on what I want to focus on,” he said.
A couple of Republican senators see McConnell’s “no” votes on the procedural motions to advance the rescissions package as part of a broader trend this year, noting that he also voted for a resolution in April to undo Trump’s punitive tariffs against Canada.
Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he thought McConnell’s votes breaking with the GOP leadership were “more directed at Trump.”
A second Republican senator who requested anonymity to speak on the subject said McConnell doesn’t mind sticking Trump in the eye given their rocky relationship, which hit a low point after McConnell refused to endorse Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
McConnell told his biographer, Michael Tackett of The Associated Press, that he thought the “MAGA movement is completely wrong” and that former President Reagan “wouldn’t recognize” the party today.
But he sounded a more conciliatory tone after Trump won a sweeping victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
“I want Trump to be successful,” he said right after the election.
A person familiar with McConnell’s thinking said his “no” votes have never been about political vengeance and have always been about policy.
In addition to voting to unwind Trump’s tariff on Canada, McConnell voted against Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominees to head the Department of Defense, serve as director of national intelligence, and lead the Department of Health and Human Services, respectively.
A few Republican senators saw McConnell’s no votes this week as a veiled “shot” at Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s long-time deputy who replaced him as GOP leader at the start of the year.
"I wonder if this rescissions thing is a little bit of a shot at John Thune,” said a third Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment frankly on McConnell’s relationship with the new leadership team.
“Thune pretty much sidelined him during the reconciliation debate, which makes sense to me because Thune's the leader now,” the lawmaker said. “You can tell that McConnell tried to insert himself a couple of different times over the course of the months in meetings. Thune would let him talk but then he would quickly move him aside, he wouldn't comment, he wouldn't engage.
“Why would he vote against rescissions? There's nothing in here that's ideological that would bother him,” the senator said of the votes against proceeding to the bill. “He's not for public broadcasting money, he's voting against that a bunch of times.”
McConnell voted for the $15 billion rescissions package Trump sent to Congress in 2018, when Republicans controlled both chambers and McConnell was Senate majority leader.
That package narrowly failed in the Senate by a 48-50 vote.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) called McConnell’s votes against motions to discharge the rescissions bill from the Appropriations Committee and to proceed to it on the Senate floor as “disappointing.”
“Rescissions are a legitimate appropriations process, albeit rarely used,” he said, countering the argument pushed by members of the Appropriations Committee that the White House’s request for rescissions undercut congressional spending authority.
Cramer suggested that McConnell owes Thune more loyalty after many years of pressing GOP colleagues to stay unified on tough votes when he was the leader.
“As leader, he certainly would have done everything he could to earn our ‘yes’ vote as part of the team effort,” he said. “It’s certainly disappointing to see him not do that for … John Thune, who was a very, very good and loyal lieutenant.”
Cramer said voting for the rescissions package “is as easy as it gets.”
A source familiar with McConnell's relationship with Thune said while the two men have “different styles,” they both have a lot to offer the GOP conference by working together.
“While Leader Thune and Sen. McConnell ... approached the [leader's] role with different styles, they both understand — better than anyone else in the conference — the hurdles and opportunities that come with the job,” the source said.
“They speak frequently, and Leader Thune appreciates and values the unique role Sen. McConnell plays, having served as leader for nearly two decades and now as chair of the Rules Committee and as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee,” the source said.
McConnell gave Republican senators a “pep talk” about sticking together when they held the first vote-a-rama to pave the way for Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill Act and again urged his colleagues to band together to beat back Democratic attempts to divide them over proposed cuts to Medicaid, according to another source familiar with McConnell’s efforts to help Thune get the reconciliation package across the finish line.