The 118th Congress has contained a lot of drama and infighting, shown on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, announced he was stepping down from his leadership position. McConnell has left a lasting impact on the Senate and how things are done in the Senate, as he has set precedents that will forever change the Senate. One thing is how judicial appointments are handled for both lower and supreme courts. McConnell made it so you only need a simple majority to get justices to be confirmed to a court. He also set the precedent that it is alright to refuse to even hold a vote for a president’s judicial nominee. He did this during Obama’s presidency when Kennedy stepped down from the Supreme Court during his last year in office, and McConnell refused to hold a vote on Merrick Garland. Also, during Obama’s second term, McConnell said that the Senate would keep Obama from passing any bills. This just helped to widen the divide between the two parties. McConnell has been a thorn in the Democrat’s side the entire time he led the Senate Republicans.

People probably think that it is a fantastic thing that he is stepping down from leadership. I can not lie; I was happy to hear he was stepping down from leadership. Then, I started to think about it more and realized that the fact he is stepping down from leadership is not a good thing. Hear me out; if McConnell is gone, who is going to take his place? That is what worries me; he has been killing all sorts of bills that I wanted passed, but he was not a Trumpian. Yes, he did not speak up to Trump much, but he does not like Trump and has tried to keep him contained. I could not imagine what it would look like if a close Trump ally took the leadership position for Republicans in the Senate. For one thing, McConnel pushed against Trump’s “Big Lie” and said that Biden won the 2020 election fair and square and was the new president. I worry about what would happen to our democracy if a Trump ally took the Senate Minority leader. They would help Trump with whatever he wanted and destroy our norms even more than McConnell did. As much as I do not like McConnell, he had a line he would not cross, and I am afraid his replacement might not have that same line.