In 1967, McConnell graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was president of the Student Bar Association. He has said his time with Cooper inspired him to run for the Senate later in life. In 1964, at the age of 22, he attended civil rights rallies, and interned with Senator John Sherman Cooper. McConnell attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. He was president of the Student Council of the College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. in political science in 1964 with honors. He graduated Omicron Delta Kappa from the University of Louisville with a B.A. McConnell was elected student council president at his high school during his junior year. In 1956, his family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he attended duPont Manual High School. In 1950, when he was eight, McConnell moved with his family from Athens to Augusta, Georgia, where his father, who was in the Army, was stationed at Fort Gordon. McConnell said his family "almost went broke" because of costs related to his illness. The treatment potentially saved him from being disabled for the rest of his life. He received treatment at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. In 1944, at the age of two, McConnell's upper left leg was paralyzed by a polio attack. His ancestor James McConnell fought on the American side in the American Revolutionary War. He is of Scots-Irish and English descent. McConnell was born in Sheffield, Alabama, and grew up in nearby Athens, Alabama, where his grandfather, Robert Hayes McConnell Sr., and his great uncle, Addison Mitchell McConnell, owned McConnell Funeral Home. McConnell was born on February 20, 1942, to Julia Odene "Dean" ( née Shockley 1919–1993) and Addison Mitchell "A.M." McConnell II (1917–1990). In 2015, 20, Time listed McConnell as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. McConnell is married to former secretary of transportation and former secretary of labor Elaine Chao. While supportive of many of Trump's domestic and foreign policies, McConnell was critical of Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and despite voting to acquit on Trump's second impeachment trial on reasons related to the constitutionality of impeaching a former president, deemed him "practically and morally responsible" for the January 6 United States Capitol attack. McConnell invoked the " nuclear option" to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, after his predecessor Harry Reid had previously eliminated the filibuster for all other presidential nominations Trump subsequently won confirmation battles on Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. McConnell worked to withhold Republican support for major presidential initiatives during the Obama administration, having made frequent use of the filibuster, and blocked many of President Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.ĭuring the Trump administration, the Senate Republican majority under his leadership passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, the First Step Act, the Great American Outdoors Act, and confirmed a record number of federal appeals court judges during a president's first two years. FEC that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the U.S. McConnell holds conservative political positions, although he was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career. In November 2006 he was elected Senate minority leader, the post he held until Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. He was elected Majority Whip to Bill Frist in the 108th Congress and re-elected to the post in 2004. During the 19 election cycles, he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Senate in 1984 and is the second Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate. McConnell first served as a Deputy United States Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford from 1974 until 1975 and went on to serve as Jefferson County Judge/Executive from 1977 until 1984 in his home state of Kentucky. McConnell has been the leader of the Senate Republican Conference since 2007 and is the longest serving Senate party leader in US history. He previously served as minority leader from 2007 to 2015, majority leader from 2015 to 2021 and was majority whip from 2003 to 2007. Addison Mitchell McConnell III ( / m ə ˈ k ɒ n ə l/ mə- KON-əl born February 20, 1942) is an American politician and retired attorney who has been serving as Senate Minority Leader since 2021 and the senior United States senator from Kentucky since 1985.
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