McConnell takes on a new role in the Senate: Lone wolf: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, we dive into the political futures of three senators: one who wants to stick around Washington, one who wants to leave a mark and one who’s on the way out. Plus, President Donald Trump takes the next step in implementing his tariff agenda.

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— Adam Wollner

McConnell takes on a new role in the Senate: Lone wolf

Two key Republican senators’ votes today on the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be health and human services secretary illustrate the new order of the party under President Donald Trump.

Let’s start with Sen. Mitch McConnell, who voted against Kennedy. He’s now the third of Trump’s nominees that McConnell, of Kentucky, the former Senate GOP leader, has opposed on the floor. In the case of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, McConnell was joined by Republican Sens. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska. But on Kennedy and newly installed National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, McConnell was the lone GOP dissenter. 

As the longest-serving Senate leader in history, McConnell developed a reputation for keeping his rank-and-file members in line and frustrating Democrats by relentlessly using procedural tactics to block their agenda, Scott Wong, Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V write.  

Now out of leadership and wrapping up what is likely to be his last term in office, McConnell, 82, is free from the constraints of leadership and the prospect of facing voters again. He has not only voted against a trio of Trump’s high-profile nominees in recent days but also publicly criticized Trump’s tariff plans. 

At the same time, McConnell, who is using a wheelchair in recent days after he suffered a fall, has lost much of his influence on a Senate Republican Conference that he once managed with an iron grip as he has grown further out of step with the MAGA movement driving the party.

McConnell, though, seems unperturbed by going it alone. A Republican senator said McConnell hadn’t been trying to lobby colleagues to join him in opposition to Trump’s nominees, Melanie Zanona reports. And with Hegseth, Gabbard and Kennedy, he didn’t publicly say how he’d vote ahead of time.  

As a former McConnell aide put it: “I think we’ve reached peak YOLO McConnell.” 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, however, finds himself in a much different situation. A physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Cassidy, of Louisiana, had publicly struggled with Kennedy’s nomination, specifically his anti-vaccine stances.

But Cassidy eventually came around and said he had received enough assurances to vote for Kennedy to lead the country’s most powerful health care agency. A key difference between him and McConnell: Cassidy may have a re-election run in Louisiana on the horizon. 

He hasn’t formally announced whether he’ll seek another term in 2026, though he has signaled he will. As Bridget Bowman and Natasha Korecki report, problems await. 

The never-doubt-Trump wing of the Republican Party has yet to forgive Cassidy for voting in 2021 to convict Trump on impeachment charges that he incited the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. And Cassidy already has at least one primary challenger, with others waiting in the wings.

“It’s no secret. It’s going to be a tough primary for him,” Louisiana GOP chair Derek Babcock said. 

Keep reading below for more on the 2026 Senate map.

Another open Senate seat could complicate Democrats’ 2026 plans 

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., announced Thursday that she isn’t running for re-election, meaning Democrats will have to defend another open seat on a difficult Senate map in 2026. 

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., also recently said he wouldn’t see another term. The open seat races could make Democrats’ uphill battle to take control for the Senate that much more challenging. They need to net four seats to take the majority, meaning they have to hold on to all of their existing seats and flip four Republican ones.  

And Democrats don’t have many obvious pickup opportunities. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is the only Republican up for re-election in a state Kamala Harris won. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., is also expected to be a top target in his perennial battleground state. After that, Democrats will have to go deeper into Trump territory and target states he won by double digits.  

Democrats may now need to dedicate more resources than expected to defending seats in Minnesota and Michigan, without incumbents who bring high name ID and fundraising prowess. Plus, competitive — and potentially divisive — primaries could damage the eventual nominees (although primaries can also be useful testing grounds for candidates). Democratic Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan already announced that she’ll be running for Smith’s seat, and several others could follow. 

Minnesota might not have been at the very top of Republicans’ Senate target list — Democrats are defending two seats in states that Trump won (Michigan and Georgia) — but it’s most likely up there. Trump lost Minnesota by 4 points, improving on his 2020 margin even with the state’s governor, Tim Walz, on the Democratic ticket. Walz himself isn’t ruling out a run for the Senate, while he’s also thinking about running for another term as governor, a source close to Walz told our colleague Katherine Koretski.  

Democrats, though, are confident that they will hold the seat, noting that a Republican hasn’t won a Senate race in Minnesota since 2002. 

Read more on the emerging Minnesota Senate race →

What to know from the Trump presidency today

• Trump signed a memorandum calling for “fair and reciprocal” trade tariffs on all major U.S. trading partners, including longtime allies. The memo calls on administration officials to assess within 180 days in a country-by-country report whether “remedies” that ensure reciprocal trade relations are necessary. 
• Trump acknowledged that the new tariffs could lead to “short-term” price increases. 
• The top federal prosecutor in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned after they refused to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. The White House also terminated multiple U.S. attorneys Wednesday evening.
• A group of 14 states sued Elon Musk and Trump, arguing that the authority the White House granted the tech billionaire and the Department of Government Efficiency is unconstitutional.
• About 75,000 federal employees have accepted the “deferred resignation” offer to resign but be paid through September, according to the White House. 
• Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon said any effort to eliminate the department she’s seeking to lead, as Trump has called for, would require congressional approval at her confirmation hearing. 

Follow live updates →

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.

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