Mitch McConnell Still MIA Days Before Key August 3 Deadline

Senator Mitch McConnell has yet to show his face in the halls of Congress, and the deadline for Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to call a special election is fast approaching.The 84-year-old Republican senator has not made a public appearance in weeks, ever since he was rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious at his Washington, D.C., home on June 14. Since then, McConnell’s office has refused to provide any meaningful updates on the exact state of the senator’s health, the reason for his extended hospitalization, or if and when he plans to return to Capitol Hill.Beshear has until this Monday, August 3, to call a special election so Kentucky voters can choose a new senator in time for the midterms. Under Section 152 of the Kentucky state Constitution, a special election to fill a vacant seat must be called at least three months ahead of the vote—and since the midterm elections are set for November 3, Monday is exactly that three-month cutoff.Kentucky’s law on Senate vacancies, House Bill 622, which was passed in 2024, is still legally untested. It eliminated the governor’s ability to appoint interim replacements for vacant U.S. Senate seats and mandated that any vacancy be filled by a special election, but as there are several competing legal provisions, it’s not yet clear what would happen in the courts.Although Kentucky traditionally votes Republican at the federal level, Beshear, a Democrat, has been elected twice as the state’s top dog. A special election might just give Democrats a chance to send another one of their own to the Senate.Beshear has repeatedly called on McConnell to justify his absence from Congress or to step down in time for Kentucky voters to choose a replacement. If the senator does not retire earlier, he will leave the Senate at the end of his term in December.“I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition. If the Senator is unable to respond for either of those or other conditions, consider this letter a demand for his Senate staff to be honest and transparent with the people of Kentucky,” Beshear wrote Monday in a letter to McConnell obtained by CNN.McConnell’s office has only released two unconvincing photos of the senator alongside his wife, Elaine Chao, since his hospitalization. The latest statement from the senator’s office, released on July 27, said that McConnell would not yet be returning to his legislative duties in Congress, but he was “looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky.”McConnell’s ongoing absence has caused a stir among D.C. lawmakers and political commentators alike—from rumors that the Kentucky senator was brain-dead to pointed questions from MAGA-aligned allies, to a missing-person poster taped outside the Russell Senate Office Building. The White House’s “Ice Maiden” has gotten involved to salvage Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act.Chief of staff Susie Wiles made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill Wednesday to implore top Senate Republicans to pass the wildly unpopular voter restriction bill ahead of the midterm elections.“This was her attempt to say to [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune and [Senate GOP Whip John] Barrasso [that] ‘A lot is stalled in the Senate. SAVE/reconciliation ... nominations ... what can we do?” a person familiar with the discussion told Politico via text Thursday.Wiles was also interested in discussing efforts to end the filibuster, a Trump priority that the upper chamber has repeatedly rebuked. The stalled succession of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was not mentioned, multiple sources told Politico.The discussions were “candid” but not immediately productive, according to the unidentified source.“Thune basically said: I want to move the president’s agenda whenever it has the votes,” they added.Wiles’s visit has been interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the White House to smooth over ruffled feathers and keep the president’s political priorities on track—particularly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put Thune on blast last week, sharing with reporters during a White House press conference that Trump’s patience was “running out” on the SAVE Act.“He wants to see as much of the SAVE America Act passed by the August recess,” Leavitt said at the time. “He knows that’s what the American people want to see passed.”Thune was quick to hit back, bluntly stating that the caucus simply didn’t have the votes.That timeline would offer Senate Republicans just five more business days to pass the controversial legislation, which promises to ban mail-in voting and institute new voting policies that would require voters to prove their identities via either a birth certificate or passport in order to access the ballot box.“You can’t show how high the importance of this issue is to the president other than bringing in Susie,” a former Trump adviser told Politico. “If there is an ability to land it, the president is certainly putting pressure on Susie to land it. It’s still an uphill battle.”Read more about the SAVE Act:The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has stopped offering free tours, after a tour guide claimed President Donald Trump had killed the nation’s prestigious national theater. In a Thursday memo review by The New York Times, Brooks Broeke, the director of the volunteer program, announced a “temporary pause” on the tour program for the first time in five decades. The move follows a Times interview with Sandy Weiswasser, an 87-year-old volunteer tour guide who spoke candidly about Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center. “This place used to be really thriving and busy and crowded,” Weiswasser said in the interview published Monday. “Now it’s a black hole.”Before the memo announcing the pause was circulated, three volunteers expressed concerns that the Kennedy Center would target the tour program in retribution for Weiswasser’s interview. The Kennedy Center has become an outlet for the Trump administration’s shocking pettiness. Trump previously tried to close the Kennedy Center for two years for “renovations” after multiple artists canceled their performances in response to his proposed name change. After Trump’s name was scraped off the wall, the building’s facade has remained concealed by a massive tarp. Read more about the Kennedy Center:At least one Republican governor is pushing back against President Trump’s plan to take over elections, saying they should continue to be run by states.Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt told the Associated Press in an interview published Friday, “I don’t think that we should federalize the elections at all.“I believe that is a state issue. The states should control their own elections. Should we make sure they’re done fairly and U.S. citizens are voting? 100%. I think there’s broad agreement with that,” Stitt said, ahead of the National Governors Association meeting in his state this weekend, where he will turn over leadership of the organization to Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat.Stitt noted, “It is weird that in a swing state, in a certain county, it takes them a month to count the votes. So rightly, you should be questioning some of these things.” However, he also said he trusted the leaders of those states “100 percent.”“I don’t think we should federalize that. Because then you’ve got a pendulum swing. What about the next guy gets in office and the next guy and the next guy? The system that we have with 50 different states is the right system,” Stitt said. But he also came out in support of Trump’s voter ID bill.“Now, the SAVE America Act, making sure that we know who’s voting, I think that’s a very legitimate thing to do,” Stitt said.Stitt isn’t entirely on Trump’s good side. During the last NGA meeting in Washington in February, he had to persuade the president not to exclude two Democratic governors from a White House meeting, and Trump ended up criticizing his performance and calling him a “RINO” for his efforts. In October, Stitt also called out Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to places like Illinois.“We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he said at the time. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”As states wrap up their primary elections and gear up for the general election in November, Trump is taking drastic steps to engineer a favorable Republican outcome, including demanding voter rolls from states and severely restricting mail-in voting. Statements like Stitt’s aren’t enough—after all, Oklahoma has already agreed to hand over its voter rolls to the Trump administration. Republicans have to actually fight to safeguard the vote from Trump overruling the will of the people. Read The TNR Blue Book, our new newsletter on the Democratic Party:President Donald Trump lashed out Friday at Texas Senator John Cornyn for holding up acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation.Cornyn has refused to support Blanche’s nomination over Trump’s cushy settlement deal with the IRS, which granted protections for the president’s family against audits and established a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for so-called victims of political weaponization. But in an angry social media post, Trump insisted the issue was personal. Cornyn “never had a problem” with the fund “until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump claimed that his MAGA allies deserved financial compensation because they’d been allegedly targeted by the federal government. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who cheated on his wife, was impeached by his own party on corruption charges, and illegally targeted his donor’s enemies as state attorney general, among other transgressions. Trump has claimed that he defected from Cornyn due to the senator’s “disloyalty.” Now he’s demanding the senator he betrayed fall in line. The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed the vote to advance Blanche’s nomination, after Cornyn and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina made clear that they would not support him. Even if he’s not confirmed before the Senate’s August recess, Blanche will continue to serve as acting attorney general. But it would be a humiliating blow to the president, who is clearly losing his grip on party members.