Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might be the most powerful and consequential Senate leader in memory, Republican or Democrat. The Kentucky Republican gave conservatives a supermajority on the Supreme Court. He saved Donald Trump from two impeachments. And he's held the post longer than anybody else.

But it sure looks like his power over Senate Republicans is faltering.

McConnell is facing "one of the toughest challenges of his career this week," The Hill said, trying to gather votes for a bill that will both replenish funding for Ukraine and crack down on immigration. But that proposal has little support from his party. And McConnell may be forced to "abandon" the effort if he can't muster even 10 votes to help Democrats override the inevitable filibuster. "It's certainly been a challenge," he told reporters. 

Indeed, McClatchy said, right-wing Republicans are increasingly criticizing McConnell for being too willing to make deals with Democrats. "The problem is almost always Mitch McConnell," said Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation. McConnell's biggest challenge, though, is probably Trump himself. The former president "is propelling that rebellion" against the border deal, Politico said. The two men hardly love each other: McConnell "essentially disowned" Trump after Jan. 6, and the former president "has responded with regular attacks" on McConnell. 

What did the commentators say?

"It can be argued that McConnell is in a fix of his own making because he didn't push to try, convict and disqualify Trump for Jan. 6," Al Cross argued at Kentucky Lantern in McConnell's home state. Trump is now pushing against the immigration bill because he wants to run for president on the border issue. That means "some Republicans don't want to take yes for an answer." Now the future of Ukraine is at stake, and so is "the standing of the United States in the world." But those aren't the only issues hanging in the balance: So, too, is "how history will remember Mitch McConnell."

McConnell "is being forced to reckon with former President Donald Trump's hold on the GOP," Emily Jacobs added at the Washington Examiner. Supporting Trump's impeachment after Jan. 6 would have been a "political suicide mission," one political strategist told Jacobs, "the equivalent of getting a small dog to jump over Niagara Falls." But McConnell also believed that Trump had fatally wounded his political career after the insurrection. Said another observer: "Obviously, in hindsight, it was a miscalculation."

"McConnell's vaunted political acumen has failed him at critical times" since Trump took over the GOP, John David Dyche, a McConnell biographer, wrote at the Lexington Herald-Leader. McConnell did castigate Trump after Jan. 6, saying the former president's actions were "a disgraceful dereliction of duty." But he failed to press the impeachment, and now he's living with the results of a Trumpified GOP. "When the time for a McConnell obituary comes, that will be his legacy."

What next?

McConnell might actually have more support from his rival, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), than from his fellow Republicans. Both men have been trying to get the Ukraine-border bill passed. "I guess you could say I've got 99 problems but Mitch ain't one," Schumer joked at last week's Congressional Dinner. But their collective efforts may come to naught: Politico said the bill "is already close to failure." McConnell may have already accepted defeat: At a recent meeting with Senate Republicans, he "did not forcefully whip for or against the bill."

Meanwhile, the presidential election is approaching. Trump has all but wrapped up the nomination. But Spectrum News said that McConnell hasn't endorsed him as of yet. "I don't have any announcement to make on the presidential election," McConnell replied. "In fact, you all may recall I've stayed essentially out of it and when I change my mind about that, I'll let you know." Most observers believe, however, that "the question is not if McConnell will endorse Trump, but when." McConnell might be one of the most powerful and consequential GOP leaders in history. But even he is no match for Trump.

Joe Biden has admitted that he could “drop dead tomorrow” and conceded that it is “legitimate” for voters to be concerned about his health.

Interviewed by MSNBC just two weeks ahead of the midterm elections, the US president was quizzed about his mortality and said: “I could get a disease, I could drop dead tomorrow. I think it’s a legitimate thing to be concerned about, anyone’s age, including mine.”

However, he added, that “the best way to make a judgment” is for voters to “watch” him and decide for themselves if he is “slowing up”.

Biden, who will be 80 on 20 November, is expected to run for the White House again in 2024, said The Telegraph, and “the oldest person ever to hold office” would be 86 if he completed a second term.

‘He outlasts us’

Biden’s age is a red herring, said Brendan Boyle, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania. “The age thing is a convenient place to go for people who had other reasons to say they didn’t want him to run,” Boyle told CNN.

Speaking in the Capitol, where the three most important members of the Democratic leadership are all in their 80s, Boyle said: “I serve in Congress. To me, Joe Biden is young.”

While engaging with crowds, the 79-year-old has “perfected his selfie arm” and tested his aides’ stamina, reported The Independent. “He outlasts us,” said White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon. Biden is known to spend more than an hour shaking hands and chatting with the public.

“If I was advising Biden, I would say don’t hide it,” conservative consultant Craig Shirley told Politico. “Everybody knows you’re going to be 80 years old, make it a positive. He can have a cake. Have some friends over. To run away from it is foolish.”

Age old problem

However, according to one report, people behind the scenes are increasingly concerned about the president’s age. White House staffers have expressed doubts about scheduling long international trips for Biden, “out of concern that they are too draining for him”, reported The New York Times.

“His energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it was, and some aides quietly watch out for him,” said the paper. Biden “often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire”, it added.

Biden’s age could become an issue at the polls, according to one study. A New York Times/Siena College poll published in July found that around 64% of surveyed Democratic voters believed the party should nominate a different candidate for president in 2024, with 33% giving Biden’s age as their primary reason.

It could become a problem for Biden. Former president Donald Trump, who was defeated by Biden in 2020 but is “mulling” over running again in 2024, “frequently criticizes Biden over his performance and his age”, said USA Today.

However, the former president is no spring chicken himself at 76, opening up the prospect of two elderly men running for what is often referred to as the most powerful office in the world.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Sunday that President Biden has "no plans" to visit Ukraine during his trip to Europe this week.

It would likely be difficult for Ukraine to guarantee Biden's safety no matter where he went in the country. Western Ukraine remained safe for the first several weeks of the Russian invasion, but Russian forces have recently begun launching strikes in that part of the country, including a cruise missile attack on an aircraft repair plant in Lviv and a hypersonic missile strike targeting what the Russian Defense Ministry described as "a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the ... Ivano-Frankivsk region."

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield seemed to confirm Psaki's statement on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.

"Three European heads of state visited Kyiv in the last week or so, [and] former Ukrain[ian] President Petro Poroshenko suggested that President Biden should visit Ukraine during his trip to Europe this week. Is that on the table?" host Jake Tapper asked Thomas-Greenfield.

(Tapper's first statement was not quite correct. According to The Washington Post, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa all visited Kyiv last week, but they are their countries' heads of government, not heads of state).

"As far as I know, that's not on the table," Thomas-Greenfield responded.

During a Sunday appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Biden should get as close to Ukraine as he can.

"[W]hat I'd like to see the president do is to reassure our Eastern Bloc allies. It's fine to go to Brussels. It's fine to go to Berlin, and I'd like to see him go to Romania or Poland or to the Baltics. They're right on the front lines and need to know that we're in this fight with them to win," McConnell said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had little to say on Wednesday about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's reported decision to retire at the end of the current term.

At 83, Breyer is the oldest justice on the court, and one of three liberals. During an event in Bowling Green, Kentucky, reporters asked McConnell for his thoughts on Breyer's apparent retirement. "I'm afraid to put the cart before the horse," McConnell replied. "Justice Breyer has not yet made an official announcement. He's entitled to do that whenever he chooses to, and when he does that I'll have a response on his long and distinguished career."

Following the February 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia, McConnell — then Senate majority leader — famously blocked former President Barack Obama from filling the vacancy, claiming that because the election was nine months away, it should be up to the next president. This time around, Democrats have control of the Senate, and if the entire caucus votes for President Biden's nominee, there won't be any need for GOP support.

A reporter asked McConnell if Senate Republicans will still try to find a way to block Biden's nominee, a question he dodged. "We don't know who the nominee is yet, so that's [a decision] the president has an opportunity to make should there be a vacancy," McConnell said. "And Justice Breyer will determine when and if there's a vacancy."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Saturday appeared to briefly step into the Virginia gubernatorial race, which has turned its focus to a debate over "parents rights" when it comes to education.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom McConnell once blocked from getting a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the senator said he was concerned that the Justice Department has "directed federal law enforcement to partner with state and local governments to address" violent threats against administrators, teachers, and others who work in the public school sphere across the country.

McConnell dismissed the idea that Garland's view on the situation reflects the reality on the ground. Instead, McConnell painted the debate as a civil one, "the very basis of representative," and said parents "absolutely should be telling their local schools what to teach." "I hope you agree with me that the kind of grassroots interest parents have shown throughout the country in both the methods and substance of their children's education is to be commended and encouraged," he wrote.

But McConnell didn't stop at praising the parents pushing back against their local education officials. He also criticized those officials, particularly in Virginia, for launching "shocking efforts ... to organize the intimidation and harassment of parents who have the temerity to want a better education for their children."

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett tried to draw a sharp line between "judicial philosophies" and "political parties" in a lecture Sunday night at the 30th anniversary celebration of the University of Louisville's McConnell Center. "My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks," she said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced Barrett, saying she is from "Middle America" and doesn't try to "legislate from the bench." Some of the students at the event asked Barrett, in written questions submitted beforehand, about the Supreme Court's 5-4 "emergency" order effectively banning almost all abortions in Texas and other "shadow docket" decisions with huge effects on policy with no public hearings or serious discussion. She said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on specific cases or "emergency" decisions generally.

McConnell founded the McConnell center in 1991 and, as Senate majority leader, pushed through Barrett's party-line confirmation a year ago, a little over a month after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and shortly before Republicans lost control of the White House and Senate in the 2020 election. Democrats had objected to Barrett's confirmation, citing among other things McConnell's argument four and a half years earlier that justices shouldn't be confirmed in the months before a presidential election.

McConnell's moves to deny President Barack Obama's nominee a hearing for months combined with pushing through Barrett's nomination a week before the 2020 election cemented conservative control of the Supreme Court for years or decades.

Barrett on Sunday argued that's not the right way to look at the high court. "The media, along with hot takes on Twitter, report the results and decisions" from the Supreme Court in a way "that makes the decision seem results-oriented," she said. "It leaves the reader to judge whether the court was right or wrong, based on whether she liked the results of the decision." She added that "sometimes, I don't like the results of my decisions. But it's not my job to decide cases based on the outcome I want."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt Monday morning that it was "highly unlikely" a Republican Senate would confirm a Biden nominee to the Supreme Court in 2024 should the GOP recapture the Senate next year. When asked what would happen if a justice retired in 2023, McConnell more or less confirmed what has been obvious for some time – Democratic presidents will never get to fill a Supreme Court seat while Republicans hold the Senate. "Well, we'd have to wait and see what happens," McConnell told Hewitt.

McConnell's incendiary interview almost seemed designed to prompt 82-year-old Stephen Breyer, one of the Court's three remaining liberals, to retire while Democrats hold a narrow Senate majority. Breyer has publicly resisted pressure from progressive activists to retire, under the delusional pretext that judges are "loyal to the rule of law, not to the political party that helped to secure their appointment," and that retiring under such duress will only deepen partisan polarization and the politicization of the Court.

That would be big if true, but only people whose birth certificate says "yesterday" can believe that this Court is apolitical. McConnell invented a farcical new rule to block Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, eight months before the election, and then promptly amended it in 2020 so Republicans could confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the bench just eight days before Joe Biden was elected. Now he's all but saying that he'll not only do it again in 2024, but that Republicans will likely block any Biden nominee, no matter when the vacancy occurs.

Hopefully Breyer is listening – and prepping his retirement announcement while Biden can still fill his seat.

Former President Donald Trump has released a new post-presidency statement, and Democrats might just be glad he did.

The former president, who remains permanently banned from Twitter, released a statement Thursday once again raging against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), blasting him as the "most unpopular politician in the country" while blaming him for Republicans' Senate losses in Georgia — losses for which Trump himself has been blamed by other Republicans.

One of the reasons Republicans lost the two Georgia Senate runoffs in January, Trump argues, was "Mitch McConnell's refusal to go above $600 per person on the stimulus check payments when the two Democrat opponents were touting $2,000 per person in ad after ad."

The statement offered "quite the pre-stimulus political gift to Democrats," wrote National Journal's Josh Kraushaar, while The Washington Post's Dave Weigel noted that Trump "remarkably" used this opportunity to "validate Biden's messaging on the $1,400 checks instead of whacking him and Democrats for curtailing them."

Indeed, Trump writes that "the $2,000 will be approved anyway by the Democrats," while offering no comment on the fact that the new checks are actually for $1,400, nor on Biden's recent compromise that narrows the eligibility. Politico's Gabby Orr observed that Trump "could have put out a statement saying the income phase-outs in the Biden stimulus bill are going to mean he gave checks to more Americans," but "instead he's still targeting his own party with stuff like this."

This was just Trump's latest statement in this vein after he released another one last month describing McConnell as an "unsmiling political hack." He also mentioned McConnell in a recent Conservative Political Action Conference speech, in which he took credit for McConnell's recent re-election. McConnell told Fox News he "didn't watch" the speech and that "we're dealing with the present and the future, not looking back to the past."

Donald Trump has made history by becoming the first president to be impeached twice, after Congress voted to take action in the wake of last week’s riot on Capitol Hill.

The House of Representatives voted 232-197 yesterday to begin impeachment proceedings against the president, with ten Republicans breaking ranks to side with Democrats in backing a second Senate trial.

Trump is charged with “incitement of insurrection” amid allegations of “encouraging violence with his false claims of election fraud”, the BBC reports. And while the president was acquitted less than a year ago at the conclusion of his last Senate trial, his former allies appear less inclined to back him this time around.

Back in the dock

Impeachment charges are political, rather than criminal, and have political repercussions. If found guilty, Trump would be barred from holding federal office in the future, ending any plans he might have to run for the White House again in 2024.

Congress has cited a speech given by Trump on 6 January to supporters outside the White House in which he told them to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard, but also to “fight like hell” against the result of November’s presidential election, which he has repeatedly claimed was fraudulent.

As The Guardian notes, Wednesday’s vote marks the “most bipartisan impeachment in American history”, with Republican members of Congress lining up to condemn the president.

The vote has opened a faultline within the GOP, however, with “freshman” lawmakers “feuding with each other” over the charges, the paper continues.

Indeed, this second impeachment is taking place against a backdrop of Republic divisions not seen during the first, when the vote in Congress was split along party lines. This time, “some of the most high-profile members of Republican leadership aren’t denouncing the Democratic effort”.

More widely, the row over impeachment has seen “Washington devolve into a miasma of suspicion and conflict”, says The New York Times. During the pre-vote debate, “a Democratic member of Congress accused Republican colleagues of helping the mob last week scout the building in advance”, while some GOP members “sidestepped magnetometers intended to keep guns off the House floor”.

Judge McConnell presiding

Trump is now facing a trial in the Senate. Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell has said that the trial will not begin before Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.

However, the hugely influential Republican senator “signaled through advisers Tuesday that he would be open to a possible conviction”, reports The Washington Post.

In a statement posted on Twitter yesterday, McConnell said “there was simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude” before Biden takes over the White House on 20 January.

The three previous impeachment proceedings have taken 83, 37 and 21 days respectively, McConnell points out.

All the same, his apparent willingness to open to impeachment marks a huge difference between this second Democratic effort and Trump’s trial in 2020.

“How things will shake out in the Senate is a mystery,” says The Guardian. But “this time it’s conceivable a few more Republicans could join Democrats, though they need 17 to convict”.

During last year’s trial, only Senator Mitt Romney voted with Democrats against Trump. But McConnell’s suggestion that he could conceive of the president having committed impeachable offences could move the dial.

“I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate,” he said in a letter sent to fellow GOP senators.

As The Guardian notes, such comments from the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill are “a far cry” from the stance taken by Trump’s party during his first impeachment.

President Trump's second impeachment trial will likely have to wait until he's out of office.

With just one week left in Trump's term, the Senate would have to return early from its recess to hold an impeachment trial — even a protracted one — and vote to remove Trump from office. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) team confirmed Wednesday that he won't use his emergency powers to do so, meaning the Senate won't return until its scheduled date of Jan. 19. That's just a day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

The House was also on recess after last week's attack by Trump supporters on the Capitol, but reconvened for Wednesday's vote to proceed with articles of impeachment against Trump. The House, with a Democratic majority and support from a handful of Republicans, is expected to move the impeachment effort to the Senate. Trump can still be convicted in the Senate after he leaves office, which could block him from running in 2024 again.

Influential Republican senator Mitch McConnell may back efforts to impeach Donald Trump after telling associates that he believes the president committed impeachable offences in relation to riots on Capitol Hill last week, according to reports.

McConnell also believes impeachment proceedings will make it easier to “purge” Trump from the Republican party, The New York Times (NYT) reports, ahead of a vote in the House of Representatives today on whether to formally charge the president with inciting violence against the country.

The senate majority leader, who was a major stumbling block in efforts to impeach Trump in 2020, “has made clear in private discussions that he believes now is the moment to move on from the weakened lame duck” and blames the outgoing president for the Republicans losing control of the upper house, the paper adds.

Power relations

Relations between McConnell and Trump worsened in mid-December, when having held out on backing the result of the November vote, the senator told the president that he would recognise Biden as president-elect. It is understood they have not spoken since.

However, relations between the two were always pragmatic, with “the wily Kentuckian and the brash political outsider from New York adopt[ing] a mutually beneficial embrace”, The Times reports. That “marriage of convenience is ending in raw acrimony” with McConnell signalling his support for impeaching proceedings, the paper adds.

McConnell’s court

McConnell’s private acknowledgment that the president has committed impeachable offences is “the moment the political sands shifted under the president’s feet”, The Telegraph says. A hugely powerful member of the senate and GOP, McConnell is a “quietly spoken individual, but when he strikes he is lethal”.

Commentators have speculated that in allowing news of his position to reach the NYT, McConnell was sending a clear message to the Republican’s 211-strong caucus in the lower house that they are free to vote with the 222 Democrats to impeach.

Shortly after the NYT broke the story, Liz Cheney, the third most senior Republican in the House, declared her support for impeachment. And after McConnell gave his blessing, only 17 of the Republican’s 50 senators would need to vote with Democrats to convict the president, meaning his move could prove to be the pivotal moment that leads to Trump’s conviction.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is taking the idea of an impeachment trial seriously, and there is "a better than 50-50 chance" he would vote to convict President Trump, Axios reported Tuesday night.

One high-ranking Republican close to McConnell said the "Senate institutional loyalists are fomenting a counterrevolution to Trump," and one way to keep him from running for president again would be to convict him in a Senate trial.

Earlier Tuesday, The New York Times reported that McConnell believes Trump did commit impeachable offenses when he incited supporters to storm the Capitol last week, and thinks an impeachment would push the president out of the GOP. Fox News later confirmed the report, saying McConnell has finally decided to break from Trump and is "done" with him. McConnell has yet to publicly call on Trump to resign or say he is in favor of impeachment.

There are still Senate Republicans who refuse to publicly acknowledged that President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Trump in the Nov. 3 election, but that number shrank Monday after the Electoral College cast its votes, formalizing Biden's 306-232 win.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had still not publicly acknowledged Biden's victory, but his top deputy, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) did Monday, as did the No. 4 Senate Republican, Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who chairs the inaugural committee, and the No. 5 Republican, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). (The third-ranking Senate Republican, John Barrasso of Wyoming, said asking about Biden's status was a "gotcha question" but suggested Biden has effectively been president-elect since Trump signed off on the transition process three weeks ago.)

"I understand there are people who feel strongly about the outcome of this election," Thune said. "But in the end, at some point you have to face the music, and I think that once the Electoral College settles the issue today that it's time for everybody to move on." Blunt said "the electors have voted, so there's a president-elect," and his inaugural committee will now "deal with Vice President Biden as the president-elect."

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said that "although I supported President Trump, the Electoral College vote today makes clear that Joe Biden is now president-elect." Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said "it's time to turn the page and begin a new administration," and Sen Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) was blunt: "Vice President Biden is the president-elect based on the electoral count."

Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Steve Daines (Mont.), and James Inhofe (Okla.) aren't quite there yet. "No," Inhofe said when asked Monday if Biden is president-elect. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally, said "yeah" when asked the same question, then noted that Trump still has "a very, very narrow path" and "we'll let those legal challenges play out."

Even the pro-Trump network Newsmax dipped its toe in the reality of Biden's win Monday. Afternoon anchor John Bachman called Biden president-elect, explaining, "What I'm trying to do is manage everyone's expectations." But the Newsmax show after his treated Biden's victory as more of an open question, and rival pro-Trump network One America News hardly mentioned the Electoral College vote at all, broadcasting instead an Arizona hearing on voting procedures.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not a fan of the $908 billion pandemic relief bill that was put together by a bipartisan group of senators and subsequently received a nod of approval from Democratic congressional leadership.

Sanders said he won't vote for the bill if it ever comes to the floor, taking particular issue with the liability provision, which he argues gives "100 percent legal immunity to corporations whose irresponsibility has led to the deaths of hundreds of workers." But his Democratic colleague, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who was part of the negotiating team that crafted the framework, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday that Sanders had mischaracterized the bill.

The main purpose of the package, Warner said, is to give states "some level of time out" to set their own coronavirus standards and serve as a holdover until a more comprehensive bill is put together. In the meantime, he questioned how politicians from either party could tell small business owners, unemployed workers, and people struggling to pay their rent that a $908 billion package wasn't enough for four months of emergency aid.

Later in the State of the Union interview, Warner said he'd ask Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose position on the proposal is unclear, a similar question. Tim O'Donnell

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told CNN he supports President Trump's decision to spike coronavirus relief talks because the negotiations with congressional Democrats "were not going to produce a result and we need to concentrate on what's achievable," perhaps referring to the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation process.

But some analysts, like The Washington Post's Philip Bump, are baffled by Trump's move. Bump is of the opinion that the Democrats' latest offer was a gift for the president since it would have allowed him to take credit for rejuvenating the economy just weeks before November's presidential election.

"It's inexplicable that an incumbent president whose primary argument for his re-election is the strength of the economy would prefer to argue that 'jobs are coming back in record numbers' — a function of how deep they'd plunged — instead of actually pouring money into the economy," Bump wrote before suggesting the president is using the stalled talks to leverage votes, since he said he'd sign a "major" relief package after the election. Axios' Jonathan Swan agreed, writing, "I truly don't understand this, and nor do a number of people who advise the president. It's like he's trying to lose."

Former Obama administration economist Byron Auguste, meanwhile, isn't interested in the "political implications" of the end of talks. Instead, he said, "what matters most" is how it will affect the American people. Tim O'Donnell

The House is expected to clear a $484 billion coronavirus relief package to replenish a small-business loan programs Thursday, sending it to President Trump's desk. Democrats won $100 billion for hospitals and national coronavirus testing in the legislation, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a Democratic push to include $150 billion for states and local governments. The White House said those funds would be included in the next rescue bill, but McConnell pushed the "pause button" on more aid packages Tuesday, telling The Wall Street Journal he's now worried about the national debt.

McConnell told conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that governors "would love to have free money" but he would prefer hard-hit states be allowed "to use the bankruptcy route." States can't legally declare bankruptcy. In a press release, McConnell called relief funds for states "Blue State bailouts."

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) tweeted Tuesday afternoon that he's working with colleagues to provide "additional and more flexible" funding for states, adding: "The skyrocketing unemployment rate and subsequent decline in tax revenue has left local governments stretched to the limit." Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called McConnell "the Marie Antoinette of the Senate" Wednesday night, arguing it's "shameful and indefensible" to urge "devastated" states to declare bankruptcy, adding it's not "'free money' to provide funds for cops, firefighters, and health care workers."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) shrugged off McConnell's state funding comments Wednesday, telling Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. that "McConnell will do whatever the president wants," and Trump "needs this" for his re-election. "Look at the language of Mitch McConnell: 'I'm not bailing out blue states, they should go bankrupt,'" she added. "Really? Really? How insecure is he in his own race in Kentucky to have to resort to that pathetic language?" The House will take the lead on the next bill, Pelosi said, and McConnell can take it or make a better offer.

Congressional and White House negotiators were working late Sunday night to finalize a fourth coronavirus rescue package, with a goal of getting it approved by Congress on Wednesday. The package, currently worth about $470 billion, is focused on adding $310 billion to the tapped-out Paycheck Protection Program, bank-issued government loans aimed at keeping small businesses afloat and staffed. Democrats also won $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for testing, and there is another $60 billion for another drained emergency lending program for small businesses.

The bailout package will not include $150 billion for state and local governments, another Democratic priority, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Senate Republicans on Sunday afternoon, Senate GOP aides told Politico and Axios. McConnell noted the deal has not yet been finalized.

"The thinking among some Trump administration officials is that many states should be reopening their governments soon and that additional funding could deter them from doing so," reports Axios' Alayna Treene. Politico adds: "The White House and Trump administration have been holding out because, in part, they believe if Congress keeps cutting checks for state and local governments, they will be disincentivized to open up their economies."

States and cities have taken steep hits to their budgets from the coronavirus outbreak. "It's important for the feds to support our efforts to fund the stuff we do," Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R-Mass.) said on CBS News. "If we're laying off tens of thousands of people at exactly the time when they want to reopen the economy, we're going to be swimming against the current they're trying to create." Trump said Sunday evening he supports backstopping states and local governments at "another time." White House officials tell Axios they envision such a package weeks or months from now.

The White House reiterated Sunday on Twitter that, as far as they see it, "the success of the phased approach will rely on preparedness and planning by states — safe and efficient screening, sufficient PPE supplies, and the ability to mitigate any rebound."

The Senate voted 47-47 on a $1.8 trillion bill to shore up the economy during the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, far short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who wrote the bill Saturday night, vowed Sunday night to bring it up for a vote again at 9:45 Monday morning, repeatedly daring Democrats to vote against it again as the stock market plummets further. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said no. Negotiations continued overnight.

Republicans are "throwing caution to the wind for average workers and people on Main Street and going balls to the wall for people on Wall Street," Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) said Sunday. Schumer laid out most of the Democratic concerns about the legislation, which The Washington Post calls "by far the largest financial rescue ever attempted by Congress," earning a three-word response from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

But Democrats weren't the only ones concerned that the legislation gives too much to large corporations while demanding too little in return. "Any relief for big corporations must limit executive compensation, ban stock buybacks, and require companies to pay back loans w/ interest. Or I'm not voting for it," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tweeted. Democrats voiced special concern about the $500 billion available to large companies with little oversight, including $425 million to be doled out at the discretion of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the recipients able to shield their identities for six months.

"We're not here to create a slush fund for Donald Trump and his family, or a slush fund for the Treasury Department to be able to hand out to their friends," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Sunday. Democrats also want the funds contingent on companies retaining 90 percent of their workers, not just "to the extent practicable," as McConnell's legislation allows. New York Times economic columnist Binyamin Appelbaum found that point the most baffling.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said "we're so far apart," the House will "be introducing our own bill and hopefully it will be compatible" with the Senate deal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is denying that he knew a project in his home state would benefit from the U.S. ending sanctions against a Russian oligarch.

In January, nearly a dozen Republicans broke away from McConnell and joined Democrats in voting to block the Trump administration from lifting sanctions on companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. They didn't reach the 60 votes necessary to advance the resolution, and a few weeks later, the government lifted the sanctions against Deripaska and Rusal, Russia's largest aluminum producer. Three months after that, The Washington Post reports, Rusal announced it was partnering with Braidy Industries on an aluminum-rolling mill in Ashland, Kentucky, with Rusal supplying $200 million in capital for a 40 percent stake in the plant.

The night before the Senate voted on lifting sanctions, Braidy Industries' founder, Craig Bouchard, had dinner in Zurich with Rusal's head of sales. Bouchard told the Post they did not discuss the Senate vote, and Braidy Industries did not tell any government officials that lifting sanctions would be beneficial. Rusal's parent company, EN+, told the Post the Kentucky project had nothing to do with its aggressive lobbying to get sanctions dropped, and McConnell's spokesman, David Popp, said McConnell "was not aware of any potential Russian investor before the vote."

Democratic lawmakers are suspicious of the timing, and have asked the government to review the deal. "It is shocking how blatantly transactional this arrangement looks," Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, told the Post. Bouchard doesn't see it that way. "You just can't be so picky," he said. "Whoever is going to help us go in and rebuild this place that's been decimated, we just welcome it, with open arms."

This tweet was questionable to begin with. The timing made it even worse.

Over the weekend, a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas left 22 people dead, and another in Dayton, Ohio killed nine people. But that didn't stop Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) campaign Twitter account from sharing a photo of his political opponents' names written onto tombstones hours after the first shooting happened.

The tweet from McConnell's official Senate campaign Twitter account @Team_Mitch started gaining traction after McConnell's Democratic Senate challenger Amy McGrath tweeted it out on Monday afternoon. Merrick Garland, whose Supreme Court nomination was stalled by and ultimately upended thanks to McConnell, is on another tombstone, as is Kentucky's Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergarn Grimes.

The original tweet was posted at 6:35 p.m. on Saturday — hours after news of the shooting started coming out, and just 24 minutes before McConnell tweeted his prayers to the victims and first responders in the El Paso shooting. The tweet was still up as of 2:30 p.m. Monday.

On Tuesday, the Senate cleared a bill, the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, providing financial support for 9/11 first responders through 2092, with only two senators, Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), "voting themselves into the dustbin of history," Stephen Colbert said on The Late Show. This was a victory not only for the first responders but also for their highest-profile advocate, former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, whose relentless hammering on the issue overcame slow-walking of the legislation by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

"One of my favorite things about this story" is a photo of "Mitch McConnell right before the vote, walking in, knowing that he's going to have to vote for it," Colbert said. "And here's our friend Jon Stewart," watching and smiling. "That's a good picture," he said, laughing. "Long overdue, thank you to the 9/11 responders for what you did for all of us, and thank you do Jon for staying on top of this." You can see the photo in the video below. Peter Weber

President Trump was in his element Wednesday night, Seth Meyers said on Thursday's Late Night, as he whipped the crowd at his North Carolina rally into a "racist frenzy" by going after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

Meyers said Trump has spent the last few days slandering Omar, who came to the U.S. as a Somali refugee and is a naturalized citizen, and stood by as the audience began chanting, "Send her back!" This was "one of the most vile spectacles in modern political history," Meyers declared, "a defining moment for our country, and any Republican who doesn't immediately condemn it should imagine how it will look in a history textbook years from now, because there will absolutely be a section on this and it will absolutely name everyone complicit in it and they will absolutely use the worst photo of you they can possibly find."

To prove it, Meyers put up a graphic showing a photo of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that made it appear as though his face was melting into a puddle of chins, and another of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) looking like a hissing bobcat out for revenge.

When asked by reporters on Thursday about the chant, Trump said he tried to shut it down, but Meyers was prepared with a clip showing Trump just standing there, looking around the arena. "That's not how you stop a chant," he said. "That's how you wait in line at the deli for them to call your number." This was an "obvious lie," but that's the "con at the heart of Trump's politics. He whips his base into a racist frenzy and claims Omar is the one who looks down on hard-working Americans, when in reality he's the one plundering the government, doling out trillions in tax cuts to his rich buddies, and partying it up all night because he doesn't work on Thursdays." Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia

President Trump's loyalty to Fox News "is the closest thing he's ever had to a monogamous relationship, but his marriage to Fox must be growing stale, because last week he cheated on them with ABC's chief news sprite George Stephanopoulos," Samantha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. But "while Trump is openly saying that he thinks it's fine for foreign powers to meddle with our elections, the Senate is making sure there's nothing standing in the way of a good meddle." Well, one senator in particular.

"Of course Mitch McConnell is blocking election security bills, just like he spent years stalling health aid for 9/11 first responders," Bee said. "McConnell's so good at blocking things he's like the kidney stone of the Senate," or "the dry rot of Democracy. If our institutions seem like they're on the verge of crumbling, Mitch is the guy who gnawed away at the foundations." But "McConnell's awfulness gets only a fraction of the attention Trump's awfulness gets," she said, and that's not right.

Bee walked through McConnell's Senate history, from moderate Republican to the dull "genius" who weaponized the filibuster. Thanks to his unprecedented filibustering of President Barack Obama's judicial nominations, she said, "at least 89 judgeships that were President Obama's constitutional right and duty to fill have instead been filled by President Trump. We'll be feeling the consequences of that for decades. In 2050, when my granddaughter gets jailed by Judge Kid Rock for brewing bathtub Plan B, she will have McConnell to thank." And yes, she covered Merrick Garland.

Long before McConnell "was blocking efforts to secure the 2020 election, he was blocking efforts to secure the 2016 election," Bee said. "He made us go soft on Russia because his side was benefitting. I'd ask how he can show his face after betraying America like that, but honestly, I've also wondered how he showed his face before he did that." Along with insult comedy there's also NSFW language. Peter Weber

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may be luxuriating in his reputation as a villainous legislation killer, but his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, has kept a fairly low profile for a member of President Trump's Cabinet — in the U.S., at least. Chao has been a celebrity in China since she became the first Chinese-American Cabinet secretary under George W. Bush, and she "has repeatedly used her connections and celebrity status in China to boost the profile" of her family's shipping business, The New York Times reports.

Chao's father, James Chao, founded the shipping company, Foremost Group, in 1964. While its headquarters are in Manhattan, Foremost now "builds most of its ships in state-owned shipyards in China, with some financed by Chinese government loans," primarily shipping iron ore and other raw materials to China, using ships registered in Liberia and Hong Kong through companies in the Marshall Islands, the Times reports.

Chao hasn't had a formal role at Foremost since the 1970s, but she and McConnell have benefitted in other ways — James Chao gave them a gift worth between $5 million and $25 million in 2008, and Chao's family has donated $1.1 million to McConnell's campaigns and political action committees since 1989 — and Chao's advocacy for Foremost has at times blurred the lines between family business and official duty, the Times found.

Chao said in a statement that her family members "are patriotic Americans who have led purpose-driven lives and contributed much to this country," and a Transportation Department spokesman said the Times wove "together a web of innuendos and baseless inferences." Her sister, Foremost CEO Angela Chao, told the Times that Foremost was "around and we were well respected well before Elaine was in anything. We predate her; she doesn't predate us." Read more about Chao's proposed cuts for the struggling U.S. maritime industry she oversees, her family's powerful friends in China, and Chao's role as a "bridge" between China and the U.S. at The New York Times.

Back in 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "blocked President Obama from appointing Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, because 'a president shouldn't get to fill a Supreme Court seat in an election year,'" Trevor Noah reminded viewers on Wednesday's Daily Show. "But now that Donald Trump is president, McConnell says 'Playas gotta play,'" he paraphrased, showing the video of McConnell changing his tune at a luncheon in Kentucky on Tuesday.

"Say what you want about Mitch McConnell, but he is truly the perfect movie villain," Noah said. "And not just because he looks like Jabba the Hut got a gastric bypass. No, it's because look at how he did it: He took a sip of his drink and then he just revealed his evil plan, then he gave a creepy-ass smile. Classic movie villain. I'm surprised he didn't end the press conference by turning into a cloud of bats." McConnell, it should be noted, is embracing his dark side and reveling in his growing reputation for villainy.

Still, the analogy isn't perfect, Noah conceded. "When a villain does this in a movie, we're always like: 'You idiot — why would you reveal your plan? Now the good guys can stop you!' But in real life we're like: 'Aha! Now we can stop him — we just need 50 votes in the Senate to ... wait, who's got the votes?' ... And the worst part is, Mitch McConnell lives so deep in Senate procedure that it's not easy to explain to people why his plan is so evil." Watch him briefly try to explain before moving on to abortion, Netflix, The Bachelorette, and the Midwest's stormy weather. Peter Weber

Former White House communications aide Cliff Sims says he's one of the vipers in his new memoir, Team of Vipers, about his 500 days in President Trump's West Wing, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is a snake. At least that was Trump's assessment of McConnell after their first legislative strategy session in February 2017, Sims recounts, according to an excerpt in Politico. The topic of discussion was repealing ObamaCare, and Trump's interest was piqued by "an offhand comment" from McConnell about "doing this without any Democratic votes," Sims writes.

Trump suggested the bill might get support from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), "a friend of mine" from a state he'd just won by 42 points. "Absolutely not," McConnell responded. Manchin will vote no, and "we're going to do everything in our power to beat him when he comes up for re-election in 2018." Trump asked: "Do we have to go after him like that?" And McConnell said yes, "we're going to crush him like a grape."

On Thursday, Manchin — who did vote against the GOP's failed ObamaCare-repeal bill, along with three Republicans, and won re-election in 2018 — made a joke of McConnell's reported threat.

McConnell's statement had a different effect in the Roosevelt Room, Sims writes:

Read the rest of the excerpt at Politico.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) "single biggest regret of my time in Congress," he told Bloomberg News on Tuesday, is "our failure to address the entitlement issue." McConnell said that the mushrooming federal deficit, which the Treasury Department just said grew to $779 billion last fiscal year — 77 percent higher than when McConnell became majority leader in 2015 — is "very disturbing," but he blamed Medicare and Social Security spending, not the $1.5 trillion tax cut he steered through last year.

"I think it's pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government," McConnell said. Because cutting Social Security and Medicare are politically toxic, he added, it will be "very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we're talking about Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid," while Republicans run everything. While top GOP lawmakers have recently proposed cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to shrink the deficit, Democrats reiterated Tuesday that they won't be on board if they win one or both houses of Congress.

When advocating for the tax cuts last December, McConnell predicted they would at least pay for themselves due to stronger growth. The White House blamed the ballooning deficits on stagnant tax revenue and higher spending. "Business tax revenue fell sharply in the first nine months of this year because tax rates were cut under last year's law," The Washington Post notes. "McConnell blamed the recent run-up in the deficit on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but there haven't been policy changes in those programs to explain the major run-up in the debt in the past two years. The bigger changes have instead been bipartisan agreements to remove spending caps on things such as the military, and last year's tax cut."

"There have been protests in Washington" over the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, "and several cry breaks here at CNN," Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson said in character as anchor Don Lemon. He then introduced a live feed from the "GOP locker room," where Republican senators were gleefully celebrating their triumph.

"Republicans read the mood of the country, we could tell that people really wanted Kavanaugh," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (a nearly unidentifiable Beck Bennett). "Everyone's pumped — from white men over 60 to white men over 70." The victory, he added, is "up there with Vietnam, for sure."

Kate McKinnon reprised her role as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) giving a play-by-play of the final moments of the win, with an assist from Cecily Strong's Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the deciding pro-Kavanaugh vote. Watch the full sketch below. Bonnie Kristian

The Republican party has taken control of the US Senate in midterm elections that will reset the political landscape of Barack Obama’s final two years in office.

The Republicans, who needed to take six states from the Democrats to win control of the Senate, have already taken seven states and are expected to gain more as votes continue to be counted.

The Democrats have now lost control of both chambers, after the Republicans took back the House of Representatives in 2010, further restricting President Barack Obama’s ability to push through his political agenda. So what happens next?

How important are the midterms?

The 2014 midterms, which fall halfway into Obama’s second four-year term in office, offered voters a chance to elect the entire House of Representatives, around one third of the 100-seat Senate and 36 out of 50 state governors. Midterm elections determine which party takes control of Congress and the Senate, but tend to attract fewer voters to the polling stations than presidential elections.

What happened overnight?

Republicans seized Democratic Senate seats in North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, West Virginia, Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota. This means the party now controls 52 seats, and is tipped to win more. It is also projected to increase its majority in the House of Representatives to levels "not seen since before World War Two", says the BBC.

Why did the Democrats do so badly?

Historically, the party in control of the White House tends to lose strength in Congress and the Senate in midterm elections – but the results are worse than many Democrats had feared. "Virtually every Republican candidate campaigned on only one thing: what they called the failure of President Obama," says the New York Times. The Republicans packaged the election as a referendum on Obama’s competency and it appears that voters were dissatisfied. Even Democratic candidates distanced themselves from Obama during their campaigns because of his unpopularity. Analysts suggest that voters are yet to feel the effects of any economic recovery and that world events such as Ebola and the conflict in Iraq and Syria exacerbated the public’s already gloomy mood.

How will the results affect Barack Obama?

The president will need to appease the dissatisfied public, but with new limitations on his ability to push through his political agenda. The Republicans can also thwart his ability to name new federal judges, cabinet members and senior government officials. One of the biggest effects is the power of the Republican party to set the political agenda. Republican Senator of Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, currently the minority leader of the Senate, will become majority leader, deciding which bills come to the floor. However, even if his party tries to pass a wish list of legislation, Obama could simply veto the bills with which he disagrees, says the BBC. The president will have to balance his own interests in trying to secure a successful legacy, perhaps by compromising with Republicans to push through legislation, with the interests of his own party, which faces another election in 2016.

What do the results mean for the presidential election?

The "thumping" taken by Democrats might put pressure on Hillary Clinton to declare her intentions for presidency on an accelerated schedule, says The Independent. "It is possible that not only she but also several Republican presidential aspirants will declare in the coming weeks, thus firing the starting pistol on the 2016 race," says the newspaper.

While voters took out their frustrations on the president this time round, it is possible that they will vent their spleen on the Senate in two years’ time. The BBC’s Rajesh Mirchandani suggests Democrat candidates can now pit their campaign against a Republican Congress and Senate, while Republican candidates can argue that, with control of both chambers, it is only a Democrat president standing in their way.

Will there be any international effects?

Like many second-term presidents, Obama is expected to focus heavily on foreign policy, says the Wall Street Journal. He is attempting to strengthen ties with Asia, end the US combat mission in Afghanistan and negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, as well as continue the operation against Islamic State. But the Washington Post suggests that other governments, particularly in Asia, may now view him as a "lame duck". Nevertheless, Tom Packer at the not-for-profit media outlet The Conversation says international trade deals, such as the US-EU deal, could actually be advanced: "On trade the Republican party tends to agree more with President Obama than his own party does."

The Republican party has taken control of the US Senate in midterm elections that will reset the political landscape of Barack Obama’s final two years in office.

The Republicans, who needed to take six states from the Democrats to win control of the Senate, have already taken seven states and are expected to gain more as votes continue to be counted.

The Democrats have now lost control of both chambers, after the Republicans took back the House of Representatives in 2010, further restricting President Barack Obama’s ability to push through his political agenda. So what happens next?

How important are the midterms?

The 2014 midterms, which fall halfway into Obama’s second four-year term in office, offered voters a chance to elect the entire House of Representatives, around one third of the 100-seat Senate and 36 out of 50 state governors. Midterm elections determine which party takes control of Congress and the Senate, but tend to attract fewer voters to the polling stations than presidential elections.

What happened overnight?

Republicans seized Democratic Senate seats in North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, West Virginia, Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota. This means the party now controls 52 seats, and is tipped to win more. It is also projected to increase its majority in the House of Representatives to levels "not seen since before World War Two", says the BBC.

Why did the Democrats do so badly?

Historically, the party in control of the White House tends to lose strength in Congress and the Senate in midterm elections – but the results are worse than many Democrats had feared. "Virtually every Republican candidate campaigned on only one thing: what they called the failure of President Obama," says the New York Times. The Republicans packaged the election as a referendum on Obama’s competency and it appears that voters were dissatisfied. Even Democratic candidates distanced themselves from Obama during their campaigns because of his unpopularity. Analysts suggest that voters are yet to feel the effects of any economic recovery and that world events such as Ebola and the conflict in Iraq and Syria exacerbated the public’s already gloomy mood.

How will the results affect Barack Obama?

The president will need to appease the dissatisfied public, but with new limitations on his ability to push through his political agenda. The Republicans can also thwart his ability to name new federal judges, cabinet members and senior government officials. One of the biggest effects is the power of the Republican party to set the political agenda. Republican Senator of Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, currently the minority leader of the Senate, will become majority leader, deciding which bills come to the floor. However, even if his party tries to pass a wish list of legislation, Obama could simply veto the bills with which he disagrees, says the BBC. The president will have to balance his own interests in trying to secure a successful legacy, perhaps by compromising with Republicans to push through legislation, with the interests of his own party, which faces another election in 2016.

What do the results mean for the presidential election?

The "thumping" taken by Democrats might put pressure on Hillary Clinton to declare her intentions for presidency on an accelerated schedule, says The Independent. "It is possible that not only she but also several Republican presidential aspirants will declare in the coming weeks, thus firing the starting pistol on the 2016 race," says the newspaper.

While voters took out their frustrations on the president this time round, it is possible that they will vent their spleen on the Senate in two years’ time. The BBC’s Rajesh Mirchandani suggests Democrat candidates can now pit their campaign against a Republican Congress and Senate, while Republican candidates can argue that, with control of both chambers, it is only a Democrat president standing in their way.

Will there be any international effects?

Like many second-term presidents, Obama is expected to focus heavily on foreign policy, says the Wall Street Journal. He is attempting to strengthen ties with Asia, end the US combat mission in Afghanistan and negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, as well as continue the operation against Islamic State. But the Washington Post suggests that other governments, particularly in Asia, may now view him as a "lame duck". Nevertheless, Tom Packer at the not-for-profit media outlet The Conversation says international trade deals, such as the US-EU deal, could actually be advanced: "On trade the Republican party tends to agree more with President Obama than his own party does."

A SECRET tape recording of a senior Republican senator and his staff discussing ways to exploit Hollywood actress Ashley Judd's history of mental illness if she stands for election, has "stripped bare" the take-no-prisoners nature of US politics, The Times says.

Rather than apologise for the conversation – in which Judd is labelled "emotionally unbalanced" – Senator Mitch McConnell has condemned the release of the tape to Mother Jones magazine as "quite a Nixonian move" by his opponents on the left. He was referring to the Watergate scandal which linked former US president Richard Nixon to a plan to install secret listening devices in the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in Washington.

"This is what you get from the political left in America … Much like Nixon in Watergate, that is what the political left does these days," McConnell said. The senator has referred the matter to the FBI for investigation.

Judd, who has since decided not to challenge McConnell for his seat in 2014, said: "This is yet another example of the politics of personal destruction that embody Mitch McConnell and are pervasive in Washington, D.C. We expected nothing less from Mitch McConnell and his camp to take a personal struggle such as depression, which many Americans cope with on a daily basis, and turn it into a laughing matter."

In the tape recording, McConnell - who leads the Republicans in the senate - is allegedly heard saying, "I assume most of you have played the game Whac-A-Mole? This is the Whac-A-Mole period of the campaign…when anybody sticks their head up, do them out."

The senator's staffers then analyse Judd's battles with depression, which she discusses openly in her 2011 autobiography. "She's clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced," one aide says. "I mean it's been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she's suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalised for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the '90s."

Mother Jones is the magazine that obtained a recording of a fund-raising speech by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last year in which Romney said 47 per cent of Americans were dependent on government and unlikely to vote for him.