John Barrasso

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week the biggest news in politics has nothing to do with the presidential election — it’s the decision by Mitch McConnell to step down after leading the Senate Republicans for seventeen years. McConnell’s choice to exit was inevitably going to come at some point, and announcing it this early allows him to escape the many questions about how he’d potentially work with President Trump in the future. McConnell doesn’t want to have to play pretend, and after his bout with recent health issues, he also eliminates the ability of Democrats to play games of comparison around Joe Biden’s age and enfeebled nature. It’s going out in a time of his own choosing — in sports, business and politics, that’s a rare thing to accomplish.

The Department of Energy was besieged with ethics complaints this week as energy secretary Jennifer Granholm stares down accusations of corruption and demands from Congress that she fire Christopher Smith, a top aide and former Ford lobbyist. Senator John Barrasso, one of the most powerful Senate Republicans, faulted Granholm for “repeated lapses in upholding basic ethical standards” and demanded she “remove Ford’s lobbyist from [her] advisory board,” while laying out how Ford has basically taken over the Energy Department. “Just over two months after Ford’s top lobbyist was appointed to the [Secretary of Energy Advisory Board], the department announced a $9.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has been out of the public eye for weeks, following a serious fall that hospitalized him. Now multiple sources confirm that Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota are actively reaching out to fellow Republican senators in efforts to prepare for an anticipated leadership vote — a vote that would occur upon announcement that McConnell would be retiring from his duties as leader, and presumably the Senate itself. One source says that Cornyn has been particularly active in his preparations, taking fellow senators with whom he has little in common to lunch in attempts to court them.