Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell departs the Senate chamber on February 28, 2024 in Washington, DC.Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images Al Cross, University of Kentucky Mitch McConnell, who announced on Feb. 28, 2024, that he would step down as the Senate GOP leader later in the year, used his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader of any party to remake the federal judiciary from top to bottom. His success could hardly have been predicted when Senate Republicans elected McConnell as their leader in 2006. For most of the 40-plus years I have watched McConnell, first as a reporter cov…
