What Just Happened to Mitch McConnell in This Press Conference (Again)?

On Wednesday, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell froze midway through a press conference, requiring aides to escort him from the scene after he was seemingly unable to respond.

The incident happened after a reporter asked the 81-year-old Senate minority leader about his plans for reelection.

McConnell stared off into space, before an aide asked him, “Did you hear the question, senator? Running for reelection in 2026?”

The aide then escorted McConnell away from the lectern.

A McConnell spokesman later said the senator “felt momentarily lightheaded.”

The incident is a near copycat of what happened last month, when McConnell appeared to simply have shut down in the middle of a press conference at the Capitol. In that instance, McConnell trailed off midsentence, and as several of his colleagues asked if he was all right, he turned away and stepped to the side.

McConnell has made no recent indication that he plans on retiring, even as concerns about his health continue to mount. After last month’s incident, The New Republic’s Pablo Manriquez asked the senator whether he had someone in mind to replace him. McConnell glared at him, then smiled and walked away. McConnell did not explain what happened to him during the press conference.

This is the second-oldest U.S. Senate in history—and McConnell’s health has been an area of specific concern.

In March, McConnell tripped and fell, suffering a concussion and cracked rib as a result; these injuries forced him to forgo his duties for nearly six weeks before he was finally able to return to Congress. His injury is a common one among older people, as an estimated 800,000 seniors per year are hospitalized for injuries from falling. After last month’s incident, reporters revealed that McConnell has fallen multiple times this year and has taken to using a wheelchair in airports to avoid future accidents.

Even McConnell’s Republican colleagues are worried, with some suggesting that he should step down. One senator anonymously told Politico that “the next leadership election is well underway.” Another told NBC that McConnell is “just not processing.”

“I’d hate to see it forced on him,” the senator said, referring to McConnell’s resignation. “You can do these things with dignity, or it becomes less dignified. And I hope he does it in a dignified way—for his own legacy and reputation.”

Voters in a small pro-Trump county in Iowa have voted out an election auditor who repeatedly shared conspiracy theories, including about QAnon and the 2020 election. Then they replaced him with a Democrat.

Warren County voted 57.3 percent for Donald Trump in 2020, slightly higher than the overall state outcome. The county’s all-Republican board of supervisors appointed David Whipple as county auditor in June. Iowa’s county auditors oversee elections.

Whipple’s appointment quickly sparked outrage after his social media activity came to light. After the 2020 election, Whipple made multiple posts on Facebook insisting that the vote had been fraudulent, despite widespread evidence disproving that claim. He also shared conspiracy theories from QAnon and about the 9/11 attacks.

In the two weeks following Whipple’s appointment, county Democrats petitioned to force a special election. They gathered 3,400 signatures, about 1,000 more than they needed. Democratic deputy auditor Kimberly Sheets announced she would run against Whipple—so he placed her on leave.

Sheets handily defeated Whipple on Tuesday, winning 66.5 percent of the vote. Whipple walked away with just 33.4 percent.

Sheets’s victory is an unusual plot twist in Iowa, which has been moving decidedly rightward in recent election cycles. But it reflects a larger trend that was seen during the 2022 midterms. Voters rejected conspiracy theorists across the country, resulting in major local Democratic wins.

A judge issued a default judgment against Rudy Giuliani Wednesday in a defamation lawsuit brought by two women who worked during the Georgia 2020 election.

Judge Beryl Howell sanctioned Giuliani for failing to provide discovery documents and other evidence requested by lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Howell ordered him to pay $133,000 in sanctions and gave the two sides until September 20 to set up a trial date to determine how much Giuliani also owes the women in compensatory and punitive damages. If he fails to comply, Giuliani will face further sanctions.

“Just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks—even potential criminal liability—bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions,” Howell said in her ruling. She slammed Giuliani for complaining about the plaintiffs’ efforts to make him comply with the discovery process, which he called “punishment by process.”

“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case,” Howell said.

Giuliani denied any wrongdoing in a statement and called for Howell’s ruling to be overturned. He described it as “the weaponization of the justice system,” a popular Republican dog whistle.

Giuliani, then acting as former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, for months accused Freeman and Moss of election fraud. The man once known as “America’s mayor” insisted that security footage of the pair proved that thousands of ballots in Georgia were mishandled or sabotaged.

His claims have been widely and repeatedly disproven by both state and federal investigators, but Trump and his allies have held up Giuliani’s statements as evidence the 2020 election was rigged. Freeman and Moss sued Giuliani for defamation and told the House January 6 investigative committee that they have faced threats and experienced damage to their livelihoods as a result of Trump’s and Giuliani’s actions.

Giuliani finally conceded in July that he had made “false” statements about Freeman and Moss, but he worded his admission in a way to meet the barest-minimum level of accountability. He insisted that he only made the concession to move the lawsuit along and that he believed he still had legal defenses he could pursue.

Just two weeks later, Giuliani was indicted alongside Trump and 17 other co-defendants and charged with felony racketeering for their role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

This article has been updated.

The front page of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s student newspaper has gone viral for showing the terror of being caught in a school shooting.

Print managing editor Caitlyn Yaede posted the front page of the latest print edition of The Daily Tar Heel on X, formerly known as Twitter, Tuesday night. The front page is filled with haunting text messages from UNC students and their loved ones during a lockdown that occurred on Monday due to an active shooter on campus.

Messages like “Guys I’m so fucking scared,” “Multiple voices and loud banging,” and “Texts won’t go thru” were printed in black and red font, taking over the newspaper’s entire cover.

“I shed many tears while typing up these heart-wrenching text messages sent and received by UNC students yesterday,” Yaede wrote on X. “Beyond proud of this cover and the team behind it.”

The Daily Tar Heel also provided updates on the shooting for its campus community while on lockdown.

One faculty member was killed in the shooting, which took place in the center of the campus and left the school in lockdown for hours. The motive remains unclear, and the suspect has been taken into custody.

Georgia’s far-right state Senator Colton Moore suggested that a civil war will break out when Donald Trump goes to trial for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump surrendered to Georgia authorities last week on charges of felony racketeering for trying to overturn the state’s election results. He will be arraigned next week—and Moore is already sounding the alarms.

“I told one senator, I said, ‘Listen … we’ve got to put our heads together and figure this out. We need to be taking action right now. Because if we don’t, our constituencies are going to be fighting it in the streets,’” Moore said Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s War Room.

“Do you want a civil war? I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so.”

Moore has also urged his fellow legislators to defund Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney who investigated Trump. Moore called two weeks ago for a special session of the Georgia state legislature to investigate and potentially impeach Willis. Only a handful of other lawmakers have backed his proposal, which is unlikely to work and has been shut down by Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp.

There is reason to be concerned about how people will react to Trump’s trial. A poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 61 percent of likely Republican Party primary voters believe the 2020 election was fraudulent. A lawmaker talking about civil war is dangerous and incredibly irresponsible.

Frighteningly, Moore is now at least the third Republican to mention civil war in relation to Trump’s many indictments. Sarah Palin called for people to “rise up” and potentially start a civil war over Donald Trump’s arrest in Georgia. And Trump himself mused about a potential civil war during a recent interview with Tucker Carlson.

Republicans’ tacit condoning—and sometimes explicit encouragement—of violent attacks is dangerous. Political violence has been steadily increasing in recent years, and it can be directly traced back to this kind of rhetoric.