After nearly four decades in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) long tenure is finally coming to an end. Some have hailed him as a master strategist, a guardian of conservative principles, and a fierce protector of institutional norms. But history will tell a different story — one that reveals McConnell as the architect of the Golden Age of Trump, a political era that has profoundly reshaped the judiciary, emboldened extremism and deepened the erosion of democratic norms.

For all the analysis of Trump’s rise, the fundamental groundwork was laid not in 2016, but years earlier, in the corridors of the U.S. Senate, where McConnell wielded power with cold precision. His refusal even to consider Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016 was not just a political maneuver; it was an outright defiance of the democratic process, an act of obstructionism that set the stage for the radical transformation of the judiciary.

That single decision led to the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, setting in motion a chain reaction that........

© The Hill