Sen. Mitch McConnell was a generational force for the Republican Party — using procedural tactics and political will to stymie much of former President Barack Obama’s agenda, hand President Donald Trump key first-term political victories and deliver a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority.

Mitch McConnell is pushing back against President Trump’s most controversial nominees, becoming an unlikely — and sometimes lonely — face of Republican resistance.

McConnell was hardly alone among Senate Republicans in raising doubts about Gabbard, Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose confirmation he opposed last month. Several colleagues who hail from the same traditionalist wing of the GOP aired similar concerns about those nominees’ fitness for office.