By LISA MASCARO (AP Congressional Correspondent)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate leader Mitch McConnell is the highest-ranking Republican in Congress who has yet to endorse Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House — having once called the defeated president “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

But that’s potentially about to change.

McConnell’s political team and Trump’s campaign have been in talks over not only a possible endorsement of the former president but a strategy to unite Republicans up and down the party’s ticket ahead of the November election, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

How, when or where McConnell would endorse Trump is less head-spinning than the idea that it could happen at all: A stunning rapprochement for two men who have not spoken since McConnell enraged Trump by declaring Joe Biden the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election.

But a fast-moving series of events ahead of Super Tuesday’s elections have been set in motion by McConnell’s own sudden announcement he would step down as leader next session and as Trump is on track to move closer toward the GOP nomination.

Taken together, it lays bare the lengths that McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader and an ever calculating politician, will go as he works to win back Republican control of the Senate in what could be among his final acts in power.

“I still have enough gas in the tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics, and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm which they have become accustomed,” McConnell said last week in announcing his decision to step aside as leader for the next session.

Not long ago, it appeared Trump would have few fans politically lining up behind his bid to return to the White House, particularly from the halls of Congress.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, key Republicans, including McConnell, signaled unequivocally they were done with Trump.

In a scathing speech during the Senate impeachment trial on charges Trump incited the insurrection at the Capitol, McConnell decried Trump’s intemperate language and the “entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe” and “wild myths” about a stolen election.

“The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things,” said McConnell after the mob siege.

Still, McConnell declined to vote to convict Trump of the impeachment charges in the Senate trial, saying it was for the courts to decide, since the defeated president by then was out of office. “He didn’t get away with anything yet,” McConnell said in the February 2021 speech.

Trump is now charged in several cases including a federal indictment of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and obstruct an official proceeding related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters trying to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election. Trump has appealed claiming immunity.

The first sign that McConnell was leaving the door open to reuniting with Trump came in early 2023 when he was asked about Trump’s potential return to the presidential campaign. At the time, McConnell suggested he would support the Republican Party’s eventual nominee, declining to name names or mention Trump.

But endorsements matter to Trump, who has assigned key campaign staff in charge of roping in support from elected officials in what has become a two-way political street. The GOP leaders are also relying on Trump to support — or at least not attack — their own nominees for the House and Senate.

As McConnell is weighing his decision to endorse Trump despite his concerns over Jan. 6, he is watching core Republican voters flock to the former president. And he is wary of being the one to try to stand in their way.

It’s not just McConnell but the other Republican leaders on Capitol Hill who have all quickly fallen in line as Trump emerges ever so close to again becoming the party’s nominee at the top of their party ticket this November.

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson traveled to Mar-a-Lago last month to meet with Trump at his private club about House races as the new speaker works to keep his slim GOP House majority.

The other House Republican leaders endorsed Trump as the former president’s team pushed for backing ahead of the Iowa, New Hampshire and other early contests. Senate Republican leaders did the same.

And Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the Senate GOP campaign arm who is a friend, hunting and fishing partner to the president’s oldest son, Don Trump, Jr., had told others as far back as 2022 he hoped Trump would run again. He became the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse him.

When Daines traveled to Mar-a-Lago for his own visit in February 2023, he told Trump the most important thing he could do for Trump was deliver a Senate majority to confirm Cabinet nominees and approve conservative policies, according to another person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. Daines remains close to Trump, and the two speak often, the person said.

“I’m encouraging the Republican Party to unite behind President Trump,” Daines said in a recent statement to the media, including AP.

McConnell’s past political distaste for Trump appears to be no match for the GOP leader’s desire to win back a Senate majority for Republicans one more time as he prepares to exit the leadership stage.

The two have traded harsh words since even before McConnell’s 2021 speech, with Trump deriding the now 82-year-old as an “Old Crow.”

But in recent weeks Trump has refrained from name-calling McConnell, or using racial slurs against McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, the former Trump Transportation Secretary, who resigned in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

While representatives for McConnell and Trump had restarted the conversation, first McConnell had his announcement last week about stepping aside as GOP leader.

Once that project was done, the person said, McConnell’s team could turn its attention to this next one.

By JAMES POLLARD (Associated Press/Report for America)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Highway signs welcome drivers entering North Carolina to “the nation’s most military friendly state,” and veterans here know they’re being courted. But in a state where camouflage-colored appeals have become commonplace, recent efforts by progressive groups to cut into what has long been a reliably red constituency face an early test on Super Tuesday.

Among the 16 states and one territory casting ballots in Tuesday’s 2024 presidential primaries and caucuses are some with the nation’s highest rates of active-duty service members and largest populations of veterans: Texas, California, Virginia and North Carolina. But Tar Heel State veterans interviewed in the runup to the primary season’s biggest voting day varied in their politics, even if they agreed that their military service informed their opinions.

Ryan Rogers, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, says the Biden administration mishandled the August 2021 attacks on Kabul’s airport that killed at least 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops. The right-leaning independent voter from eastern North Carolina fears the blasts signaled a weakness that could endanger U.S. troops overseas.

“I don’t care what side you’re on,” he said. “You better be strong.”

But Ric Vandett, a 78-year-old Vietnam veteran from Hickory, won’t vote for President Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. The left-leaning independent voter said he cannot forget Trump’s refusal to acknowledge defeat in the 2020 election, which he blames for the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

“We came extremely close to a major constitutional crisis on Jan. 6,” he said. “I’m afraid to see that happen again.”

Recent statements by Trump have fueled Democrats’ sense that there’s an opening among voters with strong military ties, even if that gap hasn’t surfaced during his march toward the GOP nomination.

Ahead of South Carolina’s Republican primary, Trump said he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want ” to NATO countries that don’t meet defense spending targets. He also questioned why the husband of rival Nikki Haley wasn’t joining her on the campaign trail, though Michael Haley was then deployed with the South Carolina Army National Guard.

Haley responded that Trump knows “nothing about” serving the country. Trump handily defeated Haley in South Carolina, just like every state primary and caucus to date. Her only win came on Sunday in Washington, D.C.

Trump benefited from the bloc’s support in the 2020 general election. AP VoteCast found that about 6 in 10 military veterans said they voted for Trump then, as did just over half of those with a veteran in the household.

Among voters in this year’s South Carolina Republican primary, AP VoteCast found that close to two-thirds of military veterans and people in veteran households voted for Trump over Haley.

Still, progressive groups are citing Trump’s unorthodox foreign policy and past comments to argue that he’s no friend to Americans in uniform. Any significant departure from the more conservative constituency of veterans and military families could spell trouble for Trump in a November rematch with Biden.

The Democrats will have to work for that support, according to Cal Cunningham, North Carolina Democrats’ 2020 nominee for U.S. Senate and an Army reservist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Winning over this community is always challenging, Cunningham said, because people with military experience tend to value a culture more aligned with the “hierarchical” GOP than the “egalitarian” Democrats.

Their ability to do so could help determine which candidate receives North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes this fall.

“It’s going to be part of where the presidency is won and lost,” Cunningham said.

Trump’s weekend rally in Greensboro was protested by Common Defense, a progressive organization founded in 2016 to engage veterans as more than just “political props.” The group said Trump’s “alarming disregard for the core tenets of democracy” goes against their oaths.

The Biden campaign has also ratcheted up attacks over Trump’s history of disparaging remarks about the armed forces.

“I call them patriots and heroes. The only loser I see is Donald Trump,” said Biden, angrily wagging his finger during the South Carolina Democratic Party’s fundraising dinner, in reference to reports that his predecessor described the American war dead at a French cemetery as “losers” and “suckers.”

VoteVets, a liberal political action committee, is planning a $10 million to $15 million push targeting veterans and military families in key battleground states, according to co-founder Jon Soltz. A 60-second ad invoking former President Ronald Reagan to attack Republicans over blocking Ukraine aid will hit airwaves soon, Soltz said.

Soltz, a U.S. Army officer in the Iraq War, said the GOP lost its status as “the party of the military” during the Trump era. Anyone who claims to support service members “just can’t vote” for someone with a “ridiculous amount of deferments” who “trashes” the likes of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, he said.

Some veterans who oppose Biden say Trump has better defended the country’s priorities despite past comments. Rogers, the Afghanistan and Iraq veteran, didn’t like Trump’s description of McCain as “not a war hero,” but said he’s voting “on a strong America” and not “what comes out of the man’s mouth.”

“I’ve been the guy on the ground,” he said. “I’ve lost Marines because of decisions.”

The modern GOP has grown skeptical of foreign entanglements. So have many former military members, according to John Byrnes, a senior adviser for a conservative advocacy group called Concerned Veterans for America.

Ken Deery, a Charlotte resident whose Army career took him from Missouri to Germany in the 1980s, said he sought to defend the “American way” against the Soviet Union. That dream — affordable home ownership and education, for example — isn’t possible nowadays, he said.

“We’ve got global wars starting up all over the place. Any one of these could blossom into a world war,” said Deery, who described himself as libertarian. “And that’s all on Biden’s watch.”

Biden supporters say they trust his administration more to navigate the wars in Russia and Gaza than Trump — who as president bucked tradition by currying favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Liberal veterans also point to 2022 legislation that extended health care services to millions who served at military bases exposed to toxic “burn pits,” but who had often seen their disability claims denied. Considered the largest expansion of benefits in three decades, the law added hypertension to the list of ailments presumably caused by exposure to chemicals used during the Vietnam War.

For Sandra Williams, who spent most of her five years with the Army in Georgia, it “means a lot” that Biden pushed that to the forefront. She said the law opened up medical services for several relatives.

Williams plans to back Biden and disagrees that Trump has the country’s best interests at heart. She said the United States “almost turned into a laughingstock” and “lost our credibility” under Trump.

What’s certain is that veterans do tend to vote. According to the Census Bureau, they cast ballots at rates 8 percentage points higher than non-veterans in the last presidential election.

Those votes should not be taken for granted, cautioned Allison Jaslow, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. In a survey of over 2,500 members, the non-partisan organization found that nearly three-fourths of respondents were dissatisfied with democracy.

Jaslow said veterans are so politically engaged because they want their sacrifices “to be worth it.” She said some politicians claim they’re “for the troops” but lack “the guts” to fully debate the cost of going to war.

“I think it’s fair for the average veteran to feel like our service was taken for granted,” she said.

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Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.