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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) extended absence from the Senate has stirred speculation among Republican senators over how much longer the 81-year-old senator will lead the Senate GOP conference. 

There’s no word yet on McConnell’s date of return, but some lawmakers expect he may not come back to the Senate until mid-April, after the two-week Easter and Passover recess.  

“I’ve heard senators say, half-jokingly, I wonder if the people who want to be leader are starting to count votes,” one Republican senator said. “People are thinking this is probably good reminder that he’s not going to be leader in 10 years.” 

“It’s kind of a state of limbo. Nobody really knows what the situation is and nobody knows how long he’ll be gone,” the lawmaker added. “A couple of folks have said, ‘Who’s in charge right now.’” 

Another GOP senator privately expressed concern to The Hill last week about the future of the Senate Republican Conference after McConnell retires.  

“I think, who would be our next leader and what kind of leader would that person be?” the senator said. “Yeah, I do worry about that.” 

The Republican Party is changing and some GOP lawmakers fear that could accelerate if former President Trump wins the party’s presidential nomination or general election in 2024. Speculation about Trump is rising again this week as the former president himself predicts an indictment over a hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

Before his injury, McConnell was trying to put his stamp on the future makeup of the Senate GOP conference by playing a significant role in next year’s Senate primaries, helping candidates who have an eye toward governing and the best chance of winning in November.  

He told Fox News last month that in West Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania “we’re focusing on now to try to get the very most electable candidate nominated.”  

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said McConnell’s “got a better instinct for the electorate than virtually anybody in the Senate.”  

“I think he’s representing good conservative value and at the same understanding the political boundaries we need in to resonate at a national level and in purple states and even blue states,” he said, predicting that McConnell will remain as leader through his current Senate term, which ends after 2026.  

“I have full confidence in him, I’m going to support him,” he said.  

Some Republican senators think that McConnell’s successor would lead in the same way he has by promoting traditional Republican values, cutting deals with Democrats when necessary and promoting unity across the Senate Republican Conference. 

GOP senators say they expect either Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) or Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to someday replace McConnell as leader and predict that either man would inspire a lot of confidence. 

Thune is the second-ranking Senate Republican leader, but he will step down from that job at the end of 2024 because of Republican conference term limits.  

Thune built strong relationships with the business community during his time as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and has an impressive track record of moving legislation, getting more than 100 bills signed into law. He was one of the “core four” Republican senators who put together the landmark 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.   

He actively raised money for Senate colleagues and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and has more than $16.5 million in his campaign account. 

Thune is open to the possibility of running for leader someday, but says any talk about him succeeding McConnell is putting “the cart before the horse.” 

“If and when the time comes, I’m always interested in what I can do to help our team succeed but certainly right now just trying to get from one day to the next,” he said. 

Cornyn has made it clear that he’s also interested in serving as leader whenever McConnell decides to retire.   

Cornyn’s allies tout him as the biggest Senate Republican fundraiser after McConnell and the Senate GOP’s campaign arm. 

He raised $11 million in hard dollars through the Cornyn Victory Committee to aid Republican campaigns directly and he raised another $9 million for the NRSC and Senate GOP incumbents and candidates, hosting and attending events in Texas, Washington and around the country.  

He also played a central role in negotiating two of the biggest bipartisan accomplishments of 2022: gun violence legislation to respond to the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act.  

McConnell asked Cornyn to take the lead on the difficult gun violence issue because he wanted to get a result that wouldn’t create a rift between GOP senators and gun rights advocates.  

Thune stood in for McConnell last week by presiding over the Monday afternoon Senate Republican leadership meeting and taking the lead in speaking to reporters at the Tuesday leadership press conference.  

But McConnell has continued to play a role. His staff worked closely with Thune’s staff to set the agenda for the Monday leadership meeting, which was still held in his Capitol office.  

Asked how it felt to be in charge of the GOP conference while McConnell is away, Thune laughed and answered: “I don’t think of it as being in charge, I think we’re all trying to pitch in and help the team however we can.” 

“We’re working closely with the leader’s team to make sure all the bases get covered,” he said.

McConnell sent a message to colleagues Thursday when they gathered for a lunch hosted by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to say he was doing well and sorry to miss out on the delicious Maine lobster rolls prepared by a Park City restaurant.    

“I don’t anticipate there to be an uncertainty whatsoever. His return is absolute,” said Josh Holmes, a senior political adviser to McConnell, who added that the GOP leader is showing good progress at a rehab facility.  

“Based on everything we’ve seen over the last week any suspicion otherwise will be voided almost immediately when he gets back,” he added, knocking down speculation that McConnell’s condition is worse than has been publicly reported.   

McConnell has a solid grip on the Senate Republican leader’s job, which he showed in November by easily defeating Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) in a leadership race by a vote of 37-10. 

He is biggest fundraiser for Senate Republican candidates and helped raise $290 million for the 2022 midterm through an affiliated super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.  

But McConnell has also bitterly feuded with Trump. In addition, his commitment to free trade, a strong national defense and political pragmatism is sometimes a friction point with Republicans who embrace Trump’s “America First” populism.  

McConnell’s break with Trump opened the door for Scott to challenge him, something that Trump publicly encouraged.  

Several Republicans who voted for Scott said McConnell has led the GOP conference for long enough — more than 16 years. The Kentucky senator in January surpassed late-Sen. Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) as the longest-serving Senate leader in history. 

“I voted for change,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill in November. “Nothing against Mitch, I just think we need change.”

Some Republicans, however, think McConnell has performed a major service for the Senate GOP conference by absorbing so much of Trump’s wrath and taking the heat of other senators who have their own complaints and disagreements with the former president.  

They say he also soaks up criticism from the media and critics on the left that would otherwise fall on other GOP senators.   North Korea describes latest missile launch as simulated nuclear attack on South Trump accuses Manhattan DA of ‘interference in a presidential election’

“One thing about McConnell’s total value is that he’ll just take it from anybody for anybody,” said a third Republican senator who requested anonymity to talk about the future of the Senate GOP leadership.  

The senator said Thune and Cornyn are the clear front-runners to become the next leader but still have to prove they can fill McConnell’s shoes as a political heat shield for other Republican senators. 

“I think both of them are like that but I don’t know. I think they’d have to convince some people that they are,” the senator said. 

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Meredith Kercher’s killer faces new trial over sexual assault allegations

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Meredith Kercher's killer faces new trial over sexual assault allegations

The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.

Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.

He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.

Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.

Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.

The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.

Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.

The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.

(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. Pic: AP
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(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP

Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.

Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.

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RWAs build mirrors where they need building blocks

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RWAs build mirrors where they need building blocks

RWAs build mirrors where they need building blocks

Most RWAs remain isolated and underutilized instead of composable, DeFi-ready building blocks. It’s time to change that.

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In rare earth metals power struggle with China, old laptops, phones may get a new life

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In rare earth metals power struggle with China, old laptops, phones may get a new life

A stack of old mobile phones are seen before recycling process in Kocaeli, Turkiye on October 14, 2024.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

As the U.S. and China vie for economic, technological and geopolitical supremacy, the critical elements and metals embedded in technology from consumer to industrial and military markets have become a pawn in the wider conflict. That’s nowhere more so the case than in China’s leverage over the rare earth metals supply chain. This past week, the Department of Defense took a large equity stake in MP Materials, the company running the only rare earths mining operation in the U.S.

But there’s another option to combat the rare earths shortage that goes back to an older idea: recycling. The business has come a long way from collecting cans, bottles, plastic, newspaper and other consumer disposables, otherwise destined for landfills, to recreate all sorts of new products.

Today, next-generation recyclers — a mix of legacy companies and startups — are innovating ways to gather and process the ever-growing mountains of electronic waste, or e-waste, which comprises end-of-life and discarded computers, smartphones, servers, TVs, appliances, medical devices, and other electronics and IT equipment. And they are doing so in a way that is aligned to the newest critical technologies in society. Most recently, spent EV batteries, wind turbines and solar panels are fostering a burgeoning recycling niche.

The e-waste recycling opportunity isn’t limited to rare earth elements. Any electronics that can’t be wholly refurbished and resold, or cannibalized for replacement parts needed to keep existing electronics up and running, can berecycled to strip out gold, silver, copper, nickel, steel, aluminum, lithium, cobalt and other metals vital to manufacturers in various industries. But increasingly, recyclers are extracting rare-earth elements, such as neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium, which are critical in making everything from fighter jets to power tools.

“Recycling [of e-waste] hasn’t been taken too seriously until recently” as a meaningful source of supply, said Kunal Sinha, global head of recycling at Swiss-based Glencore, a major miner, producer and marketer of metals and minerals — and, to a much lesser but growing degree, an e-waste recycler. “A lot of people are still sleeping at the wheel and don’t realize how big this can be,” Sinha said. 

Traditionally, U.S. manufacturers purchase essential metals and rare earths from domestic and foreign producers — an inordinate number based in China — that fabricate mined raw materials, or through commodities traders. But with those supply chains now disrupted by unpredictable tariffs, trade policies and geopolitics, the market for recycled e-waste is gaining importance as a way to feed the insatiable electrification of everything.

“The United States imports a lot of electronics, and all of that is coming with gold and aluminum and steel,” said John Mitchell, president and CEO of the Global Electronics Association, an industry trade group. “So there’s a great opportunity to actually have the tariffs be an impetus for greater recycling in this country for goods that we don’t have, but are buying from other countries.”

With copper, other metals, ‘recycling is going to play huge role’

Although recycling contributes only around $200 million to Glencore’s total EBITDA of nearly $14 billion, the strategic attention and time the business gets from leadership “is much more than that percentage,” Sinha said. “We believe that a lot of mining is necessary to get to all the copper, gold and other metals that are needed, but we also recognize that recycling is going to play a huge role,” he said.

Glencore has operated a huge copper smelter in Quebec, Canada, for almost  20 years on a site that’s nearly 100-years-old. The facility processes mostly mined copper concentrates, though 15% of its feedstock is recyclable materials, such as e-waste that Glencore’s global network of 100-plus suppliers collect and sort. The smelter pioneered the process for recovering copper and precious metals from e-waste in the mid 1980s, making it one of the first and largest of its type in the world. The smelted copper is refined into fresh slabs that are sold to manufacturers and traders. The same facility also produces refined gold, silver, platinum and palladium recovered from recycling feeds. 

The importance of copper to OEMs’ supply chains was magnified in early July, when prices hit an all-time high after President Trump said he would impose a 50% tariff on imports of the metal. The U.S. imports just under half of its copper, and the tariff hike — like other new Trump trade policies — is intended to boost domestic production.

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Price of copper year-to-date 2025.

It takes around three decades for a new mine in the U.S. to move from discovery to production, which makes recycled copper look all the more attractive, especially as demand keeps rising. According to estimates by energy-data firm Wood Mackenzie, 45% of demand will be met with recycled copper by 2050, up from about a third today.

Foreign recycling companies have begun investing in the U.S.-based facilities. In 2022, Germany’s Wieland broke ground on a $100-million copper and copper alloy recycling plant in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Last year, another German firm, Aurubis, started construction on an $800-million multi-metal recycling facility in Augusta, Georgia.

“As the first major secondary smelter of its kind in the U.S., Aurubis Richmond will allow us to keep strategically important metals in the economy, making U.S. supply chains more independent,” said Aurubis CEO Toralf Haag.

Massive amounts of e-waste

The proliferation of e-waste can be traced back to the 1990s, when the internet gave birth to the digital economy, spawning exponential growth in electronically enabled products. The trend has been supercharged by the emergence of renewable energy, e-mobility, artificial intelligence and the build-out of data centers. That translates to a constant turnover of devices and equipment, and massive amounts of e-waste.

In 2022, a record 62 million metric tons of e-waste were produced globally, up 82% from 2010, according to the most recent estimates from the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union and research arm UNITAR. That number is projected to reach 82 million metric tons by 2030.

The U.S., the report said, produced just shy of 8 million tons of e-waste in 2022. Yet only about 15-20% of it is properly recycled, a figure that illustrates the untapped market for e-waste retrievables. The e-waste recycling industry generated $28.1 billion in revenue in 2024, according to IBISWorld, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 8%.

Whether it’s refurbished and resold or recycled for metals and rare-earths, e-waste that stores data — especially smartphones, computers, servers and some medical devices — must be wiped of sensitive information to comply with cybersecurity and environmental regulations. The service, referred to as IT asset disposition (ITAD), is offered by conventional waste and recycling companies, including Waste Management, Republic Services and Clean Harbors, as well as specialists such as Sims Lifecycle Services, Electronic Recyclers International, All Green Electronics Recycling and Full Circle Electronics.

“We’re definitely seeing a bit of an influx of [e-waste] coming into our warehouses,” said Full Circle Electronics CEO Dave Daily, adding, “I think that is due to some early refresh cycles.”

That’s a reference to businesses and consumers choosing to get ahead of the customary three-year time frame for purchasing new electronics, and discarding old stuff, in anticipation of tariff-related price increases.

Daily also is witnessing increased demand among downstream recyclers for e-waste Full Circle Electronics can’t refurbish and sell at wholesale. The company dismantles and separates it into 40 or 50 different types of material, from keyboards and mice to circuit boards, wires and cables. Recyclers harvest those items for metals and rare earths, which continue to go up in price on commodities markets, before reentering the supply chain as core raw materials.

Even before the Trump administration’s efforts to revitalize American manufacturing by reworking trade deals, and recent changes in tax credits key to the industry in Trump’s tax and spending bill, entrepreneurs have been launching e-waste recycling startups and developing technologies to process them for domestic OEMs.

“Many regions of the world have been kind of lazy about processing e-waste, so a lot of it goes offshore,” Sinha said. In response to that imbalance, “There seems to be a trend of nationalizing e-waste, because people suddenly realize that we have the same metals [they’ve] been looking for” from overseas sources, he said. “People have been rethinking the global supply chain, that they’re too long and need to be more localized.” 

China commands 90% of rare earth market

Several startups tend to focus on a particular type of e-waste. Lately, rare earths have garnered tremendous attention, not just because they’re in high demand by U.S. electronics manufacturers but also to lessen dependence on China, which dominates mining, processing and refining of the materials. In the production of rare-earth magnets — used in EVs, drones, consumer electronics, medical devices, wind turbines, military weapons and other products — China commands roughly 90% of the global supply chain.

The lingering U.S.–China trade war has only exacerbated the disparity. In April, China restricted exports of seven rare earths and related magnets in retaliation for U.S. tariffs, a move that forced Ford to shut down factories because of magnet shortages. China, in mid-June, issued temporary six-month licenses to certain major U.S. automaker suppliers and select firms. Exports are flowing again, but with delays and still well below peak levels.

The U.S. is attempting to catch up. Before this past week’s Trump administration deal, the Biden administration awarded $45 million in funding to MP Materials and the nation’s lone rare earths mine, in Mountain Pass, California. Back in April, the Interior Department approved development activities at the Colosseum rare earths project, located within California’s Mojave National Preserve. The project, owned by Australia’s Dateline Resources, will potentially become America’s second rare earth mine after Mountain Pass. 

A wheel loader takes ore to a crusher at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. January 30, 2020. Picture taken January 30, 2020.

Steve Marcus | Reuters

Meanwhile, several recycling startups are extracting rare earths from e-waste. Illumynt has an advanced process for recovering them from decommissioned hard drives procured from data centers. In April, hard drive manufacturer Western Digital announced a collaboration with Microsoft, Critical Materials Recycling and PedalPoint Recycling to pull rare earths, as well as copper, gold, aluminum and steel, from end-of-life drives.

Canadian-based Cyclic Materials invented a process that recovers rare-earths and other metals from EV motors, wind turbines, MRI machines and data-center e-scrap. The company is investing more than $20 million to build its first U.S.-based facility in Mesa, Arizona. Late last year, Glencore signed a multiyear agreement with Cyclic to provide recycled copper for its smelting and refining operations.

Another hot feedstock for e-waste recyclers is end-of-life lithium-ion batteries, a source of not only lithium but also copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese and aluminum. Those materials are essential for manufacturing new EV batteries, which the Big Three automakers are heavily invested in. Their projects, however, are threatened by possible reductions in the Biden-era 45X production tax credit, featured in the new federal spending bill.

It’s too soon to know how that might impact battery recyclers — including Ascend Elements, American Battery Technology, Cirba Solutions and Redwood Materials — who themselves qualify for the 45X and other tax credits. They might actually be aided by other provisions in the budget bill that benefit a domestic supply chain of critical minerals as a way to undercut China’s dominance of the global market.

Nonetheless, that looming uncertainty should be a warning sign for e-waste recyclers, said Sinha. “Be careful not to build a recycling company on the back of one tax credit,” he said, “because it can be short-lived.”

Investing in recyclers can be precarious, too, Sinha said. While he’s happy to see recycling getting its due as a meaningful source of supply, he cautions people to be careful when investing in this space. Startups may have developed new technologies, but lack good enough business fundamentals. “Don’t invest on the hype,” he said, “but on the fundamentals.”

Glencore, ironically enough, is a case in point. It has invested $327.5 million in convertible notes in battery recycler Li-Cycle to provide feedstock for its smelter. The Toronto-based startup had broken ground on a new facility in Rochester, New York, but ran into financial difficulties and filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in May, prompting Glencore to submit a “stalking horse” credit bid of at least $40 million for the stalled project and other assets.

Even so, “the current environment will lead to more startups and investments” in e-waste recycling, Sinha said. “We are investing ourselves.”

MP Materials CEO on deal with the Defense Department

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