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WASHINGTON — As the nation rings in 2025 on Wednesday, it is also closing out a presidential election year that brought seismic twists and turns to the political landscape.
From a single debate performance leading to the withdrawal of an incumbent president months before an election to multiple apparent assassination attempts against a former president and major candidate to the country’s highest court handing down monumental decisions, 2024’s most significant events are expected to reverberate throughout the new year ahead.
Here are five of the most consequential events that shook the political world in 2024 and the questions they raised that are shaping 2025 in Washington.
President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race following his June debate performance, widely regarded as disastrous, against now President-elect Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the political universe. The subsequent election loss of his vice president, Kamala Harris, to Trump raised significant questions about who will take the reins as the driving force in the Democratic Party in the years ahead.
The coming year will not only bring the election of a new chair of the Democratic National Committee, but it is also likely to provide insight into which Democratic figures will emerge as potential national leaders as the party prepares to pick a nominee in the 2028 presidential election.
Biden’s exit from the 2024 race — a decision he, at 81 years old at the time, personally called a choice to “pass the torch to a new generation” — was the most prominent case of an elected official clearing a path for a younger colleague. But it wasn’t the only one.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, announced in February that he would leave his post as the top Senate Republican at the end of 2024. GOP senators already have chosen the man who will replace the 82-year-old McConnell: South Dakota’s 63-year-old Sen. John Thune.
The decisions appeared to seep into races for key positions on the committee level, with several younger House Democrats challenging their more-tenured fellow lawmakers for top panel posts.
The political world is now waiting to see how Thune leads a conference in 2025 that McConnell has had his grip on for more than 15 years and, more broadly, what younger leadership in Washington looks like in the wake of their older colleagues’ decisions to step aside.
Republicans had a solid year in the 2024 election, winning control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. The presidential contest specifically saw Trump win all seven major battlegrounds and improve his standing in traditionally deep-blue states. Data from AP Vote Cast shows the president-elect even made inroads with Black and Hispanic voters.
In the new year, Washington is readying not only to see what a second Trump term looks like and how a Republican trifecta in the nation’s capital governs, but also what the GOP victories in 2024 say about the American electorate moving forward.
The attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July, which led to a bullet striking his ear and the death of an event attendee, was followed by what prosecutors say was a second foiled plot to kill the then-presidential candidate in September.
The events rocked the beltway, revealing failures of the U.S. Secret Service to properly protect a major presidential candidate in the first instance and sparking a conversation about the influence of heated political language. Trump and many in the GOP directly blamed Democratic rhetoric for the attempts on the candidate’s life.
It remains to be seen whether calls to tone down the language used in American politics have a place in 2025 and whether any changes are made within the Secret Service to address shortcomings exposed in the assassination attempts.
The agency has been led by an acting director since late July, when its former head resigned in the wake of the first attempt on Trump’s life. Biden never named a new director, and Trump has yet to say who he wants to take the role.
The Supreme Court handed down a slew of consequential decisions this year, including perhaps most notably a ruling that U.S. presidents are shielded from criminal prosecution for most official acts. The decision was a major victory for Trump just months ahead of the November election.
The nation is now waiting to see whether a second Trump term void of the potential for criminal prosecution for some official acts impacts how the White House and political world operates in the year ahead.
