McConnell Falls at the Capitol

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell tripped and fell in a Senate building while being questioned by an activist on the move.

On Thursday, Oct. 16, a young woman reportedly representing the climate-focused Sunrise Movement approached McConnell, 83, in a hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building and introduced herself.

In a widely circulated video of the moment, the woman is shown walking alongside McConnell and another man who was wearing an earpiece when she asked whether the Republican senator supports ICE "taking working people off the streets and kidnapping them," referring to recent immigration raids in cities like Chicago and Portland that have led to violent arrests and reports of false detainments.

McConnell, who was walking with a noticeably stiff gait and relying on the man beside him for stability, is shown stumbling to the ground toward the end of the woman's question and landing on his left side.

Two people, including a Capitol Police officer standing nearby, helped the senator up. Noticing that he was still being filmed, McConnell waved at the camera and uttered a noise before he was guided away.

"These are the people running our government," said Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay in a statement shared with PEOPLE. "Mitch McConnell couldn’t even answer a simple question without falling down, and it’s certainly not the first time he hasn’t been able to answer young people."

The statement continued: "Both parties are run by out-of-touch octogenarians who have been in politics for longer than we’ve been alive. Their incompetence and need to cling to power aren’t just embarrassing; they’re costly, and the American people are paying the price."

McConnell, who held a record as the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, stepped down as leader of the Republican Senate Conference after 18 years last year amid concerns about his health.

The former Senate majority leader has a well-documented history of public falls and freezing episodes, with Thursday's incident marking at least his third fall since December.

In 2023, McConnell worried his colleagues when — months after being hospitalized for nearly five days after sustaining a concussion and rib fracture in a fall — he froze mid-sentence during a Capitol press conference and stared straight ahead for several seconds before his colleagues helped usher him away. He later emerged from his office and assured reporters that he was doing "fine."

One month later, a similar situation unfolded in his home state of Kentucky, when he suddenly froze after a reporter asked if he would seek reelection in 2026.

After the second freezing incident, McConnell agreed to undergo testing with the Senate's dedicated physician, who later concluded there was "no evidence" that he suffered a seizure or stroke after performing MRI imaging, an EEG study and "consultations with several neurologists for a comprehensive neurology assessment."

The doctor had previously suggested that lingering concussion effects and dehydration may have accounted for some of McConnell's lightheadedness.

Even so, some of his Republican colleagues remained unconvinced, including fellow Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who is an ophthalmologist.

In conversation with The Hill, Paul slammed the doctor's findings as "not believable," saying, "When you get dehydrated you don’t have moments where your eyes look in the distance with a vacant look and you’re sort of basically unconscious with your eyes open. That is not a symptom of dehydration."

"What’s occurring from what I’ve seen, it’s a neurological event," Paul insisted.

McConnell's current Senate term ends in January 2027.