Does Todd Blanche Have a Red Line?
The Atlantic · LC · trust 48/100
The acting attorney general is showcasing his willingness to intimidate reporters whose revelations have upset the president.
Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty July 13, 2026, 6:12 PM ET Share Save This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
On Wednesday, Todd Blanche will head to Capitol Hill for hearings on his nomination to be U.S. attorney general. Usually these hearings are a chance for senators to get a sense of how a nominee would approach the job, but Blanche has already had a 100-day tryout as acting attorney general, which removes some of the suspense.
Although not all of the suspense. If Blanche loses a single vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee would deadlock and sink his nomination. Senator Lindsey Graham’s death leaves an opening on the committee, and who will fill it is not yet known, although it’s likely they would vote in favor of Blanche. The vote that will receive the most attention is that of Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who has emerged as a notable critic of Donald Trump since announcing his retirement.
Tillis’s actions have not always been as bold as his rhetoric. He said last month that “the key for Todd, or anybody going through Judiciary Committee, is being pretty tight on January 6.” One might imagine that Blanche’s involvement in Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for political allies, including January 6ers, would be an issue, but Tillis apparently does not . A federal judge today issued a scathing finding that the lawsuit that produced the settlement was improper, because Trump was effectively negotiating against himself. The ruling , which singles out Blanche, should be good fodder for this week’s hearings.
If Blanche clears the committee, he will also have to get a majority of the full Senate, where he has only a little more margin for error. South Carolina’s governor today said that he would name Graham’s sister to fill the seat, but until she is sworn in, and as long as Mitch McConnell is indefinitely out of commission , the GOP has just a 51–47 edge in the chamber.
For most Republican senators, this will be a straightforward yea : The president’s a Republican; Blanche is his nominee, and so they’ll vote for him. During his time as acting attorney general, Blanche has demonstrated the same blind loyalty: If Trump, who previously retained him as a personal attorney, tells him to do something, he does it. The past few days have shown why that’s a dangerous disposition for an attorney general—and especially perilous to free speech and a free press. Any GOP member open to considering Blanche’s nominations on its merits should pay close attention.
Last week, Trump departed from a summit in Turkey not on his flashy new airborne conflict of interest but on one of the older planes that also serve as Air Force One. The New York Times reported that this was because the new plane, given by Qatar, lacks the same “defensive countermeasures” of the older plane, including “advanced antimissile capabilities.” Over the weekend, the Times revealed that Blanche’s Justice Department had issued subpoenas to four of the paper’s reporters, dispatching federal agents to some of their homes. The administration wants to compel them to testify about how they learned of the security vulnerabilities.
This is only the latest in a string of attempts to squeeze reporters. In January, when Blanche was deputy attorney general, the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter , searching for evidence in an investigation into a contractor suspected of leaking. Two judges have ruled that the government cannot search the data and criticized its approach. In May, the department subpoenaed the records of Wall Street Journal reporters , trying to find the source of leaks about the planning of Trump’s war in Iran, and another Post reporter who had written about the takeover of Venezuela. In June, DOJ withdrew the subpoenas . (FBI Director Kash Patel has also sued The Atlantic and my colleague Sarah Fitzpatrick over her reporting on his leadership at the bureau , and reportedly opened a criminal investigation into her.)
These are classic cases of attacking, or at least threatening to imprison, the messenger. A Justice Department spokesperson said that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are,” but in practice this is a meaningless distinction. If reporters give up their sources, they will violate agreements they made, which will make it harder for them to obtain information relevant to the public in the future, but if they refuse, they could be fined or sent to jail.
The driving force behind these subpoenas is Trump. CNN reported in May that the president wrote Treason in Sharpie on a note to Blanche with a stack of articles about the Iran war. Soon thereafter, DOJ issued the subpoenas. The Times also reported that a livid Trump summoned Patel to the White House to oversee an investigation into how the information about Air Force One had leaked, leading to the latest subpoenas. In the past, top Justice Department officials have resigned or threatened to resign over political pressure from the White House—including cases far less direct than the president instructing the attorney general to subpoena reporters over stories that made him look bad. But Blanche hasn’t just complied; he’s been happy to publicly defend these moves.
After the WSJ subpoenas became public, Blanche posted on X that “prosecuting leakers who share our nation’s secrets with reporters, in turn risking our national security and the lives of our soldiers, is a priority for this administration.” The idea that internal dissent over the war represents a threat to soldiers is difficult to take seriously. Even harder to believe was a comment that Blanche made to journalists last month . “We very much value and appreciate the role that…
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