The Republican resistance to Todd Blanche was never serious
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Two key Republican senators drew a line in the sand. It wasn’t far from where Trump already stood.
Gift Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche attends a Cabinet Meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat, on July 31, 2026. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. For a brief moment late last week, it looked like acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s bid to get the word “acting” removed from his job title was in serious trouble . But that moment appears to have passed, as two key Republican senators just signalled that they will vote to move his nomination forward .
Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) halted Blanche’s nomination because of concerns about a $1.8 billion slush fund that Blanche helped create as the Justice Department’s acting leader, as well as some objections to a collusive deal between President Donald Trump and the IRS that could have shut down tax investigations into Trump, his family, and his businesses. Both senators announced on Monday that they will no longer block the nomination .
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Though these two senators, both of whom are retiring in January, did extract some minor concessions from the Justice Department in return for their votes, they objected to only a small fraction of Blanche’s efforts to transform DOJ’s lawyers into Trump’s personal advocates and enforcers. The fact that Blanche is likely to be confirmed, despite his sycophancy towards Trump, suggests that any meaningful guardrails on a weaponized Justice Department have ceased to exist.
Cornyn and Tillis both currently serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. That committee, where Republicans currently have a two-vote majority , was originally scheduled to vote on Blanche’s nomination Thursday — but that vote would have failed if Cornyn and Tillis rejected the nominee. And, now, it’s likely to go ahead.
Cornyn and Tillis’ objections to Blanche were quite narrow in scope . They demanded a written order from Blanche “terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” a reference to the $1.8 billion slush fund that could be paid out to Trump’s allies, including participants in the January 6 attack on the US capitol. Blanche originally established this fund in a May 18 order . On Sunday night, he tweeted out a new document terminating his May 18th order.
Cornyn also objected to the breadth of settlement between Trump and the IRS — which could be read to permanently cut off that agency’s power to audit Trump, his companies, or many members of his family — but only sought to narrow this settlement’s scope .
For the most part, however, the two senators did not object to Blanche’s broader efforts to weaponize the Justice Department against people who’ve displeased Trump, including the use of law enforcement to cow Trump’s critics. As both DAG and as acting AG Blanche oversaw several highly dubious prosecutions brought against Trump’s perceived enemies and prominent Democrats.
A video introduced in federal court, for example, indicated that Blanche personally instructed law enforcement officers to arrest Newark’s Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka — an arrest that led a federal magistrate judge to scold DOJ for “using the immense power of the government to pursue weak cases or to make examples without sufficient cause.” Under Blanche’s oversight, the DOJ’s also brought flimsy charges against individuals like FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump for potential wrongdoing. (One minor exception: Tillis did previously pressure Blanche to drop an investigation into former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.)
So, while Cornyn and Tillis did successfully push Blanche to make some small concessions in order to secure their votes in the Judiciary Committee, neither senator appeared interested in a confrontation over Trump and Blanche’s broader efforts to transform the Department of Justice into a revenge-seeking agency. And now, it appears likely that Blanche will be confirmed — and that those efforts will continue.
Earlier this year, Trump, the Trump Organization, and Trump’s two oldest sons sued the IRS, claiming that it failed to prevent a contractor from leaking some of Trump’s tax documents. The president originally demanded a $10 billion payout from the federal government, and the lawsuit triggered widespread concerns about a conflict of interest, because Trump was both the plaintiff and the chief executive of the government he sued.
On May 18, a little over a month after Blanche became the federal government’s top lawyer, Trump (and the other plaintiffs) entered into a “ settlement agreement ” that did not include a $10 billion payday for Trump but that did include several provisions favorable to Trump, his family, and his companies.
Among other things, the settlement announced the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which would distribute money to an unknown group of people who claim they were unfairly targeted by previous administrations based on decisions by five individuals appointed by Blanche. It also included a provision claiming that the IRS (and potentially other federal agencies) is “FOREVER BARRED” from pursuing any claims that “ have been or could have been asserted by Plaintiffs ” — open-ended language which sparked fears that a wide range of potential investigations into Trump, his family, or his companies could be shut down forever.
In response to Cornyn and Tillis’s objections to this settlement, Blanche tweeted out a brief order on Monday, stating that his own May 18 order establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund “ is rescinded and shall have no force or effect .” According to Tillis, DOJ also…
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