The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination on a strict 12-10 party-line vote Tuesday, ending a weeks-long standoff between the White House and two Republican senators who demanded the rescission of a $1.8 billion Justice Department fund.
Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general since April, needed every Republican on the committee to reach the floor. He got them, but only after agreeing to permanently scrap the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund and narrow the scope of audit protections tied to a lawsuit between President Trump and the IRS. Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both outgoing members who had blocked the nomination, voted yes after the deal was finalized Sunday night.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune can now schedule a full confirmation vote, potentially as soon as this week. But Blanche's path to a permanent appointment still runs through a floor vote where the margin for error is razor-thin.
Cornyn had been the most vocal Republican holdout. His objection centered on the Anti-Weaponization Fund, a $1.776 billion pool established through a settlement in a lawsuit between Trump and the IRS. The Justice Department described the fund as a mechanism "to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare."
Cornyn saw it differently. He used his committee vote as leverage to force Blanche to rescind the order creating the fund, and to limit the scope of audit protections in the underlying settlement. On Tuesday, Cornyn told the committee the resulting agreement satisfied his concerns:
"Given this agreement with Mr. Blanche, I expect the department to live up to this in future litigation, and I will vote to advance him out of the committee today."
Cornyn also laid out what the deal accomplished in practical terms. He said the agreement would "limit the substance and scope of the audit protection to the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury," and would restrict the settlement's parties to "the plaintiffs, the people who brought the lawsuit, and no one else."
That distinction matters. Cornyn wanted to ensure the settlement could not be read as a blanket shield for anyone beyond the original litigants. Whether the Justice Department honors that interpretation going forward remains an open question, one Democrats were quick to raise.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee's ranking Democrat, warned that the concession could be temporary. "The fund can easily be revived with a new order from the Department of Justice 15 minutes after Mr. Blanche is confirmed as attorney general," Durbin said.
Durbin's argument amounts to a claim that the rescission is theater, a procedural maneuver to clear the committee vote, with nothing preventing the fund's reinstatement once Blanche holds the permanent title. Whether that fear is warranted or simply political positioning, it underscores the fragility of the deal Cornyn struck.
President Trump offered a blunter explanation for the standoff. Speaking to reporters at a Cabinet meeting Friday, he suggested Cornyn's hold on Blanche had less to do with policy than with personal politics. Trump had endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Cornyn in the state's Republican Senate primary, and Paxton won.
"This is being done by a senator. And I don't really blame him, to be honest with you. I endorsed his opponent, and as soon as I endorsed his opponent, his opponent went through the roof, and he won the primary election in Texas for the Senate."
Trump defended Blanche directly, calling him "a very, very good man" who "shouldn't be in the middle of this." He added: "He should get approved because you will never get anybody like him."
On the Anti-Weaponization Fund itself, Trump said it was never intended for his personal benefit. "There's essentially never been a group of people treated so badly as these people, and this fund, this fund was not for me," he said. "This fund was for those people that have been weaponized, that have been abused."
Republicans have previously blocked Democratic efforts to strip Trump's IRS audit protections through legislative amendments, making the committee-level fight over the fund all the more notable as an intra-party dispute rather than a partisan one.
Even as he extracted concessions, Cornyn made clear he viewed Blanche as the right pick for the job. His remarks went beyond grudging acceptance.
"We need a stabilizing force at the Department of Justice. And Mr. Blanche deserves the opportunity to provide that."
Cornyn also argued that the president needs an attorney general who can deliver hard truths privately. "As our nation's top law enforcement officer, President Trump needs someone in this role as well with a strong legal mind, but who also is close enough to him to give him confidential legal advice, to tell him hard truths," Cornyn said.
That framing positions Blanche not just as a competent lawyer but as a trusted adviser, someone who can push back internally while executing the administration's agenda. It is a notable endorsement from a senator who spent weeks holding the nomination hostage.
The broader pattern of Senate battles over DOJ funding priorities has defined much of the confirmation fight's backdrop. Tillis himself had previously pushed to redirect the Anti-Weaponization Fund toward fraud enforcement, an effort the full Senate rejected.
Clearing the committee was necessary but not sufficient. The 12-10 vote reflected a strict party-line split, with every Democrat voting no. The floor vote will be tighter.
Fox News reported that with Sen. Mitch McConnell absent, Blanche can afford to lose only two Republican votes. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has already announced she will not support the nomination, citing what she described as erosion of the Justice Department's independence. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have not declared their positions.
That leaves Blanche one declared "no" away from the maximum he can absorb, and two uncommitted senators whose votes could determine whether the administration gets its permanent attorney general or faces a prolonged acting arrangement.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana offered a more confident prediction. "He'll be confirmed," Kennedy said.
Democrats, for their part, have opposed Blanche at every stage. The committee vote was their latest defeat in a string of losing legislative fights, from House Democrats voting down their own stock trading ban rather than accept Republican conditions, to repeated failures to block Trump's executive and judicial appointments.
The confirmation fight also plays out against a broader push by the administration to fill key positions across the federal government, including new seats on the nation's busiest federal appeals courts.
The committee vote settled one question: Blanche will get a floor vote. The Sunday night rescission of the Anti-Weaponization Fund gave Cornyn and Tillis the cover they needed. The written agreement limiting audit protections to the original lawsuit parties gave Cornyn something to point to when critics ask whether the concession was real.
But Durbin's warning hangs over the deal. Nothing in the rescission prevents a future DOJ order from reconstituting the fund under a different name or mechanism. The agreement Cornyn described is between Blanche and the committee, not a statute, not a court order, and not binding on Blanche's successors.
For now, the nomination moves forward. Thune controls the floor calendar. The math is close. And the question shifts from whether Blanche can survive his own party's objections to whether Collins, Murkowski, and Cassidy will hand Democrats a victory they could not win on the merits.
Washington spent weeks watching two Republican senators hold up a Republican president's attorney general pick over a fund most voters have never heard of. The deal got done. Whether it sticks is a question only the next DOJ order will answer.
