President Donald Trump is taking a hardball tactic against Republican rebels demanding concessions for their vote to confirm Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
After Blanche’s confirmation hearing was postponed late Wednesday night, Trump took to Truth Social Thursday morning to excoriate the two key holdouts on the Senate Judiciary Committee standing in the way of his personal lawyer becoming the nation’s top prosecutor: Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.
Trump threatened to withdraw Blanche’s nomination until both are out of office next year.
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“Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time,” Trump said. “However, John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting.”
“Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention,” he continued. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”
While Trump did thwart Cornyn’s re-election bid by backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as the Republican nominee, Tillis opted to retire on his own volition last year after raging over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
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Cornyn shrugged off the threat almost immediately. Both he and Tillis are in pursuit of explicit, written proposals to modify the settlement deal reached between the IRS and Trump and his family earlier this year.
“POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” Cornyn said on X.
Negotiations are still ongoing, but so far the duo have not gotten specifically what they want to permanently kill the now-defunct, nearly $2 billion anti-weaponization fund and a rewrite of Trump’s audit immunity baked into the settlement deal.
And there’s no guarantee that the Senate would be more accepting of Blanche next year, either, given that Republicans have more seats in danger than Senate Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that waiting until 2027 is “a calculation they’ll have to make.”
“The best answer to this is to figure out how to answer, to resolve, the questions that Tillis and Cornyn have,” Thune said. “And I think there’s a way to do that, and then let’s get him confirmed. That would be my take. But, I mean, I’ll defer to whatever the White House, the president decides what they’re gonna do.”
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Trump could leave Blanche as acting attorney general for some time, similar to how former President Joe Biden left former acting Labor Secretary Julie Su in the role from 2023 to the end of his presidency. But that also comes with its own time limit.
Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a cabinet-level official can stay in an acting role for 210 days. That timer resets if there is a pending nomination in the Senate. If Trump were to formally withdraw his nominating paperwork, the clock would start over.
If Trump were to formally yank Blanche from consideration on Thursday, he would be allowed, under law, to stay as acting attorney general until late February.
Tillis and Cornyn’s argument isn’t necessarily against Blanche, either. The problem lies with the administration and resistance to their demands, specifically for him putting a permanent end to the anti-weaponization fund. Tillis feared that “there is somebody who wants to enable it,” and that in doing so it would harm Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections.
“Look, I’ve said I’m not a no [on Blanche],” Tillis said. “I’m still working on getting this done, and I’m still optimistic that we will.”
Meanwhile, their resistance and demands are what caused Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to postpone Blanche’s confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday morning. Without their support, he wouldn’t be able to make it to the Senate floor.
Grassley said after Trump’s threat that Blanche was “well qualified, and I want to get him approved.”
“I think that right now I’m concentrating on the next few days to get this nomination through, and I’m not going to consider anything else,” Grassley said.
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