What Price for the Soul of Democracy?
INSIDE: Todd Blanche ... Thom Tillis ... John Cornyn
What I Got Wrong
Writing about politics every day inevitably leads to an internal mental landscape full of regrets, self-recrimination, and second-guessing about how you covered the news, what you skipped that you shouldn’t have, and what you plain got wrong.
I had anticipated only last month that Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general would “cue up the mother of all confirmation battles” and “sets up a potentially epic confirmation battle.” So far, that really has not come to fruition, even though this is most important nomination the Senate has ever considered
As the confirmation hearing began this morning, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed poised to confirm Blanche, with ostensible holdouts Thom Tillis (NC) and John Cornyn (TX) creating a bare modicum of drama but giving themselves plenty of room to jump on board the Blanche bandwagon when the time comes to vote.
The nomination is most hung up on the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund, with Tillis insisting on a vote on standalone legislation to ban it before he’ll vote for Blanche. Note that he’s only demanding a vote, not passage.
This is one of those patented Capital Hill smokescreens, where a senator reduces a complicated, wide-ranging, multi-dimensional issue to a single high-profile element of that issue — then offers an easy way to talk him off the ledge on it. These kinds of maneuvers are so transparently about not taking a stand that I can’t believe they still work to fool anyone, reporter or voter. But clearly they still do, because they remain an invidious part of congressional politics.
But Tillis and Cornyn — whose political careers Trump ended — deserve no more scorn that the rest of Senate Republicans, who know exactly what Blanche has done and have a chance to put a stop to him doing any more of it. As my colleague John Light puts it, Republican senators are voting on the future prospects of Trump’s ongoing retribution campaign.
For a year and half at DOJ — including as acting attorney general for the last few months — Blanche has unmistakably shown who he is and what he will do if confirmed. He has been nothing less than a travesty: destroying the independence and professionalism of the Justice Department; capitulating to the president and letting the White House run DOJ; abusing the powers of his office for the president’s personal benefit; and hijacking the criminal justice system to use it as a tool of political retribution.
But sure, tell us more about how the slush fund is a bridge too far for you.
My error in anticipating the mother of all confirmation battles wasn’t so much misplaced confidence in GOP senators doing the right thing. It was in under-crediting the fact that Blanche, having already been confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general, can stay on as acting attorney general for the rest of Trump’s term of office, even if the Senate rejects his nomination. That creates a perverse dynamic where GOP senators would have to assume all of the risk of rising up against Trump but have very little to show for their efforts in the end.
And so GOP senators sit back once again — abdicating their constitutional roles and prioritizing their own self-preservation — while watching democracy slip away at an ever quickening pace.
Trump DOJ Watch
Grand Juries: “Federal judges are increasingly peering under the hood at the Trump-led Justice Department’s use of grand juries aimed at well-known adversaries of President Donald Trump,” Politico reports. “And they don’t like what they’re seeing.”
DOJ Case Quotas: In a blunt, statistics-driven, quantity-over-quality move, Aakash Singh, the associate deputy attorney general overseeing US attorneys’ offices, has announced the imposition of case quotas on line prosecutors, Bloomberg reports.
Law Firm Subpoenas: In a convoluted and head-scratching move, the Trump DOJ is subpoenaing the nine law firms that struck deals with the White House plus four other firms that fought that Trump executive order, the NYT reports. The latest development comes after the American Bar Association, in its lawsuit against the administration for attacking law firms, sought to force the White House to turn over internal documents and communications among it, Trump personal lawyer Boris Epshteyn, and Stephen K. Bannon. The most charitable explanation for the DOJ move is that this falls under the rubric of “the best defense is a good offense,” but it still doesn’t really make any sense.
Is ICE Really Halting Traffic Stops?
Reports yesterday — confirmed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) — that ICE was halting traffic stops nationwide in the wake of two fatal shootings by federal agents in Houston and Maine were quickly contradicted this morning by President Trump in a social media post:
… we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.
The initial decision immediately seemed like a sop to Collins, who is in a tough re-election campaign. But only momentarily.
“It’s not a policy change. It’s a temporary pause,” Trump administration border czar Tom Homan told Fox News.
Even that was too much of a concession for Trump.
Mass Deportation Watch
Florida: A Mexican national running from an “encounter” with ICE at a gas station was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer on a nearby roadway.
Mexico: President Claudia Sheinbaum is demanding U.S. criminal investigations into the deaths 14 Mexican nationals who have died in detention centers and three who have been killed in ICE operations since President Donald Trump took office, the WaPo reports.
Targeting ICE protesters: A new report documents 412 verified incidents of the “misuse” of “less-lethal weapons” against ICE protesters from June 2025 through May 2026 that led to 203 injuries, including blindings, traumatic brain injuries, lacerations, fractures and contusions, according to the Guardian.
The Corruption: ‘Development Fee’ Edition
A $2 million “nonrefundable development fee” made last year to President Trump’s holding company by a South Korean company “illustrate[s] the minefield Mr. Trump has created by maintaining personal financial ties with nearly 30 different business ventures with foreign counterparts worldwide — unlike any other president in modern American history,” the NYT reports.
In Hegseth’s Navy, Women Need Not Apply
NYT:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of seven senior Navy officers, five of whom are women or people of color, to two-star admiral rank, current and former defense officials said.
The highly unusual move means that for the first time in more than a decade, no female active-duty naval officers are likely to be promoted to admiral this year, officials said.
Musk’s $1 Million Checks Broke Election Law
The Wisconsin Elections Commission found last week that Elon Musk likely broke state law when he handed out $1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election and referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney’s office for possible prosecution, the AP reports.
News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Dear David, please do not waste your special intelligence and moral clarity on self recriminations for not guessing how low it could go. I am so grateful for your reporting. Succumbing will erode your clarity and capacity for joy.
Susan Collins here in Maine is THE master of the Tillis smokescreen move you describe, along with her friend and colleague Lisa Murkowski, and honed with the help of amoral vote counter Mitch, always with an assist from Riverboat Joe. And the voters keep falling for it.