Blanche confirmation allows Trump to continue ‘pervasive, breathtaking corruption’, says Schumer – US politics live | Trump administration
Blanche confirmation gives Trump ‘excuse’ to continue his ‘breathtaking corruption’, Schumer says
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said Senate Republicans have “handed Trump an excuse on a silver platter” to continue his “pervasive, breathtaking corruption” by confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general
“If you want to wipe out corruption, you can’t have the president’s personal attorney as the attorney general. You don’t need a PhD in political science to know that,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Todd Blanche has no intention of stopping Trump’s corruption. He advanced his career enabling it. Every senator who voted to confirm him has now branded themselves as an enabler, too.”
Schumer said Senate Democrats will continue to resist the Trump administration’s “assault on the rule of law and undermining of democratic values”.
All Democrats voted against Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department on a permanent basis, with a wide spectrum of lawmakers saying he was unfit for the role and would do the president’s bidding.
Key events
Chris Stein
Democrats instigated a government shutdown last year when they refused to approve funding bills without an agreement to extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans. That led to the longest funding lapse in US history, but ultimately no agreement to keep the cost offsets going after the shutdown ended 43 days later.
Some government agencies shut down again briefly earlier this year after Democrats held up a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in protest of the killings by federal agents of two US citizens in Minneapolis during an intensive immigration enforcement drive.
While an agreement was reached to resolve that blockade, the two parties did not agree on funding DHS for weeks, as Democrats held out for reforms to immigration enforcement operations.
Senate passes funding bill to prevent shutdown through US midterms
Chris Stein
The US Senate on Friday passed a government funding bill that will prevent a shutdown through the midterm elections, though it still must be approved by the House of Representatives.
The continuing resolution (CR) passed by a 90-6 vote will keep the government running at its current funding levels until 11 December, more than a month past the midterms in which Democrats are hoping to regain control of Congress and block Donald Trump’s legislative agenda for the final two years of his presidency.
The measure’s passage signals a recognition by both parties that they would prefer to avoid a messy battle over federal spending in the weeks leading up to the 3 November vote.
The government will shut down after 30 September if new funding is not approved, and the Republican Senate appropriations committee chair, Susan Collins, called the CR “a major step toward averting a damaging shutdown that only harms vital programs and federal workers”, and noted it makes no major changes to funding levels.
Trump reposts social media account calling Lisa Murkowski a ‘traitor’
Although Donald Trump has not yet commented directly on Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general, he has taken to his platform Truth Social to post a screenshot from an account on X that refers to Lisa Murkowski, the Republican Alaska senator, as a “traitor”.
Murkowski was one of only two Republicans, along with Maine’s Susan Collins, to vote against Blanche.
The US embassy in London is offering grants of up to half a million dollars for new “public education” programmes in what has been criticised as interference in British domestic politics.
Using language that the pro-Trump Maga movement has sought to appropriate, a funding notice identifies a goal of fostering a “national conversation” about “shared civilizational values” underpinning US-UK ties. Priority will go to applicants aiming to celebrate “freedom of speech” and “limited government”.
It comes after senior Trump officials voiced sharp criticism of British authorities and repeated misinformation on a range of fronts including abortion and digital regulation, and allied with European far-right movements in attacks on hate speech and immigration policies.
You can read more of this story from my colleagues, Ben Quinn and Aisha Down, here:
Adding to Chuck Schumer’s comments, New Mexico’s Democratic representative Melanie Stansbury said the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general represents a “dark moment” for the nation’s traditional system of checks and balances.
She said this is because the justice department “is being weaponized for retribution, shielding the administration from accountability, and actively obstructing the Epstein case.”
“There is no doubt that these 50 votes will go down in history. To every survivor and every person who cares about justice: this is not the end. We will continue fighting to hold them accountable,” Stanbsury added in her post on X, in reference to the concerns raised about Blanche’s handling of the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents.
The US constitution’s creation of the three branches of government, with the legislative branch being the third, was intended to ensure checks and balances so that no branch had too much power.
The system, however, has come under severe strain during the Trump administration, with presidential power aggressively expanded and the president accused of usurping powers reserved for the legislature.
Blanche confirmation gives Trump ‘excuse’ to continue his ‘breathtaking corruption’, Schumer says
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said Senate Republicans have “handed Trump an excuse on a silver platter” to continue his “pervasive, breathtaking corruption” by confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general
“If you want to wipe out corruption, you can’t have the president’s personal attorney as the attorney general. You don’t need a PhD in political science to know that,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Todd Blanche has no intention of stopping Trump’s corruption. He advanced his career enabling it. Every senator who voted to confirm him has now branded themselves as an enabler, too.”
Schumer said Senate Democrats will continue to resist the Trump administration’s “assault on the rule of law and undermining of democratic values”.
All Democrats voted against Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department on a permanent basis, with a wide spectrum of lawmakers saying he was unfit for the role and would do the president’s bidding.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said he was undecided about whether to vote to confirm Todd Blanche as the attorney general as late as last Wednesday.
“I’ve got to be convinced that he is an attorney general who just happens to have once been President Trump’s personal attorney, as opposed to President Trump’s personal attorney who is now the attorney general,” he said in a radio interview. “I think there’s a big difference between the two.”
In what was a major win for Donald Trump, Cassidy soon got in line with the president’s wishes as he brushed off his concerns about Blanche’s independence and cast the deciding vote in the acting attorney general’s favour.
Here is a video of Cassidy, who has had a strained relationship with the president, explaining his vote on the Senate floor on Friday:
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Sam Levine
Todd Blanche faced heavy criticism for the department’s sloppy rollout of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which redacted information that should not have been redacted and left unredacted the names of victims that should have been kept private.
During his confirmation hearing, Blanche refused to personally meet with Epstein victims, then agreed to do so. The survivors said they received few answers from Blanche during the meeting.
Blanche, who left a lucrative partnership to represent Trump in 2023, has been at the center of the president’s attempt to bend the federal government to his will. Scores of career justice department attorneys have left the agency under his leadership. Department lawyers have been rebuked by judges across the US for making misrepresentations to the court.
Blanche has also been at the center of Trump’s efforts to use the justice department to punish political rivals. During his tenure as both the deputy attorney general and acting attorney general, the department has indicted former FBI director James Comey twice, New York attorney general Letitia James, the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center – all in cases that exerts see as thin.
It has also tried to bring criminal charges against two Democratic senators, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and used its investigative powers to try to get leverage over Jerome Powell, the former chair of the Federal Reserve.
Todd Blanche ‘honored’ to be confirmed as new attorney general after narrow Senate vote
The US Senate has narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general, installing Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
Blanche was confirmed by a vote of 50-49 early on Saturday morning, with only two Republican senators – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – having voted against him, joining all the chamber’s Democrats in opposing the nomination.
He said he was “deeply honored” to be confirmed as the new attorney general, thanking Trump for the “trust and confidence” that has been placed in him.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was among earlier Republican holdouts, cast the deciding vote in Blanche’s favor. Explaining his decision on the senate floor on Friday, he said:
Mr Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this, but the choice is not between perfection and Mr Blanche.
It is between Mr Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr Blanche.
Blanche has been serving as the acting attorney general since the president fired Pam Bondi, another Trump loyalist, in April.
However, there was a lengthy delay to Blanche’s confirmation amid concerns he could use the department to go after Trump’s political adversaries as attorney general.
Blanche faced pushback from Republican senators over the department’s deal to create a $1.8bn so-called “anti-weaponization fund” and to give the president, his sons, and business tax immunity, as my colleague notes in this story.
“The attorney general is supposed to be the people’s lawyer,” Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said on Tuesday.
“Mr Blanche continues to operate as the president’s personal lawyer, treating the justice department like a law firm serving one client: the president.”
But despite these concerns, Blanche’s confirmation was narrowly confirmed after a late-night session ran over into the early hours of Saturday ahead of a planned five-week Senate recess.
The Senate majority leader, John Thune, Trump and Senate conservatives reached a deal last night to postpone a vote on a budget resolution and defer action on a significant portion of the SAVE America Act until after the break.
Trump had demanded that senators stay in session to pass a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill before the summer recess.
Instead, Republican senators who had brought the chamber to a standstill spoke to Trump late in the evening about an alternative plan: they would try again to approve elements of the voting bill as part of a broader GOP budget package to fund the Iran war and replenish the Pentagon when they return to work in September.
